Healthy Lifestyles Can Halve Cancer Deaths Among Whites In The US: Study

If you are terrified about cancer that is overtaking the US, you can examine this new study by a team of researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston. Between 20 to 40 percent of U.S. cancer cases and almost half of cancer deaths among the white race can be prevented through just a "healthy lifestyle pattern."

This would, of course, mean that you avoid smoking and drinking, and maintain a healthy body mass index (BMI) as well as regular exercise.

The healthy lifestyle pattern has been outlined as: "never smoking or past smoking, no alcohol consumption or moderate consumption, a BMI between 18.5 and 27.5; and 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity."

Studying 89,571 women and 46,399 men made experts conclude that everyone in the study that followed the healthy lifestyle pattern fell into the low-risk category for cancer. Others were ranked in the high-risk category. On the whole, 16,531 women and 11,731 men comprised the low-risk group, while 73,040 women and 34,608 men were part of the high-risk group.

The team identified the population-attributable risk (PAR), or the number of cancer cases that can be avoided if every case in the study adopts the lifestyle pattern. Between 20 to 40 percent of cancer cases and half of the deaths can be avoided.

So far, the study has looked only at whites, but it could apply to other ethnic groups too, though more research is needed to determine them.

"These findings reinforce the predominant importance of lifestyle factors in determining cancer risk," the authors wrote. "Therefore, primary prevention should remain a priority for cancer control."

"We have a history of long delays from discovery to translating knowledge into practice," wrote Graham Colditz and Siobhan Sutcliffe of the Washington University School of Medicine in an opinion piece on the findings. "As a society, we need to avoid procrastination induced by thoughts that chance drives all cancer risk or those new medical discoveries are needed to make major gains against cancer, and instead we must embrace the opportunity to reduce our collective cancer toll by implementing effective prevention strategies and changing the way we live."

"It is these efforts that will be our fastest return on past investments in cancer research over the coming decades," they added.

The findings were published in the May 19 issue of JAMA Oncology.