How to Lower Cancer Risk in Women: 12 Easy Ways to Stay Healthy

Cancer risk factors in women often stem from a combination of their family’s medical history, environmental exposures, unhealthy lifestyle choices, and genetic mutations. As cancer continues to be a disease that affects FIlipinos not only physically, but emotionally and financially as well (due to cancer therapy cost), the need to enlighten people on how to lessen the chances of developing the said serious illness is more prominent.

Especially if we consider the fact that in the Philippines, the incidence rate for cancer in females are significantly higher than males, with breast cancer reported to have the highest incidence and mortality rate for both sex nationwide, establishing its prevalence and the urgency to do the necessary preventive measures against it.

Table of Contents

What are the Most Common Cancer in Women

The usual cancer risk age starts after 45 years old, but there’s still a possibility of having the disease when you’re already over 74 years old or when you’re still young (although rare).

These are the 5 most common cancers in females:

Breast
Colon and rectum
Cervical
Endometrial
Ovarian

What Increases Cancer Risks in Women

As mentioned, the factors that increases the risk of women having cancer are:

Family health history: Members of your family (by blood) are known to easily develop cancer.
Exposure to environmental risks: Being exposed to air pollution, radiation, chemicals, and the like.
Unhealthy lifestyle choices: Drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, etc.
Genetic changes: This is when cells start to become abnormal and go out of control.

These variables can contribute to a woman’s susceptibility to cancer, causing them to have a higher chance of developing the said illness if they’re not mindful enough — most especially with risk factors like unhealthy lifestyle choices and being exposed to environmental risks that they can be proactive about when it comes to its prevention.

Can Cancer Risk Be Reduced in Women

On the question, can cancer be prevented in women, there are certainly measures that can be done in order to reduce the risk of developing any harmful tumor in the body.

There are a lot of things that a person can do to prevent cancer from developing in the body or even for its further spread in the case that the disease is already present. You only need to be determined and consistent in ensuring that you take care of yourself by getting rid of bad habits that could make you susceptible to the illness, as well as being well-informed about what other information you ought to know to lessen the risks.

12 Easy Lifestyle Changes to Help Women Prevent Cancer

Now that you’re aware that there are ways on how to lower cancer risk, you must be wondering what are the best ways to prevent cancer that you can easily incorporate in your day-to-day life.

Here are 12 simple steps that you can use as reference for its prevention:

Avoid drinking alcohol
Avoid smoking or using tobacco
Manage your weight
Eat fruits and vegetables
Avoid eating ultra-processed foods and meat
Exercise regularly
Use sunscreen and sun protective clothing
Lessen exposure to outdoor and indoor pollution
Be cautious of the behaviors that can put you at high risk
Get the essential vaccines
Be familiar with your family’s medical history
Get routinely screened for cancer

Let’s dive into them individually.

Avoid drinking alcohol

All alcoholic drinks, such as red wine, white wine, beer, and liquor are all beverages that you should lessen consumption of or abandon completely to reduce cancer risk.

There may be a higher likelihood of having malignancy in the mouth, throat, larynx, esophagus, colorectum, liver, and breast if you do not refrain from consuming alcohol.

Instead, you can indulge in other drinks that can be substituted to alcohol like alcohol-free wine, mocktails, sparkling water, tea, and fresh juices.

Avoid smoking or using tobacco

Without a doubt, the use of tobacco products can do significant harm to your body. Aside from how it’s one of the leading causes of lung cancer, it can cause the oncological disease to develop almost anywhere including the bladder, blood, cervix, colorectum, kidney, liver, mouth, throat, pancreas, stomach, and larynx.

Which is why in general, smoking is strongly discouraged by doctors due to the detrimental effects it has on an individual. Not to mention that you may become addicted to nicotine upon using tobacco products for a long time.

Even electronic cigarettes are still considered harmful along with inhaling smoke coming from smokers surrounding you (also known as secondhand smoking).

