Previously, I told you how drinking tea – especially green tea – can be a powerful weapon in the fight against cancer. And since October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, there’s one more simple thing you can do to help reduce your chances of ever getting this terrible disease.

Avoid consuming any kind of sugar!

Starving tumours

With Halloween and the Christmas festivities just around the corner, we are entering that time of year when there will be enough sweet treats around to put you in a sugar-induced coma.

Believe me, I get it… it’s a tough choice to go for a veggie platter when there is a tray of chocolate champagne balls in front of you. But if the latest research findings are anything to go by, steering clear of dessert can do more than just keep your waistline from expanding.

It can literally starve cancer!

Researchers at the University of Texas collected data of about 33 different types of cancer from more than 11,000 patients. They found that amounts of glucose – the form of sugar found inside your body – were particularly high in certain types of cancer.

In fact, glucose was a lot higher in squamous cell carcinoma than it was in other cancers. And squamous cell makes up as much as 30 per cent of all cancer cases of the deadliest form of cancer there is: lung cancer.

Other types of squamous cell cancer that feed off of glucose include head and neck, oesophageal, and cervical cancer.

In another separate study, researchers lowered the glucose levels of mice who had squamous cell cancer and this reduction actually put the brakes on tumour growth.

Now we all know that eating too much sugar can make you pile on the pounds and play havoc on your blood sugar levels, setting you up for diabetes and putting you at risk for heart disease.

So, if avoiding sugar can also help slow-down cancer cell growth, then these are all plenty of good reasons to cut down on the sweet stuff.

And it’s much easier than you think. Simply cut out all refined sugars by focusing your diet on fresh, organic, whole foods including fish, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and healthy oils.

And if you reach a point where you have to satisfy your sweet tooth, then head over to the fruit bowl.

Anything from citrus fruits to berries, grapes, watermelon, cherries, peaches, and pineapple will help curb a sugar craving.

But consider these fruits as a treat. Because even though they contain “natural” sugar”, it’s still sugar. So, moderation is key.

And stick to only fresh (ideally organic) fruit… not dried… and never anything in a can or a jar, or in any kind of syrup.