Preventing Cancer: Reducing the Risks

by Richard Beliveau, Denis Gingras

Ten key recommendations to help prevent cancer.

Cancer is the leading cause of death in the majority of industrialized countries. Yet there is no reason to feel powerless. Research has shown that nearly three-quarters of cancer cases could be prevented simply by changing everyday habits, a positive impact unlikely ever equaled by any treatment.

Preventing Cancer provides the necessary tools to those who want to take their fate into their own hands. Decades of research by agencies like the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Cancer Society has revealed ten major recommendations that are the best weapon at our disposal to help prevent cancer and give cancer survivors a practical tool to prevent recurrence.

Preventing Cancer explains the science behind each recommendation and its statistical potential for disease prevention. The authors provide numerous practical examples of lifestyle changes that can make a profound contribution to cancer prevention.

The ten recommendations to preventing cancer are:
1. Don't smoke.
2. Stay as lean as possible.
3. Limit the consumption of red meat to about one pound per week. Also helpful, marinate red meat in virgin olive oil with garlic and lemon juice or herbs like thyme or rosemary; add turmeric or related spices to ground beef.
4. Eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, pulses (like lentils) and whole grains. Eat "superfoods" like green tea, blueberries, crucifers, garlic and tomatoes.
5. Be physically active for at least 30 minutes every day.
6. Limit daily alcohol consumption to two glasses for men and one for women. Better yet, drink red wine and even better, drink red pinot noir. Also, avoid mouthwash with alcohol.
7. Limit consumption of salt. Use spices, especially Indian spices like turmeric.
8. Avoid unnecessary sun exposure.
9. For extra protection, vaccinate girls against HPV. Breastfeed for six months, avoid pollution and nanomaterials, get eight hours' sleep.
10. Do not use supplements to prevent cancer.
Easy to read, approachable and supported by an avalanche of research studies, Preventing Cancer provides dozens of examples of why and how to start preventing cancer today.

Genres: Nonfiction, Health

264 pages, Paperback

First published October 20, 2014

Reviews

[Shari Brouwer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would like to do more to reduce my family's risk of cancer. According to research, your risk of cancer is 25% chance (genes, viruses, etc) and 75% lifestyle. Wow. In readable language with helpful color pictures and charts, this book explains specific lifestyle habits which will reduce your risk, based on a wealth of cancer studies. We've all heard many of these before (don't smoke, exercise, eat your vegetables, etc) but what I found interesting was the explanation of why and how these actions reduce the risk of cancer. This knowledge was empowering to hopefully help me make some changes. As I read, I kept a list of changes I would like to try, such as eating less red meat and checking if my sunscreen protects against both UVA and UVB rays. The only thing that I found questionable was that authors downplayed the effects of pollution and all of the chemicals we are exposed to.

[EliasA · Rating 4 out of 5]

A scientific perspective of how to prevent cancer. Probably most of the concepts detailed in this book are well known, but Dr. Béliveau speaks from his own experience and that is what makes his data trustful (except the supplements part where he discards most of pills option for vitamins, which sincerely, I think he exagerates a lot).

[Dianna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too many unnecessary pictures. I wish the graphs were better explained.

[Shelly Nicholson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good information.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is good, useful information in this book that will help prevent cancer. Preventive action is a great idea! And it's nice that a person can just jump to a section that interests them and read through it fairly quickly. But rather than trying to scare people into action, I'd have preferred that the authors more clearly state the actual risks. Rather than telling people to completely change their lifestyles (at least, regarding smoking and foods eaten), it might have been more helpful to give step-by-step smaller goals toward that end goal which will still improve your risks and will feel more do-able.

Instead, much of this book was filler. Half of the pages were photographs. Most of them added nothing (like people smoking in the section about quitting smoking), though a few were informative. Even the information was often filler, like the history of smoking or a highly speculative story about how a certain type of ape unsuited to hunting started to hunt and eventually evolved into humans who eat meat. I would have preferred more information about the studies that the recommendations were based upon.

This book did contain research data from cancer studies, but it wasn't always presented in useful ways. I sometimes had to stare at a chart for a while before I could understand what they were trying to show and what it meant. And, okay, taking this action will decrease my risk of this cancer by this amount, but what was the risk level to begin with? 50% reduction in risk sounds awesome, but if my risk was 2%, then now it's 1%. I might want to concentrate on behaviors that will help the most with the cancers I'm more likely to get, but we don't really get that type of information. Also, we're not told how reliable these studies are. As far as I could tell, a poorly set up study with 500 people is treated as reliable as a well set up study or one with 5,000 people. (We are sometimes given information about numbers of people studied and whether it's a population study or scientific test, but we're not given enough information to sort out which are the most reliable.)

And, honestly, some recommendations seemed motivated by something beyond just health. In the wine section, there's a chart showing benefit or risk per cups of wine, and the most benefit was at 1/4 cup. Yet they repeatedly said "one cup for women, two cups for men." That was the maximum amount while still beneficial, not the point of highest medical benefit. And the benefit we're interested can be gained by eating red grapes and some other foods, but they didn't go into that. While they don't hesitate to tell people to change their diet in major ways, they recommend giving a HPV vaccine to early adolescence (on up) but don't even suggest abstinence as another option.

Update: Though I still have problems with this book, I should admit that I've found myself grabbing the book to double-check information from the parts I did like. So it has been a useful book.

I received this review copy from the publisher through Amazon Vine.