Manage your weight

It’s been indicated that being overweight or being obese can increase a person’s chances of developing cancer. This is because of how it can lead to long-term inflammation and higher levels of sex hormones, insulin, and insulin-like growth factors.

To determine if someone is overweight, their body mass index (BMI) will be calculated. You can do this by dividing your weight in kilograms and your height in meters squared. If your BMI is from 25.0 to 29.9, you are considered overweight; if it’s 30.0 or higher, you are considered obese.

The types of malignancy that are linked to obesity are: meningioma, adenocarcinoma, multiple myeloma, kidney, uterus, ovaries, thyroid, breast, liver, gallbladder, upper stomach, pancreas, and colorectum.

Eat fruits and vegetables

Fruits and vegetables are among the foods that lower cancer risk. The plants that contain phytonutrients are the ones typically recommended in order to lessen the chances of being susceptible to the oncological disease.

It includes the following:

Berries
Beans
Broccoli
Grapes
Nuts
Seeds
Tomatoes
Walnuts
Whole grains

Of course, aside from the foods mentioned in the list, there are a lot of healthy diet options that you can incorporate in your meals. Each food offers different kinds of nutrients that you may not be able to get from any other food, hence it’s important to keep your options open when it comes to eating other plant-based foods.

Avoid eating ultra-processed foods and meat

Examples of ultra-processed foods are:

Ice cream
Ham
Sausages
Breakfast cereals
Biscuits
Carbonated drinks or soft drinks
Chips
Yogurts
Instant soups

Ultra-processed foods are bad for our health because they contain ingredients like saturated fat, salt and sugar which when taken in high levels can prompt our body to make less space for nutrients. Moreover, the other additives found in these foods can cause other bad side effects to our health.

As for processed meat, there are:

Hot dogs
Bologno
Bacon
Salami
Lunch meat
Sausage
Corned beef
Pepperoni
Chorizo

Processed meat is among the foods to avoid if you want to prevent cancer. Due to how it has nitrates and nitrites, the chemicals used to preserve it and maintain its color. In the instances these chemicals are added to processed meat and then later on exposed to heat, it can potentially harm the colon by triggering cells to mutate and subsequently form tumors.

Exercise regularly

Women’s risk of breast cancer can be lessened upon being physically active and exercising regularly. It can help with losing weight, which is another preventive measure against developing malignant cells, and can help with reducing the chances of contracting other diseases that can bring significant harm to your health (e.g. cardiovascular diseases, osteoarthritis, dementia, and depression).

These exercises do not have to be too tiring or would require maximum effort — but even just small activities like walking from one place to another or climbing a flight of stairs are enough.

Further, to answer the question how does exercise prevent cancer effectively, it all comes down to the way exercising can regulate certain hormones and make the immune system healthy.

Use sunscreen and sun protective clothing

Two types of UV rays (UVA and UVB) can both penetrate the skin, damaging the skin and possibly causing skin cancer. It can cause sunburns, as well as skin ageing — hence, in order to be protected against it, the use of sunscreen and sun protective clothing is recommended.

The more times you get sunburnt, the higher chances you can get this kind of skin disease. This is because sunburn is an indication that your skin is trying to repair itself and its cells’ DNA have been harmed by excessive UV radiation.

Aside from using sunscreen and sun protective clothing to lower cancer risk, other ways you can stay safe from UV rays are:

Staying in a shaded area if it’s sunny outside
Avoiding tanning beds, booths, and sunlamps
Wearing sunglasses
Avoid being outside in general from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (the time wherein UV radiation is at its strongest in the Philippines)

If not practiced, you may be more susceptible to skin cancers like basal cell and squamous cell cancers and melanoma.

Read our guide about shielding your skin from sunburn and tan.

Lessen exposure to outdoor and indoor pollution

Air pollution is considered to be a rising determinant among recognized lung cancer risk factors in recent times. Apart from that, being exposed to air pollution also puts you at risk of other respiratory diseases such as pneumonia, asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Therefore, this not only makes reducing air pollution exposure an essential step to female cancer prevention, but a vital course of action in ensuring that respiratory health does not become compromised.

