Individuals who adopt five key healthy behaviors are at a lower risk of developing bowel cancer, a new study finds.
The study was conducted by researchers from the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke. Researchers noted that the adoption of combined multiple healthy lifestyle behaviors has an impact on the risk of developing bowel cancer and it is similar for both men and women.
"These data provide additional incentive to individuals, medical professionals and public health authorities to invest in healthy lifestyle initiatives. Each person can contribute a lot to avoid cancer, the more healthy lifestyle changes, the better," lead author, Krasimira Aleksandrova, said in a press statement.
Bowel cancer is the second most common form of cancer in men and third most common form among women. About 55 percent of bowel cancer cases have been reported in developing regions such as Western Europe and North America. For the current study, researchers examined the data of 347,237 men and women from 10 countries from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort study using a healthy lifestyle index. Over the 12-year study period, 3,759 cases of bowel cancer were recorded.
Factors such as healthy weight; low abdominal fat; participating in regular physical activity; not smoking and limiting alcohol; and a diet high in fruits, vegetables, fish, yoghurt, nuts and seeds, and foods rich in fiber, and low amounts of red and processed meat were used to measure a healthy lifestyle index. For each of the five behaviors, study subjects were assigned one point for having the healthy factor and zero for not having the healthy factor. These points were then summed to generate a cumulative score for each participant.
"Our data confirmed that with an increasing number of healthy lifestyle behaviors the risk that a person will have of developing bowel cancer decreases," the researchers said.
Researchers found that the more healthy behaviors a person adopted, the lower the risk of developing bowel cancer. Compared to those who adopted only one healthy behavior, those who adopted two, three, four or all such behaviors had a 13 percent, 21 percent, 34 percent and 37 percent lower risk of developing the disease.
"Estimates based on our study populations suggest that up to 22 percent of the cases in men and 11 percent of the cases in women would have been prevented if all five of the healthy lifestyle behaviors had been followed. Our results particularly demonstrate the potential for prevention in men who are at a higher risk of bowel cancer than women," the study authors concluded.
Findings of the current study were published online in the access journal BMC Medicine.
