Benefits of living healthy

Friday the 13th was unlucky if you read a controversial front-page story about cancer medicines in The New York Times and didn't research the facts for yourself. In this story, journalist Gina Kolata reported that Americans are skipping proven cancer-prevention drugs, including those designed to prevent prostate and breast cancers, and relying instead on unproven lifestyle habits for cancer protection.

Gina is a friend, and we think she's a great journalist. We value the way she challenges health myths we'd all like to keep on believing. But when it comes to cancer prevention, we think there's more to the story than the Times' space allowed in that particular article. Lifestyle really does matter.

It's true there are no guarantees with cancer. You can do everything right and still get the diagnosis no one wants to hear. And we agree that some people are needlessly missing out on medicines that could improve their odds. But are cancer-prevention drugs the answer for everybody? Is healthy living no better than shooting blanks in the war on cancer? No way!

Take a look at tamoxifen, a drug that cuts breast cancer risk up to 50 percent. It has serious downsides, too, including increasing a woman's chances for endometrial cancer, early menopause and blood clots that cause strokes. For these reasons, the American Cancer Society says tamoxifen's risks outweigh its benefits for two out of three women eligible to take it.

Now look more closely at healthy lifestyle habits. It's true that big studies of individual supplements and even of low-fat diets have been disappointing. But there's enough good evidence from medical research to enable the American Institute for Cancer Research to say we could prevent one-third of common cancers if more people ate a healthy diet, got regular exercise and watched their weight more closely.

When you look at the really big picture, lifestyle comes out on top. Following a Mediterranean-style diet, not smoking, having healthy blood pressure and exercising (such as walking) 30 minutes a day cut your odds of dying (of anything) during the next 10 years to just 10 percent of the U.S. average. Lifestyle may not show up as the way to prevent some individual cancers, but obviously it profoundly reduces the odds of dying from all cancers combined.

Here's what else the article didn't say:

Cancer-prevention drugs are far from perfect. Tamoxifen and a similar drug called raloxifene do cut risk, but so far haven't been proven to prevent deaths from breast cancer. Neither has finasteride, a drug that can reduce prostate cancer cases by 25 percent.

These drugs have side effects that turn some people off.

Thanks to their effects on sex hormones, breast-cancer drugs can lead to early menopause, as we noted earlier. For 2 percent to 4 percent of men, finasteride causes erectile dysfunction and encourages growth of breast tissue. It can torpedo libido.

For our money, we'll take a serious discussion with your doctor about whether drugs are right for you, plus lifestyle change as the best way to prevent the drivers of chronic disease, including many cancers.

There's still strong evidence in favor of a healthy lifestyle. Need more proof? Plenty of data shows that getting the right nutrients from such foods as broccoli and cabbage help lower your risk. And study after study has revealed that people who exercise more have lower rates of breast cancer, ovarian cancer and colon cancer.

The key? Make sure it's vigorous enough that you break a sweat. Your waist size and weight matter, too. A staggering 100,500 cancers per year may be linked to excess body fat, including half of all endometrial cancers, 17 percent of postmenopausal breast cancers and 9 percent of colorectal cancers. We don't always know why healthy living works, but we're convinced that it does; so don't wait. Commit to it!

The YOU Docs, Mehmet Oz and Mike Roizen, are authors of "YOU: Having a Baby." To submit questions, go to www.RealAge.com.

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