Fascinating French study came out recently where respondents were asked several questions to determine their beliefs about health.
One of the questions was whether people thought being overweight increased the risk of cancer?
Although diet and excess weight represent the third and fourth biggest avoidable cancer risk factors, after smoking and alcohol, only 30% of survey respondents knew of this link.
“Among the causes of cancer known and cited by respondents without prompting, excessive weight and obesity were mentioned only 100 times out of 12,558 responses,” highlighted the authors of the report. The explanation put forward by the authors is that discourse about diet has been more focused on diet as a protective health factor, especially in preventing cardiovascular diseases. “The link between cancer and diet is less prominent in the public space,” they noted.
I would agree with that. I reckon us Brits would probably say the same as the French. And we’d be wrong. As the researchers say: diet and excess weight are the third and fourth biggest cancer risk factors.
The respondents also thought that cancer was more hereditary than it is. That could lead to people thinking there is no point in trying to prevent it because it’s just the genetic hand they have been dealt. Nothing could be further from the truth, actually.
The report shows that 67.7% of respondents believe that cancer is a hereditary disease…..healthcare professionals almost systematically ask questions about family history of breast cancer and, when a family member has been diagnosed with cancer, medical monitoring of other family members is often sought out, thus reinforcing the belief that cancer is hereditary,”
Furthermore, there seems to be confusion regarding the role of genes in the development of cancer. A person can inherit cancer-predisposing genes, not cancer itself. The authors highlighted their concern that this confusion may “lead people to think that prevention measures are unnecessary because cancer is inherited.”
Genes have to be triggered and often that is by an environmental onslaught such as poor diet, smoking, drinking to excess, toxin intake etc. It’s epigenetics. We can change how those genes we have inherited are expressed or triggered; it’s in our hands to offset them much of the time, certainly a lot more than these French respondents (and probably us Brits) think it is.
Interesting stuff. You can read the whole of this article here if you can access Medscape: