Department of Surgery
The holidays are here, and that means a calendar filled with family, friends and festivities. And as wonderful as that can be, it can also make it challenging to stick to the regular routines that help keep us healthy. To help you have the physical and mental freshness to fully enjoy the season, try […]
A new study further confirms the health benefits of lacing up your shoes and heading out for a walk. The study, published today in JAMA Internal Medicine, followed over 16,000 older women for an average of five years and compared recorded step counts with deaths that occurred in the group over that time. The researchers […]
A new study has found that a large majority of the public may be unaware that lack of physical activity can increase the risk of cancer. The study, out of Washington University in St. Louis and published Wednesday in the Journal of Health Communication, included a diverse sample of participants who were asked to list […]
by Hank Dart The course of the obesity epidemic in the United States has been so bad for so many years that even minor victories have been cause for celebration. But despite some bright spots in the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports on national rates of obesity (on adults, on youth), […]
by Hank Dart We’re in the middle of it now. The holiday season – that wonderful and stressful five-week stretch from Thanksgiving to New Year’s where at every turn, there seems to be food. And not just everyday food, but food of such amounts and enticing types that it can feel nearly impossible at times […]
by Katy Henke Colon cancer is the third most common cancer in the United States. The good news is that 75 percent of cases could be prevented with healthy lifestyle choices. These eight simple tips can help you lower your colon cancer risk and improve your overall health (PDF). For more information and prevention tips, […]
It’s day two in our nine day series highlighting key steps and practical tips that can help women lower their risk of breast cancer. Previous days. _ _ _ _ Day 2 – Be Physically Active Exercise is as close to a silver bullet for overall good health as there is, and those benefits […]
[If you are viewing the mobile version of this post on a desktop, click here for desktop version.] A large proportion of colon cancer is preventable with healthy lifestyle choices, even without taking into account the benefits of screening. That’s the finding in a new analysis from the large Nurses’ Health Study released in print […]
Creative Commons photo (cropped): Flickr/hjl There is no magic bullet that will guarantee good health. That’s just an unfortunate fact of life. But there is something that can help stave off heart disease, diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, and depression, while also helping us maintain a higher quality of life as we get older. And it’s largely […]
Creative Commons photo: Flickr/CatDancing (cropped) 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 […]
Photo: Flickr/thomashawk It probably comes as no surprise, but mom was right: We really shouldn’t eat so fast. Apart from the noise and the mess and the ill-effects on dinner table conversation, wolfing down food may have ill-effects on health as well. A detailed new analysis in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that […]
Photo: Flickr/abraj This week I had the privilege of addressing the American Cancer Society CEOs Against Cancer at their annual meeting that this year was held at Washington University in St. Louis. As a member of the panel addressing worksite wellness, I was able to briefly summarize the strong evidence that worksite wellness programs can […]
Photo: Flickr/DanielGo This post seems a bit cruel, coming out as it does during the current TV season’s finale week and the beginning of the World Cup. But, science doesn’t rest – not even for Game of Thrones or the Brazilian national soccer team. So, neither do we. Just released on the Journal of the […]
It was hard to miss the headlines this summer telling us that a new federal study confirmed what many disgruntled office workers had long suspected – that their desk jobs may just be killing them. While the headlines were a bit overblown, they did capture the essence of what more and more evidence is showing, […]
Tara Parker-Pope wrote an interesting post yesterday on the New York Times’ Thanksgiving Help Line about the commonly thrown around stat that the average person consumes 4500 calories in the course of Thanksgiving Day. In the piece, she works at length itemizing what 4500 calories would actually look like – choosing many fat and sugar-laden […]
In Sunday’s New York Times, the editors ask prominent economists to weigh in on how to face the economic challenges ahead of us in 2012. Richard Thaler, of the University of Chicago, who wrote (with Cass Sunstein) Nudge, the best selling book on behavioral economics argues that employers have the opportunity to tackle one of […]
Ask women what they think is the biggest threat to their health, and most will answer “breast cancer.” And even though lung cancer and heart disease kill more women each year, their concern is well placed. Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the US — about 230,000 American women are diagnosed […]
