We’ve all had it drummed into us that there’s certain choices we make that dramatically up our cancer risk – smoking, for example – and there’s constantly a new study saying X and Y can increase your risk by Z per cent. But we’ve also been told that equally, it’s just our DNA that is to blame.
But the latest study on the disease claims that as high as 90% of cases are avoidable, as it’s our lifestyle that makes the biggest difference to our cancer risk, rather than that mixed in with genetics and family history.
Researcher Yusuf Hannun from Sony Brook University examined the effect of external factors on cancer rates. For example, he studied the difference of people migrating from a low-risk area to a high-risk environment, and found that the rate of developing the disease correlated with the increased risk.
The latest findings, however, largely contradict that of another big study published in Science journal earlier this year. This claimed that two thirds of cancer can be attributed to DNA mutation – essentially bad luck that we as individuals have little control over.
But Hannuns study claimed that environmental factors set off cancer, as the cell mutations alone rarely caused the cancer.
So it’s all still a bit of a muddle, really.