Lifestyle blamed for many cancers

[liberte]

Simple lifestyle and environmental changes could significantly help to cut the number of cancer deaths around the world each year, research suggests.
Experts linked more than a third of the seven million cancer deaths worldwide in 2001 to nine potentially modifiable risk factors.

These include poor diet, smoking, alcohol, obesity, lack of exercise and air pollution.

The Harvard University study is published in The Lancet.

The researchers calculated that of the seven million deaths from cancer in 2001, 2.43 million were linked to the nine risk factors.

MODIFIABLE RISK FACTORS
Obesity
Low fruit and vegetable intake
Lack of exercise
Smoking
Alcohol
Unsafe sex
Urban air pollution
Indoor smoke from household use of coal
Contaminated injections

The findings were based on a comprehensive review of scientific studies and other sources such as government reports.

The Harvard team and their collaborators also re-analysed some of the original data from the studies.

They concluded that in low and middle-income countries the most important risk factors were smoking, alcohol use, and low consumption of fruit and vegetables.

In high-income countries, smoking, alcohol use, and obesity played the leading role.

Deaths could be cut

Lead researcher Dr Majid Ezzati said that smoking was by far the most important risk factor for cancer - alone responsible for 21% of cancer deaths worldwide.

He said public health campaigns targeting smoking in the UK had led to a drop in deaths from lung cancer in the past few decades, and showed just how effective such campaigns could be.

He said: "Primary prevention through lifestyle and environmental interventions remains the main route for reducing the global cancer burden.

"If implemented, reduction of exposure to well-known behavioural and environmental risk factors would prevent a substantial proportion of deaths from cancer."

Dr Kat Arney, of the charity Cancer Research UK, said: "This report is an impressive demonstration that many cancers, and many deaths from the disease worldwide, are preventable.

"Cancer Research UK estimates that around half of all cancers in the UK could be prevented by changes to lifestyle."

The charity has launched a Reduce the Risk campaign, encouraging people to quit smoking, stay in shape, eat and drink healthily, avoid excessive sun exposure, be body aware and go for screening when invited.

BBC NEWS | Health | Lifestyle blamed for many cancers

[Shotokan_Karate]

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Not surprising really! I thought this was common knowledge?!

[liberte]

Agreed! Sadly the message still doesn't appear to be getting through to everyone. Also, I think goverments really need to take note of the urban pollution issue... I remember a recent report of also attributing it to more childhood asthma.

[Shotokan_Karate]

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That's true Liberté.
It's a bit of a continuous struggle unfortunately. Some bad habits die hard, if at all! Sometimes the only fast track solution is to enforce bans and strict policies but, then again this could be argued that it infringes on people's freedom and the government is then accused of being a nanny state. Not to mention the almost ineluctable danger of rebellious cliques taking root as we already see today. So here's a question: should people be free to harm themselves, yet they are aware of the risks? (a definite no if at the same time they would harm other people and the environment as well, such as smoking and pollution).

What do you suggest as solutions to the urban air pollution? Do you think it can ever be eliminated?

[liberte]

It's a tricky one, isn't it Shotokan? I think ongoing education, rather than outright bans are far more effective, except, where you rightly say, the action would harm others/the environment. And that's tricky as well - smoking is more damaging to physical health but then alcohol abuse/addition can destroy whole families psychologically, financially, etc.

There's now also the arguement of not prioritising treatment of 'self inflicted' illness by the NHS...

Personally, although all the lifestyle factors listed in the article are clearly harmful, I strongly feel the harm done to us by chemicals legally being used in food processing, in household articles, etc are also doing us (and the environment) much damage. However, as with CO2 emmissions/, big business is involved and they will cover this up for as long as possible.

Pollution? Well, we may never eliminate it but I think it's everyone's (from government/international bodies to each individual) responsibility to dramtically cut our carbon emmissions now.

What do you think?

[Cheba_Mami]

just staying indoors seems to be risky too in some homes ....
It is old news, but radon gas is still harmful.

