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healthy

More Than A Third Of All Global Cancer Cases Are Preventable Through Lifestyle Changes, WHO Says 

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According to a new study and analysis from the World Health Organization (WHO), more than a third of all cancer cases globally are preventable. There are several ways in which we can reduce the odds of many different kinds of cancers developing, and a lot of it has to do with our overall lifestyle habits. 

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The organization wrote that lung, stomach, and cervical cancers make up nearly half of those cases, meaning that millions of deadly cancers every year could be prevented through medical intervention, behavior changes, reducing occupational risks, and/or combatting environmental pollutants, according to ScienceAlert. 

The study itself was published in Nature Medicine.

“Addressing these preventable causes represents one of the most powerful opportunities to reduce the global cancer burden,” says Isabelle Soerjomataram, medical epidemiologist at WHO and senior author of the analysis.

The specific analysis found that in 2022 there were about 19 million new cases of cancer, and about 38% of those diagnoses were related to 30 changeable risk factors. 

It was reported that these risk factors include “tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, high body mass index, insufficient physical activity, smokeless tobacco (like chewing tobacco), a traditional stimulant known as areca nut, suboptimal breastfeeding, air pollution, ultraviolet radiation, infectious agents, and over a dozen occupational exposures.”

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Smoking tobacco was the number one preventable factor associated with cancer, and was linked to 15% of all cancer cases in 2022. 

For men specifically this risk was particularly high, and smoking contributed to 23% of all new cancer cases globally in men that year. 

Air pollution also plays a major role in cancer cases, and varies by region. In East Asia, it was reported that around 15% of all lung cancer cases in women were due to air pollution. In Northern Africa and Western Asia, about 20% of all lung cancer cases in men were also due to air pollution. 

Drinking alcohol was the second changeable lifestyle factor that was linked to 3.2% (around 700,000) of all new cancer cases. 

Certain infections within the body were also linked to about 10% of new cancer cases. In women, the largest share of preventable cancers were due to high-risk human papillomavirus, or HPV, which has been known to potentially lead to cervical cancer. 

“By examining patterns across countries and population groups, we can provide governments and individuals with more specific information to help prevent many cancer cases before they start,” says André Ilbawi, WHO Team Lead for Cancer Control and co-author of the analysis.

drinks

Even Light Drinking May Raise Dementia Risk, Landmark Study Finds

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For years, the public has heard that a glass of wine a day may offer some health benefits. But a sweeping new study suggests that even modest drinking could quietly erode cognitive health over time, adding weight to growing evidence that there may be no truly safe amount of alcohol when it comes to dementia.

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walk

Study States 8 Lifestyle Habits Can Add Up Over Two Decades To Your Life 

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According to a new unpublished study that analyzed data from US veterans, adding eight healthy lifestyle habits to your life between the ages of 40 and 60 could extend your life by up to 24 years, depending on what age you begin implementing the habits. 

Even on the older end, the study states that if you start implementing the habits at age 60, you could still potentially gain 18 years to your life. 

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“There’s a 20-year period in which you can make these changes, whether you do it gradually or all at once. We also did an analysis to see if we eliminated people with type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, stroke, cancer and the like, does it change the outcome? And it really didn’t, so, if you start off with chronic diseases, making changes does still help,” said lead study author Xuan-Mai Nguyen, a health science specialist for the Million Veteran Program at the VA Boston Healthcare System. 

The habits are relatively well-known: eat a healthy diet, exercise, maintain low stress levels, keep positive social relationships, get a full night’s sleep, don’t smoke, don’t drink in excess, and avoid hard drugs/opioids. While these habits may seem rather obvious, it’s important to understand just how much of a difference they can make in your life, and it’s encouraging to know that it’s never too late in life to make the changes. 

“The earlier the better, but even if you only make a small change in your 40s, 50s or 60s, it still is beneficial. This is not out of reach — this is actually something attainable for the general population,” Nguyen said. 

