Eating nutritious food, being active, maintaining a healthy weight and other behaviors lower cancer risk, a study says.
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Greater adherence to healthy behaviors could reduce cancer rates in the U.S. by almost half, a July study finds.
Published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, the research found that behaviors such as alcohol use, physical inactivity and poor dietary choices are responsible for 40% of the 1.9 million U.S. cancer cases diagnosed each year. They are also linked to almost half of the more than 600,000 annual cancer deaths among people ages 30 and older.
Smoking remains the leading cause of cancer, contributing to about 20% of cases and 30% of all cancer deaths in 2019, said the study, which was led by researchers at the American Cancer Society. Smoking also accounts for 56% of potentially preventable cancers in men and 40% in women.
Despite a significant decline in smoking over the past decade, 11 out of 100 adults in the nation still smoke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This finding underscores the importance of implementing comprehensive tobacco control policies in each state to promote smoking cessation, as well as heightened efforts to increase screening for early detection of lung cancer, when treatment could be more effective,” the study’s lead author, Farhad Islami, MD, PhD, senior scientific director of cancer disparity research at the society, said in a news release.
The second-highest risk for cancer is excess body weight, attributed to 8% of annual cancer cases, the study said. The problem affects women more than men, with about 11% of weight-attributable cancer cases in women compared to 5% in men.
An estimated 30% of U.S. adults are classified as overweight and 20% as obese, CDC says. Overweight and obesity have been on the rise in the U.S. in recent decades and account for nearly $173 billion in medical costs. People with obesity often have other serious health issues such as diabetes or heart disease. Other preventable behavioral risk factors for cancer are secondhand smoke, and eating too much red and processed meat.
Nationwide, cancer was responsible for an estimated 609,000 deaths in 2023, according to the American Cancer Society. While cancer can affect anyone, certain populations experience worse health outcomes than others.
For more information on the study, visit bit.ly/cancerbehaviors.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
