Growing tall and prone to cancer? If this kind of topic had been discussed in the past, it would have been regarded as unscrupulous discrimination against tall people by short people, but now, it really has theoretical support.
The international academic journal Science Advances has published a study on the relationship between cancer and human body size, and finally came to the conclusion that people with large bellies and tall people have a high risk of developing cancer!
This kind of obviously common sense subversive conclusion can't help but make people wonder, is it reliable?
1. Non-transmission anxiety, real research
If you want to know whether the conclusions of a study are reliable, you need to see whether the research process is formulated or not.
In order to exclude the influence of a specific race on the results, the researchers of this study deliberately selected nearly 330,000 people including Asians, Africans, and Caucasians to participate in the study.
Throughout the study, the researchers divided the samples into four control groups according to body type.
They were the generalized obesity group, the tall obesity group, the tall abdominal fat group, and the short obesity group, but the hip and waist circumference groups.
And to make the results as accurate as possible, the research team followed the participants continuously for a full 15 years, during which more than 47,000 people developed cancer.
With the blessing of so many experimental samples and the ultra-long experimental process, even if the final result may not be 100% in line with reality, it will definitely reflect the reality to a certain extent and have practical application value.
The final experimental results directly subverted the common sense of people in the past.
The researchers found that compared with the general population, the probability of cancer was increased by 10% in the generalized obesity group, 3% in the tall obese group, and 12% in the tall abdominal fat group.
As for the last short man who is obese, but the hip circumference and waist circumference are thin, the probability of cancer has not increased unexpectedly.
So they concluded that people with large bellies and tall stature have a greater risk of cancer than the average person.
In fact, in recent years, many domestic and foreign institutions, including the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), have found that there is a significant positive correlation between obesity and cancer risk.
The uniqueness of the above experiment is that for the first time, it has been discovered that there is a positive correlation between height and the risk of cancer.
So the question then becomes, what exactly is it that makes obese people and tall people at greater risk of cancer? How can we prevent it?
2. Repeated cutting, long-term accumulation
The principle of cancer has become a commonplace in Chinese medicine-related popular science topics.
There are about 60 trillion cells in each person's body, and the physiological activities of human beings all the time are actually completed by the continuous division of cells.
If all 60 trillion cells in the human body divide once, then the replication process will have to be repeated 60 trillion times.
With such a huge project, it is inevitable that there will be some small mistakes, so there will be many cells with genetic mutations.
These mutated cells are functionally difficult to have the functions that humans need, but they live in the human body and need energy from the human body to survive, so they are as annoying as parasites to humans.
But fortunately, the human body has a special immune mechanism that can respond quickly to mutant cells, so that there will be no cancer per capita.
Those who are unfortunate enough to get cancer are actually the result of the failure of the immune system in the body, allowing the mutant cells to escape and find a place to hide and multiply.
The reason why obese people are more likely to develop cancer than ordinary people is because obese people tend to have a much larger number of cell divisions in their bodies than ordinary people.
Specifically, everyone's body will have large and small inflammation, which is a normal physiological phenomenon, when inflammation appears, the body's immune system will move to participate in repair, and at the same time stimulate cell division to fill the vacancy of dead cells.
Compared with ordinary people, obese people have more fat, and there are a large number of inflammatory factors in the fat, so the probability of inflammation in obese people is greater than that of ordinary people, so the number of cell divisions in the body will increase, and the probability of cancer will naturally increase.
This theory is known as the "chronic inflammation theory" in academic circles, and it is also one of the most widely accepted theories.
It's like a tree, if you cut a wound with a knife, wait until the tree has healed, and then cut the wound in the same place, and so on, you will eventually find that the part of the tree's hand will grow and become induration.
The same is true of the "chronic inflammation theory", and the reason why smokers are prone to lung cancer is not because smoking causes micro-inflammation in the lungs.
Long-term smoking is like cutting a tree, and the inflammation of the lungs just happens to scratch it, and over time, the lungs will naturally produce lesions.
The same is true for people who have been drinking heavily for a long time and eating spicy food for a long time, their intestines and stomach are constantly being irritated, and after a long time, they are also prone to cancer.
As for why people who are tall and fat are more likely to develop cancer, there was an explanation in an article published by People's Daily Online as early as 2016.
According to the article, height gain is a manifestation of excess nutrients caused by high-calorie foods at different stages of human development.
Taller people build up insulin-like growth factor 1 and 2 and IGF-1/2 systems in their bodies, which make taller people more sensitive to insulin, which affects lipid metabolism.
Laymen can hear it in the clouds, in fact, all the above content can be translated into one sentence, people who grow tall have more hormones in their bodies.
