The Reason We Love Life / Does The Soul Exist? Evidence Says ‘Yes’ / Garlic in Cancer Prevention / Sept. 1 School Begins .

‘Know from whence you came.
If you know
whence you came,
there are absolutely
no limitations
to where you can go.’

James Baldwin

                 We reflect the Joy in our Hearts.

The reason
we Love Life,
is simple
Life
is Love.

LOVE
is the most powerful energy
in existence.
And when we send
this amazing and indefinable
energy
to each other,
we reflect the Joy
in our Hearts.

“To watch us dance
is to hear our Hearts speak”.
Hopi, Native American Tribe, proverb

When
we let the Love of God
flow through our Heart
and out into the World,
we spread the Message
of God’s Love.

Life is a song,
and our Love
is the lyrics.

Love permeates everything.
It is all that Truly is,
and all that ever was,
and all that will ever be.

Love stays with you.
And it changes
the Shoreline of Life
Beautifully,
by the ebb
and flow
of seas,
filled with our tears of Joy
and many memories.

The sounds of Nature blend melodious song to mirror Salvation.

The Beautiful Message of Love
that you share,
is a shining Light.
Your Loving words
enable others to feel
the Love in their Hearts
through the day,
and enables them to see
through the long night.
 Happiness
need not hide,
waiting to be found.

Happiness cannot be found
through great effort and willpower,
but is already here,
right now,

in relaxation and letting go.
Lama Gendun Rinpoche
.
Send a Blessing of Love.
Shower others
with your smiles.
Share the Love
from God
Above.

“Peace begins
with a smile.”
Mother Teresa

Saying,
“I’ll see you later.”
is
engaging the meaning
of the moment –
in the Circle
of Life.

,
“When you Pray
enter into your closet
and when you have shut the door,
Pray to your Father which is in secret
and your Father which is in secret
shall reward you
openly.”
Matthew 6:6

My Friends,
PRAYER
is also an entrance
into the subconscious.
It is
perfect medicine
for our Souls.
.
We
cannot put into words
all the Beauty
that resonates in our
Spiritual Being.
But,
we can give Thanks
for the Journey
of discovery.

We faint and flickering shadows
ever dance
in the Beautiful Light
of Love.

You
are the only one
that can feel
into the depths
of your Sacred Inner Being,
and listen to your Heart
tell the Beautiful Story
of a
World where YOU
can be Happy
and Loved,
and Truly alive
in Peace and Harmony.

Yes.
Life is a song.
Let’s sing it
together.

The Beautiful Message of Love you share is a shining Light.

.Reality,
My Dear Friends,
is projected outward
from
the Heart and mind.
If
you Believe,
it exists.

Our inner psychological state
is projected outward
and gains
physical reality.
This is regardless of the nature
of your psychological state.
This applies to everyone.
And,
you can use this knowledge
for your own benefit.
You can change
your own conditions.

The Bible says,
“Without Faith
it is impossible to please Him [God],

for he who comes to God must Believe
that He is and that He is a rewarder
of those who diligently seek Him”
Hebrews 11:6

If we seek Him,
will we find Him?
Yes.
.
God says,
“You will seek Me and find Me,
when you search for Me
with all your Heart”

Jeremiah 29:13

Yes,
we need to change
the World.
But to change the World
around us,
we must change
OUR World
inside.

“Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me.
Let there be peace on earth
The peace that was meant to be.
With God as our Father
Brothers all are we.
Let me walk with my brother
In perfect Harmony.
Let peace begin with
me.

Let this be the moment now.
With every step I take
Let this be my solemn vow.
To take each moment
And live each moment
In peace eternally.
Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with
ME.”

Jill Jackson-Miller,
wrote this Beautiful song
after discovering what she called
“Life-saving Joy of God’s Peace
and unconditional Love.”

In the inner Core
of our Souls,
we find Faith.

We cannot doubt
we exist,
because we exist
to doubt.

