What are the first steps to take in avoiding cancer?

Some of the suggestions below are easy to implement, others take more planning and preparation. I wish everyone would make an effort to do all of them, if they did, we'd see a different world.. A world with less cancer..

1) Don't microwave paper or plastic. (The microwaves break pieces of the container off and push them into your food, and you end up eating bleached paper (containing dangerous chemicals such as dioxin) and plastics, which are obvious carcinogens.)

It's only okay to microwave glass or ceramic.


2) Don't put #1 Artificial Colors
#2 Artificial Sweeteners
#3 Artificial Flavors
in your mouth.

Artificial Colors, such as 'Red Dye #40' or 'Blue Lake' or 'Yellow Dye' that you read on the ingredient list.
Artificial Sweeteners such as 'Sweet & Low' 'Equal' 'Splenda', Nutra Sweet or aspartame. They are chemically derived and are known carcinogens. You're much better off breaking yourself of needing to have sweetness on everything you drink. Break the habit now. It's not as hard as it seems.
Artificial Flavors are easy to spot, manufacturers are required by law to say so on the package, so it'll say "artificially flavored" or "artificial flavor"

Just don't buy them. Insist that your food be at least of the quality that it's not made in a lab, but grown in a field. You're worth it.

3) Don't cook with, serve with, or store food in plastic. (On a daily basis. It's okay to do it occasionally for picnics or roadtrips, but take it out of your daily life.) Store your food in the fridge in glass bowls with plates or saucers on top for lids. Don't use a plastic slotted spoon to stir cooking noodles. Or a plastic colander to strain those noodles. Use metal or wood or whatever-------anything but plastic. Don't pack your lunch in tupperware to take to work. For packed lunch: think like they did in Little House on the Prarie, it worked just fine, wrap sandwiches in a handtowel and put other things in little jelly jars.

The idea is: You don't want to heat up plastic, that will cause it to break down, then get into your food, which then gets into your bloodstream. (For a graphic account of what happens when plastic gets into your bloodstream, consult the Environmental Working Group's website www.ewg.org or
John Robbins' legendary book 'Diet for a New America'. )

And you don't want plastic sitting smack-up-against your food for a day or two in your fridge. Why? Because it begins to break down, and the break down gets into your food, you eat it......you know the rest.

"But," you say "so much of our food is sold in plastic containers.......?" That's right, a great deal of our food is sold to us in plastic containers, which is a shame. Shame on the plastics manufacturers, the oil companies who supply them, shame on the whole line of production that leads to our buying food in a one-time-use plastic container, that never goes away.

That is a whole other, very discouraging issue. For now we're focusing on
what we can do to keep it out of our bodies, and that container has actually shown, in laboratory tests, to withstand use once, without showing significant breakdown of the plastic molecules. After one use though, it begins to shed the external layer.

So it doesn't do much good to fret about buying food in those plastic containers, unless you have an alternative, which is great, but if you don't, that's fine, just don't use them again to store your food later. Use pasta sauce jars, jelly jars and Pyrex glass bowls that have the plastic lids (that's okay, because your food sits in the bowl and doesn't touch the lid).

4) Use natural soaps, not soaps made from petroleum. Again, this is about keeping plastics out of your blood, your liver, your brain, your lymph nodes...
Traditional soaps-----hand soaps, body soaps, laundry soaps, dish soap----
--that you would find in a mainstream grocery store, are actually made from----i know this is gross------by-products of the gasoline process. They're what's left over after a barrel of crude oil yields about 1 1/2 gallons of gasoline. Chemical companies decided they could use that garbage by making it into soap and selling it to us, which not only pollutes our body but also our watershed.
Request that your grocer carry natural, non-petroleum dish soap, laundry detergent, body soap and hand soap. These are made by reputable companies and sold at reasonable prices.

Some examples are "Dr. Bronners" for hand and body soap
"Natures Gate" for hand soap and shampoo
"Seventh Generation" for laundry soap and dish soaps
"Ecover" for dishsoap and dishwasher soap
"Country Save" for laundry soap and dishsoap
"Citra Solv" for dishsoap and laundry soap
"Bi-O-Kleen" for laundry soap and dishwasher
Look these companies up on the internet.

More tips to come later. These are simple things you can adopt in your daily life that have been shown to make an impact on a person's lifetime risk for developing cancer.

Of course, the most important things an individual can do, by far, to reduce their risk of cancer, is to adopt an unprocessed, plant-based diet, to exercise strenuously and often, to drink green tea daily, take vitamin supplements, get plenty of sleep and to learn to manage stress well.

The tips listed above are small things intended to keep chemicals out of your body. The big things------eating right and exercising-----are to keep your body cleaned-out and strong, and both things, together, will put the power of good health in your hands.