Meet expert the who can help you l olinveg er

In a brilliant series from his new book, one of the world’s top cancer specialists reveals the simple lifestyle tweaks that can transform your life

THE more I delve into research from around the world, and the more I listen to the experiences of patients, the more convinced I am of the importance of the way we choose to live our lives over the genes we were born with.

The meals we eat and snacks we munch, the hours we spend at our desks or in the garden and the exercise (or lack of) we take, over the years, has a profound effect on whether we go on to develop serious diseases — and if we do, how our bodies will fight back.

When I’m not in my clinic at Bedford and Addenbrooke’s hospitals (where I practice as a consultant oncologist and teach Cambridge University students), I am often to be found in a research clinic conducting trials into which foods or habits can most benefit patients — and everyone else.

I am not suggesting for a moment we abandon traditional medicine — I’ve seen too many referrals of patients who’ve refused potentially curative treatments because they opted to go it alone with lifestyle strategies only, with tragic results.

But it cannot be ignored that many diseases, including cancer, are caused or contributed to by daily lifestyle choices made over several years and cannot simply be put down to genes or bad luck.

This was illustrated by a fascinating study of the Japanese citizens who survived the initial blast of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs 75 years ago.

Because the radiation exposure caused considerable damage to their DNA, they all had an increased risk of cancer. Yet a study published 30 years later showed that the rate of cancer among survivors differed vastly, depending on whether they had good or poor diets. REmArkABlY,

the cancer incidence among survivors who did not smoke, ate little meat, exercised most days and consumed lots of fruit and vegetables was fairly similar to that of the general population — suggesting their healthy lifestyle had counteracted their risk from the bomb blast.

Those who smoked, on the other hand, were ten times more likely to develop lung and other cancers than smokers who had not been exposed to radiation.

Our susceptibility to disease is inherited from our parents, but numerous factors in the lives we choose to lead can damage our cells — including chemicals in the food and drink we consume and toxins such as pesticides and air pollutants. These chemicals either cause direct damage to our DNA or indirect damage by a process known as ‘oxidative stress’ — resulting in the buildup of harmful particles known as ‘free radicals’ in your body.

This can scramble the important order of genes in our DNA, messing up the body’s messaging system and leading cells to mutate when they divide and repair themselves. This in turn leads to cancer.

But the good news is that by choosing to avoid these hazards and by eating foods we know will protect our bodies, we can dramatically cut our risk of developing cancer. This is particularly true of vegetables, fruit, herbs and spices which are loaded with naturally-occurring compounds called phytochemicals, which have been shown to be formidable weapons in the fight against cancer and other diseases.

I’ve seen first hand the dramatic results a change in lifestyle can have on a patient’s outcome. Today, you’ll read the remarkable story of a 30-year-old woman who came to see me with so much cancer spread to her lungs and liver that they were failing.

Although she had intensive surgery and medical treatment, I’m convinced the reason she’s alive against the odds 13 years later is down to changing her diet.

Or there’s the 65-year-old man who came to see me about 12 years ago after being referred with advanced prostate cancer. He’d undergone treatment five years earlier but the cancer had returned and by the time he saw me, he’d exhausted all medical avenues. The cancer was now resistant to treatment.

Then aged 65, he had a life expectancy of three to six months – and the only option was to monitor his progress.

His wife, however, had other ideas. Having read about the

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power of broccoli and a diet rich in phytochemicals, she fed him a bowl of broccoli and onion soup every day.

To everyone’s joy and amazement, his tumour shrank consistently over the months and years that followed to the point at which it eventually disappeared.

I was staggered by this man’s results, which could not be attributed to any other change. If I hadn’t seen the scans and the blood tests for myself I would not have believed it.

Now, sadly, his cancer has returned again — but he’s had ten years free from the disease with a very good quality of life and is currently managing well.

He is on chemotherapy and other medication but both he and his wife are thankful for those extra happy, healthy years, which they attribute entirely to his new diet.

Although global life expectancy has doubled in the past 150 years, there has been an equally staggering rise in chronic diseases, the origins of which are strongly linked to lifestyle and diet.

The top five killers — cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disease and dementia — are now responsible for 90 per cent of deaths in western countries.

Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer Support both predict that one in two people will develop cancer in their lifetime. But of these, around 40 per cent could have prevented the disease with a healthier lifestyle — and it’s not too late to change.

This link between cancer and the way we live inspired me 20 years ago to establish a lifestyle research facility, the Primrose Oncology Research Unit, with like-minded doctors at the universities of Bedford, Cambridge, Glasgow and Southern California.

Over the past two decades we have published more than 100 papers to help patients understand their options and learn how to reduce their risks of developing cancer and to mitigate the sideeffects of their treatment.

And research is pointing to the importance of reducing the amount of meat and saturated fats you eat, cutting your intake of refined sugars and taking care with how you cook your food.

The most up-to-date data clearly underlines the massive health benefits of eating a diet of phytochemical-rich fruit and vegetables, gut-friendly fibre and probiotics (the live micro organisms found in plants and fermented foods that boost your vital colony of ‘good’ gut bacteria).

Healthy fats and plant proteins are also important for optimum health along with regular exercise and good quality sleep; these all combine to help your body’s natural defences fight off cancer.

That’s why I am so keen to share my lifetime’s work in my latest book How To Live — and in this exclusive Daily Mail series of extracts, starting today and continuing next week, I will suggest practical ways based on the latest science to help you reduce your risk of cancer and other diseases by protecting your DNA and boosting your immune system.