How Does Diet Affect the Prevention of Cancer?

Video Transcript

"Hi. This is Dr. David Cathcart. I'm from Heartland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph, Missouri. And today, we're going to talk about how diet affects your ability to ward off cancer. Diet is important, primarily because of certain foods that contain antioxidants. As it turns out, oxygen, which is normally required for our body to function, the normal byproduct of oxygen, as cells metabolize and go through the mechanics of doing whatever they do throughout the day in living, produce a byproduct called free radicals. Free radicals are these molecules, then, that will damage surrounding cells or other adjacent cells, and particularly the nucleus of those cells, rearranging the DNA in such a way as to cause them to become cancerous cells. And we talked about that in earlier segments. So free radicals are the enemy of the body. They cause aging, heart disease, cancer, and all sorts of things. And so if we have a diet that's high in antioxidants, or basically these chemicals that eat up free radicals and make them non-toxic, then, in theory, it helps our immune system fight off a potential cancerous cell or, in fact, other aspects of aging, as well; heart disease and just aging, wrinkles. So certain foods are high in antioxidants. Certain vitamins in particular- vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, and selenium. Selenium-containing foods are chicken and fish. There's other naturally occurring foods that contain high levels of these antioxidant vitamins, such as berries and garlic, tomatoes, red grapes, spinach, tea, carrots. All these things are high in antioxidants. So, in order to help improve your health and protect yourself from these dangerous free radicals that can cause cancer, keep your diet high in these things. This is Dr. David Cathcart."