Want to do what you can to reduce your risk of cancer? A new study is pointing to some specific actions you can take — and how much difference it can make.
In the American Cancer Society study, published Thursday in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, researchers found more than 40% of all cancer fatalities among adults age 30 and over in the United States could be linked to lifestyle risks that can be changed.
The most impactful of these risk factors include:
On “CBS Mornings” Friday, CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook said this study is a good lesson in moderation.
“You’re born, you live and you die. In that middle part, you got to have some fun, so it’s everything in moderation, including excess,” he said. He believes this research can also empower people to take control of their health.
“One of the problems is that people feel out of control. Cancer, first of all, it’s terrifying to so many of us — ‘It must be genetic, and there’s nothing I can do about it.’ No, there’s a lot you can do about it,” LaPook said.
What exactly can people do based on the findings? For starters, avoid cigarettes, which cause 30% of the deaths that are attributable to a modifiable lifestyle change.
“We know it’s tough to stop smoking. It’s easier to never start smoking in the first place. So I would say a report like this should just emphasize that people give them incentive to say, ‘You know what, I’m never going to start smoking,'” he said.
There are also some simple preventative steps that are proven to help, including getting certain vaccines and screenings.
“There’s some very low-lying fruit. For example, human papilloma virus, that’s HPV — we know that it causes cervical cancer in women and cancer of the back of the tongue and throat in men. There is a vaccine against it that can prevent HPV, but fewer than 40% of eligible children actually get the vaccine,” he said.
Hepatitis C, a virus that can cause liver cancer, is another example.
“Only about 40% of Americans know they have it, even though there is an easy cure for it, actually — eight to 12 weeks of a pill. But they don’t know, because they’re not getting the routine screening test the CDC has recommended at least once in people’s lifetime, for people who are over the age of 18,” LaPook explained.
The COVID-19 pandemic is one reason for the disruption in routine screenings — something LaPook said he saw in his own practice.
“(People) didn’t go into the doctor’s office … and then you didn’t have the mammograms, you didn’t have the colonoscopies, you didn’t have the routine screenings for skin exams. So now that’s coming back a little bit, but it absolutely plummeted,” he said.