Hormones tend to be involved in the body's physiological responses, and since any response may involve cell division, tall people have significantly more cell divisions than short people.
In fact, this statement is similar to the "chronic inflammation theory", tall people divide more cells, the probability of the immune system making mistakes increases, and obesity will also lead to an increase in the number of cell divisions, so it is no wonder that tall and fat people have an increased probability of cancer.
At this point, you already know how to prevent cancer. That's right, height can't be changed, but weight can be changed, weight loss can greatly reduce the probability of cancer, and can reduce the probability of other underlying diseases, so that the human body is healthier, why not.
However, people who are obese should not rush to lose weight, if the weight loss method is not done properly, the consequences can be much more serious than the high probability of cancer.
3. Lose weight scientifically and do what you can
This is not alarmist, in August 2021, the Beijing News reported a news about "a 20-year-old girl died suddenly in a weight loss training camp".
At that time, the weight loss method adopted by the training camp for the academy was high-intensity training + starvation, six hours of aerobic every day, and after the end, only the students were given steamed buns, pickles and porridge.
Although this weight loss method is fast, it will cause a serious physiological burden on the body, even if you are lucky in the end, there is no sudden death like that girl, and the weight will rebound because of the revenge diet after the weight loss, so the weight loss must be scientifically reduced.
So how to lose weight scientifically, in fact, the General Administration of Sports of China released an answer as early as 2021.
According to an article titled "Scientific Weight Loss Methods and Methods are Important" published on the official website of the General Administration of Sports of China, weight loss must be followed in three steps.
The first and most important step is to determine whether you are fat or not.
In fact, many women always have body anxiety, obviously not fat, they have to be slimmer, if they can't make a correct judgment whether they are fat or not, then the weight loss must be a negative effect.
Judging whether you are fat or not is mainly based on body mass index (BMI).
On the Internet, it is easy to find the calculation method, and if the data obtained is within the normal range, it is not considered obese, and it is beyond the normal range before the second step can be carried out.
The second step is to eat less.
Weight loss is actually a process of reducing energy intake, although exercise can also reduce energy intake, but compared with eating less, the effect is much more tortuous. It can be said that as long as you can control your mouth and not eat indiscriminately, even if you don't exercise, losing weight is already half the success.
The last step is movement.
Exercise is the last guarantee for weight loss, and obese people try not to participate in exercise at the beginning, because if the body does not exercise for a long time, coordination will definitely be reduced, and it is easy to get injured if you exercise at the beginning.
Take running as an example, when a person is running, every step he takes, the knee meniscus will be shaken once, if an obese person runs, the weight base is large, and the meniscus is easy to be injured.
So even if you must exercise, it is best to go to a nearby gym and exercise with fixed equipment under the guidance of a special person.
Of course, if someone has done the above three things, but finds that the weight has not been significantly reduced, do not be discouraged, gaining weight is not overnight, and losing weight is of course impatient.
In fact, in my opinion, compared with the previous three points, the most important thing for weight loss is mentality.
If you don't have the patience to fight a protracted battle, either you can't keep exercising, or you can't help but want to add food, and losing weight is easy to fall short, just like the cultivation in martial arts novels, the body and mind are indispensable.
If you have a mental method, you can still control your mouth + open your legs, and it is only a matter of time before you lose weight successfully.
Of course, although losing weight can greatly reduce the risk of cancer, the process is quite painful, and if possible, everyone can still not get fat and not get fat.
epilogue
Although body size does not determine cancer, body shape has a certain relationship with the probability of cancer, compared with ordinary people, tall people and fat people are more likely to develop cancer.
However, there is no need to panic, and it is very simple to reduce the risk of cancer, as long as you maintain a healthy body and not make yourself too fat, which is useful for both tall and short people.
Resources:
"People's Political Consultative Conference Daily" 2024-05-22 "People with large bellies and tall people have a higher risk of cancer"
The Paper2024-04-07"Is cancer "fat"? Weight above these 3 indicators is associated with a higher risk of cancer》
Clinical Nutrition Network2022-07-21Why does obesity increase the risk of more than 10 cancers? Reading in one article》
People's Daily Online, December 25, 2018 "Why are fat people more likely to get cancer? 7 rules to reduce the risk of cancer》
People's Daily Online, April 11, 2016 "Latest Research: Are Tall People Really Prone to Cancer?" 》
People's Daily Online, February 05, 2023 "Popular Science: What Causes Cancer?" Where is cancer treatment headed? 》
The Paper2022-04-11 "Closed "Death" Battalion: The Fat Didn't Get Rid of It, but Lost the "Half Life"? 》
General Administration of Sport of China2021-05-12 "Scientific weight loss methods are very important"