Category: mortality

Large Study Further Confirms Overweight & Obesity Increase Risk of Premature Death

 A “normal” weight – with BMI between 22.5 and 24.9 – was linked to lowest risk by Hank Dart It turns out that a healthy weight is a healthy weight. That’s the essential conclusion of a large and well-designed new study looking at long term weight and its relation to premature death. What makes this […]

(Video) Nuts Cut Risk of Cancer, Heart Disease, and Early Mortality

Earlier this month, we posted about recent findings linking nut consumption with a lower risk of benign breast disease in young women.  Further confirming the power of nuts, new results from a large study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that men and women who are frequent nut eaters (7 or more […]

Obesity Cuts Life Short

More than 15 yeas ago we showed conclusive evidence that obesity causes many chronic conditions in the US population1-3 -, that weight gain increases risk of diabetes 4-6, heart disease 7, breast cancer 8, and that this burden adds up quickly, even before we get to overweight, let alone obesity. In the New England Journal […]

Becoming a Stand-Up: Fighting Disease with Desks

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, […]

Smoking cessation: The rapid road to preventing cancer mortality

One third of the 571,000 cancer deaths in 2011 are due to smoking. That is 188,744 men and women will die unnecessarily because of their smoking habits. These are avoidable deaths. Strong evidence supports the benefits of smoking cessation, not just lowering cancer deaths but also reducing deaths form heart disease and total mortality. The […]

Colorectal Cancer: Screening Rates Up; New Cases and Mortality Down

A new federal report out yesterday may put some wind in the sails of those who work in the field of cancer prevention.  The July 5 issue of CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report shows that rates of screening for colorectal cancer have been climbing steadily between 2002 and 2010, with a related drop in […]

Cigarette smoking causes excess deaths in men with prostate cancer

Smoking remains the largest preventable cause of cancer (see summary of Surgeon General’s Report). While smoking causes cancer at many organ sites, including lung, larynx, oral cavity and pharynx, esophagus, pancreas, bladder and kidney, cervix, stomach, and acute leukemia, the evidence review in 2004 by the Surgeon General indicated that the evidence was suggestive of […]

Preventing Disease, Saving Billions of Dollars

In the New York Times this week, Mark Bittman highlights the magnitude of our chronic disease burden and the potential for prevention to save our future federal budget billions of dollars (see story).  A small change in diet to reduce heart disease by 10% would save 100 billion dollars. And this is all easy to […]

Another Cancer Study Shows Health Boost from Aspirin: Is It Time to Revise Recommendations?

The documented benefits of aspirin go back, literally, thousands of year.  As early as the fifth century B.C., Hippocrates noted that a bitter willow bark extract – which contained chemicals very similar to today’s aspirin – was effective at relieving pain.  Since then, aspirin has become the most commonly used medicine in the world, and […]

Study of 1.4 Million Shows Early Deaths Linked to Overweight & Obesity – What Now?

In what in many ways is a definitive study on the topic, a very large analysis of 1.46 million adults further confirms that overweight and obesity significantly increase the risk of mortality (study). The analysis by Berrington de Gonzalez and colleagues, which appears in the New England Journal of Medicine today, pooled together data from […]

Just Sitting Around Really IS That Bad

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 […]