The study was presented on Monday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition, Nutrition 2023, and it showed how the study looked at the lifestyle behaviors of around 720,000 military veterans between the ages of 40 and 99. 

“Adding just one healthy behavior to a man’s life at age 40 provided an additional 4.5 years of life. Adding a second led to seven more years, while adopting three habits prolonged life for men by 8.6 years. As the number of additional lifestyle changes climbed, so did the benefits for men, adding up to nearly a quarter century of extra life,” Nguyen said, according to CNN. 

Nguyen went on to explain how women saw major changes in life span as well. “Adopting just one healthy behavior added 3.5 years to a woman’s life, while two added eight years, three 12.6 years and embracing all the healthy habits extended a woman’s life by 22.6 years.”

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“Doing all eight had a synergistic effect, sort of an added boost to extend your life, but any small change made a difference,” Nguyen said.

“An important strength of this analysis was that the population was highly diverse by race, ethnicity, and SES (socioeconomic status),” said senior study author and leading nutrition researcher Dr. Walter Willett.

The study also ranked all eight habits in order from which could give the largest increase in longevity, the following percentages were all taken from the study itself: 

  1. Exercise: “We looked at whether they did light, moderate or vigorous activity compared to not doing anything and just sitting on the couch. People who lived longer did 7.5 metabolic equivalent hours of exercise a week. Just to give you a baseline — if you can walk up a flight of stairs without losing your breath, that’s four minutes of the 7.5,” Nguyen said.
  2. Staying away from/not becoming addicted to opioids can reduce the risk of an earlier death by 38%.
  3. Never using tobacco can reduce the risk of death by 29%.
  4. Managing stress and reducing your daily stress levels can reduce early death by 22%.
  5. Eating a plant based diet could increase your chances of living a longer life by 21%.
  6. Avoiding excessive drinking and binge drinking, having more than four alcoholic drinks per day, could reduce your risk of death by 19%.
  7. Getting enough sleep every night, at least seven to nine hours a night with no insomnia, can reduce early death from other causes by 18%.

Having and maintaining positive social relationships can help life longevity by 5%. “Five percent may seem small, but that’s still a decrease in terms of all-cause mortality. Every little bit helps, whether you pick physical activity or make sure you’re surrounded by positive social support,” Nguyen said.

Alcohol

Americans Are Drinking More Today Than During Prohibition

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With many of us struggling to get to the end of one of the many health kicks that appear in January, we may be starting to wonder whether what we are doing is really necessary. Alongside Veganuary there is also Dry January, a movement that has seen many around the world opt to abstain from alcohol for 31 days in an attempt to get healthier.

But do we as a nation have an issue with alcohol? The answer apparently is yes. It has recently been announced that Americans are consuming more alcohol than during Prohibition, and with the trend for drinking increasing steadily over the last twenty years, is there really an option for the trend to stop?

Federal health statistics has shown an increase in per-capita alcohol consumption, and has seen a shocking increase in the number of hospitalizations, emergency room visits, and even deaths that are linked to drinking.

However, there has been some good news. Teenagers are drinking less than before, a sign that they may be witnessing the destruction that alcohol can cause. The influence of social media has also been cited as a reason for the decline. However, public health experts are still concerned over the drinking problem that is on-going.

Dr Tim Naimi, an alcohol researcher at Boston University confirmed that “consumption has been going up. Harms [from alcohol] have been going up. And there’s not been a policy response to match it.”

Before Prohibition was implemented in 1920, the average American adult – and teenager – was drinking around two gallons of alcohol each year. However nowadays the figure is nearer 2.3 gallons, equating to around 500 drinks – or nine drinks a week.

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However historians have confirmed that America’s biggest drinking problem was during the early 1800’s with 1830 reaching a peak of nearly seven gallons of alcohol being consumed by the average American.

With such a large alcohol problem the temperance movement campaigned for moderation on alcohol, followed by abstinence and eventually called for the national ban, which was passed in 1919. Prohibition commenced on January 17th 1920 and continued for a further 13 years until it was ended under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration.

