HOUSTON – The American Cancer Society says to reduce your risk of cancer you need to eat a well-balanced diet, live an active lifestyle and maintain a healthy weight. However, a local couple has written a book saying it takes more than that.
Alison Jeffries and Lorenzo Cohen, authors of Anti Cancer Living, said a mix of six healthy habits could improve your chances of avoiding the disease.
VIDEO: Watch the whole conversation with Alison Jeffries and Lorenzo Cohen
In addition to diet and exercise, these are a few of the habits they insist people need to improve in order to reduce cancer risk:
Love & Support
In the order of importance, Lorenzo Cohen from MD Anderson and Alison Jefferies say love and support is your most critical defense against cancer.
“High social support, higher immune function. High social support, lower inflammation. All factors that are linked to cancer,” Cohen explained.
Jefferies said people should develop a team to live the anti-cancer lifestyle together and encourage each other to stay on track.
Stress
While stress is well known to be linked to health problems. Cohen and Jefferies say too much will negate all your best intentions.
“More recent evidence actually shows that stress decreases the beneficial effects of a healthy meal. So, as our body is taking in what would be a plate of super nutritious foods, the anti-cancer plate that's primarily plants etc., if you're chronically stressed, you're flooding your body with stress hormones and activating processes are going to decrease the beneficial effects of that food,” Cohen said.
Environmental Exposure
While you might not be able to control where you live and pollutants you breathe, they say consider toxic environmental exposures as things you bring inside too.
“What's in your house and the products that you use from the top of your head to the tip of your toes, you have control over what you choose,” Jefferies said. “We use the precautionary principle, which is that you proceed with caution in every product that you use. You need to start reading labels, you need to start researching just even minimally, toxins that we know are detrimental to health.”
Sleep
Sleep cannot be ignored as a critical key to a healthy life. Adults need seven to nine hours every night to heal and restore the body. Sleep plays an important role in the six healthy habits to reducing cancer risk