Medical World News

[Preciouslife1]

Thany you as always tsurge! ..Report Reveals Convincing Links Between Growth Pattern, Cancer.
Main Category: Cancer / Oncology News

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/87475.php

The most comprehensive report on cancer prevention ever published shows that how the body grows is closely linked to one's cancer risk. The landmark American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) report concluded that events that take place early in life greatly influence a person's cancer risk later on.

The result of a five-year process involving nine teams of scientists from around the world who reviewed and analyzed over 7,000 studies on all aspects of diet, physical activity, weight management and cancer, the report finds that factors such as birth weight, bearing children, breastfeeding, and even adult height all influence cancer risk. Understanding why these factors affect cancer risk, and how to put this information to use to prevent cancer, is an intriguing new direction for cancer research, authors of the report said last day.

"We need to think about cancer as the product of many long-term influences, not as something that 'just happens,'" said Expert Panel Member Walter J. Willett, M.D., Ph.D., who announced the report findings at a Washington press conference today. Willett is one of 21 international experts who wrote the report, Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective. "Examining the causes of cancer this way, across the entire lifetime, is called the life course approach."

Early Factors Have Long-Term Implications on Cancer Risk

Among the findings of the AICR report is the association between high birth weight and the increased risk for pre-menopausal breast cancer. The reason for the link between weight at birth and breast cancer in adulthood likely has to do with body fat, according to AICR experts. Carrying excess body fat seems to change the body's hormonal environment in various ways. Ultimately, these changes make it more likely for cells to undergo the kind of abnormal growth that leads to cancer

There is another early influence on long-term cancer risk that is indirectly associated with body fat.
Girls who are overweight may start menstruating at an earlier age. This means that, over the course of their entire lifetime, they will experience more menstrual cycles.
This extended lifelong exposure to estrogen is associated with increased risk for post-menopausal (but not pre-menopausal) breast cancer.

Breastfeeding Protects Both Mother and Child

The AICR Expert Report also provides some very positive news about the protective benefits of breastfeeding. According to the report, once a woman becomes sexually mature, having children, and breastfeeding those children, convincingly lowers her own risk of developing breast cancer throughout her lifetime. Equally important, the evidence shows that infants who are breastfed are likely to have a lower risk of becoming overweight or obese throughout their lives and this translates into a lower cancer risk.

"The evidence is uniformly strong on breastfeeding, and the fact that it offers cancer protection to both mothers and their children is why we made breastfeeding one of our 10 Recommendations to Prevent Cancer," said Willett. The AICR Expert Report is the first cancer report to issue a recommendation on breastfeeding.

Cancer Risk, Like Tallness, is Determined by Many Factors

The observed association between body growth and cancer risk "makes sense," Willett said. Simply put, when cells divide and develop normally, the process is called growth. When cells divide abnormally, ignoring the body's inbuilt system of checks and balances, that uncontrolled growth is called cancer.

A combination of nutrition, hormones and genes determines how and when our cells divide, and thus how our bodies grow and develop. How tall we become, when growth spurts take place, and how our bodies store fat are all determined by this complex combination of influences. And this same set of influences can make cancer more or less likely.

According to the report, there is convincing evidence that people who are tall have a higher risk of colorectal and post-menopausal breast cancer.

"We found that tallness is also probably linked to increased risk for ovarian, pancreatic and pre-menopausal cancer as well," said Willett. He was careful to note that, although the association between height and cancer is convincing, a tall person is not destined to get cancer.

Tallness is an indicator of risk, not a cause of it, Willett said. "If you're tall, the Expert Report's 10 Recommendations for Lowering Cancer Risk are even more important to you, not less."

Focus on the Choices that Lower Risk

The same advice holds true for all people who find themselves at increased risk for cancer due to growth-related factors, including: adults who were never breastfed, women who started menstruating early; women who do not give birth, or who choose not to breastfeed the children they do have.

"Risk isn't fate," Willett said. "The evidence clearly shows that risk can be changed."

Men and women who have been overweight or obese throughout their lives are advised to gradually reduce the amount of body fat they carry over a period of months and years.

Willet presented evidence from a chapter of the 517-page WCRF/AICR Expert Report that was devoted to issues of growth and development in relation to cancer risk. At the press conference, a fellow member of the expert panel presented the Expert Panel's conclusions on other aspects of diet, physical activity and weight management, which took the form of 10 Recommendations for Cancer Prevention. The report is available online at www.dietandcancerreport.org.

Willett noted that, with the notable exception of breastfeeding, the Report does not provide recommendations about the growth-related factors he outlined, because evidence is still emerging.

"We wanted to point these emerging links out because we now believe them to be more important than the scientific community, much less the public, has yet realized," Willett said. "Whether or not we get cancer has to do with our genes, and with the choices we make everyday. But what I'm highlighting today is that our cancer risk is also influenced by our whole accumulated life experience, from conception onwards."

And in the future, it may become possible to influence some of the growth-related risk factors that remain beyond our control today. Researchers are constantly learning more about how nutrition interacts with our genes, Willett said. But he stressed that scientists still aren't ready to design diets tailored to turn genes on and off, or to make cells grow and divide in specific ways that could make cancer less likely.
For now, he said, the best advice for everyone to follow is to focus on those factors they can control: diet, physical activity and weight. To that end, he summarized the main points of the Expert Report's Recommendations for Cancer Prevention.

"Get and stay lean. Be physically active for at least 30 minutes a day as part of everyday life. Eat a diet that's primarily composed of vegetables, fruits and other plant foods and limit meat. Limit or eliminate the consumption of alcohol.

"By following that advice, everyone - men, women, tall, short, overweight, lean - can reduce their chances of getting cancer.

The American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) is the cancer charity that fosters research on diet and cancer and educates the public about the results. It has contributed more than $82 million for innovative research conducted at universities, hospitals and research centers across the country. AICR also provides a wide range of educational programs to help millions of Americans learn to make dietary changes for lower cancer risk. Its award-winning New American Plate program is presented in brochures, seminars and on its website, http://www.aicr.org. AICR is a member of the World Cancer Research Fund International