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Fat kills. A whopping 90,000 cancer deaths that occur every year in the United States can be blamed solely on being overweight or obese, Reuters reports of a new report from the American Cancer Society
based on a 16-year study of 900,000 adults, all of whom were cancer-free when the research began in 1982. Fully 14 percent of all cancer deaths in men and 20 percent of cancer deaths in women are caused
by being overweight. What's more, the researchers say these deaths could have been prevented by just maintaining a healthy weight.
Obesity is related to most types of cancers, not just a select few. The researchers measured body weight using the body mass index, which takes into account weight and height, and determined that when
compared to people of normal weight, those who were overweight had a higher risk of death from a host of different cancers. This included cancer of the esophagus, colon and rectum, liver, gallbladder,
pancreas and kidney, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and multiple myeloma. The heaviest men were more likely to die from cancer of the stomach or prostate, while the heaviest women were afflicted with cancer of
the breast, uterus, cervix, and ovary. And the higher the BMI, the more likely a person is to die from cancer.
Reuters notes that a normal BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9. A BMI of 25.0 to 29.9 indicates being overweight, while anything over 30.0 is obese. Men whose BMI is 40 or higher have a 52 percent greater
chance of dying from cancer than those of normal weight; for women the risk is 62 percent higher. "The more weight you have, the higher the risk," study author Dr. Eugenia E. Calle told
Reuters. One encouraging note: Since the death risk appears to increase incrementally with body weight, losing any weight would be helpful.
The study findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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