Domestic exposure to radon gas is responsible for a significant number of lung cancer deaths, research has found.
The risk appears to be much higher for smokers.

The researchers conclude radon in the home causes approximately 20,000 lung cancer deaths in the European Union each year - about 1,000 in the UK.

The British Medical Journal study, funded by Cancer Research UK and the European Union, is the largest ever of its type.

We also found that there is a detectable risk even in homes with levels below 200 Bq/m 3, which is the currently recommended 'action level' in the UK.

Professor Sarah Darby
Radon is a naturally occurring, colourless, odourless, radioactive gas found at varying levels in all houses in the UK and across Europe.

This research combines information from 13 smaller studies across Europe, which involved 7,000 people who had developed lung cancer and 14,000 without the disease.

It found that radon exposure can cause lung cancer in lifelong non-smokers, but the risk is low.

However, for any given level of exposure to radon, smokers have about 25 times the risk of developing lung cancer than those who do not smoke.

Previous studies of radon in homes have not been large enough to assess the risks reliably.

Nor have they been able to examine risks separately in smokers and non-smokers.

Professor Sarah Darby, of the University of Oxford, who led the collaboration, said: "By putting together many different studies we have shown that radon in ordinary homes is causing about 9% of lung cancer deaths each year in Europe, which is 2% of all cancer deaths.

"In the UK, where radon levels are lower than in many European countries, radon in ordinary homes causes about 1,000 deaths each year, which is about 1% of all cancer deaths."


read more: BBC NEWS | Health | Radon gas linked to cancer deaths

[Al-khiyal]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Up to 20 percent of women who develop lung cancer have never smoked, U.S. researchers found in a study that suggests secondhand smoke may be to blame.

A survey of a million people in the United States and Sweden shows that just 8 percent of men who get lung cancer are nonsmokers.

"I have a lot of patients who have never smoked," said Dr. Heather Wakelee of Stanford University in California, who led the study.

"And because of the stigma, people are embarrassed to speak out about their disease. They feel like as soon as they say they have lung cancer, everyone judges them."

She said it is not clear why women may be more likely to get lung cancer even if they have never smoked.

"There is a lot of controversy over whether women are more susceptible to smoking at all, whether direct or secondhand smoke," Wakelee said in a telephone interview.

Writing in Friday's issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Wakelee and epidemiologist Ellen Chang said they tracked the incidence of lung cancer in more than 1 million people aged 40 to 79. All had taken part in various studies of diet, lifestyle and disease, some going back into the early 1970s.

Some groups were mostly white women, such as an ongoing nurse's study, while others included ethnically diverse groups, Wakelee said.

Among women who never smoked, the lung cancer incidence rate ranged from 14.4 per 100,000 women per year to 20.8 cases per 100,000. In men, it ranged from 4.8 to 13.7 per 100,000. Rates were about 10 to 30 times higher in smokers.

This would translate to about 20 percent of female lung cancer patients having been nonsmokers and 8 percent of males, they said. That compares with American Cancer Society estimates of about 10 percent to 15 percent for all lung cancer patients.

"That estimate has been thrown about without any hard data to support it. This data sort of supports it," Wakelee said.

Chang said that because more men smoke than women, women may be more likely to be exposed to secondhand smoke, even when they are classified as never-smokers.

"We know that secondhand smoke does increase the risk of lung cancer so it's likely that a lot of these cases we observe are attributable to that," she said in a statement.

Smoking is by far the leading cause of lung cancer, but radon, asbestos, chromium and arsenic are also associated with lung cancer.

The American Cancer Society projects that lung cancer will be diagnosed in 213,000 Americans in 2007 and kill 160,000.

Weill Cornell Medical College last week said it was starting a lung cancer study of 5,000 people working in industries with a high degree of secondhand smoke exposure, such as flight attendants, restaurant workers and entertainers.

Many lung cancer cases in nonsmokers: study