Daily Lessons from Life 04 February 2011 - "Simple life changes could stop millions of cancers

"Simple life changes could stop millions of cancers - Fri, Feb 04, 2011 Reuters

LONDON, ENGLAND - About a third of all common cancers in the United States, China and Britain could be prevented each year if people ate healthier food, drank less alcohol and exercised more, health experts said on Friday.

Estimates from the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) and the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) suggest that making simple lifestyle changes could prevent some 40 percent of breast cancers alone in Britain and the United States, as well as tens of thousands of colon, stomach and prostate cancers.

"It is distressing that even in 2011, people are dying unnecessarily from cancers that could be prevented through maintaining a healthy weight, diet, physical activity and other lifestyle factors," Martin Wiseman, a WCRF medical and scientific adviser, said in statement.

In China, 620,000 cases, or 27 percent are preventable, the WCRF said, as are about 35 percent, or 340,000, in the United States and 37 percent in Britain. Healthier lifestyles could prevent 61,000 cancers in Brazil and 79,000 in Britain."

It is the 2nd day of Chinese New Year festival. A festival where traditionally the celebrants have big feast and, for some, or a good many, time to indulge in a drink or a smoke of the cigarette a bit much!!

Hopefully this 2-3 days or 15 days for many in China does not trigger a change in the habit of the celebrants into excessive eating, drinking and smoking. That would be a disaster when put in the light of this news article!

Lessons for me are:

1. knowledge is easy to get these days about healty living and prevention of cancers. What with the great Internet revolution and availability of high speed wireless broadband access. At the same time, knowing and doing are two very separate activities!;

2. as I advocated in my 'The 7e Way of Leaders' Enable section where I said we need to ASK for TOP D where A=Attitude/Values, S=Skills (or applied knowledge), K=Knowledge, T=Tools, O=Organization Culture and Structure, P=Processes and Systems, and 'D' instead of 'A' as D=Discipline. We need Discipline to form a new habit after we become aware, agreed, and accepted that we need to discard the old bad habit! The healthy lifestyle can only be formed after we are aware and agreed that the OLD WAY is not the best way and accepted the need to CHANGE! Forming a new healthy lifestyle is a big CHANGE;

3. So, to have a consistent Healthy Lifestyle of Eating Just Right and Exercising Regularly, let's shoot for:

Attitude/Values - Healthy Lifestyle is the way to go. Health is worth working hard for!;
Skills - Applied the Knowledge of Healthy Eating: What to eat, how and how much to eat!;
Knowledge - what you need to apply in the Skills section!!;

Tools - do we need to buy a weighing machine? Bike machine at home for ease of exercising? blood pressure meter to track our blood pressure?;

Orgnization Culture and Structure - is the family supportive and share in the same vision as us to develop a healthy lifestyle? our friends? is there is Disciplinarian to keep us honest and stick to our 'plan'?;

Process and Systems - do we develop and keep a routine like jogging 10-12km twice a week? and keep to it! Soup-based food mostly. Steam fish instead of deep fried. etc;

Discipline - Just do it once you made up your mind and plan. The earlier you start, the earlier you can achieve the goals. It will be hard to break the old habit and develop the new habit. Habit is built taking the 1st step, then repeating the same step over and over again. Enjoy it. Make it fun. BUT JUST DO IT!!

May everyone has Good Health and may those who did not believed they can change successfully, TRY IT. You will never know what ASK for TOP D can take you!!