10 stupidly easy ways to reduce your cancer risk every day
From a lazy health queen
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I’d really like to not get cancer. I’m guessing you probably feel the same way. So here are some HOT TIPS for adding cancer-fighting foods into your diet, even if you hate healthy food. (I’ve included tips for sneaking them in if you or your children are fussy!)
Eat ground flax seeds
Buy a bag, keep it in the fridge (it preserves their nutrients better), and sprinkle them on/in most of your meals. You can’t taste them and they significantly reduce your risk of various cancers, like prostate cancer and breast cancer.
I throw mine in smoothies, pasta, salads, mashed potatoes, and a whole bunch of other meals.
Eat dark leafy greens
Iceberg lettuce is a waste of your precious time! And we all know what an unreliable little brat romaine is!
Dark leafy greens are one of cancer’s biggest enemies, as they’re packed with antioxidants that fight and kill free radicals in your body. They’re also anti-aging, good for your vision, and protective of your bones, so there’s no excuse not to eat them. I’ve heard various nutritionists say that if you only make one change to your diet, it should be adding in more dark leafy greens — because they’re just so good for you.
I personally love arugula and I eat it with most meals that I make. If you’re not a fan of its bitter taste, or greens generally, you can put spinach in smoothies or rip up kale and throw it in pasta or rice dishes. You won’t notice it’s in there and it’ll make your food look more aesthetically pleasing. INSTAGRAM WILL BE SO GLAD.
Eat berries
Berries are the B O M B when it comes to preventing cancer, strokes, and going into debt buying skincare products and makeup. (Our skin is super horny for berries and if you aren’t motivated by AVOIDING CANCER, eat them so you can be beautiful.)
There are so many cool studies showing how good berries are at kicking cancer’s ass. For example, eating blueberries for six months was shown to reduce tumor volume in rats by 60%. 60!!!!
You don’t even have to buy fresh berries — frozen and freeze-dried are just as good! “Oh thank God,” I hear you say, traumatized from the hours of your life you’ve spent poring over questionable punnets of strawberries at Walmart in search of the least bad ones. (The dating analogies write themselves.)
Drink coffee (YAY!)
Everyone’s always like, “Omg I need to cut down on coffee, I’m soooo addicted” and I’m like WHY???? YOU TRYNA INCREASE YOUR CANCER RISK?
People get too hung up on wanting to kick their caffeine dependency and don’t focus enough on coffee’s incredible cancer-fighting properties — some of which come from the caffeine.
Coffee protects against a bunch of different cancers, depending on how much you drink. To get the most benefits, you need to drink 6 cups a day — a fact you can rub in your coworker’s face the next time she talks about how she’s trying to “cut back”. (“Oh really, Jess? Because I”m trying to cut back on my CANCER risk. Did you know that Belvita on your desk is PROCESSED? And that the palm oil in it is killing orangutans? FOR SHAME, JESSICA)
If drinking 6 cups of coffee a day makes you feel like an anxious mess, try to drink at least 2 or 3, as that’s the amount you need to prevent uterine cancer, colon cancer, breast cancer, liver cancer, endometrial cancer, and potentially lung cancer and skin cancer.
PS. Decaffeinated coffee doesn’t have the same cancer fighting effects, as a lot of antioxidants have been removed. JESS WILL BE DEVASTATED.
Put more garlic and onions in your cooking
Do you cook? Ever? If so, throw more garlic and onions into your meals. They usually make food taste way more flavorful (even the worst cooks can make their food taste better by using more garlic) and they can block the formation of powerful carcinogens that cause colon, liver, and breast cancer. I’m lazy, so I buy peeled garlic from Trader Joe’s, as it makes life way easier. I also always buy red onions over white onions, as they contain more nutrients.
Hot tip: When trying to decide between (real) foods, always go for the one with more color pigment in it, as it’ll contain more antioxidants. For example, get red potatoes over white ones.
Drink green tea
If you can stand it, drink it — it’s great for preventing liver, breast, pancreatic, lung, esophageal, and skin cancer. If you hate its bitter taste (does anyone NOT? I don’t have the bitterness gene and I still think it’s an ASSAULT on my mouth) add a couple of drops of organic Stevia. And maybe jazz it up with a lemon — because life is for living!
