I found this article in the Healthy Living section at Care2.
Cancer Risks: 70-90% Lifestyle and Environment Choices, Study Says
Our genes determine most everything about us—how tall we’ll be, the color of our eyes, and whether we’re at risk for developing certain types of cancer. But new research says genes may play less of a role in the latter than originally thought. It turns out our lifestyles and environments are far more influential in determining our cancer risks for most types of cancer.
That’s the finding of new research by Stony Brook, published in the recent issue of the journal Nature.
While many people—scientists among them—have long speculated that the risk of developing cancer was mostly random “bad luck,” the new research says that’s not likely true at all. According to the study, the majority of cancer cases—70 to 90 percent—may actually be more attributable to lifestyle and environment than heredity or “bad luck.”
The researchers looked at stem cells and how they divide in different parts of the body. The team theorized that cells with similar division patterns would hold similar risks for becoming cancerous.
“It turned out to not be true, an outcome that suggests that some external factors play a role,” reports the Washington Post. “They also looked at how cancers change according to where people live like when people move from a low-risk area to a high-risk area and take on the risk of the high risk area – which seems to imply that something in the environment or lifestyle of that new place impacts the risk.”
“People cannot hide behind bad luck,” Yusuf Hannun, director of Stony Brook, told BBC News. “They can’t smoke and say it’s bad luck if they have cancer. It is like a revolver, intrinsic risk is one bullet.”
That’s not to say that every exposure to a risk factor means you’re going to get cancer. But it does clearly implicate lifestyle and environmental factors—from the foods we eat to the chemicals we use in our every day lives to things much more out of our control like air pollution or contaminants in our drinking water.
The findings do also reiterate the importance of taking diet and lifestyle choices seriously—opting for organic and non-GMO foods, avoiding harsh chemical-based cleaning and personal care products, and limiting tobacco and alcohol consumption. Taking care to avoid cancer risks is not a guarantee you won’t develop the disease, but it certainly can help.
Written by Jill Ettinger, and reposted with permission from Naturally Savvy.
