Everyday Choices Can Influence Cancer Risk

Everyday Choices Can Influence Cancer Risk
FRIDAY, Dec. 7 (HealthDay News) -- While genes and environment canaffect your risk for cancer, so can everyday lifestyle choices on thingssuch as diet, exercise and smoking, new research shows.
The findings were to be presented Friday in Philadelphia at an AmericanAssociation for Cancer Research conference on cancer prevention.
One study found that people who quit smoking can further reduce theirrisk of lung cancer by eating plenty of vegetables (four or more servingsof salad a week or equivalent). The researchers at the University of TexasM.D. Anderson Cancer Center also found that former smokers who getexercise through gardening are 45 percent less likely to get lung cancerthan former smokers who don't garden.
Current smokers who ate three servings or less of salad a week were twotimes more likely to develop lung cancer than current smokers who ate fouror more salads a week. Current smokers who gardened were 33 percent lesslikely to get lung cancer than current smokers who didn't garden, theTexas team found.
"Although this is a very preliminary analysis, it give us someimportant clues about how everyone -- smokers and non-smokers alike --might be able to reduce their risk of developing lung cancer," MicheleForman, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Texas, said in aprepared statement.
"If you are worried about lung cancer risk, this study shows that youmay benefit from eating a healthy diet and being physically active," shesaid.
A second study suggests that males may be more prone to developingcancer than females because of gender differences in antioxidant levelsand the ability to repair DNA damage.
The Ohio State University study found that the same degree of damagingultraviolet (UV) light caused more damage to the skin of male mice than tothat of female mice. As a result, the male mice developed more squamouscell skin cancers, and these tumors grew more quickly and aggressivelythan the same type of tumors on the skin of female mice.
The findings may help explain why men develop three times as manysquamous cell skin cancers than women and why men are more prone todeveloping cancer in general, the researchers said.
"Men get more skin cancer than women, and it has classically beenthought that the reason for this is lifestyle -- men spend more timeoutside and are less likely to use sun protection," Kathleen Tober, aresearch scientist in OSU's pathology department, said in a preparedstatement. "Our data suggests that while that may be a factor, an evenmore critical reason for this difference is that female skin may be betterable to combat the damaging effects of UV exposure."
"Based on our data, it would be a reasonable hypothesis that one of theunderlying mechanisms for this is that men might have less overallantioxidant levels and diminished DNA repair capacity," Tober said.
A third study found that black Americans may have a more difficult timegiving up smoking, because they have much lower levels of an enzyme(glucuronide) that metabolizes nicotine and nicotine byproducts thanwhites. This means that blacks may experience higher nicotine levels whensmoking, which makes it more difficult for them to kick the habit.
"Smokers adjust their level of smoking to maintain blood levels ofnicotine, which are determined in part by rates of nicotine metabolism,and, while we can't say from this study that differences in metabolismdefinitively account for lower quit rates (among blacks), it could verywell have an impact," Jeannette Zinggeler Berg, an M.D./Ph.D. student inbiochemistry, molecular biology, and biophysics at the University ofMinnesota, said in a prepared statement.