As a parent, you would do anything to prevent your child from getting a serious disease, like cancer. But you may not realize daily healthy habits that start in early childhood can affect a child’s future cancer risk.
The fact is, as a parent, you have tremendous influence on your child’s lifestyle choices.
Experts say lifestyle choices are among the most important cancer risk factors. Establishing healthy habits early and maintaining them throughout life provides your child with the biggest bang for reducing his or her cancer risk.
Here are six tips to help keep your child cancer free.
- Set an example
When it comes to kids, actions often speak louder than words. Incorporating healthful habits into your personal and family routines are the best way to establish lifelong healthy behavior, according to a Michigan State University study.
Mothers who set an example early for their children by eating a variety of healthful foods with an emphasis on plant sources — fruits, vegetables and grains — have kids who also eat healthier diets. Research shows a poor diet can dramatically increase the risk of many cancer types as well as many other chronic diseases, according to the National Cancer Institute.
- Play
Encourage a physically active lifestyle for your children and adolescents by combining exercise and family time with activities such as biking, hiking, skating and walking around the neighborhood or going for a swim.
Research shows being active helps reduce your cancer risk by helping with weight control. It also helps improve hormone levels and the way your immune system works.
The American Cancer Society recommends kids get at least 60 minutes of moderate or vigorous intensity activity each day, with vigorous intensity activity occurring at least 3 days each week.
- Kick the Habit
University of Washington research shows kids whose parents smoke are twice as likely to start smoking on a daily basis before age 21 than kids with nonsmoking parents. You may not know smokers are 10 to 20 times more likely to get lung cancer than nonsmokers, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Even if your kids never pick up a cigarette, parents should be aware that secondhand tobacco smoke also kills — as many as 43,000 people each year, according to American Cancer Society. Children of smokers have a greater chance of developing certain illnesses too, such as respiratory infections, ear infections, chronic coughing and reduced lung function.
As with adults, the more smoke a child is exposed to, the more that child’s risk to illness is increased. In fact, there is no safe level of tobacco smoke exposure. Talk to your kids about the dangers of tobacco use and if you smoke, get help to quit.
- Take Care of the Inside
A child’s insides need special care that only regular sound sleep can provide. Help your child promote a healthy circadian rhythm by keeping regular bedtimes and learning to sleep in darkness. Recent studies have indicated that sleeping in a dark room is essential to supporting an endocrine system that can suppress cancer development, including childhood leukemia and breast cancer.
- Get Sunshine, Just Not Too Much
Sunshine is an important source of natural vitamin D that helps form strong, healthy bones and teeth and staves off certain cancers, neurological disease and diseases of the heart and blood vessels.
But too much sunshine can be a risk factor for skin cancer, so it’s equally important to protect children’s tender skin from the damaging effects of the sun.
No matter what they’re doing or what time of year it is, if kids are outside, their skin needs to be protected. Just a few minutes in the sun can be enough to provide adequate exposure for vitamin D production.
The American Academy of Dermatology recommends using an UVA and UVB sunscreen with at least 30 SPF or higher everyday on children older than 6 months of age. (For babies younger than 6 months, keep them covered and in the shade when outside.)
Use protective clothing, avoid being outside in the sun between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. when the rays are the strongest, and never, ever use a tanning booth or sunlamp. Just one blistering sunburn in childhood or adolescence doubles the chance of melanoma later in life, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation.
- Reduce Environmental Toxins
There’s no denying that we live in a world filled with toxic chemicals. According to a 2010 federal report, since 1975, exposure to toxic environmental chemicals has intensified while at the same time, the incidence of childhood cancers has unequivocally been increasing about one percent per year.
It’s estimated that about 90 percent of pediatric cancers can be prevented by making simple, toxic free lifestyle choices, according to Children’s Cancer Recovery, an organization that help children diagnosed with cancer.
Toxins could be in your drinking water, on fruits and vegetables treated with pesticides, in baby products, cleaning supplies, clothing and household fabrics and emitted from high voltage power supply lines, among other sources.
Toxic Free Kids blog has tips on reducing toxic chemicals in your home.
Lynette Summerill is an award-winning writer and Scuba enthusiast living in San Diego with her husband and two beach loving dogs. Besides writing about cancer-related issues for EmpowHER, her work has been seen in newspapers and magazines around the world.
Sources and More Information:
”What you Need to Know About Cancer.” National Cancer Institute. Online at:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/wyntk/cancer/page3
”Eat Healthly, Your Kids are Watching.” ScienceDaily. 30 May 2012. Access online:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120530152326.htm
“Diet and Physical Activity: What’s the Cancer Connection?” American Cancer Society. Online:
http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/CancerCauses/DietandPhysicalActivity/diet-and-physical-activity
“Children whose parents smoke are twice as likely to smoke.” ScienceDaily. 29 Sep 2005. Online:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050929082408.htm
Lung Cancer Awareness. CDC. Online at:
http://www.cdc.gov/features/lungcancer
“Childhood sunburn doubles skin cancer risk.” UPI. 30 June 2011.
http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2011/06/30/Childhood-sunburn-doubles-skin-cancer-risk/UPI-95901309492310
“Sunburn.” Skin Cancer Foundation.
http://www.skincancer.org/prevention/sunburn
“Rise in Childhood Cancers Parallels Toxic Chemical Proliferation.” Environmental News Service. 26 Jan. 2011.
Access at: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2011/2011-01-26-01.html
Toxic Free Kids Blog. Mena Noll, Children’s Cancer Recovery National Outreach Director.
Online at: http://toxicfreekidsblog.org
Reviewed October 10, 2012
by MIchele Blacksberg RN
Edited by Jody Smith