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How to reduce your risk of cancer

Dr Naveen Puri

Medical Director, Bupa UK Insurance

29 September 2022

Next review due September 2025

In the UK, one in two people will have cancer at some point in their life. But did you know that over a third of cancer cases could be prevented? Here, I discuss some of the steps you can take to reduce your risk of cancer.

woman running outdoors and looking at her fitbit

What causes cancer?

Cancer is caused by the uncontrolled growth of cells in your body. This can happen when genes, the instructions that tell your cells how to function, are damaged. Cells can normally repair this damage. But if they don’t, and the cells keep growing and multiplying, they may eventually form a tumour.

This damage to your genes can happen randomly, it can be inherited from a parent, or it can be caused by external factors you’re exposed to. Some cancers are linked to long-term inflammation, which you might have if you’re overweight. So your risk of cancer can depend on several different things. Most cancers happen because damage builds up as you age - half of all cancers are in people older than 70.

What are the main risk factors for cancer?

Other than age, there are several key risk factors for cancer. These include:

Tobacco use
Ultraviolet light, such as sunlight and light from sun beds
Some viruses, such as human papillomavirus (HPV) and hepatitis B virus (HBV)
Alcohol consumption
A diet high in red and processed meat
Being overweight or obese – which means you have a body mass index (BMI) higher than 25

Some factors increase your risk of certain types of cancer. For example, smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer. A diet high in red and processed meat can increase your risk of bowel cancer.

But some factors can more generally increase your risk of cancer. For example, being overweight increases your risk of at least 13 types of cancer, including breast cancer, bowel cancer, pancreatic cancer and oesophageal cancer. Alcohol is a risk factor for seven types of cancer, including liver cancer, bowel cancer, and breast cancer.

You can learn more about how these factors affect your cancer risk by using our cancer risk tool.

Can I prevent cancer?

Not all cancers can be prevented, but there are steps you can take to reduce your risk of some cancers. Over a third of cases of the most common cancers could be prevented by making lifestyle changes. By making these changes you can reduce your risk of cancer, as well as develop habits that help improve your general health.

How do I reduce my risk of cancer?

Making healthy lifestyle changes is one way of limiting your exposure to many of these cancer risk factors. Here are some steps you can take to manage your risk of cancer.

Stop smoking – tobacco contains more than 60 chemicals that can cause cancer, and smoking is the main cause of cancer in the UK. Stopping smoking also lowers your risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease
Keep to a healthy weight – being overweight or obese is the second leading cause of cancer in the UK. If your BMI is over 25, try to introduce regular exercise and a healthy, balanced diet into your routine. This will help you lose weight safely
Use sunscreen and reduce your exposure to ultraviolet radiation. Sunburn increases your risk of skin cancer, and sun exposure over a long time also increases your risk
Eat a balanced diet – try to limit your intake of red and processed meat and eat foods that are high in fibre. This will help lower your risk of bowel cancer. You should aim to eat at least five portions of fruit or vegetables each day, too
Stay physically active. World Health Organization Guidelines recommend you get 150 minutes of exercise each week, which helps maintain a healthy weight and lowers your cancer risk. Try setting some goals for each week – it’ll keep you motivated!
Limit your alcohol intake – your cancer risk increases with the amount of alcohol you consume, and any type of alcohol can cause cancer. There are several ways you can cut down on alcohol. Why not have some drink-free days, or reduce the size of your drinks?

Some of these habits could be picked up as part of a bigger lifestyle change. For instance, if you stop smoking, you might find it easier to exercise, which can help you maintain a healthy weight. Eating a healthy, balanced diet can also help you maintain a healthy weight.

Many of these are long-term changes – to see the benefit, you’ll need to stick with them. But by adopting healthier habits like these, you’ll help to reduce your risk of cancer and look after your general health in the long run.

The cancer risk tool also gives advice on changes you can make to lower your risk of cancer, based on the answers you provide. Why not try it out?

The first thing is to really understand your personal risk.

And broadly, the older you are, the higher your risk of cancer.

In general terms.

If you're a smoker, if you're overweight, if you've got a strong family history of some cancers, that may increase your risk of cancer, but often not always.

And if you drink more than the recommended guidelines, these are all things that could increase your risk of cancer.

So the first thing I say is know your own risks and then know your own body.

People are aware of their bodies and knowing when there's a change.

And that's unusual for you, but importantly, persistent changes.

So if we were to talk about bowels, for example, many people's bowels change all the time.

It depends on what they have eaten, how stressed they are, how much exercise they've had, how much water they've drank, as GP's what we're interested in is a persistent change in normal for you.

And broadly that applies to most cancers and probably the most worrying symptom that worries all of us as GP’s if someone has persistent unexplained weight loss is one of those things that should not be happening and definitely needs to be checked out.

Then there's the skin lesions that aren't healing or unexpected lumps or bumps or growths, and particularly if they're growing over a short period of time.

Things that grow over a short period of time, it's really important to get those checked out.

So I think there's the six ways that I would say that we could tackle this so that the most important is to stop smoking.

That is the most preventable cause of cancer for for all types of cancer is implicated in 70% of lung cancers.

So definitely that would be my number one.

Number two try and reduce the amount of alcohol that you drink.

We know that that is implicated in a lot of cancers too.

Try and maintain a healthy weight, weight is implicated in that endometrial cancer, but also breast cancer and bowel cancer as well.

Try and have a healthy diet.

Try not to stay in the sun too long.

That would increase our risk of skin cancers and, you know, move, move as much as you can.

So exercise.

We talk about the importance of exercise, not just to prevent cancers, but also to reduce our risk of heart disease as well.

There's so many benefits to that.

So ensuring that we do get out every day and get some resistance exercise as well and just keep moving.

There's no specific evidence to say that we should avoid certain foods or have more certain foods at the moment in a particular type of food.

And and we'd worry maybe that people would become deficient in certain nutrients if they did avoid food groups.

But having a healthy diet, lots of fruit and vegetables, high fibre, trying to avoid some processed foods because we do know that that is linked to bowel cancer and red meat as well.

So keeping that to the minimum, but making sure we get lots of those good proteins.

So, our white meat our chicken our fish and pulses and that sort of thing is a lot better for us.

So we do say for men and women to try and have less than 14 units of alcohol a week, it doesn't matter what type of alcohol it is with regards to your cancer risk.

And it also doesn't matter whether that's spread out or whether it's sort of binge drinking as such when we're looking at cancer risk.

I mean, it's obviously different in other circumstances, but from that cancer risk point of view, it's just staying below that 14 units a week.