No, you did not. We don’t yet know what causes all cancers. We do know that there are certain things we call risk factors that affect your chance of getting a disease. Some risk factors can be changed (lifestyle choices) and others cannot. Risk factors that can’t be changed include your age, sex, and family health history. Lifestyle choices include things you do, such as use tobacco and drink alcohol, what you eat, and sun exposure. Other factors are linked to cancer-causing factors in the environment.
But risk factors don’t tell us everything. Having a risk factor, or even many risk factors, does not mean that you will get the disease. And some people who get cancer may not have any known risk factors. Even if a person with cancer has a risk factor, it’s often very hard to know what part that risk factor may have contributed to the cancer.
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