Healthy lifestyle can prevent half of cancer deaths, study finds

A new study has found that eliminating smoking, drinking in moderation, maintaining a healthy weight and exercising could prevent more than half of cancer deaths and cut new cases of cancer by 40 percent to 60 percent (Source: “Scientists have determined how we can prevent half of all cancer deaths,” Washington Post, May 19, 2016).

The study, which was published in the journal JAMA Oncology, used large ongoing studies that have closely followed the health and lifestyle habits of tens of thousands of female nurses and male health professionals. They divided people into two groups: a low-risk group that did not smoke, drank no more than one drink a day for women or two for men, maintained a certain healthy body mass index, and did two-and-a-half hours of moderate aerobic exercise a week or half as much vigorous exercise.

The team compared cancer cases and cancer deaths between the low- and high-risk groups and found that for individual cancers, the healthy behaviors could have a large effect on some cancers. The vast majority of cases of lung cancer were attributable to lifestyle, as well as more than a fifth of cases of colon cancer, pancreatic cancer and kidney cancer.

There are caveats to the study, however. The high-risk group in the study is healthier than the general U.S. population, so there are reasons the numbers may be slightly overestimated. But Mingyang Song, the researcher who led the work, argues the numbers are a good approximation because they may be underestimating the effects of lifestyle, too, because they selected a narrow range of lifestyle factors.