Prohibition clearly had an affect on the nation’s drinking habits as following the lifting of the ban the per-capita alcohol consumption was at nearly one gallon, however, the figures have fluctuated ever since. The 1970’s and 1980’s saw an increase to 2.75 gallons, although some have blamed this increase on the recession that was affecting the majority of the developed world at the time.

The mid-1980’s saw attention being focused on the increase in deaths due to drink driving and Congress increased the drinking age from 18 to 21, leading to a fall in alcohol consumption, however it increased again around the mid-1990’s.

William Kerr, senior scientist at Public Health Institute’s Alcohol Research Group commented, “I think people sort of forgot all the problems with alcohol.”

As well as the damage to the bank balance, excessive drinking has many significant health problems including high blood pressure, stroke, liver damage, liver cancer and heart disease. Alcohol is discouraged during pregnancy as it could lead to birth defects, stillbirth or miscarriage. It has also been confirmed that alcohol is responsible for around 30-35% of injuries within the elderly generation.

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Alcohol can also be a danger to those around us,  as fighting is way more likely to occur due to a higher level of alcohol in our systems. Domestic violence can also be alcohol fueled and of course, there can be damaging results from drink driving.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have confirmed that over 88,000 Americans die annually due to excessive drinking, a figure that is higher than those who have died during the recent opioid drug epidemic.

With the number of deaths relating to alcohol issues doubling since 1999 it has been suggested that there are links with the growing overdose epidemic as many drug users drink alcohol at the same time.

Although nearly 75% of those that had alcohol related deaths were male, there has been a significant increase in the amount of alcohol women are now drinking, a fact that has been put down to the increase in binge drinking, where you consume around four or five drinks within two hours.

Aaron White, lead researcher on a recent study by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, confirmed that the study – which saw researchers scan death certificates from the last two years looking for those mentioning alcohol problems -had seen the amount of women dying from drinking related causes had increased by 85%. Although the highest age range were those between 55 and 74 it also discovered the number of younger women dying was increasing.

There has also been a change in our attitude towards drinking with many memes ‘promoting’ wine as ‘mommy juice’. And of course, we have all heard of ‘wine o’clock’.

Hangover

The Museum Of Hangovers Opens In Croatia

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We’ve all had that moment. Waking up on a Sunday morning, the sun is burning bright through the blinds and we reach for our phone to text our friends about exactly what happened last night. The cultural phenomenon of exchanging stories the morning after a night out with good company, throbbing headaches, and hopefully a buttered bagel, is one that’s universally known and practiced. So much so that one individual from Croatia thought it would be an amazing idea to create a museum where this phenomenon can be captured and enjoyed by all; not surprisingly, he thought of the idea while he was out drinking with some friends. 

Rino Dubokovic is a student at university in Zagreb, Croatia who said he was out with a bunch of his friends drinking and talking about some of their funniest hangover stories when the idea suddenly dawned upon him. 

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“I wanted some sort of collection where all these objects from drunk stories would be exposed together with their stories,” Dubokovic told CNN Travel.

Thus, The Museum of Hangovers was officially born, well, after six or so months of actual hard work. The Museum itself contains a multitude of fun exhibits, including a room where visitors can test their drinking abilities by putting on specialized set of “beer goggles” that cause your sight to blur; visitors can then go through and test their reflexes while they’re “intoxicated.” 

Additionally, the museum has an exhibit with a bunch of random objects that people inexplicably found the morning after a night of heavy drinking, and an interactive exhibit where everyone can share their craziest stories. The website for the museum also has a specialized section where you can leave your favorite “night out” stories that might become featured in the museum itself!

The museum also includes a gift shop of fun memorabilia ranging from fun drinking board games to more traditional bar games such as darts.

