Obesity directly linked to cancer

WOMEN who are overweight for more than ten years have a higher risk of cancer, a leading scientist warns.

The chance of getting potentially deadly forms of the disease also increases as a person’s weight goes up, data revealed.

On average, every ten years of being fat upped the odds of cancer by 7 percent.

But for women who were severely obese, the risk of breast cancer rose by 8 percent every decade – and womb cancer by 37 percent.

Excess weight is thought to feed at least ten types of cancer, including breast, womb, bowel, pancreatic and kidney.

Despite advances in medicine, the disease claims more than 160 000 lives a year in the UK, where 60 percent of English women are overweight or obese.

Dr Melina Arnold, of the International Agency for Cancer Research in Lyon, France, said it was important to make people aware of the obesity link, especially as once weight was put on it was hard to lose.

World Health Organisation researcher Dr Arnold, who worked with US colleagues, analysed data on almost 75 000 post-menopausal American women whose health was tracked for around 12 years.

They provided measurements from when they were 18, 35 and 50 years old. Forty percent of the women had always been slim.

This left 60 percent who had been overweight at some point – with almost half of these obese.

Some 6300 of the women were diagnosed with cancer. And the longer they had been overweight, the higher their odds of the disease. The figures for endometrial cancer, which affects the lining of the womb, were particularly striking. The odds of the disease rose by 17 percent, on average, for every decade a woman was overweight.

But for a severely obese woman, the risk increased by 37 percent.

Fiona Osgun, of charity Cancer Research UK, said: “Obesity is the single biggest preventable cause of cancer after smoking.

“This study only studied women but we know from other research that keeping a healthy weight can help reduce men’s risk of the disease too.”