From Dopamine to Disease: Understanding the Addiction-Cancer Connection.

What’s the hidden link between addiction and cancer? In this Cracking Addiction episode, Dr. Ferghal Armstrong and UC San Diego’s Dr Raphael E. Cuomo reveal how lifestyle and cancer risk intertwine.

Discover how cancer prevention and healthy lifestyle choices can transform your health and lower risks, including skin cancer and lifestyle choices like sun exposure or smoking.

Dr. Cuomo debunks the myth that lifestyle and cancer are solely genetic, diving into how addiction and cancer connect through neurobiology—think dopamine, mesolimbic pathways, and epigenetics.

Learn how modifiable habits, from processed foods and red meat to screen time and stress, fuel lifestyle and cancer risk. Skin cancer and lifestyle choices, like neglecting sunscreen, and behavioural addictions, like binge-watching or social media scrolling, silently drive disease.

This episode empowers you with cancer prevention and healthy lifestyle strategies to break free from self-sabotaging cycles.

Dr. Armstrong and Dr. Cuomo unpack actionable health tips, showing how lifestyle and cancer are shaped by daily choices. From understanding addiction’s grip on your brain to adopting cancer prevention and healthy lifestyle habits, this science-backed guide offers hope for addiction recovery and long-term wellness.

Whether you’re aiming to reduce lifestyle and cancer risk or live healthier, this video delivers insights on the biology of wellness and proactive prevention.

Get The Book Crave: The Hidden Biology of Addiction and Cancerhttps://raphaelcuomo.com/crave

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Chapters:00:00:00 Introducing Dr. Raphael Cuomo: Background and Professional Focus

00:01:59 Lifestyle Factors and Cancer Risk: Beyond Smoking

00:02:44 The Role of Diet, Sugar, and Red Meat in Cancer Development

00:04:42 Addictive Behaviors and Lesser-Known Cancer Risks

00:05:29 Moving Public Health “Upstream”: Changing Mindsets, Not Just Behaviours

00:06:29 Why We Struggle to Establish Healthy Habits00:07:52 Addiction Pathways: Dopamine and Lifestyle Diseases

00:08:08 Cancer as a Modifiable Lifestyle Disease

00:09:01 Brain Pathways Involved in Addiction

00:10:11 Dopamine: “Wanting” vs. Pleasure, and the Hijacking of Reward Systems

00:12:10 How Addictive Foods and Behaviours Fuel Chronic Illness

00:13:43 The Modern Difficulty with Rest, Repair, and Reflection

00:15:03 Linking Lifestyle Addiction to Cancer: The Prevention 2.0 Model

00:16:29 Are Addictive Substances Directly Carcinogenic

00:17:55 How Process Addictions like Food and Screen Time Affect Cancer Risk

00:20:10 Epigenetics and How Lifestyle Changes Influence Cancer Outcomes

00:22:39 The Chain: Addiction, Lifestyle, Epigenetics, and Cancer Risk

00:23:22 Professor Cuomo’s Book: The Hidden Biology of Addiction and Cancer

00:24:49 Closing Remarks and Reflections on Healthy Change

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