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One thing that Dubokovic also told CNN Travel was that he didn’t want the general public to think that he was attempting to glamorize excessive drinking, blacking out, or making poor decisions that could harm someone. Instead, he’s trying to emphasize the way in which the museum was born to begin with. The art of being in good company and creating these funny and wild memories that everyone will look back on as “the glory years.” 

“It’s [the museum] a physical representation of the kinds of chats I had with my friends, where everyone is sharing stories and bonding about things they did in the past. In the future, we want to make people aware of the bad things related to alcohol,” he said.

According to the website The Museum of Hangovers officially opened on the first of December as a “test concept” for a museum. Croatia and Europe in general is known for having these “temporary” specialized museums pop up. They open up for a month or so and then based off how much positive public perception it receives, they’ll gain further sponsorship’s to stay open for longer.

So far the museum has been a massive success both in Croatia and online. The internet loves spreading the word about cool and new trendy international spots to hit. At this rate, the Museum of good friendships, good drinks, and even better stories is looking like it’ll be around for a while, at least until the morning after.

Happy Woman

Life Expectancy in America Declining According to Latest Study

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A study published in the journal JAMA has highlighted some reasons behind the latest news that life expectancy in the United States has started decreasing, despite having been on the increase for several years.

The study discovered that Americans between the ages of 25 and 64, or “working age,” are dying younger due to a combination of suicide, hypertension, and drug abuse as well as over 30 more different causes.

It has also been discovered that other wealthy countries around the world have a longer life expectancy to those in the US, which appears to be declining at a dramatic rate. And with working age adults seeing the biggest increase in deaths Steven H. Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine believes it is a “distinctly American phenomenon.”

Woolf, who is co-author of the study alongside Heidi Schoomaker, explained that “death rates among working age adults are on the rise. We have known for years that the health of Americans is inferior to that of other wealthy nations, but our research shows that the decline in US health relative to other countries began as early as the 1980s.”

Both Woolf and Schoomaker looked at over 50 years worth of US life expectancy data with the results appearing to show that although life expectancy began to rise annually between 1959 and 2014, these figures stabilized around 2011 before declining again.

And America’s relationship with opioid abuse seems to be one of the main reasons, along with suicide and alcohol abuse, especially among young and middle aged adults. The figures increased amongst those who did not finish high school.

Strangely, the decline in life expectancy was higher in areas including Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont – all in New England, while those living in the “Ohio Valley” – Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana – were also affected.

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The rise of the opioid epidemic appears to be one of the main reasons in these areas, especially since the collapse of the manufacturing industries that were a strong source of income in the regions. In fact, since 2010 over one third of “excess deaths” were reported from the Ohio Valley states since.

However those living along the Pacific coast – Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington – saw their life expectancy increase during 2010 and 2017.

The authors of the report claims that data from previous years shows that Americans began to slip behind those in other countries as far back as the early 1980s.

“Historically this [period] was the beginning of the opioid epidemic, the shrinking of the middle class and the widening of income inequality,” Woolf said.

And although there were economic shifts around the world as a whole during this time, Woolf believes the lack of support experienced by struggling families contributed to the drop in America stating that “in other countries, families that fall on hard times have programs and services available to cushion the blow. In America, people often have to fend for themselves.”

With few social services to help families it may help us to understand why there was a larger increase in death among females as they “have even fewer support systems, and more childcare responsibilities.”

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Howard Koh commented on the study, saying that although the “most exhaustive and detailed analysis of this topic to date” has helped us find the main causes of death the citizens of America should start “embracing the leading causes of life.”

For instance, by looking at how social connections alongside strong communities are affecting our wellbeing.

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“Other countries spend relatively more in terms of social services. Health is much more than what happens in a doctor’s office. It starts where people live, learn, labor and pray.”

So what can we do to improve our life expectancy? Harvard Medical School has a few suggestions and while most of them are both obvious and easier to do, some may have you asking why!

For instance, we all know that smoking, excessive drinking and drug abuse will seriously damage our health but did you know that people who have quit smoking could repair some of the damage caused by cigarettes, cigars and even marijuana?