Following closely on the heels of the American College of Sports Medicine Exercise Guidelines for Cancer Survivors, MacMillan Cancer Support in the UK this week is launching a Move More campaign designed to get cancer survivors up and moving and debunk the notion that rest is best for cancer survivors during and after treatment. As […]
If you needed another reason to lace up your sneakers and keep your New Years’ resolution to be active, this week offered 2: 1) Our team published, in collaboration with colleagues at the American Cancer Society, research on the role of physical activity in colon cancer and colon cancer mortality. There is a strong and […]
For a long time, breast cancer survivors were told by physicians and others on the cancer care team to avoid overuse of their arms after breast cancer surgery. Told to avoid lifting items over 5 pounds (or sometimes as little as 2 pounds), women were functionally limited from activities of daily living – no lifting […]
For a long time, the CNiC team has talked about 8 ways you can prevent cancer. This week, we’re proud to announce our 8 ways to stay healthy AFTER cancer. With over 12 million cancer survivors in the US alone, addressing the chronic health needs of cancer survivors is a priority. Readers will notice that […]
For a long time, the CNiC team has talked about 8 ways you can prevent cancer. This week, we’re proud to announce our 8 ways to stay healthy AFTER cancer. With over 12 million cancer survivors in the US alone, addressing the chronic health needs of cancer survivors is a priority. Readers will notice that […]
A study out this month in the journal Cancer, Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention reviewed the literature on sedentary behavior and cancer. Ten of the 18 studies included in the review found a significant positive association between sedentary behavior and cancer risk – specifically cancers of the colorectum, endometrium, ovaries and prostate. Sedentary behavior isn’t just […]
One of the key foundations of epidemiology is causation (Hill’s causal criteria were first detailed in 1965) – and that conclusions about causation are based on a number of factors including a plausible biologic mechanism. Thus, research papers outlining associations between risk factors and disease typically outline the likely or possible mechanisms that would link […]
There is a fascinating little study out this week in the journal Appetite, which was also highlighted in a piece in The Economist. What the study found was that dieters, when they felt they were given a larger piece of pizza than other people were for lunch (pieces were actually the same), were more likely […]
This week marks one of my favorite times of the year – the US Open. The New York Times had a couple of articles this week that got me thinking about how competition can fuel (or harm) health. The first was a great photojournalism article in the Sunday Magazine about how much harder the women […]
While lifestyle contributes substantially more to risk of cancer (and other chronic diseases) than genetics alone, the interplay between genetics and lifestyle is a subject of increasing interest. That’s what makes a new study out of the UK, published in PLoS Medicine so exciting. The researchers took 12 genetic mutations that had previously been found […]
There was a very nice piece this morning on NPR’s Morning Edition building on a study released earlier this month that found that being persistently overweight from young adulthood on can have a profoundly negative social and economic impact on individuals – this in addition to the already well-documented health effects of overweight and obesity (NPR story) […]
Results from an exciting new analysis were released today and highlight the important advances that are being made in understanding how energy expenditure relates to cancer. The results, from the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Prevention Study show that individuals who report more time spent sitting (6 hours/day or more) have a higher risk of mortality […]
Last week we commented on the data from the Nurses’ Health Study II showing that bike riding could reduce weight gain in premenopausal women. This is just one of many strategies available to women to increase exercise or physical activity, control their weight, and reduce their risk of breast cancer. Why do we focus on physical […]
The Times today reports that the genome (http://nyti.ms/9CqHdl) has deepened understanding of human genetics and opened up the potential for new approaches to treatment of disease. The potential pay off has not yet arrived, however. As the Times story notes, a family history of disease provides a good summary of risk, and also identifies those […]
In the movie WALL– E, the human race has become so dependent on energy-saving devices that they’ve devolved over the course of 700 years into large infant-like beings that can only get around on futuristic wheel chairs. The director of the film has denied that this was targeted social commentary, just a way to develop […]
Yesterday at the American College of Sports Medicine Annual Meeting (ACSM) in Baltimore, the new Exercise Guidelines for Cancer Survivors was presented at a panel led by Kathryn Schmitz of the University of Pennsylvania, Melinda Irwin of Yale University, and myself. These guidelines arose out of an expert roundtable hosted by the Siteman Cancer Center […]