Obesity is the cause of cancer
Scientists told about the obesity-related cancer epidemic in the United States
The incidence of six types of cancer has increased dramatically among young people and children in the United States due to the rapid spread of the obesity epidemic and related complications. Scientists write about this in an article in the Lancet Public Health journal (Sung et al., Emerging cancer trends among young adults in the USA: analysis of a population-based cancer registry).
"Despite the fact that cancer does not develop so often in young people, these trends are extremely important from the point of view of public health. Given the speed of the spread of obesity, in the future this process may nullify all our efforts to reduce the likelihood of developing cancer that have been undertaken in recent decades," said Ahmedin Jemal from the American Society for Cancer Research in Atlanta (in a press release Obesity–Related Cancers Rising in Young Adults in the U.S. - VM).
In recent years, scientists have found more and more hints that obesity not only increases the load on the skeleton, contributes to the development of metabolic problems and is one of the causes of diabetes, but also negatively affects other parts of the body. For example, recently scientists from the USA found out that excess weight in women contributes to the recurrence of breast cancer, as well as accelerates brain aging and causes changes in brain function.
At the same time, since the 80s of the last century, the Earth has been overwhelmed by a global epidemic of obesity. According to current WHO estimates, every third inhabitant of the globe suffers from extra pounds, and about 15% more from severe forms of obesity. Jemal and his colleagues tested how such processes affected the incidence of cancer in the United States, where this epidemic affected 66% of the population.
To do this, scientists have tracked how the situation has changed in recent years with a dozen types of cancer, presumably associated with obesity, and another two dozen subtypes of malignant tumors, for which such dependence is not characteristic.
The idea of the doctors was simple – if obesity really affects the likelihood of developing cancer, then the statistics for the first and second groups of tumors will be different. Accordingly, if such differences are absent, then there will be no connection between excess weight and an increased probability of getting a tumor.
Analyzing data collected by US medical services from 1995 to 2014, Jemal and his colleagues found that obesity strongly influenced the development of six out of 12 cancers suspected to be associated with excess weight.
On average, the probability of getting them increased 2.5-7 times for young people, and 1.5-4 times for people of mature age compared to the statistics of the 1980s. The situation with kidney cancer has changed the most – now young Americans suffer from it 6 times more often than their grandparents at the same age.
On the other hand, the probability of developing only two types of cancer not related to obesity has increased markedly during this time – leukemia and stomach cancer. The frequency of occurrence of the remaining 18 subtypes of tumors either has not changed, or has dropped significantly during this time.
All this, according to scientists, suggests that the obesity epidemic is much more dangerous for human health than previously thought. Despite the overall small number of cancer cases among young people, these trends may continue in the coming years and decades.
This will dramatically increase the incidence of cancer among the elderly and may cause the collapse of the healthcare system in the near future. Therefore, scientists suggest that pediatricians begin to fight obesity more actively, and legislators and authorities should introduce strict restrictions on the advertising and sale of sugary drinks and high–calorie foods.
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