Many of you like to play. Everyday. And that’s a good thing. Especially if you want to avoid cancer in your lifetime. We simply need to quit blaming cancer on pure chance says a study released by the research journal JAMA Oncology this week that stated that by not smoking, cutting back on drinking, maintaining a healthy weight and getting at least 150 minutes of exercise per week we can greatly increase our chances of avoiding a disease that kills some 600,000 Americans each year.
And that may seem rather obvious but the news is in the numbers garnered from the online journal. Men who adhere to this lifestyle philosophy could avert 67 percent of cancer deaths and 63 percent of new malignancies.
It also found that women who adhere would reduce lung cancer risk by 85 percent, colorectal cancer by 60 percent, pancreatic cancer by 53 percent, ovarian by 34 and breast cancer by 15 percent.
For starters, don’t do this.
The study ironically runs counter to another study released last year that stated 80 percent of cancers were hereditary. There are all sorts of revealing things about the American lifestyle in the study–one glaring report is that some 40 million U.S. citizens still smoke cigarettes despite the published research that it feeds cancer cells.
“As a society, we need to avoid procrastination induced by thoughts that chance drives all cancer risk or that new medical discoveries are needed to make gains against cancer,” said Dr. Graham A. Colditz and Siobhan Sutcliffe of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, commenting on the study. “We must embrace the opportunity to reduce the collective cancer toll by … changing the way we live.”
