Diet and Exercise to Prevent Cancer

An American man dies every 18 minutes from prostate cancer.

Every three minutes a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer.

Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths.

The time to act is now - before you get the disease.

The research is overwhelming. Almost every week, a study is published supporting the Pritikin Center's approach to the prevention of various cancers. The Pritikin Longevity Center has been involved in more than a dozen studies of risk factors for breast, prostate, and colon cancer. All showed significant reductions in risk factors for these cancers.

Recently, scientists at UCLA discovered how remarkably powerful prevention measures were. In the lab setting, they found that the Pritikin Program of diet and exercise destroyed prostate cancers. That's right, the Pritikin Program induced prostate cancer cells to die.

The scientists discovered that blood samples of men who had recently gone through the two-week program at the Pritikin Center were 13 times more effective at killing off prostate cancer cells than blood samples taken from the very same men before they had attended the Pritikin Center. (Cancer Causes and Control, 13: 929, 2002. See also Prostate, 56: 210, 2003)

"If you catch prostate cancer early on and adopt the Pritikin Program, you can significantly increase your odds of living your life free of invasive prostate cancer," states Dr. James Barnard, professor of physiological science at UCLA and lead investigator of the study.

It's well worth it, scientists involved in cancer research agree, to invest in the future with a healthy lifestyle today. Scientists themselves are often inspiring role models. USC cancer researcher Dr. Leslie Bernstein takes long, strenuous walks daily and follows a very low-fat diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. "The highest fat thing I eat is nonfat yogurt." Dr. Louise Brinton, breast cancer researcher at the National Cancer Institute, runs five days a week, and eats close to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables every day.

The sessions at the Pritikin Longevity Center are full of young, healthy men and women who are deeply committed to a cancer-free future, as well as those who have already faced the diagnosis of cancer. Both are confident that by adopting the Pritikin Program, they're doing all they can to remain healthy and vital for many years to come.