Do not doubt
that God Loves you.
He Loves you
enough to liberate your mind
to doubt.
He Loves you enough
to let your precious Heart
show you the way
to His Heart.

Be at Peace
My Friend.
God is more real
than we are.

And so is
His Love.

Love that dwells
within your Sacred Heart,
will never lay upon an Altar
of vain repose.
God sets Glorious the setting Sun,
as the sounds of Nature
blend melodious song
to mirror Salvation,
made manifest Majestic
in every Human Heart
that beholds the
Eternal Light
of the Everlasting
Love of God.

Goodnight.


“Oh Heart,
If one should say to you
That the Soul perishes like the body,
Answer that the Flower withers
But the seed remains.”
Kahlil Gibran

From:
psychologytoday.com

by Robert Lanza M.D.

Biocentrism

Does The Soul Exist?
Evidence Says
Yes

New scientific theory recognizes Life’s Spiritual Dimension.

The reality of the Soul is among the most important questions of life. Although religions go on and on about its existence, how do we know if Souls really exist? A string of new scientific experiments helps answer this ancient spiritual question.
 
Consider the famous two-slit experiment. When you watch a particle go through the holes, it behaves like a bullet, passing through one slit or the other. But if no one observes the particle, it exhibits the behavior of a wave and can pass through both slits at the same time. This and other experiments tell us that unobserved particles exist only as ‘waves of probability’ as the great Nobel laureate Max Born demonstrated in 1926.
.
They’re statistical predictions – nothing but a likely outcome.
Until observed, they have no real existence;
only when the mind sets the scaffolding in place,
can they be thought of as having duration or a position in space. Experiments make it increasingly clear that even
mere knowledge in the experimenter’s mind
is sufficient to convert possibility to reality.
.
Many scientists dismiss the implications of these experiments,
because until recently, this observer-dependent behavior was thought to be confined to the subatomic world. However, this is being challenged by researchers around the world. In fact, a team of physicists (Gerlich et al, Nature Communications 2:263, 2011) showed that quantum weirdness also occurs in the Human-scale world. They studied huge compounds composed of up to 430 atoms, and confirmed that this strange quantum behavior extends into the larger World we live in.
.
.
Importantly,

this has a direct bearing on the question of whether Humans and other living creatures have Souls. As Immanuel Kant pointed out over 200 years ago, everything we experience – including all the colors, sensations and objects we perceive – are nothing but representations in our mind. Space and time are simply the mind’s tools for putting it all together. Now, to the amusement of idealists, scientists are beginning dimly to recognize that those rules make existence itself possible. Indeed, the experiments above suggest that objects only exist with real properties if they are observed. The results not only defy our classical intuition, but suggest that a part of the mind – the Soul – is immortal and exists outside of space and time.

(Immanuel Kant is the central figure in modern philosophy.
He synthesized early modern rationalism and empiricism,
set the terms for nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy,
and continues to exercise a significant influence today in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and other fields.)

Immanuel Kant

The idea of the Soul is bound up with the idea of a future life and our belief in a continued existence after death. It’s said to be the ultimate animating principle by which we think and feel, but isn’t dependent on the body. Many infer its existence without scientific analysis or reflection. Indeed, the mysteries of birth and death, the play of consciousness during dreams (or after a few martinis), and even the commonest mental operations – such as imagination and memory – suggest the existence of a vital life force – an élan vital – that exists independent of the body.

Yet, the current scientific paradigm doesn’t recognize this spiritual dimension of life. We’re told we’re just the activity of carbon and some proteins; we live awhile and die. And the universe? It too has no meaning. It has all been worked out in the equations – no need for a soul. But biocentrism – a new ‘theory of everything’ – challenges this traditional, materialistic model of reality. In all directions, this outdated paradigm leads to insoluble enigmas, to ideas that are ultimately irrational. But knowledge is the prelude to wisdom, and soon our worldview will catch up with the facts.

