3 more foods to help prevent cancer

Nutrition is the foundation of a healthy lifestyle, and it may even help prevent disease. Recent evidence supports this claim when it comes to cancer.

• At a cellular level, all cancers are similar. But what makes cancer so challenging is that it can develop in many places within your body, each based on different triggers and causes.
• What does this mean? Excessive sun is the top cause of the cellular damage that leads to skin cancer, but has less effect on the inside of your body. Your digestive system directly encounters many toxins and chemicals in your food that ultimately can cause cancer to develop in your stomach, esophagus, or intestines, but might have less impact elsewhere in your body.
• Therefore, one set of preventive measures cannot effectively battle all cancer forms. So it is important for you to try more than one of the following. These are preventive measures that, in recent studies, have truly shown significant benefit.

• Real tea—not herbal tea—contains powerful antioxidants called catechins that help protect proteins and cellular DNA from oxidative damage that can lead to cells becoming cancerous.
• In laboratory studies, catechins stop tumours from growing and protect healthy cells from damage. And in population studies, researchers find that people who are regular tea-drinkers have half the risk of developing some cancers as those who don't drink the liquid at all, or who drink it less frequently.

• You already know about this fat's famous potential for reducing heart disease; now we're learning that it's also a great way to elude cancer.
• In late 2006, researchers from five European countries concluded that olive oil alone may account for the significant difference in cancer rates between Southern and Northern Europeans.
• They tracked a marker of oxidative damage in volunteers who got about 50 millilitres (1/4 cup) of olive oil daily for three weeks. At the start of the trial, the marker was found in much higher rates among Northern Europeans than in Southern Europeans.
• By the end of the trial, however, levels of this marker had dropped considerably in the Northern Europeans. The researchers aren't sure which antioxidant compound in olive oil is responsible for the benefit, but they're on track to find out.

• Lycopene, an important antioxidant in tomatoes, pack a heck of an anti-cancer wallop. Just 10 tomatoes a week reduces the risk of prostate cancer by a third and the risk of breast cancer up to 50 percent.
• The thing is, you get way more lycopene if the tomatoes are cooked, which releases more of the chemical. Even just gently heating a chopped tomato will up the content.