A new study suggests that we should add more fruits and vegetables to our diet as increased consumption of those can lower our risk to developing invasive bladder cancer, especially for women.
Song Yi-Park, lead author of the study from the University of Hawaii's Cancer Center, and his colleagues began the study in 1993 as they try to establish the association of diet, lifestyle and genes with cancer risk. The team had recruited 185,885 adults to participate in the 12.5-year study. By the end of the study, 581 of them developed bladder cancer with 152 women and 429 men.
The researchers factored in other variables such as age to come up with a more accurate conclusion. The final results showed that women who consumed more fruits and vegetables displayed the lowest bladder cancer risk.
Those who consumer more yellow-orange vegetables have 52 percent lower chance of developing bladder cancer than those who had it least. In addition, those who took in the most vitamin A, C, and E showed the same low results.
However, the researchers found out that the effects of vegetables and fruits to men were not as significant as that of women. They admitted that they will need further analysis to explain how it happened.
"Our study supports the fruit and vegetable recommendation for cancer prevention," said study lead Song-Yi Park to Nature World News. "However, further investigation is needed to understand and explain why the reduced cancer risk with higher consumption of fruits and vegetables was confined to only women."
The American Cancer Society estimates that there will be about 72,570 new cases of bladder cancer in the U.S affecting 54,610 men and 17,960 women by the end of 2013. Unfortunately, approximately 21 percent of the are less likely to survive. Bladder cancer normally affects older people with 9 out of 10 cases beginning at age 55.
