There are steps you can take when you're well that can help you later if you get cancer.

Identify and see a primary care physician who can advise you in years to come. 

• Over the years, the physician who has been with you through prior illnesses can understand how you think and what you hear, and, in general, what “makes you tick."

• This physician has the best chance among the professionals to guide you through the rough patches of fear, anxiety, rage, sleeplessness, guilt, and other challenging emotions if cancer or another serious chronic illness occurs. 

• Your physician can discuss decisions with you that you will need to make if you should get cancer.  Written material and the Internet do not (and cannot) explain how to make decisions. Your physician can help you "translate" the language of medicine.  Even familiar terms in everyday language can mean different things in medical language.

Identify and follow healthy habits.

• If you are a smoker, stop. Though lung cancer is the best known of the cancers associated with smoking, smoking can increase your risk of many other illnesses as well, and not all are cancer. 

• If you aren't exercising, start. While there is no evidence that exercise prevents cancers, if exercise is associated with weight loss, it’s possible that exercise can diminish the risk of some cancers.

• Watch what you eat.  The American Cancer Society is an excellent source of material on the relationship between what you eat and cancer.  Note that the relationship between eating choices and cancer is not well established, that research conclusions on this topic have changed several times in years past, and that they will probably continue to change.