Video: 2 min Read time: 4 min
Cancer is a group of diseases characterized by the uncontrolled growth and spread of abnormal cells that can result in death if not treated. In 2022 in the US, there will be an estimated 1,918,030 new cancer cases and 609,360 cancer deaths. That’s approximately 5,250 new cases every day and 1,670 deaths every – single – day. Obesity is the second most common preventable cause of cancer and may soon overtake tobacco use as the most common cause.
At least 18% of newly diagnosed cancers in the US are caused by a combination of excess body weight, alcohol consumption, poor nutrition, and physical inactivity.
Obesity increases our risk of developing cancer in multiple ways that are way too complicated to talk about here but they fall into three primary buckets: immunologic, endocrine, and tissue hypoxia. Risk factors may act simultaneously or in sequence to initiate and/or promote cancer growth.
The types of cancer that have been shown to have the strongest association with obesity are:
- postmenopausal breast cancer
- colorectal cancer
- cancers of the:
- uterus
- esophagus
- gallbladder
- kidney
- liver
- ovaries
- pancreas
- thyroid
- stomach
- multiple myeloma (cancer of the blood cells)
- meningioma (the tissue that covers the brain and spinal cord)
I promise you don’t want any of these!
Treating obesity is hard. However, if treating excess weight can lower your risk of developing one of these cancers, isn’t it the right kind of hard?