Lorenzo Cohen, professor and director of the integrative medicine program at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, will be in Concord on Thursday to discuss his research into the connections between lifestyle choices and cancer occurrences.

His presentation will discuss how to lower the risk of cancer as well as improve outcomes for those touched by cancer, through choices in diet, exercise and stress management. His work, and the work of other researchers at MD Anderson, has been influenced by David Servan-Schreiber, a doctor who wrote extensively on the connections between lifestyle choice and cancer occurrences, before succumbing to a brain tumor. His work also influenced Concord Hospital officials in their creation of an Anticancer lifestyles class for cancer survivors.

Cohen spoke with the Monitor about his work, his experiences and the world-wide cancer epidemic. His presentation, Living the Anticancer Life, will begin at 7 p.m., at the Concord City Auditorium.

Your talk is advertised as an opportunity to hear the evidence behind the role that lifestyle can play in risk of developing cancer and then influence outcomes of those diagnosed with cancer. What is that evidence?

It varies by cancer, but the overall estimate from the American Cancer Society shows that taking into account diet, nutrition, an individual's weight and physical activity, upwards to 30 percent or more incidents of cancer can be attributed to aspects of lifestyle. If you take into account smoking and tobacco related behaviors. . . there's no question at least 50 percent of cancer could be prevented if individuals were making appropriate lifestyle choices.

A lot of what I'll be sharing with the audience is the evidence behind that: why different types of foods relate to your risk of cancer, why physical activity will decrease your risk of cancer, why obesity is a key promoter of cancer.

Then I'll talk also about what we are doing at MD Anderson in what we call integrative medicine - working with patients in terms of diet and physical activity and lifestyle, and in particular looking at some of the evidence of the role that stress has in our physiology and biology, how stress can literally speed on the aging process and literally have a deleterious effect on every cell in our body.

Your own training is as a research psychologist, particularly focused on stress and stress biology. How did you come to be delivering lectures on the effect of nutrition on cancer?

When I started off, most of my research was focusing more on conventional forms of stress management and coping and adapting to difficult life circumstances like a diagnosis of cancer.

I was really focusing on mental health processes and how stress in particular impacts biology and then can influence health outcomes. In the world of cancer, that meant I was particularly interested in stress and the immune system, stress and stress hormones and their effect on the body.

View original post here:
Live the Anticancer way of life