ecancermedicalscience

Conference Report

Nutrition and cancer: from prevention to nutritional support, 8th October 2010, Milan

14 Dec 2010
P Gnagnarella

Cancer is a disease of genes, which are vulnerable to beneficial and harmful mutations, especially over the long human lifespan. Nutritional factors are important in determining the likelihood of some mutations, as well as in changing gene function even without mutation. Epidemiological and experimental evidence demonstrate that only a small proportion of cancers are inherited; environmental factors are the most important cause of genetic modification. These factors include smoking, infectious agents, radiation, industrial chemicals and pollution and medication. Nutrition, physical activity and body composition can also play a role. Essentially this is good news. It means that a healthy lifestyle can stop cancer before it starts.

In this context, nutrition represents an extraordinary tool to prevent cancer. It is already known that being overweight or obese increases the cancer risk; a healthy diet could reduce this. Furthermore, there is evidence to indicate that bioactives in the diet play an important role in promoting health. Validating health effects of foods and food components represents the new target of nutrition research together with understanding mechanisms through which diet factors could prevent disease.
However, healthy nutritional guidelines are partially known and poorly practiced, others could be established and implemented.

Related Articles

Berenice Freile, Andrés Rodriguez, Greta Catani, Marcos Bortz, Luisina Bruno, Juan M O’Connor, Federico Esteso
Amanda Acioli de Almeida Robatto, Erika Andrade Rocha, Renata Colombo Bonadio, Denis Artico Galhera, Carolina Teixeira Muratori, Admir Andre Belo Bueno, Abraão Ferreira Lopes Dornellas, Luciana Bastos Valente Alban, Carolina Ribeiro Victor, Maria Ignez Freitas Melro Braghiroli, Marília Polo Mingueti e Silva, Camila Soares Araujo, Carlos Frederico Sparapan Marques, Caio Sergio Rizkallah Nahas, Karim Yaqub Ibrahim, André Tsin Chih Chen, Paulo Marcelo Gehm Hoff, Camila Motta Venchiarutti Moniz
Yanet Isabel Carrasco Rojas, Albert Gabriel Turpo Peqqueña, Natalia Camila Zenteno Tejada, Victoria Elena Quispe Pastor, Juan Augusto Martínez San Martín, Evelyn Maria Chambilla Huellcacure
Jeanine Justiniano, Ally H Mwanga, Daniel W Kitua, Nashivai E Kivuyo, Seif Wibonela, Cameron E Gaskill