Avoiding obesity, tobacco and alcohol reduces the risk of suffering from cancer by 30% – Health and Medicine

2024-03-25 13:37:27

Almost 10 million people die every year in the world from cancer, a figure that is increasing due to an increasingly aging population, but there is also good news: more than a third of cases of this disease can be prevented. “Only by eliminating risk factors such as obesity, tobacco and alcohol, the risk of suffering from cancer is reduced by more than 30%,” he emphasizes. Cesar Ramirezhead of the Service General and digestive surgery from the Quirónsalud Málaga Hospital.

Experts expect to diagnose around 80,000 new cases of this type of digestive tumors in 2024 or, in other words, “one in every four tumors diagnosed (28%) will be of the digestive system.” The most common of this type of tumors is colorectal cancer. Furthermore, if we take into account the total population, of men and women, it is the most prevalent tumor.

Ramírez calls for primary prevention, which consists of the elimination of avoidable risk factors, as well as what is called “secondary prevention of a tumor: early diagnosis. Nowadays there are two essential tools for the early diagnosis of colorectal cancer: screening campaigns for the detection of occult blood in feces and colonoscopy, which is the most important test and which should be done to anyone who has non-specific bleeding from the colon. digestive system or any suspicion of colon cancer, so that the tumor is diagnosed early.” Among cancer screening studies, other determining medical tests are ultrasound and mammography, in breast cancer; prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test and transrectal ultrasound-guided biopsy for prostate cancer; or CT to rule out lung cancer.

If we talk about preventable cancer, lung cancer deserves special mention. It is the tumor that causes the most deaths and is clearly associated with smoking, to the point that “90% of those diagnosed with lung cancer have been or are smokers. It is the tumor that causes the most deaths, because in 80% of cases when we diagnose them the tumor is advanced. Hence the importance of two aspects: not starting a smoking habit or quitting smoking in order to prevent the incidence of new cases and, secondly, it has been shown that lung cancer screening programs manage to diagnose tumors in phases. initials and that allows us to be able to treat them in a more effective way,” he says. Roberto Mongilhead of the Service Thoracic Surgery from the same center.

There is also talk of an increase in the incidence of uterine cancer “because it is associated with risk factors such as obesity, hypertension, diabetes mellitus or a sedentary lifestyle due to an increase in estrogens that stimulate the endometrium; all these diseases that are increasingly common in the Western world.”

The most common gynecological cancer of the internal genital tract of women and the most common gynecological cancer excluding the breast is cancer of the uterus and endometrium, which is the mucosa inside the uterus. Uterine cancer is a cancer generally associated with “women aged 50-60, already in the menopause stage; “which usually has an early diagnosis because it is related in most cases to bleeding at an inappropriate stage of life.”

Age is a non-modifiable risk factor, but the way in which we reach our age is. The medical team of Urology recognizes that age contributes to certain complications, but that does not mean solutions should be avoided. Men appear to be less willing than women to undergo regular medical check-ups and this partly contributes to the fact that men die 4.5 years earlier than women for mainly preventable reasons. “As you are an older patient, you urinate worse. Yes, it is a fact. But if you urinate badly it is because you have a problem, you should at least rule it out since it greatly changes the prognosis from diagnosing it in an early stage to an advanced stage,” the urologists insist. The first thing: reviews starting at 50 or earlier in case of a history.

Prostate cancer is the most common malignant tumor among men; So much so that one in four men will suffer from prostate cancer at some point in their life, with an incidence in our country of more than 27,000 new cases each year. It is a silent disease, which occurs without symptoms in most cases, but it also has a high cure rate if it is detected in time and diagnosed quickly. It is vital to emphasize the “importance of prevention and the need for annual check-ups from the age of 50, checks that should be carried out from the age of 40-45 if you have a first-degree relative who has suffered from prostate cancer or if “If you have a positive BRCA2 gene,” warns doctor José Ángel Gómez Pascual. L.D.B/ A.M.A. (SyM)