I was watching a repeat of Oprah a few days ago. It was the episode where she talks about the areas of the world that have the most number of centenarians; people who live to be 100 years old or more. They called these areas the “Blue Zones.” Dr. Oz traveled to each of these zones and met with the centenarians to see what they were doing to live so long! Two things that all of these people had in common, were diet and exercise. They all ate a lot of fruits and vegetables, and got a good amount of exercise almost every day. They got exercise just by living. Walking and doing daily chores like cutting weeds gave them natural exercise. Since many of us don’t cut weeds everyday, we have to focus on building exercise into our lives in other ways.
As a program educator, diet and exercise are two of the main factors we mention in connection to decreasing your risk of developing breast cancer. Healthy diet and exercise are two controllable risk factorsAnything that increases or decreases a person’s chance of developing a disease. that allow us to stay healthy and live long lives!
I speak to people everyday about risk factors of breast cancer. Not everyone is eating as healthy or exercising as much as they should. Taking baby steps might make the task towards healthy eating and exercise easier. If you eat fast food four times a week, try cutting it down to once a week. If you don’t exercise, try walking one day a week and build up from there. The centenarians in the Blue Zones are definitely onto something!