Of course, most Spiritual people view the soul as emphatically more definitive than the scientific concept. It’s considered the incorporeal essence of a person, and is said to be immortal and transcendent of material existence. But when scientists speak of the soul (if at all), it’s usually in a materialistic context, or treated as a poetic synonym for the mind. Everything knowable about the “soul” can be learned by studying the functioning of the brain. In their view, neuroscience is the only branch of scientific study relevant to understanding the soul.

Traditionally, science has dismissed the soul as an object of human belief, or reduced it to a psychological concept that shapes our cognition of the observable natural world. The terms “life” and “death” are thus nothing more than the common concepts of “biological life” and “biological death.” The animating principle is simply the laws of chemistry and physics. You (and all the poets and philosophers that ever lived) are just dust orbiting the core of the Milky Way galaxy.

As I sit here in my office surrounded by piles of scientific books, I can’t find a single reference to the soul, or any notion of an immaterial, eternal essence that occupies our being. Indeed, a soul has never been seen under an electron microscope, nor spun in the laboratory in a test tube or ultra-centrifuge. According to these books, nothing appears to survive the human body after death.

While neuroscience has made tremendous progress illuminating the functioning of the brain, why we have a subjective experience remains mysterious. The problem of the soul lies exactly here, in understanding the nature of the self, the “I” in existence that feels and lives life. But this isn’t just a problem for biology and cognitive science, but for the whole of Western natural philosophy itself.

Our current worldview – the world of objectivity and naïve realism – is beginning to show fatal cracks. Of course, this will not surprise many of the philosophers and other readers who, contemplating the works of men such as Plato, Socrates and Kant, and of Buddha and other great spiritual teachers, kept wondering about the relationship between the universe and the mind of man.

Recently, biocentrism and other scientific theories have also started to challenge the old physico-chemical paradigm, and to ask some of the difficult questions about life: Is there a soul? Does anything endure the ravages of time?

Life and consciousness are central to this new view of being, reality and the cosmos. Although the current scientific paradigm is based on the belief that the world has an objective observer-independent existence, real experiments suggest just the opposite. We think life is just the activity of atoms and particles, which spin around for a while and then dissipate into nothingness. But if we add life to the equation, we can explain some of the major puzzles of modern science, including the uncertainty principle, entanglement, and the fine-tuning of the laws that shape the universe.

“The Hope of another Life”
wrote Will Durant,
“gives us courage to meet our own death,
and to bear with the death of our Loved ones;
we are twice armed if we fight with Faith.

And we are thrice armed
if we fight with science.

Garlic in Prostate Cancer Prevention

click here to read more

Can garlic help prevent and fight prostate cancer, the most common non-skin cancer in America? Several studies suggest garlic and garlic supplements offer protection against cancer, including prostate cancer. These anti-cancer effects are thought to be largely attributable to organosulphur compounds which are produced during the decomposition of allicin. Allicin, in turn, is formed in raw garlic cloves when you crush or chop them.

Additionally, garlic – especially raw garlic – is rich in vitamin C, a nutrient that has been used to prevent and treat prostate cancer.

The rest of this article provides details of recent studies that have been carried out to investigate a possible link between eating garlic and a lowered risk of prostate cancer:

A population-based, case-control study conducted in Shanghai, China, found that men who ate more than 10 grams of Allium vegetables, particularly garlic and scallions, per day were 50% less likely to get prostate cancer than those who ate only a little bit of garlic. The reduced risk of prostate cancer associated with garlic consumption was independent of total caloric intake, body size, and consumption of other foods. This study appeared in the November 2002 edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

In another case-control study, a group of researchers from Oxford asked 328 men diagnosed with prostate cancer before the age of 75 and 328 controls to provide details of their dietary habits. The controls were matched for age. Garlic and garlic supplements, along with a few other foods such as beans and peas, were found to have a protective effect against prostate cancer. This study was published in the renowned British Journal of Cancer in 1997.

