By applying the knowledge we've gained over the past century about maintaining a healthy lifestyle, more than half of deaths caused by cancer could be prevented, and new cases of the disease could decrease by 40 to 60 percent, according to findings recently published in JAMA Oncology.
While progress in understanding the molecular origins of cancer and scientific advances in treatment have created hope for more effective treatments, this study's findings emphasize the power of prevention. Simple insights such as refraining from smoking, drinking in moderation, maintaining a healthy body weight and exercising regularly could help prevent various types of cancer, which kill millions of people a year and cost thousands of dollars per patient to treat, The Washington Post reported.
Researchers from Boston-based Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health used data from participants in two large ongoing studies. They looked for associations between a healthy lifestyle — such as not smoking, moderate alcohol consumption, maintaining a body mass index between 18.5 and 27.5 and doing aerobic exercise for at least 75 minutes at high intensity or 150 minutes at moderate intensity each week — and cancer incidence and death.
Based on their analysis, the researchers found those with health lifestyles were significantly less likely to get certain cancers, especially that of the lungs, colon, pancreas and kidneys.
Extrapolating the findings to the general U.S. population, they estimated that 41 percent of cancer cases and 59 percent of cancer deaths were potentially preventable in women, and among men, they estimated that 63 percent of cancer cases and 67 percent of cancer deaths were preventable, according to the report.
"We should not ignore the knowledge we already learned over the past decade, or the past 100 years," said Mingyang Song, MD, the study's lead author. "We should use this knowledge to move the policy forward and also make the public aware that we already have this knowledge and we can utilize this knowledge to improve the current cancer prevention effort."