The steady accumulation of evidence over several decades points to a simple, but not very newsworthy fact that the best way to reduce your risk of cancer is by a series of long-term healthy behaviours such as not smoking, keeping active, keeping a healthy body weight and cutting back on alcohol. We’ve also written extensively on the scientific evidence about anti-oxidants and cancer in these posts – part one, part two and part three. Our bodies are complex and cancer is too, so it’s gross oversimplification to say that any one food, on its own, could have a major influence over your chance of developing cancer. Stocking up on fruits and veg is a great idea, and eating a range of different veg is helpful too, but the specific vegetables you choose doesn’t really matter. The odd blueberry or mug of green tea certainly could be part of a healthy, balanced diet. Some foods are clearly healthier than others. That’s not to say you shouldn’t think about what you eat. It’s a marketing term used to sell products and has no scientific basis. Despite thousands of websites claiming otherwise, there’s no such thing as a ‘superfood’. Myth 2: Superfoods prevent cancerīlueberries, beetroot, broccoli, garlic, green tea… the list goes on. There are plenty of natural causes of cancer – for example, one in six worldwide cancers is caused by viruses and bacteria. Yes, lifestyle, diet and other things like air pollution collectively have a huge impact on our risk of cancer – smoking for instance is behind a quarter of all cancer deaths in the UK – but that’s not the same as saying it’s entirely a modern, man-made disease.
We’re also now able to diagnose cancers more accurately, thanks to advances in screening, imaging and pathology. It’s perfectly normal for DNA damage in our cells to build up as we age, and such damage can lead to cancer developing. The simple fact is that more people are living long enough to develop cancer because of our success in tackling infectious diseases and other historical causes of death such as malnutrition. While it’s certainly true that global lifestyle-related diseases like cancer are on the rise, the biggest risk factor for cancer is age. It’s even been discovered in dinosaur bones. It was described thousands of years ago by Egyptian and Greek physicians, and researchers have discovered tell-tale signs of cancer in a 3,000-year-old skeleton. Cancer has existed as long as humans have. It might be more prominent in the public consciousness now than in times gone by, but cancer isn’t just a ‘modern’, man-made disease of Western society. Myth 1: Cancer is a man-made, modern disease Myth 9: We’ve made no progress in fighting cancer.Myth 8: Cancer treatment kills more than it cures.Myth 7: …And Big Pharma are suppressing it.Myth 5: Cancer is a fungus – and sodium bicarbonate is the cure.Myth 1: Cancer is a man-made, modern disease.Driven by the evidence, not by rhetoric or anecdote, we describe what the reality of research actually shows to be true. In this post, we want to set the record straight on 10 cancer myths we regularly encounter. But if you scratch the surface and look at the evidence, many continually perpetuated ‘truths’ become unstuck. There are plenty of evidence-based, easy to understand pages about cancer, but there are just as many, if not more, pages spreading myths.Īnd it can be hard to distinguish fact from fiction, as much of the inaccurate information looks and sounds perfectly plausible.
The problem is that much of the information out there is at best inaccurate, or at worst dangerously misleading. And the number of YouTube videos you find if you look up ‘cancer cure’ is similarly vast. They also created vaccines using messenger RNA (mRNA), a new technology that allows a faster approach than the traditional way vaccines are madeĪnd another key aspect was because Covid is so contagious and widespread, many volunteers who got the vaccine were exposed to the virus, and with so many exposures, the trials took a shorter time to see if the vaccine worked.Google ‘ cancer’ and you’ll be faced with millions of web pages. Vaccine developers conducted some stages of the process simultaneously to gather as much data as quickly as possible. With millions of people being infected and dying from Covid – countries and companies shared data and processes where they may not have before. The simplest reason for this is due to the size and severity of the virus. However, due to a range of measures the Covid vaccinations were created, tested and authorised at a rapid rate. Previously, some vaccines had taken years to develop. This is not the case as the vaccinations have gone through rigorous testing before being used on people. The insinuation of this comment is that you or your family or friends are being used to ‘test’ the vaccine. You’re a guinea pig for taking the vaccine. An assistant prepares a Covid-19 vaccine.