June is men’s health awareness month.

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Health tips: Cancer prevention

Dear Reader,

Cancer and heart disease jockey back and forth for position as the leading cause of death of US men after age 45. For men, prostate cancer is the most common cancer, lung cancer is the second most common, and colorectal cancer is third.

Although prostate, lung, and colon cancers are the most frequently diagnosed cancers in men, lung cancer is the deadliest of the three by a couple of furlongs. For women, substitute breast cancer for prostate cancer and the two lists—most common and most deadly—are the same.

The top 10 things on the list should be to avoid smoking, because both first- and secondhand smoke increase the risk of getting every imaginable malignancy. And chewing tobacco teams up with alcohol to be major risk factors for developing oral cancer.

Smoking caused the premature death of 100 million people in the 20th century, and it’s shooting to send 1 billion people to an early shower in the 21st century. Sucking on the heaters shortens a smoker’s life by an average of a decade, and it lowers the chance of ever becoming an octogenarian by 30 percent.

But the good news is that the body can forgive. If you quit before age 35, you’ll carry on with your life with no additional excess risk of death. Past age 35, can still dramatically reduce—but not eliminate—the excess risk of death. So cut it out, the sooner the better.

Some other cancer risk factors are:

Sun exposure: You can avoid skin cancer by limiting your cumulative sun exposure (the trigger for typically milder forms of skin cancer such as basal cell and squamous cell) and by avoiding sunburns (the trigger for the more lethal melanoma).

Radon in the basement man cave: You can have your basement tested for radon (the second leading cause of lung cancer). Lung cancer is rising in nonsmokers, and the increase is very likely due to a long list of environmental toxins we inhale.

Human papillomavirus (HPV): HPV causes more than 90% of cervical cancer. So when an HPV vaccine came out in 2006, it seemed that the benefit was primarily for women. The thinking was, since HPV is spread by sexual activity, young boys should also be vaccinated to prevent spreading the virus to female partners. Over time though, the list of cancers caused by HPV has grown to include penile cancer, anal cancer, and cancer of the back of the tongue and tonsils. It’s estimated that vaccination could prevent more than 90% of all HPV cancers, but vaccination works best if given before sexual activity begins. That’s why vaccination is recommended for all adolescents age 11 or 12, and is not recommended for adults older than 26, where the benefit is felt to be low.

Booze blues: Regular, heavier alcohol intake increases the risk of colon cancer, and together with smoking is the major cause of mouth and throat cancers.

Eat your fruits and vegetables, skip the supplements: We know that people who have a diet rich in fruits and vegetables have a lower incidence of cancer, but to date, no study has shown that taking vitamin supplements will lower your risk of cancer.

Pound for pound, extra ones increase the risk of cancer: Excess weight definitely increases the risk of getting cancer, and the reasons are not fully understood. Certainly, fat is a very hormonally active substance, and some of those hormones can cause inflammation, which is dry tinder for cancer. Fat also increases the levels of estrogen in the body, which might be why it increases the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women. Obesity also increases the chance of getting cancer of the esophagus, pancreas, uterus, kidney, thyroid, and gall bladder.

Yours in good health,

Craig L. Bowron, M.D.

Author of Man Overboard!

A must-read health guide for men

Understand your health and live your best life with this authoritative, humorous head-to-toe manual for any aging male.

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