You feel proud to be a part of urban world. Isn’t it? The long working hours, junky flabby food, freedom of alcohol & smoke, parties lessening your sleep, late marriages & later pregnancies etc, surely fascinates everyone. But do you realize that this lifestyle might show you a classy urbanite but is taking you away from your healthy mind & body.
Oncologists opine that it is alarming to see younger patients walking into cancer care clinics with serious problems. As opposed to the West, the biggest concern is that patients getting affected with serious cancers are 20 years younger comparatively.A remarkable 90-95% of cancer cases are caused by your environment and lifestyle. Lifestyle factors linked to cancer include alcohol, sun exposure, environmental pollutants, infections, stress, obesity, and physical inactivity. The biggest determinants of your cancer risk however are whether or not you are exposed to tobacco smoke and the quality of your diet. Of all cancer-related deaths around 25-30% is due to tobacco and as many as 30-35% are linked to diet.
According to Dr. Sunil Gupta, Senior Oncologist, Rajeev Gandhi Cancer Institute, “Most of these cancers are lifestyle driven and are due to unhealthy habits like no exercise, overweight, popping hormonal pills, smoking, and tobacco chewing etc. Unfortunately, people think cancer is for the old and don't even get themselves screened but we would like to tell them that cancer is not just about the old anymore.”If we look at the feminine gender, Cervical Cancer is stalking them the most.
But besides urban, more cases are reported from rural areas. It is mainly because of poor hygiene habits. Another type of cancer that is steadily increasing is breast cancer followed by stomach cancer, both directly related to the sedentary urban lifestyle.“We see a rise in the working women population because they have late pregnancies and start breastfeeding much later. Also they tend to take too many self medicated hormonal pills and survive on junk food which is contributing to the rise.” says Dr. Shyam Aggarwal, Senior Medical Oncologist, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.
We all know that Cancer is a preventable lifestyle disease yet every year it claims tens of billions of human lives with drug treatment costing hundreds of billions. Despite enormous investment in cancer treatment most cancer therapies are highly toxic, ineffective and unaffordable to greater than 80% of the world population. Therefore, more attention needs to be paid to lifestyle.
