Empowering Yourself

Cancer has once again infiltrated my circle of family and friends. Stay strong Kathy (and Eric and family) and keep fighting! I'm sending good energy your way. My initial motivation to start my website racingawareness.org was to honor my mom's death from breast cancer and to empower others when it comes to the disease. Yes, cancer sucks but holding solely onto this mentality doesn't help you. What you need to hold onto is hope, optimism, and ways to prevent cancer. Unlike a cold, you just don't wake up one morning with a life-endangering tumor; that's why early detection and prevention is still the best treatment for cancer. From my genetics and immunology classes, I learned that cancer is an opportunistic disease. If you give it a reason to think it may thrive in your body, it will do so. Thus, I encourage you to exercise more, decrease stress, lose those extra pounds, drink in moderation, stay away from highly processed foods, and to eat REAL food, not too much of it (I doubt anyone who reads this blog is a smoker so I didn't feel a need to mention it). You may not be able to change your genetic make-up and rid yourself of cancer genes (realistically, I know that my body is susceptible to cancer), but you certainly can delay or prevent the genes from turning on. Also, your immune system is damn powerful! If your immune system is not functioning at optimum level, you become more susceptible to disease. Thus, take care of it by getting plenty of sleep (7-9 hours seem like the most recommended amount for adults) and eating lots of veggies and fruits. Speaking of immune system, I've got a bit of a cold going on. I felt something come on yesterday but still went ahead and did my long run. After 8.5 miles in the rain, I decided to hit the treadmill for the last 7 miles. Four miles into the treadmill, the power went out. I took that as a sign from my other coach, the big cheese in the sky. Today is a forced rest day, catching up on blogs, drinking tea with honey, and writing the grade reports for my students. The rain is the perfect companion for such a day.