Our Prime Minister has recently gone for his prostate cancer surgery. He is another example of how the elderly is more easily inflicted with cancer.
If he can get cancer twice in his life time what are our chance ??
I have reviewed and heavily edited a very thorough research paper done in UK to be of interest, relevance and wake up call for us SHC members
One in two people will develop cancer at some point in their lives , according to the latest forecast.
There will “never be one single magic bullet” to cure all cancers and age is the biggest risk factor for most forms of the disease.
The new figure, which replaces the previous of one in three, is the most accurate forecast to date from Cancer Research UK .
Prevention must also play a role in the effort required to reduce the impact of the disease in coming decades, the charity said.
But as more people benefit from improved healthcare and longer life expectancy, the number of cancer cases is expected to rise.
This new research estimating lifetime risk replaces the previous figure, calculated using a different method, which predicted that more than one in three people would develop cancer at some point in their lives.
The charity said age is the biggest risk factor for most cancers, and the increase in lifetime risk is primarily because more people are surviving into old age, when cancer is more common.
The lifetime cancer risk for women (47.55%) is lower than that of men (53.5%), while the combined lifetime risk is 50.5%.
According to the previous method of calculation, i n 1980 the combined risk was 27.2%, in 1990 it was 32.7%, in 2000 it was 37.1% and in 2010 it was 41.8%. The charity believes that the old method of calculation underestimated the risk.
Lifetime cancer risk is also expected to increase further in the future.
While the biggest risk factor is age, other lifestyle factors include smoking, obesity, diet, tanning and sunburn, overdiagnosis, lack of exercise and child-bearing patterns.
Just over a quarter of all deaths are caused by cancer, so while one in two people will develop cancer at some point, it is still believed that around one in four people will die from cancer.
We’re living longer and that means we’re more likely to develop a range of age-related health issues.
How near a cure for cancer is ?, The research said: “There will never be one single magic bullet that treats … cures all cancers. I just don’t … I cannot foresee a time when that’s going to be the case. But already we’re able to cure a number of cancers now.”
There are more than 200 different types of cancers and they are all quite different.
The single biggest thing that affects whether a patient is cured is whether their disease is caught early enough..
Too many cancers are diagnosed very late and once they’re more advanced it becomes much harder to cure. We can treat them, we can extend life but it becomes much harder to cure if we’re catching the cancers very late,”
“Cancer is primarily a disease of old age, with more than 60% of all cases diagnosed in people aged over 65. If people live long enough then most will get cancer at some point.”
Breast cancer is the most common form in women, prostate cancer is the most common form in men, and bowel cancer and lung cancer are common in both sexes.
Cases of cancer are likely to rise with an ageing population – so the focus is on earlier diagnosis, improving care and tackling preventable cancer.
Another separate study said 30% of cancer happen to the most fit and healthy person. This sadly is term “biological badluck” due to healthy cell mutation
Still we should be in control of the 70%. Hope you find this article useful.
Leon