Once you stop smoking your risk of heart disease starts to reduce after only a few months, matching that of a non-smoker after around 5 years. Likewise with strokes. Giving up tobacco can see a reduction in the risk of having a stroke within two to four years while the mortality rate from colorectal cancer also reduces each year.

And while these statistics apply to most people, quitting smoking before you reach 50 will make the health benefits stronger, sooner.

There have also been discussions on the dangers of vaping, with many calling for the fruit flavored options to be banned.

A healthy diet, keeping fit and building a good network around you are also key to keeping you healthy and strong and therefore living longer.

By doing these things we can hopefully turn the trend on the average American’s life span before we are in “a future in which declining life expectancy may be the new norm.”

Sobriety

Sobriety Gains Popularity as Cultural Attitudes About Alcohol Shift

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No amount of alcohol is good for your health. Despite scientific consensus supporting this claim, the consumption of alcohol remains a fact of social life for most people, as a night out on the town more often than not involves drinking at bars and other venues. However, young people are growing increasingly aware of the negative consequences of alcohol consumption, which include hangovers, the potential for addiction, and even brain damage and death. As such, and as trends celebrating wellness and self-care are on the rise, business opportunities taking advantage of a growing cultural awareness of the benefits of sobriety have cropped up.

One example is the phenomenon of “sober bars,” which offer the social environment, dining options, and custom drinks of bars minus the alcohol. Geared towards people who want to stop drinking but don’t want to sacrifice their bar-centered lifestyle, sober bars offer so-called “mocktails,” which are elaborate non-alcoholic beverages, and can feature live music and dancing. Oftentimes, sober bars will copy the look and feel of traditional bars so extensively that unless somebody told you or you tried to order an alcoholic drink, you would have no way of differentiating them from ordinary bars. As such, they retain the coolness factor and atmosphere of most bars, while presenting a much safer and healthier alternative.

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For people who are serious about pursuing a wellness-focused lifestyle, sobriety is an absolute must. For one, alcohol is by itself calorically dense, even when present in light beers, and as such threatens to thwart efforts to diet and exercise. For people looking to incorporate activities like yoga and meditation into their schedules, alcohol presents an unnecessary burden, as the lasting effects of alcohol consumption inhibit a person’s sense of clarity and focus. A focus on wellness has become popular thanks to social media platforms like Instagram, where influencers frequently share self-care advice and inspirational quotes, and sober bars are often decorated with the intent of enabling aesthetically pleasing Instagram photos. Sharing a picture of yourself at a sober bar, accompanied by an explanatory caption, is sure to make your post stand out on your followers’ feeds. 

While consumption of many other drugs like opiates and amphetamines is more dangerous, cultural attitudes that normalize and promote the consumption of alcohol make it the leading cause of drug-related deaths in the US. Alcohol is not only one of the leading causes of death and disease worldwide, but is also the most popular date-rape drug, and violence and sexual assault is dramatically more prevalent in environments where drinking takes place, as the drug increases a person’s impulsivity and impairs their decision making abilities. And alcohol has the distinction of being one of the only drugs for which withdrawal can kill people.

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While a commitment to sobriety is often associated with recovering from the disease of alcoholism, you don’t need to have personally had a destructive relationship with alcohol for the prospect of sobriety to be appealing. Being sober during social occasions has a number of benefits that apply to nearly everybody. Never getting drunk means never having to deal with hangovers, and never having to sacrifice one’s confidence in their ability to drive, which is particularly important should there arise a reason why it might be a good idea to quickly leave a party or bar. Without the influence of alcohol, partygoers don’t have to worry about making decisions they’ll regret the next day nearly as much as they would if they were drinking, and gradual damage to the liver and brain over time need not be a concern. Additionally, people who have given up drinking, especially as they approach and enter their thirties, report a higher quality of sleep at night and focus throughout the day, which is consistent with medical findings about the effects of alcohol.

Feature image credit: “Sober Club,” by Flair Candy