Prevention magazine recently teamed up with the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center to poll American women about cancer. They got some interesting results!
More than fifty percent of women polled have a close friend or relative who has been diagnosed with cancer. That is a mixed blessing — it means there are a lot of people with cancer, but it also means that a lot of women are getting tested.
- 92% of women over forty are scheduling mammograms to detect breast cancer.
- 85% of women surveyed had a mammogram in the last two years.
- 94% of women polled had a Pap test to detect cervical cancer.
- 57% of women over fifty had a colonoscopy or sigmoidoscopy to detect colon cancer.
That last number could (should) be higher — colon cancer is the third leading cancer killer in women. If your doctor suggests that the time is right for a colon cancer screening test, please do it.
When asked if they believed that getting cancer was out of their control, the women polled responded thusly:
- 20% felt cancer was completely out of their control
- 22% felt they had a little control over getting cancer
- 42% felt they had some control over getting cancer
- 9% felt they had a lot of control over whether or not they got cancer
But guess what? More than sixty percent of cancer deaths are caused by smoking, poor diet choices, obesity, alcohol abuse, or physical activity. The American Cancer Society points out that it is relatively easy to protect yourself and reduce your cancer risk — eat two servings of fruits and three servings of veggies every day and exercise at least 150 minutes per week (that’s thirty minutes, five days a week).
Lots of women claim they’re making healthy choices — more than seventy percent of women polled said they were eating enough veggies and fruits and exercising regularly. But only around thirty percent of the women were actually doing it.