However, not all case-control studies support the theory that garlic helps reduce the risk of prostate cancer. A large 2006 study that analyzed dietary data from a number of Italian and Swiss case-control studies found a significant association between high garlic consumption and a reduced risk of several cancers, but not of prostate cancer. The scientists responsible for this study believe that in case of prostate cancer, hormonal factors may play a bigger role in the development of the disease than dietary factors. This study on garlic and cancer was published in the November 2006 edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

GarlicThe Bottom Line

Some studies suggest that garlic can indeed help prevent and fight prostate cancer, while other studies imply that garlic does not have a significant protective effect against prostate cancer. However, there are numerous studies that show that a diet rich in garlic is good for your overall health and vitality, and that eating garlic regularly can reduce the risk of several types of cancer including stomach, mouth and throat, kidney, and colorectal cancers. This evidence supports the idea of including garlic in an anti-prostate-cancer diet (or almost any other diet aimed at improving health).

References

1. Hsing AW, Chokkalingam AP, Gao YT, et al (2002). Allium vegetables and risk of prostate cancer: A population-based study. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 94(21):1648-1651.
2. Key T.J., Silcocks, Davey, Appleby, and Bishop (1997). A case-control study of diet and prostate cancer. British Journal of Cancer, 76(5), 678-687
3. Galeone C, Pelucchi, Levi, Negri, Franceschi, Talamini, Giacosa, La Vecchia (2006). Onion and garlic use and human cancer. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 84(5), 1027-32.

Anderson Private School
      School Calendar

       2020-2021
..
First Semester

Sept. 1 – Dec. 18   2020

Sept. 1 (Tuesday)                              First Day of Semester
Final Calendar dates: To Be Arranged.

Dr. & Mrs. Anderson may schedule 2-5 additional days
(to be announced later) for In-service Training.
Visit our website at
http://www.andersonschool.net
for updated information.
.
The School Calendar is subject to change
.
.
There are no make-up days
if school is closed due to
 inclement weather.
.
Inclement Weather Policy:

the school will close if Fort Worth I. S. D. is closed.
.
Lyrics/songs texts/paintings/articles
are property and copyright of their owners
and provided for educational purposes.
.
Copyright Disclaimer
– Section 107 – Copyright Act 1976,
allowance is made for “fair use”
for purposes such as criticism, comment,
news reporting, teaching, scholarship,and research.
Fair use is permitted by copyright statute.
.
Non-profit, educational or personal use
tips the balance in favor of “fair use”.
.
Copyright 1995-2020
Anderson Private School

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War After War / 20 Ways To Never Get Cancer / Sept. 3 (Tuesday) is the First Day of Fall Semester

The Flowering of Truth
reveals the youth
of our existence.

Like a Child,
piece by piece
we combine bits of experience
into something elusive
and illusionairy.
As if we
define the World
around us.
And,
we do.

We plebeians of procrastination
often defer
from Peaceful pursuit.

               The Flowering of Truth.

In debt
from our desire
for prosperity,
we savoir the substance
of our circumstance,
while our good intentions,
rare for the moment,
perturbate in their orbits
around
the Human Heart.

In Time,
tainted with theatrics
in Love
with our self-esteem,
we live in isolated absence
of forethought.

In these tempest-tossed times,
there is the temptation
to tread lightly
upon the past,
which becomes prologue
and profound.
Our past is filled
with stones
to mark the Graves
of many,
known and unknown.

The Treasure
of our memory
is vast
and beyond Being.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”                 – William Faulkner

The fierce breath
of History
emanates from our ignorance
buried deep within
the Human Heart.

Between the violent breaths,
prospects for Peace
grow into illusion,
and the cycle begats
war after war.

The sounds of silence,
from our precious breathless deceased,
spiral upward
with startling clarity,
in sufferance of
mortal and moral anguish.

And still,
we
do not listen.

