Medicine Cancer risk can be reduced by up to 40 percent
No more cigarettes, eat healthily: Those who stick to their New Year's resolutions not only benefit directly in terms of their health. The risk of various types of cancer can also be greatly influenced.
03.01.2025, 08:21
SDA
The risk factors for cancer read like a list of the most common habits you want to tackle at New Year. In a study by the American Cancer Society, the order is as follows: Cigarettes, obesity, alcohol, too little exercise, eating red and processed meat, too few fruits and vegetables, and too little fiber and calcium.
The study concludes that around 40 percent of cancers in US adults aged 30 and over can be attributed to controllable risk factors. These include an unhealthy lifestyle with cigarettes and the wrong food, as well as other factors. Too much UV radiation and seven carcinogenic infections were also included as risks.
Obesity often underestimated
It is well known that smoking is carcinogenic and causes lung cancer in particular. In the US study, cigarettes also had by far the strongest influence on the avoidable cancer risk.
However, the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg also points out that obese people are considerably more likely to develop breast cancer after the menopause and bowel cancer than people of normal weight. In the case of uterine and kidney cancer or carcinomas of the oesophagus, almost half of all cases are caused by obesity. The more pronounced the obesity, the higher the risk of cancer.
Reducing individual risk
"The percentages in the studies are always based on the population as a whole," explains Ute Mons, Head of the Primary Cancer Prevention Department at the DKFZ. However, it is never too late to make healthier lifestyle changes. "The earlier you stop doing something, the earlier you reduce your risk," says Mons.
However, the truth is also true: "Even a person who lives a completely healthy life can develop cancer. A certain amount of chance always plays a role. But the risk of something going wrong in the body increases in people who live an unhealthy lifestyle."
Vaccinations can also protect against cancer
The preventable factors in the US study not only include things that are part of an unhealthy lifestyle, but some infections were also included because they can be vaccinated against, for example.
"There are effective vaccines against the hepatitis B virus, which causes liver cancer, and against HPV, which can cause several types of cancer," explained Ahmedin Jemal, lead author of the study. The cancers caused by HPV include cervical cancer, cancer of the external genitalia and anal region as well as oral and throat cancer.
