Cancer special: Expert tips

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Cancer special: Expert tips

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg20026792.400-cancer-

special-expert-tips.html

Drink green tea

" Breast cancer is the top cancer among women in Singapore. I try to

reduce my risk by drinking more green tea and eating more soy-based

products. I also steam my tofu with fish since omega-3 fatty acids

have been shown to reduce breast-cancer risk. Finally, I try to catch

up on sleep because this may reduce my chance of breast cancer too,

if our recent findings are true "

Woon-Puay Koh, cancer epidemiologist, National University of Singapore

Take aspirin

" I take a baby aspirin each morning. I eat a largely vegetarian diet,

and I am a fanatic, but not totally successful, in trying to keep my

weight down. They say that obesity is the second most important risk

factor for cancer deaths after tobacco use. I feel increasingly, in

the words of the old hippies, that we are what we eat. It's still a

throw of the dice, but at least we can tilt the playing field in our

favour "

Weinberg, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research,

Cambridge, Massachusetts, discoverer of the first oncogene

Get screened

" I take low-dose aspirin - it does reduce your risk of colon cancer

by about 40 or 50 per cent. I also abide by all of the screening

tests. Unfortunately, a lot of the population can't afford that kind

of intervention, so we've got to figure out ways to make some of

these tests less costly "

Ray DuBois, M. D. Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, and

president of the American Association for Cancer Research

Eat your greens

" I grew up in Nigeria and that upbringing instilled behaviours that

still make good healthy sense. We ate lots of fruits and vegetables

and not much red meat. We got exercise, not always by choice. I now

have modern conveniences but I still exercise, by choice. And despite

my African heritage, I still try to reduce sun exposure "

Funmi Olopade, director of the University of Chicago's Cancer Risk

Clinic

Keep your weight down

" I have never smoked, I'm not overweight, I avoid getting sunburnt

and I don't drink much alcohol. I also cycle or walk most days. I

have been a vegan for over 30 years because I don't like

slaughterhouses. But whether this has any effect on cancer risk

remains to be seen "

Tim Key of Cancer Research UK's Cancer Epidemiology Unit, University

of Oxford

Eat a balanced diet

" There are many nutrients that are thought to be potentially

protective for cancer, including vitamin D, selenium, carotenoids,

other antioxidants, and specific fatty acids. However, I don't take

any dietary supplements because I do not think there is strong

evidence that supplements have benefits for cancer beyond the

nutrients that would be in a varied and balanced diet "

Kay-Tee Khaw, clinical gerontologist, University of Cambridge

Choose your parents carefully

" I don't smoke, and that's the very best thing anyone can do to avoid

cancer. I'm a pale-skinned Scotsman, so I avoid the sun where

possible and wear sunblock to avoid melanoma. Another tip would be to

choose your parents carefully, to check for inheritable cancers, but

that's a bit tricky "

Iain McNeish, medical oncologist, Barts and the London School of

Medicine

Think positive

" My advice? Well, don't smoke, eat good green stuff, make very good

friends with doctors so that they can snip off the odd mole and do

the odd colonoscopy. Also, climb mountains and be very happy and

positive the whole time "

Lane, University of Dundee, UK, who showed that defects in the

p53 gene cause a range of cancers

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Carruthers

Wakefield, UK