About 1 in 3 cancer deaths in the United States each year is related to diet, exercise, and overweight. Another 1 in 3 cancer deaths are due to exposure to tobacco.
How many ways can we reduce cancer risk today? Here are some methods that have a good deal of science to back them up.
American Cancer Society recommendations for individual choices about nutrition and physical activity
Maintain a healthy weight throughout life.
- Balance calorie intake with physical activity.
- Avoid excessive weight gain throughout life.
- Get to and stay at a healthy weight if currently overweight or obese.
Adopt a physically active lifestyle.
- Adults: Engage in at least 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity, beyond your usual activities, on 5 or more days of the week. And 45 to 60 minutes of intentional physical activity on 5 or more days a week is even better.
- Children and adolescents: Engage in at least 60 minutes per day of moderate to vigorous physical activity at least 5 days per week.
Moderate activities are those that require about as much effort as a brisk walk. Vigorous activities generally use large muscle groups and raise your heart rate, speed up your breathing, and make you sweat.
Eat a healthy diet, with an emphasis on plant sources.
- Choose foods and drinks in amounts that help you get to and stay at a healthy weight.
- Eat 5 or more servings of a variety of vegetables and fruits each day.
- Choose whole grains over processed (refined) grains.
- Limit intake of processed and red meats.
If you drink alcoholic beverages, limit your intake.
- Limit your intake no more than 1 drink per day for women or 2 per day for men.
American Cancer Society recommendation for community action on nutrition and physical activity
Public, private, and community organizations should work to create social and physical environments that help people adopt and maintain healthful nutrition and physical activity:
- Increase access to healthful foods in schools, worksites, and communities.
- Provide safe, enjoyable spaces for physical activity in schools.
- Provide for safe, physically active transportation (such as biking and walking) and recreation in communities.
Avoid things that cause cancer
- Avoid smoking, second hand smoke, and all other forms of tobacco
- Don't expose yourself to other known cancer causing agents (carcinogens) Learn more about chemicals or agents that you work with or use at home, and how to protect yourself. (See our document, Known and Probable Human Carcinogens.)
- Protect yourself from sunlight and other UV light sources (tanning beds and lamps)
Get tested for common cancers and pre-cancers
Use early detection methods that can find pre-cancerous changes in some parts of the body. Treating these pre-cancers actually keeps them from growing into cancer:
- Pap tests for women as recommended
- Colonoscopy, CT colonography, or sigmoidoscopy for people 50 and over (or earlier if high risk)
For more on prevention and early detection, see our documents, Cancer Prevention and Early Detection Checklist for Men or Cancer Prevention and Early Detection Checklist for Women.)
Even though some of these methods don't prevent cancer, early detection methods can help lower your chance of dying from cancer, and improve your chance of a cure. See American Cancer Society Guidelines for the Early Detection of Cancer and see a doctor to discuss the best plan for early cancer detection in your case.
What about heredity? How does it affect my cancer risk?
All cancers involve damage to genes that control the cell's growth (division). But only about 1 in 20 cancers are due to damaged gene that is inherited from a parent. If you inherit a damaged gene, you can have a very high risk of getting one or more types of cancer. There are genetic tests you can take to find out if there is an inherited problem if a certain type of cancer is common in your family. (See our document, Genetic Testing: What You Need To Know for more on how this works.)
This means 19 out of 20 cancers are not due to inheriting damaged genes, but from damage that builds up over your lifetime. Mutations in your genes may be caused by internal factors such as hormones or the way nutrients are processed within cells. Or they can be caused by external factors such as tobacco, chemicals, and sunlight.
If you think you are at high risk for certain types of cancer, talk with your doctor about whether earlier screening or extra testing is needed. In some cases, there are medicines that can reduce your risk. (See our document, Medicines to Reduce Breast Cancer Risk.)
Using unproven methods that may reduce your risk
For those who are still searching for a guarantee -- or even a boost in the right direction -- there is no shortage of other ideas as to how a person might be able to keep from getting cancer. Some ways have been studied, while most others have not. Some methods have proven safe, while the safety of others is still unknown. But people want to be as healthy as possible, and if they find something that may help, they may want to try it even if there is no evidence. With thousands of possibilities that take years to study, there will always be theories waiting to be checked out.
The American Cancer Society supports the right of people to decide what is best for them. But we encourage people to discuss prevention methods or treatments they may be thinking about with their doctors and other health care providers. We also encourage people to consider using methods that have either been proven to work or are being studied in clinical trials.
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