The American Battle Monuments Commission maintains 24 permanent American burial grounds on foreign soil.

Let us remember the past,
and Honor those
who gave their precious Lives
for us.
Let us learn from the past,
so that we do not remain,
as George Santayana reminds us,
savages or infants.
Let us learn
and Lovingly create
a Peaceful future,
filled with Forgiveness
and Love for all
who transgressed
against us.
Let us do this
for our precious Children.

“Those who do not remember their past
are condemned
to repeat their mistakes.
Those who do not read History
are doomed to repeat it.
Those who fail to learn
from the mistakes of their predecessors
are destined to repeat them.
Those who do not know History’s mistakes
are doomed to repeat them.”
George Santayana

My Dear Friends,
let us empower those
who can help
move our precious Lives
forward forever.
Let us help those
who can resurrect
the Future.

To do so,
let us help
ourselves.
Let us empower
we.

Let there be Peace on Earth
and let it begin with me.
Let there be Peace on Earth,
the Peace that was meant to be.

With God as our Father
brothers all are we.
Let me walk with my brother
in perfect harmony.
Let Peace begin with me,
let this be the moment now.
.
With every step I take
let this be my solemn vow,
to take each moment,
and live each moment
in Peace Eternally.
.
Let there be Peace on Earth
and let it begin with
me.

Jill Jackson-Miller and Sy Miller

Pierced by arrows
of discontent,
we cannot even now
define
our Blessings,
so abundantly bestowed.

  His Will is made abundantly clear.

To know
the Will of God
reveals the destiny
of Mankind.
And His Will
is made
abundantly clear
in His Word.

You
may not Believe
in God.
But,
He Believes
in YOU.

You Faith
is
your Love of
God.
And Love is,
at the end of Life,
truly ALL
that remains,
and all that
ever was.

Goodnight.

                 All that ever was.

20 Ways To Never Get Cancer

Little habits that can save your life.

First, the good news: You probably won’t get cancer.

That is, if you have a healthy lifestyle. “As many as 70% of known causes of cancers are avoidable and related to lifestyle,” says Thomas A. Sellers, PhD, associate director for cancer prevention and control at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa. Diet, exercise, and avoidance of tobacco products are, of course, your first line of defense, but recent research has uncovered many small, surprising ways you can weave even more disease prevention into your everyday life.

Try these novel strategies and your risk of cancer could dwindle even more.

1. Filter your tap water
You’ll reduce your exposure to known or suspected carcinogens and hormone-disrupting chemicals. A report from the President’s Cancer Panel on how to reduce exposure to carcinogens suggests that home-filtered tap water is a safer bet than bottled water, whose quality often is not higher – and in some cases is worse – than that of municipal sources, according to a study by the Environmental Working Group. (Consumer Reports’ top picks for faucet-mounted filters: Culligan, Pur Vertical, and the Brita OPFF-100.) Store water in stainless steel or glass to avoid chemical contaminants such as BPA that can leach from plastic bottles.

2. Stop topping your tank
So say the EPA and the President’s Cancer Panel: Pumping one last squirt of gas into your car after the nozzle clicks off can spill fuel and foil the pump’s vapor recovery system, designed to keep toxic chemicals such as cancer-causing benzene out of the air, where they can come in contact with your skin or get into your lungs.

MORE: 7 “Healthy” Habits That Aren’t

3. Marinate meat first
Processed, charred, and well-done meats can contain cancer-causing heterocyclic amines, which form when meat is seared at high temperatures, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which get into food when it’s charcoal broiled. “The recommendation to cut down on grilled meat has really solid scientific evidence behind it,” says Cheryl Lyn Walker, PhD, a professor of carcinogenesis at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. If you do grill, add rosemary and thyme to your favorite marinade and soak meat for at least an hour before cooking. The antioxidant-rich spices can cut HCAs by as much as 87%, according to research at Kansas State University.

