Mike
Carruthers:
Cancer is a subject no one likes to talk about much, but there
is some good news about the disease.
Devra Davis:
The good news is that, in fact, cancer deaths have started to
fall in the United States and that's chiefly because fewer people
are smoking and we have gotten better at finding and treating
colorectal cancer, breast cancer and cervix cancer.
Devra Davis,
author of the book The
Secret War on Cancer…
But having said
that, it is also true that we are seeing more cases of pancreatic
cancer at younger ages; more cases of multiple myeloma at younger
ages and we don't really have an explanation.
Family history
of cancer is a risk factor, says Devra...
But it's less
important than many people think. Consider this: one in ten
women get breast cancer because she's born with a defect in
her genes. That means that nine out of ten women who come down
with breast cancer were born with healthy genes and something
happens to them in the course of their lifetime to give them
the disease.
The likely culprit
is environmental exposure to certain substances that cause the
cancer - so what should you do?
We start by reducing
our use of known toxic materials and suspected toxic materials.
And we also take advantage of the research to identify natural
products like broccoli, fish oil, and garlic that can affect
the chance that your cancer will occur or that you'll get a
cancer to come back.
Tomorrow, some
specific things you can do to reduce your risk of getting cancer
- I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
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