You can protect yourself from being exposed to either outdoor or indoor pollution by avoiding going outside if you know air pollution is currently bad in your area, not burning wood or trash, and wearing a high quality face mask whenever you’re commuting and being exposed to air pollution is unavoidable.

Be cautious of the behaviors that can put you at high risk

Some behaviors that can put you at high risk are having multiple sexual partners and not using protection during intercourse. This makes you more susceptible to contracting human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted disease that can alter the cell’s DNA which can lead to abnormal cell growth.

Using a condom as a form of protection can decrease HPV cancer risk in women. You may also opt to use female condoms specifically if you’re willing to be the one who’ll be responsible for using protection during sexual intercourse.

Another behavior that can put you at risk is sharing needles with other people. This is usually done by drug-users, making your well-being not only endangered because of drug abuse, but also because of the health threats that come along with needle-sharing like health conditions hepatitis B and hepatitis C.

On the other hand, when it comes to the speculated link between cancer risk and birth control, studies have confirmed that although breast cancer risk in women might elevate upon the use of contraceptives, it wouldn’t be of concern considering how the percentage is only a little and that it would be gone when you stop using them. Additionally, birth control pills have proven to also lower risk for cancers like endometrial, ovarian, and colorectal.

Get the essential vaccines

Two of the essential immunizations that an individual can take to lower cancer risk are HPV vaccines and hepatitis B vaccines. These mentioned vaccines can prevent cancers in the cervix, throat, and stomach among others.

Moreover, hepatitis B vaccines can also lessen chances of developing chronic liver infections. Adults and children are recommended to take these shots for the betterment of their overall health.

Be familiar with your family’s medical history

Often, breast cancer risk in women occurs due to the fact that family members have had the disease themselves. It can either be because of having similar habits, staying in the same environment, or purely because of genes that make the health condition hereditary.

To know about your family’s health history, you should gather your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, nieces, and nephews to talk about this matter. Basically the relatives that you have who are related to you by blood.

The question topics you can address to them are:

Who has/had cancer?
What type did you have?
How old were you when you were diagnosed?
Do we have other relatives that passed away due to the disease? If yes, what type were they diagnosed with and what age were they diagnosed with it as well?

Being aware of the answers for the questions above can make a huge difference in determining whether you are at risk or not. There are some types that put you at higher risk in the event that a relative of yours had it too before they hit 50 years old, or if some family members from both sides of the family have had history with the oncological disease.

Get routinely screened for cancer

If you want to know how to prevent cancer or find it early, then getting screened is one of the things that you should definitely keep in mind. It can help doctors identify if there are any abnormal tissues or growths in your body that should be looked into, and if there are other tests that you ought to undergo to determine if the presence of malignant tumors are really there.

In getting screened (and depending on the type), you can either be screened by a health professional or conduct self-exams. The latter is particularly helpful in identifying any body changes for instances like lifetime breast cancer risk in women wherein you can examine your breasts yourself and determine any changes you may want to discuss with your doctor the next time you make a visit.

See our list of 14 essential cancer screening tests for women that you can do in the Philippines for your guidance.

In Summary

There are a lot of things you can do for female cancer prevention. From the bad habits you should stop doing, the changes you should make in your diet, and the exercises you can do to be more physically active — all of these play a role in ensuring that you are in your best health and that you are not easily susceptible to developing any kind of illness.

The most common cancers in women are in breast, colorectal, cervix, uterus, and ovaries. There are a lot of factors that contribute to why they develop the said disease, with high levels of testosterone as one factor of increased cancer risk in women, as well as even their family passing it down to them hereditarily.

Therefore, it’s good to familiarize yourself with the things you can do to make your body stronger and more resistant to cancer, and to be consistent with them to reach greater results.

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