Amidst the crush of year-end top ten lists filling your news feeds this week, we present our own: the top posts of 2014 from Cancer News in Context. Covering topics from aspirin to healthy eating to the importance of starting healthy behaviors in childhood, these posts show the prominent place that cancer prevention has had in the news this past year – and the key role it must continue to play in the nation’s health moving forward.
So why not take a break from the year’s best albums, books, movies, and cat videos and catch up on some highlights from the year in cancer prevention?
Happy New Year from the Team at Cancer News in Context.
December 10, 2014
The Power of Youth: Beginning Breast Cancer Prevention in Childhood
We’ve written a lot recently about the importance of breast cancer prevention starting early in life, both here on Cancer News in Context and in a guest post on the American Association for Cancer Research blog, Cancer Research Catalyst. Though most breast cancer research focusses on women in midlife and older, more and more evidence supports the years between early adolescence and when a woman has her first child as key to laying down risk for breast cancer later in life. Breast tissue in these years appears to be particularly vulnerable to certain risk factors that can have a durable influence on risk. Continue…
April 23, 2014
Setting the Record Straight: The Impact of Diet on Cancer Risk
An article posted earlier this week on the New York Times website stated that the link between diet and cancer risk was, in essence, a “myth.” And while links between diet and cancer are not as strong as those with some other chronic diseases, like heart disease, the article’s conclusions demonstrate a lack of understanding of the science. Continue…
October 10, 2014
Breast Cancer Prevention Now
It is time to bring our focus back to lowering the risk or reducing the onset of new cases of breast cancer at all ages. Worldwide incidence of the disease is rising as societies across the globe modernize, which brings with it higher rates of breast cancer risk factors, such as overweight, lack of physical activity, and key reproductive factors like beginning families later in life and have fewer children. Continue…
August 15, 2014
New Study Confirms Weight is a Major Cancer Risk Factor
The subjects of weight gain, the obesity epidemic, and their major impact on health are brought up so much these days that they’re easy to tune out. So, if a few articles and news reports here and there pass you by – on accident or on purpose – we understand. But we won’t let that keep us from continuing to write regularly about the topic because it’s something we’re passionate about here at CNiC. Continue…
An Aspirin a Day…May Have Overall Health Benefits
The writing was on the wall a few years ago, but it seems that we may have finally reached a point where the scientific evidence points pretty convincingly to the potential health benefits of long-term regular aspirin use outweighing the potential risks for most people. That’s the conclusion of a new analysis appearing last week in the Annals of Oncology. Continue…
February 4, 2014
Preventing Cancer Today. Over 50% of New Cancer Cases Can be Prevented by acting on What We Know Right Now
by Graham A. Colditz, MD, DrPH
Much attention is being placed today on the global burden of cancer and the power for prevention to have an enormous benefit for the world through reducing cancer incidence, diagnosis, treatment, pain, and suffering. A reminder on numbers that have been around for some time – more than half of cancer is diagnosed in low and middle income countries, where access to care is often limited. Data from the World Health Organization for 2012 (1) show that an estimated 14 million new cases of cancer were diagnosed, and the number is rising every year. The most common cancers diagnosed were those of the:
- lung (1.8 million cases, 13.0% of the total)
- breast (1.7 million, 11.9%)
- colorectal cancer (1.4 million, 9.7%)
October 31, 2014
Infographic: Breast Cancer Prevention – The Numbers
