The Link Between Heart Disease and Cancer :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

The Link Between Heart Disease and Cancer Recently, on a visit to my mothers' house, I pulled out my parents' wedding album. As I flipped through the pages of the wedding album, it was exciting to see pictures of my parents and our family members. Everyone seemed to be joyous except my grandmothers. They both had sad and angry expressions on their faces as their children made their vows to each other. I, too, was saddened as I noticed my paternal grandmother's figure because one of her breasts was wider, flatter and higher than her other breast. It appears that she had attempted to fill her bra cup with some type of soft cloth. I did not know that she had succumbed to breast cancer and had a radical mastectomy so early in her life. Although my maternal grandmother is still alive today, she has had advanced heart disease most of her life. We called my grandmother "GM" (grandmother). Although GM is a kind and gentle woman, she is quite temperamental. I believe these emotions and worry spike her towering blood pressure. As I continued to go through my parents' wedding album, I noticed that mostly everyone in my family has died of heart disease or cancer. Although my father had diabetes, he died of a massive heart attack. My great uncle died of prostate cancer and his wife died after having a massive heart attack. According to the 1995 Monthly Vital Statistics Report, heart disease and cancer are the leading causes of death in the United States; in fact, heart disease and cancer have been linked to diet and exercise. "I believe that 80 and 90 percent of cancers can be prevented because they are caused by environmental, dietary or nutritional factors," according to Dan Colbert, M.D. and author of Walking in Divine Health. The most common cancers in the United States-- colorectal cancer and breast cancer and prostate cancer--are linked to consumption of red meat, fats, and toxins in diet. In Leviticus 3:17, it is written, "This shall be a perpetual statue through out your generations in all your dwellings: you shall eat neither fat nor blood" (The New King James Bible).