600,000 cases of cancer 'may have been avoided' | Irish Examiner

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

More than four in 10 cancers could be avoided if people made changes to their lifestyle, according to Cancer Research UK. Life style changes such as smoking cessation , balanced diet and weight management would have prevented 600,000 cases of various cancers.
Smoking accounted for more than 314,000 cases in the past five years, the charity said.
A further 145,000 cancers might have been averted if more people ate a balanced diet low in red and processed meat and salt, and high in vegetables, fruit, and fibre.
Maintaining a healthy weight could have prevented around 88,000 cases, while tens of thousands of cancers were linked to excess alcohol, failing to protect the skin from sun, and lack of exercise. Read the whole article here:
600,000 cases of cancer 'may have been avoided' | Irish Examiner

Darker Skin Evolved To Reduce Cancer Risk

Image courtesy of ponsulak/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A long-discounted theory about the evolution of skin color may have had it right all along, new research suggests.
Darker skin gives individuals much greater protection from UV light-induced skin cancer. Pale-skinned people are roughly 1,000 times more likely than individuals with dark skin to suffer from the three most common skin cancers. But for years, researchers believed the lowered risk was an incidental benefit, not one derived through the pressure of natural selection.
Even Charles Darwin poo-poohed the notion that pigmentation could be an adaptive trait. A new study, however, finds evidence that skin cancer was in fact a driving evolutionary force for early hominids to have darker skin.

 Darker Skin Evolved To Reduce Cancer Risk - D-brief | DiscoverMagazine.com