Obesity and Cancer.
That an obese person is a potential museum of medicine is a fact. He or she is prone to many health disorders such as diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, cancer and more. That obesity is a strong risk factor of cancer is an established fact. Being overweight has been linked to 14 to 20% of cancer deaths.
How or why obesity and cancer are linked is yet to be established. Obesity increases your risk to cancer by 1.5 times. It may not sound much but in the U.S. alone, 90,000 deaths occur annually due to obesity.
Obesity causes Cancer.
According to the American Cancer society, obesity increases the risk of many cancers. Cancers related and associated to obesity are:
- Uterine cancer,
- Cervical cancer,
- Ovarian cancer,
- Post menopausal breast cancer,
- Cancer of Liver,
- Esophageal cancer,
- Stomach cancer,
- Colorectal cancer,
- Cancer of Kidney,
- Cancer of the Pancreas,
- Cancer of the Gall bladder, and
- Multiple myeloma.
How Obesity may Cause Cancer.
That obesity and cancer are linked is established. But how obesity and cancer are linked is yet to be established. But some studies do indicate the following reasons:
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Chronic inflammation, obesity and cancer.
Obesity is associated with chronic low grade inflammation probably due to early onset of atherosclerosis and there is a strong association between a long standing chronic inflammation in a particular organ and cancer of that organ.
For example,
(a) chronic inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer,
(b) chronic gastritis often seen in obesity and cancer of the stomach and
(c) chronic hepatitis and cancer of the liver.
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Estrogen and cancer.
Here is how being fat and cancer risk is linked. Fat tissue is important for estrogen production. Prolonged exposure to excess levels of estrogen as in obesity, greatly increases risk of breast cancer. According to a federal study, women who take hormone replacement after menopause not only increase their risk of getting cancer but also are more likely to die of it.
According to the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, women who took estrogen and progesterone were at a greater risk of dying from breast cancer, uterine cancer and lung cancer. In obesity, due to prolonged exposure to hormones due to excessive fat tissue, cancer risk is greatly increased.
Prevent Cancer due to Obesity.
Losing weight from your body seems to be the only way to reduce cancer risk due to obesity. The right diet to lose weight and exercise to lose weight will help you reduce obesity cancer risk as well as risks to a whole many other diseases as well.
Your action step.
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