I must have missed this memo

Now they tell me what I could have done to help prevent my cancers. I must have missed this memo. According to new research, half of all cancers are preventable - mostly through lifestyle changes.

"A report, published a few weeks ago in the journal Science Translational Medicine, says that more than half of all cancer is preventable. And doing so doesn't mean you have to eat a ton of broccoli, drink twig tea or swallow strange supplements."  I am happy to skip twig tea and have eaten plenty of broccoli in my life time.

We know that smoking causes lung cancer and several others. More exercise and less alcohol can help prevent breast cancer and tanning causes melanoma. I love it when they (that would be the evil them who rule the world) tell us these things after the fact. A 2005 study from Harvard named '... nine cancer risk factors that could be controlled by personal choice or social and health policy changes anywhere in the world. They include obesity, low fruit and vegetable intake, physical inactivity, smoking, alcohol use, unsafe sex, urban air pollution, indoor smoke from household use of coal, and contaminated injections in health-care settings.'

I will say I never  knew unsafe sex  or contaminated injections can cause cancer - I thought they caused diseases. But these lists always give us cancer people guilt trips - the basic 'what did I do wrong?'. To quote the movie '50/50', 'but I recycle'.

But then the Canadian Cancer Society tells us 'cancer is no one's fault'. Why thank you. I was getting that guilt trip started. But then they add '...40% of Canadian women and 45% of men will develop cancer during their lifetimes. To help protect yourself, don't smoke, eat healthily, wear sunscreen and get up and move.' I believe the rates in the US are 1 in 3 women and 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed with cancer in their life time.

I guess the guilt trip is optional. But next time I'll try to read the memo first.