A HEALTHY lifestyle may be even more important than you think. The most comprehensive report on cancer prevention yet finds that healthy eating and exercise could prevent more than a third of common cancers in developed countries, and more than a quarter in developing countries.
鈥淧eople think that somehow cancer comes from heaven, or Darwin, or from their parents鈥� genes, but that鈥檚 not always the case,鈥� says Michael Marmot, chair of the panel that produced the . These figures do not take into account cancers caused by smoking, which alone causes about a third of all cancers.
The panel examined the biggest and most reliable studies to date on how cancer risk is affected by 10 patterns of diet and physical activity, such as eating processed meats or more than 6 grams of salt per day, being obese, or not exercising regularly. They combined these with estimates of the proportion of people in the US, UK, China and Brazil indulging in these 鈥渞isky鈥� behaviours.
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It turns out that, at 39 per cent, the UK has the highest proportion of all preventable cancer, followed by the US at 34, Brazil at 30 and China at 27 per cent.