LEMONS!
As my father loves to say to me, “Who do you know who had a lemon a day and died young?”
Wise words. Lemons contain anti-cancer properties AND they’re great for your skin. Squeeze them in your water — what have you got to lose?! (Your teeth? Maybe? BRUSH AND FLOSS AND USE GENTLE ALOE VERA MOUTHWASH.)
MOVE
“Exercise is the single best thing you can do for your brain in terms of mood, memory, and learning.” — Harvard Medical School psychiatrist John Ratey
Exercise is the closest thing to a wonder drug we humans have. In addition to staving off cancer and heart disease and depression, it prevents Alzheimer’s, which is The Worst.
Find ANY WAY YOU CAN to move every day. Literally any form of movement is better than none — so don’t have an “all or nothing” approach and feel like you have to establish some regular gym routine or whatever.
DO LITERALLY ANYTHING. WHATEVER YOU’RE CAPABLE OF. Walk around your block. Dance hard to your favorite song. Do handstands on your haters’ faces. Chase your dog. Stand on your tiptoes while you brush your teeth. Dine and dash. Let your partner be a pillow princess. Just do something! (Ideally for 30 minutes a day.)
Don’t eat dairy
It is EVIL! Your body doesn’t need it. It’s also MEAN to baby cows and their mothers. Far meaner than I’m willing to go into in this post.
Meditate
A lot of you are probably thinking, “It’s too hard! I can’t switch my brain off! I meditate while doing [some other thing that isn’t actual meditation and therefore does not provide the same effects as meditation]!”
You guys aren’t getting it. The point of meditation is to train your brain to be less overactive, and get your thoughts to CHILL OUT A BIT. It’s hard when you’re not used to doing it for the same reasons running is hard when you’re not used to doing it. (And honestly always, because running is a joyless form of self-torture.)
Download the Headspace app and meditate every day, even if it’s only for 3 minutes. It counteracts the effects of chronic stress, lengthens your telomere strands (longer strands = younger body), promotes better sleep, boosts your immune system, and helps you become less of an anxious mess.
Make it as part of your daily routine as brushing your teeth and your body (and your partner) will thank you for it. I KNOW YOU HAVE FIVE SPARE MINUTES, and if you don’t, you need to change something ASAP, because that’s completely insane.
Some super easy meals I eat a lot:
Breakfast or lunch
Sesame seed Ezekiel bread (it’s the bomb, health-wise) topped with hummus, flax seeds, and arugula — then drizzled with some extra virgin olive oil.
HUMMUS RECS: Trader Joe’s Olive hummus, Everything Bagel hummus you can buy at Smith’s/Kroger/presumably other places too
The most delicious smoothie on the planet (great as a dessert or breakfast):
- Frozen berries
- Some other frozen fruit if you want (like mango, pineapple, whatevs)
- Avocado if you want (for creaminess)
- Banana if you want (for creaminess)
- FLAX SEEDS, OBVIOUSLY, HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING?
- Cocoa powder (gr8 for you)
- Vanilla extract (GAME CHANGER)
- Spinach if you want (just a bit — food should be tasty!)
BOWLS OF WHATEVER
Roast some sweet potatoes and whatever protein and veggies you want. Add mashed avocado. Then douse in Sriracha. I’m not gonna hold your hand here. You’ve got this.
Fear (I eat this for breakfast)
Cancer is super scary, but being afraid of it is probably not good. Try to feel empowered to prevent it by living healthily, but don’t be obsessive. (SUBTWEET @ MYSELF.) You can be the healthiest person in the world and still get cancer. It’s just a lot less likely. Treatment is constantly advancing, too so CHILL OUT, stop thinking about it. You’ve got other things to do.
A fun fact:
- On average, plant foods contain 64 times more antioxidants than animal foods. SUCK IT ANIMAL AGRICULTURE but please don’t sue me, for the love of God.
Ok, that’s the end of this post. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter @TheSamspo. And if you want food inspo, follow me on Instagram @VeganByTheSamspo.