4. Caffeinate every day
Java lovers who drank 5 or more cups of caffeinated coffee a day had a 40% decreased risk of brain cancer, compared with people who drank the least, in a 2010 British study. A 5-cup-a-day coffee habit reduces risks of oral and throat cancer almost as much. Researchers credit the caffeine: Decaf had no comparable effect. But coffee was a more potent protector against these cancers than tea, which the British researchers said also offered protection against brain cancer.

MORE: 13 Foods That Fight Stress

5. Water down your risk
Drinking plenty of water and other liquids may reduce the risk of bladder cancer by diluting the concentration of cancer-causing agents in urine and helping to flush them through the bladder faster. Drink at least 8 cups of liquid a day, suggests the American Cancer Society.

6. Load up on green greens
Next time you’re choosing salad fixings, reach for the darkest varieties. The chlorophyll that gives them their color is loaded with magnesium, which some large studies have found lowers the risk of colon cancer in women. “Magnesium affects signaling in cells, and without the right amount, cells may do things like divide and replicate when they shouldn’t,” says Walker. Just 1/2 cup of cooked spinach provides 75 mg of magnesium, 20% of the daily value.

7. Snack on Brazil nuts
They’re a stellar source of selenium, an antioxidant that lowers the risk of bladder cancer in women, according to research from Dartmouth Medical School. Other studies have found that people with high blood levels of selenium have lower rates of dying of lung cancer and colorectal cancer. Researchers think selenium not only protects cells from free radical damage but also may enhance immune function and suppress formation of blood vessels that nourish tumors.

8. Burn off your risk
Moderate exercise such as brisk walking 2 hours a week cuts risk of breast cancer 18%. Regular workouts may lower your risks by helping you burn fat, which otherwise produces its own estrogen, a known contributor to breast cancer. (Try these 14 Walking Workouts That Blast Fat.)

9. Skip the dry cleaner
A solvent known as perc (short for perchloroethylene) that’s used in traditional dry cleaning may cause liver and kidney cancers and leukemia, according to an EPA finding backed in early 2010 by the National Academies of Science. The main dangers are to workers who handle chemicals or treated clothes using older machines, although experts have not concluded that consumers are also at increased cancer risk. Less toxic alternatives: Hand-wash clothes with mild soap and air-dry them, spot cleaning if necessary with white vinegar.

10. Ask about breast density
Women whose mammograms have revealed breast density readings of 75% or more have a breast cancer risk 4 to 5 times higher than that of women with low density scores, according to recent research. One theory is that denser breasts result from higher levels of estrogen – making exercise particularly important (see #8). “Shrinking your body fat also changes growth factors, signaling proteins such as adipokines and hormones like insulin in ways that tend to turn off cancer-promoting processes in cells,” Walker says.

11. Head off cell phone risks
Use your cell phone only for short calls or texts, or use a hands-free device that keeps the phone – and the radio frequency energy it emits—away from your head. The point is more to preempt any risk than to protect against a proven danger: Evidence that cell phones increase brain cancer risk is “neither consistent nor conclusive,” says the President’s Cancer Panel report. But a number of review studies suggest there’s a link.

12. Block cancer with color
Choosing your outdoor outfit wisely may help protect against skin cancer, say Spanish scientists. In their research, blue and red fabrics offered significantly better protection against the sun’s UV rays than white and yellow ones did. Don’t forget to put on a hat: Though melanoma can appear anywhere on the body, it’s more common in areas the sun hits, and researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have found that people with melanomas on the scalp or neck die at almost twice the rate of people with the cancer on other areas of the body.

13. Pick a doc with a past
Experience – lots of it – is critical when it comes to accurately reading mammograms. A study from the University of California, San Francisco, found that doctors with at least 25 years’ experience were more accurate at interpreting images and less likely to give false positives. Ask about your radiologist’s track record. If she is freshly minted or doesn’t check a high volume of mammograms, get a second read from someone with more mileage.

