One of the most life threatening conditions out there today and one that everyone without a doubt wants to avoid is cancer. While most people realize the severity of suffering from cancer, not everyone really understands why cancer occurs.

What causes it? And more importantly, what can you do to prevent and/or overcome it?

Let’s go over some facts that you need to know.

What Is Cancer?

To answer the question of what is cancer, you need to know that first ‘cancer’ is the name given to a number of different diseases that are related.

What do they have in common? In all forms of cancer, there are cells in the body that begin to divide, often rapidly, and continue doing so without stopping as they spread into surrounding areas.

Often cancer will start in just one area of the body and soon, spread to surrounding areas, increasing the severity and impact it has on your life.

In a normal healthy body, when cells grow old, they eventually die and new cells are made to replace them.

In cancer, this process is shifted. Now, cells become abnormal, old, or damaged and instead of dying off like they should, they survive. These cells may start to divide without stopping, which then leads to the growth of tumors.

How long or how often do cells die and get replaced? Cell renewal rates in different tissues of the body have different durations

Example:

*Stomach cells get replaced every 2-9 days

*Lungs Alveoli – 8 days

*Tongue taste buds cells 10 days

*Red Blood cells 4 months

*Fat cells 8 years

*White blood cells 2-5 days

There are malignant tumors, which are life threatening and can spread to various organs or systems in the body and then you have benign tumors, which do not spread into invading nearby tissues and can usually be removed. Once removed, these tumors rarely grow back, however malignant tumors often do.

What Causes Cancer?

So what causes all this to take place? Do these cells just become abnormal on their own? Sometimes, they can. But often lifestyle factors are contributing to it.

Some of the day to day choices you may be making that could be putting you at risk for cancer include:

*High exposure to environmental toxins and pollution

*Diet rich in refined and heavily processed foods

*Excessive sun exposure (which puts you at risk for skin cancer)

*Exposure to radiation

*Intake of cancer-causing chemicals (carcinogens) from the foods/substances we put into our body

*Chronic levels of inflammation (which are often related to a poor diet)

*Excess levels of body fat

*Smoking or high intake of alcohol

*Exposure to certain viruses

So as you can see, while there are some things that you may not be able to prevent (such as a genetic mutation you are born with that leads to cancer), there are many causes of cancer that you can prevent.

How can we prevent cancer?

*Reducing your intake of unhealthy and heavily processed foods is a great step towards preventing cancer. Once diagnosed, whole plant based diets have been shown to reduce the grown of cancer and even completely reversing the condition.

*Physical activity coupled with good nutrition are great ways to keep your body weight in check and your body healthy to combat cancer before it starts.

Remember the body is a living things and quality of our cells is ever-changing and heavily dependent upon the type of lifestyle and nourishment we feed our bodies. Cells of those who eat clean are replaced by new, healthy cells while cells of those who don’t pay attention to what they eat are replaced by new, weaker cells hence weak immune systems.

Most people do not realize just how much control they have to influence whether they contract this disease or not, so it’s time to sit up and start paying attention to your lifestyle choices.

Prevention now Is way better than trying to seek for a cure in the future.