How Much of Late Life Cancer is Easily Avoidable?

A range of data on the benefits produced by simple health interventions in late life suggests that many people are self-sabotaging to a point at which a significant fraction of age-related disease and mortality might be legitimately thought of as being self-inflicted. To pick one example, if programs of moderate exercise improve health and reduce mortality in old people, which they do, then the conclusion must be that older people are harming themselves by not undertaking sufficient exercise. Cancer is one of the more important classes of age-related condition. It is age-related for a range of reasons, such as rising levels of chronic inflammation that make the tissue environment more hospitable to cancerous growth, and the progressive failure of the immune system to identify and destroy pre-cancerous and cancerous cells at the earliest stages. If people adopt better lifestyle choices or other simple interventions that reduce these and other issues, then how much of cancer might be avoided? Today's open access paper reports on study results suggesting the answer to that question is perhaps a larger fraction than one might have thought. A combination of three simple treatments may reduce invasive cancer risk by 61% among adults aged 70+ Mechanistic studies have shown that vitamin D inhibits the growth of cancer cells. Similarly, omega-3 may inhibit the transformation of normal cells into cancer cells, and exercise has been shown to improve immune functio...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs