Cancers of all types are an evil bitch that will destroy your quality of life and rob you of every bit of your dignity if you allow it. Cancer is an equal opportunity offender and does not give a damn about your race, gender, sexuality, religion  or socio-economical back ground. Cancer does not give a shit who or what you are, it takes out the rich among us as rapidly as it takes out the poor. It will kill those who have lived the healthiest of lives and spare those who did not. Often, there is no rhyme nor reason to who it affects and why. There is nothing right nor fair about cancer, you might have never touched a cigarette in your life, yet find yourself dying with lung cancer. You may have never touched a drop of alcohol in your life, to only perish from liver cancer. Sometimes we might get a form of cancer simply because of an unlucky draw of the short stick. As  powerless as we might feel against the ravages of cancer, there are still steps we can take in order to improve our quality of life should we or a loved one become afflicted.

You are not entirely a helpless victim!

As if cancer is not enough of an insult to the human body, many of the treatments are akin to rubbing salt into a wound. Many treatments can be debilitating by making you even sicker than the disease the medicines are designed to help slow down or cure. If you have been diagnosed with any type of cancer, it is imperative on your part to maintain your immune system the best you possibly can.  The tricky part is cancer cells develop from our own cells, therefore our immune system doesn’t always know that it should attack them. Sometimes the immune system knows that cancer cells shouldn’t be there, but more often our immune system doesn’t notice cancer cells. Cancer cells can even turn off the immune response so that the immune cells don’t attack them.

You can fight back!

Common sense would dictate that if cancer can trick our immune systems when they are healthy, then it could really run roughshod over your body if your immune system is weak. Our immune system gets weakened when the cancer itself or treatments like chemotherapy or radiation therapy, affects the bone marrow. Blood cells are made in the bone marrow and when it’s affected by cancer or its treatment, the number of blood cells that are made are lower than normal. When blood cell counts are low, the body can’t fight off an infection very well.

Your first line of defense is to choose a healthy lifestyle.

Following general good-health guidelines is the single best step you can take toward naturally keeping your immune system strong and healthy. Like any fighting force, the immune system army marches on its stomach. Healthy immune system warriors need good, regular nourishment. People who are malnourished are more vulnerable to disease. Every part of your body, including your immune system, functions better when protected from environmental assaults and bolstered by healthy-living strategies such as these:

Don’t smoke

Eat a diet high in fruits and vegetables.

Exercise regularly.

Maintain a healthy weight.

If you drink alcohol, drink only in moderation.

Get adequate sleep.

Take steps to avoid infection, such as washing your hands frequently and cooking meats thoroughly.

Try to minimize stress.

Regular exercise is also one of the pillars of healthy living. It improves cardiovascular health, lowers blood pressure, helps control body weight, and protects against a variety of diseases. Just like a healthy diet, exercise contributes to general good health and therefore to a healthy immune system. It may contribute even more directly by promoting good circulation, which allows the cells and substances of the immune system to move through the body freely and do their job efficiently.

A cancer diagnosis may leave us feeling helpless. There is little we can do by ourselves to stop the progression, therefore we must place our faith and trust in doctors and other medical professionals to heal us from the ravishes of cancer.  If you do not want to feel quite so helpless, then make it a point to be proactive in the treatment of your disease. The doctors and their staffs will do all they can medically for you, therefore if you want to be cured, you must stand up and do your part of the fighting too.

You have choices to make.

You can choose to live as healthy as you can by eating a nutritionally sound diet. You can choose to follow your doctor or nutritionists orders by eating or not eating foods as they have directed.

You can choose to try to keep your body as physically fit as possible under the circumstances. Getting to and staying at a healthy weight is important to reduce the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes. Being overweight or obese increases the risk of several cancers, including those of the breast (in women past menopause), colon and rectum, endometrium (the lining of the uterus), esophagus, pancreas, and kidney, among others. Being overweight can increase cancer risk in many ways. One of the main ways is that excess weight causes the body to produce and circulate more estrogen and insulin, hormones that can stimulate cancer growth.

You can choose to maintain a healthy mindset and a fighting spirit.

You can take actions to protect yourself from getting cancer in the first place.

The evidence for this is strong. The World Cancer Research Fund estimates that about 20% of all cancers diagnosed in the US are related to body fatness, physical inactivity, excess alcohol consumption, and/or poor nutrition, and thus could be prevented.