Dodge colon cancer with 3 diet changes

Eating healthy prevents a lot of diseases.

But it’s especially critical to colon cancer prevention. Just think about it…

Every morsel of food you eat gets processed by your colon. So if you’re eating inflammation-producing Franken foods, your colon is left to clean up the mess. That’s probably why colon cancer is among the most commonly diagnosed cancers in the U.S.

But eating “healthy” is such vague advice. There are so many supposedly “healthy” diets out there… it’s hard to know which one to choose. Should you go vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian or paleo? Should you try the raw food diet, the Atkins diet, the alkaline diet or the Whole30 diet?

Well, I’ll make the decision easy for you…

Give the Mediterranean diet a go. Science shows it can reduce your risk of diseases like dementia, heart disease and diabetes. But it’s especially well-known for its role in colon cancer prevention. It’s been shown to reduce the risk of colon cancer by 30 to 50 percent in certain studies. As a result, it’s considered the…

Best colon cancer prevention diet around

In case you don’t know, the Mediterranean diet includes vegetables, whole grains, fruits, fish, nuts and olive oil, and little to no red meat and sweets. Sounds easy enough, right?

But, as you probably know, sticking to a healthy eating plan—even one as well-balanced and scientifically supported as the Mediterranean diet—is easier said than done.

So I’ll make your life even simpler. If you want to prevent colon cancer, you don’t need to stick to the Mediterranean diet 100 percent of the time. You can cut yourself some slack here and there, as long as you do these three things…

More fruit and fish, less sugary drinks

In a recent study, researchers from Tel-Aviv Medical Center in Israel figured out which three dietary habits from the Mediterranean diet are most impactful when it comes to colon health:

• Eating a lot of fish
• Eating a lot of fruit
• Cutting back on soft drinks

So if you want a healthy, cancer-free colon, you should probably follow these three dietary guidelines religiously. That’s not to say you shouldn’t do your best to follow the other guidelines of the Mediterranean diet as much as possible. But if the idea of overhauling your diet is overwhelming for you, these three things are a good starting point.

Based on their study, researchers found that each one of these dietary changes lowers your risk of developing advanced, pre-cancerous colon lesions by over 30 percent. And combined, these three dietary habits lower your risk of developing these lesions by an astounding 86 percent.

Researchers came to this conclusion after looking at dietary questionnaires from 808 people between the ages of 40 and 70. Those who followed these three magic rules of healthy eating kept their colon free of precancerous polyps — small growths in the colon that can eventually turn into cancer. Even those who only followed two of these rules slashed their polyp risk in half.

3 is the magic number…

The good news is, these three dietary changes aren’t that hard to make. If you like seafood, eating more fish is far from a chore. And it has a huge impact on autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis too.

And who doesn’t like fruit? It’s delicious and cancer-fighting. It can even keep you safe from strokes and heart attacks.

As you know, soft drinks and other sweet drinks are brain-damaging beverages that set you up for dementia and stroke. So the sooner you can banish these drinks from your diet, the better for your brain and your colon. If drinking water all the time sounds boring, make yourself a batch or fruit-infused water, unsweetened iced green tea or even unsweetened iced coffee. You can also turn to antioxidant-rich juices like blueberry or pomegranate juice. Whatever you do, just make sure you give your colon a fighting chance against cancer by following these simple healthy habits daily.

Editor’s Note: If you’d like to discover more ways to dodge cancer — of all kinds — click here a quick review of what you’ll find in Dr. Michael Cutler’s comprehensive guide to understanding the causes, treatments and big business behind medicine’s most frightening diagnosis — Surviving Cancer.

Sources:

1. “The specifics of the Mediterranean diet for colorectal health.” — MedicalXpress. Retrieved July 3, 2017.

2. Djuric “The Mediterranean diet: Effects on proteins that mediate fatty acid metabolism in the colon.” — Nutrition Reviews. 2011 Dec; 69(12): 730–744.

3. “Mediterranean diet best for a healthy gut, study finds.” — Medical News Today. Retrieved July 3, 2017.

4. “The Best Diet to Lower Your Colon Cancer Risk.” — Cleveland Clinic. Retrieved July 3, 2017.