Health

Reduce Your Risk of Cancer

By making some small changes to your lifestyle, you could reduce your risk of developing cancer by more than a third. Judy Hobson reports

While there's little you can do about your genetic make-up, and no way of halting the ageing process – the main cause of cancer – you can give yourself the best chance of keeping the disease at bay simply by being more physically active, watching your weight and quitting smoking.

Since the Nineties, the number of people diagnosed with cancer in the UK has increased by 12 per cent, largely due to the fact that we are living longer. The biggest risk factor for developing cancer is our age. After the mid-thirties our cell system starts to break down. If there’s too much damage, cells start to get out of control, divide and create more cells that can eventually form a tumour.

There are now 352,000 cases of cancer a year in the UK – 179,000 men and 173,000 women. However, the charity Cancer Research UK (CRUK) says 42 per cent of these could be prevented if we changed our lifestyle. Indeed, leading cancer expert Professor Karol Sikora, 54 formerly chief of the World Health Organisation (WHO) cancer programme and now chief medical officer of Proton Partners International, believes that if we did this, as many as 50 per cent could be avoided. So what can you do to reduce your risk?

To continue reading and find out what you can do to reduce your risk of cancer, click here

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