SPRINGER: Fitness: Obesity linked to cancer

Losing weight can lower your risk of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and arthritis, and researchers are now finding that extra pounds may also have a link to an extra risk of cancer.

After smoking, obesity is the principal cause of cancer in the United States, according to the Harvard School of Public Health.

Cancer is a mysterious disease in that it can sometimes strike those that have few or no risk factors.

Take for example Linda McCartney. She was a life-long vegetarian who ate all organic foods, yet she died of cancer. Others know of someone who never smoked yet still contracted lung cancer.

Taking the attitude "damned if you do, damned if you don't" is no way to live your life. If researchers say healthy eating, exercise and maintaining an ideal body weight helps reduce your risk of cancer, do it.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month so you hopefully have already been informed of some of the important risk factors and prevention steps. Until now, researchers never found a connection to breast cancer and obesity. However, when women were divided into groups according to hormone intake, the results changed.

Women who were taking hormones were at a higher risk of breast cancer no matter what their weight, because they were taking pharmacological levels of estrogen. On the other hand, women who were not taking estrogen clearly were at higher risk if they were overweight.

Obese women had circulating estrogen levels that were three times higher than lean women. In general, the risk of cancers starts to climb at a Body Mass Index of 25, which is the dividing line between "normal" and "overweight."

Colorectal cancer kills more Americans than any cancer other than lung. High blood insulin levels may be a culprit.

If you are obese, and especially if you carry extra weight around your abdomen, you run the risk of living in a state of high circulating insulin levels. That sets off a chain of events that leads to higher levels of insulin-like growth factors, or IGFs, which promote cell growth

Insulin might explain why active people have a lower risk. Exercise helps put a lid on insulin levels, even if you're overweight.

Overweight men were more likely than normal-weight men to die of prostate cancer in the recent American Cancer Society study. But researchers think that's because excess weight lowers a man's odds of surviving prostate cancer, not getting the illness.

The healthier you are, the stronger you are to fight any illness you might have, even cancer.

The heaviest women are six times more likely to get cancer of the endometrium (the lining of the uterus) than women who aren't overweight. As with breast cancer, the risk starts to climb even for women who are not yet overweight.

Women who are heavy-normal have a higher risk than those that are lean-normal. Estrogen is clearly the culprit. That's why most women on hormone replacement therapy take both hormones.

The bottom line is that avoiding weight gain, along with not smoking, is one of the most important things people can do to protect their long term health.

The goal isn't just to keep your BMI in the "normal" range, but to keep your weight stable from your 20s on. It is never to late to improve your health and decrease your risk of cancer.

A healthy eating plan, controlled portion sizes and daily exercise are all it takes to start on a path of good health.

Kim Springer and her husband, Mike, are certified personal trainers and owners of Springer Training. They can be reached at 233-9442 or at their Web site www.springertraining.com


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