By Faye Martins
Before we discuss lifestyles for cancer prevention, it is important to note that cancer does not discriminate. It is possible for a person of any culture, religion, ethnic origin, age, gender or lifestyle, to encounter a battle with cancer. However, certain lifestyles are at higher risk. Cancer risk is in some ways like the risk of getting into an auto accident, in that wearing a seat belt does not guarantee that we will get home safely. However, if we decide to forget the seat belt, drink beer, drive over the speed limit, and text our friends, while driving, we are less likely to get home safely. If we do arrive home at all, after such taking risks behind the wheel, we are “lucky to be alive.”
The Yoga Lifestyle and Prevention
Yoga is more than an exercise routine. It is a philosophy and a practice from India that possibly stretches back into prehistory. It is about good health in general, and ideas extend into the realm of diet and anything that affects the health of the body. It is also an ongoing tradition that easily incorporates new knowledge to achieve better effects.
Proper diet, as it turns out, can have an enormous impact on a person’s chances of suffering from cancer in a lifetime. Modern foods are loaded with chemicals, pesticides, hormones, and food colorings. While vegetables might be contaminated with pesticide residue, factory processed meat is generally the worst to eat.
It is surprising how well the traditional Yoga diet fits into a modern healthy diet. It is better to avoid red meat, because of the many contaminants the production process involved. Most red meat animals were fed hormones and then stuffed with grains, which were produced with petroleum fertilizers. Red meat is injected with nitrates and other food colorings in order to make the aging meat look red.
To be, or not to be, a Vegetarian
Simply preferring a more vegetarian diet goes a long way to eliminating the artificial compounds that have made cancer endemic in the modern world. It is a hard-to-admit fact, but the chemistry that runs the modern world also makes cancer much more prevalent than in previous centuries. Very little in the modern diet is natural, and it is good to gently remind antagonists of that fact.
Chemical fertilizers destroy soil and can also put unnatural substances into grain. It is enough to eat grain directly as to eat meat that concentrate those poisons. It is not necessary to eat meat; grains as well as beans and nuts easily substitutes for meat. A little known pseudo-grain called amaranth can provide all the amino acids that are normally supplied by meat.
Many Yoga practitioners are vegetarians, but some are not. Some sources of meat are actually healthy, and the benefits out weight the small amounts of contamination the meat might contain. Fish concentrate poison in their liver, and the meat is largely free of toxins. Fish that are grown in tanks by organic farmers are especially free of heavy metals. Free ranged chickens are both natural and taste different from the supermarket variety.
Back to Nature
A person who is serious about Yoga should consider gardening. It is consistent with an Earth-friendly mentality, and gardening with hand tools can be excellent exercise. Gardening produces vegetables and fruit that are free of contaminants and the soil is improved rather than destroyed, because organic fertilizers are used.
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Yoga is more than an exercise routine, It is about good health in general, and ideas extend into the realm of diet and anything that affects the health of the body. Thank you Faye Martins for writing this nice article.