Cancer Statistics
Bullet Points:
• The risk for developing cancer is the highest it has ever been: 1 in 3 for developing invasive cancer; 1 in 5 for dying from cancer in the U.S.
• The “Cancer Triad”, composed of genetics/epigenetics, chronic inflammation and aging, accounts for the majority of cancer risk.
• Luckily, your lifestyle choices can directly influence the Cancer Triad and drastically reduce your cancer risk – you have control!
Cancer Statistics
Why should you care about living an “anticancer lifestyle”? Because cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide, second only to heart disease, and like heart disease, our lifestyle choices greatly influence our risk. Don’t you want some control over that risk?
The American Cancer Society’s 2019 Surveillance Research for the United States quoted the probability of developing invasive cancer over a lifetime at 1 in 3, and the risk of dying from cancer at 1 in 5. Global numbers provided by World Health Organization (WHO) in 2018 quoted the probability of developing cancer at 1 and 5 for men and 1 and 6 for women, and the risk of dying from cancer at 1 in 8 for men and 1 in 11 women.
We are ALL at significant risk.
Our health remains our most valuable commodity. Without our health, we are unable to fully enjoy life. And the health issue that causes the most anxiety and worry is the diagnosis of cancer. The big C. The news can feel devastating, can be devastating, like a death sentence. Like we have no control over life, disease, and outcome. The diagnosis of cancer leaves patients feeling vulnerable, filled with anxiety, fear, anger, sadness, disbelief, and a loss of control. The diagnosis of cancer can be overwhelming. With Anticancer: Total Body Makeover, we here to help you gain control over your risk!
Surveys show that many people misunderstand cancer risk. Many believe family history and genetic mutation account for most of the risk, but, in reality, only 5-10% of cancers are a result of familial risk or inherited genetic mutation. That means that fully 90-95% of cancers are related non-genetic factors like lifestyle choices and environment! Studies show that approximately 42% of total cancer cases and 45% of cancer deaths in the United States are linked to lifestyle related risk factors, and, according to WHO, between 30-50% of all cancer cases are preventable, being caused by lifestyle choices and environment. This means you can significantly influence your cancer risk, for better or worse, by the choices you make.
So, 1 in 3 of people living in the US will have a diagnosis of cancer in their lifetime. 1 in 3! What happened? An abundance of evidence suggests that lifestyle factors including toxin exposure, the standard Western diet full of processed food, unhealthy fats, and refined sugar, smoking, and physical inactivity account for the majority of cancer diagnoses. The same trends are seen around the world where cancer incidence is on the rise where the consumption of processed food and physical inactivity due to our modern lifestyle is on the rise. For example, cancer incidence has been shown to increase dramatically in both Japanese and African populations who immigrate to Western countries, the increase being linked to the adoption of a Western diet.
We have benefitted in innumerable ways from the industrial revolution, including in the area of health from vaccines to modern medicine. But it has also shifted our health. Despite all the advances in medicine, our risk for developing cancer is the highest it has ever been. From new and ubiquitous chemicals and plastics in our modern world that infiltrate every aspect of our life, our fast-paced lifestyle, and reliance of processed food, it is not surprising to see the current cancer statistics.
The biggest underlying risk factors for cancer are genetics/epigenetics, chronic inflammation, and aging – the “Cancer Triad.” Inherited genetic mutations, as described earlier accounting for only 5-10% of cancer risk, can increase your baseline risk for many cancers, such as having the BRCA gene mutations and breast cancer. Until there are viable gene therapy treatments that remove the mutations from the genome, there is little we can do to change the genetic component of cancer. However, our lifestyle choices and environmental exposures can directly influence affect how our genes function, and these changes, known as epigenetics, can have an enormous positive (or negative) influence on our cancer risk, accounting for the other 90-95% of cancers.
Chronic inflammation: the second part of the Cancer Triad, chronic inflammation, is the most important. It’s the balance point of the cancer teeter-totter (as well as a big player in most, if not all, chronic diseases). And to a large degree, the lifestyle choices that we make, like diet, exercise and more, lean the teeter-totter toward cancer or toward health by directly influencing our gene expression in either a healthy or unhealthy way. This is great news! We will describe how this is possible in a different post about epigenetics.
Aging: cancer is a so-called “multi-hit process”, which means it is not just one thing that you do or are exposed to that will result in cancer. It is the accumulation of many “hits” in your lifetime that can eventually allow cancer to develop and progress. For this reason, aging is a factor, because it accounts for the accumulation of multiple hits over a lifetime. While there isn’t a thing we can do about the march of time, we can reduce the number of hits over time and help our bodies best respond to (and even repair the damage from) those hits.
For many people it takes a cancer diagnosis to stop, reassess habits and choices, and start living life with eyes wide open. Many of my patients diagnosed with cancer tell me it is a “wake up call” to take a look at their lifestyle choices and try to live a healthier life. By adopting an anticancer lifestyle, you will ensure your best chance for never hearing the words “you have cancer” or, if you’ve had a cancer diagnosis, optimizing your outcomes and minimizing recurrence going forward.