14. Eat clean foods
The President’s Cancer Panel recommends buying meat free of antibiotics and added hormones, which are suspected of causing endocrine problems, including cancer. The report also advises that you purchase produce grown without pesticides and wash conventionally grown food thoroughly to remove residues. (The foods with the most pesticides: celery, peaches, strawberries, apples, and blueberries. See the full list of dirtiest fruits and vegetables here.) “At least 40 known carcinogens are found in pesticides and we should absolutely try to reduce exposure,” Sellers says.

MORE: 25 Ridiculously Healthy Foods

15. Do a folic acid check
The B vitamin, essential for women who may become or are pregnant to prevent birth defects, is a double-edged sword when it comes to cancer risk. Consuming too much of the synthetic form (not folate, found in leafy green veggies, orange juice, and other foods) has been linked to increased colon cancer risk, as well as higher lung cancer and prostate cancer risks. Rethink your multivitamin, especially if you eat a lot of cereal and fortified foods. A CDC study discovered that half of supplement users who took supplements with more than 400 mcg of folic acid exceeded 1,000 mcg per day of folic acid. Most supplements pack 400 mcg. Individual supplements (of vitamin D and calcium, for instance) may be a smarter choice for most women who aren’t thinking of having kids.

16. Up your calcium intake
Milk’s main claim to fame may also help protect you from colon cancer. Those who took calcium faithfully for 4 years had a 36% reduction in the development of new precancerous colon polyps 5 years after the study had ended, revealed Dartmouth Medical School researchers. (They tracked 822 people who took either 1,200 mg of calcium every day or a placebo.) Though the study was not on milk itself, you can get the same amount of calcium in three 8-ounce glasses of fat-free milk, along with an 8-ounce serving of yogurt or a 2- to 3-ounce serving of low-fat cheese daily.

MORE: How To Prevent Osteoporosis

17. Commit to whole grains
You know whole wheat is better for you than white bread. Here’s more proof why you should switch once and for all: If you eat a lot of things with a high glycemic load—a measurement of how quickly food raises your blood sugar—you may run a higher risk of colorectal cancer than women who eat low-glycemic-load foods, found a Harvard Medical School study involving 38,000 women. The problem eats are mostly white: white bread, pasta, potatoes, and sugary pastries. The low-glycemic-load stuff comes with fiber.

18. Pay attention to pain
If you’re experiencing a bloated belly, pelvic pain, and an urgent need to urinate, see your doctor. These symptoms may signal ovarian cancer, particularly if they’re severe and frequent. Women and physicians often ignore these symptoms, and that’s the very reason that this disease can be deadly. When caught early, before cancer has spread outside the ovary, the relative 5-year survival rate for ovarian cancer is a jaw-dropping 90 to 95%.

19. Avoid unnecessary scans
CT scans are a great diagnostic tool, but they deliver much more radiation than x-rays and may be overused, says Barton Kamen, MD, PhD, chief medical officer for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. In fact, researchers suggest that one-third of CT scans could be unnecessary. High doses of radiation can trigger leukemia, so make sure scans are not repeated if you see multiple doctors, and ask if another test, such as an ultrasound or MRI, could substitute.

20. Drop 10 pounds
Being overweight or obese accounts for 20% of all cancer deaths among women and 14% among men, notes the American Cancer Society. (You’re overweight if your body mass index is between 25 and 29.9; you’re obese if it’s 30 or more.) Plus, losing excess pounds reduces the body’s production of female hormones, which may protect against breast cancer, endometrial cancer, and ovarian cancer. Even if you’re not technically overweight, gaining just 10 pounds after the age of 30 increases your risk of developing breast, pancreatic, and cervical, among other cancers.

MORE: 12 Big Myths About Breast Cancer

Richard Laliberte is an award-winning veteran health journalist and former senior writer at Men’s Health who writes for some of the nation’s best-known magazines, blogs for WeightWatchers.com, and has authored several books.

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