Pierce the heart! The taller you are, the greater your risk of cancer! 14% increase for every 10cm height

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By Jevin

It is widely recognized that tall people tend to achieve a state of health after getting more nutrition, but is it really what we think?

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the United States have published a research paper
in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Studies have shown that the higher the height, the greater the risk of cancer
.

https://pubmed.
ncbi.
nlm.
nih.
gov/35247904/

Previous years of research

 01 

In the '50s, a study of more than 5 million Swedish men and women by Dr.
Emelie Benyi from Karolinska Institutet in Solna, Sweden, showed that the higher the height, the greater the risk of cancer
.

Li Zhizhong, a doctor of cancer biology at Duke University in the United States, also introduced in detail the research on "height and cancer risk" in his book, confirming that "the higher the height, the more likely it is to develop cancer"
.
Combining the risk of multiple cancers, for every 4 inches of adult height, the risk of cancer increases by 18% in women and 11%
in men.
Studies have reported that taller women have a 20 percent
higher risk of breast cancer.
Researchers say that for every 4 inches increase in height in both men and women, the risk of developing melanoma increases by 30 percent
.

Korean scholars have published a study on height and cancer risk, which included 22,809,722 subjects older than 20 years old from 2009 to 2012, and the researchers collected and analyzed the characteristics of these subjects and followed them until 2015
.
During the 5-year follow-up period, 765,651 patients were diagnosed with cancer
.
The taller the subjects in the study, the greater their risk of cancer, and the overall risk of cancer increased by 28%
in tall people.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health have also conducted research on the relationship between height and cancer risk, she believes: Adult height is related to organ size, the higher the height, the larger the body organ volume, so the taller people are more active in organ cell proliferation, the greater the possibility of mutation, so it is more likely to induce cancer
.

Height and risk of colorectal cancer

 02

Recently, researchers from Johns Hopkins University in the United States published a research paper
in the journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
This is the largest study of its kind to date, and heightening is likely to be an overlooked cancer risk factor during a physical exam or screening, so height should be considered a risk factor
for colorectal cancer screening.

In the study, the researchers analyzed data from 47 observational studies involving 280,660 cases of colorectal cancer and 14,139 cases of colorectal adenoma, of which 33 studies reported data on the incidence of colorectal cancer for every 10 cm increase in height, 26 studies compared colorectal cancer incidence between individuals with the highest and lowest height, and 4 studies reported data
assessing the incidence of colorectal adenoma for every 10 cm increase in height.
The study enrolled 1459 adult patients undergoing outpatient colonoscopy to explore the relationship between
cancer and bacteria that adhere to the colon wall.
Data analysis found that the tallest people had a 24% higher risk of colorectal cancer than those with the lowest, a 14% increased risk of colorectal cancer for every 10 centimeters of height, and a 6%
increased risk of adenoma.

Research implications

 03 

According to the statistics of the National Cancer Center in 2021, the incidence of colorectal cancer in China ranks second in malignant tumors and fourth in mortality, and since 2000-2016, the incidence and mortality of colorectal cancer have shown an upward trend
.
For colorectal cancer, there are some well-known modifiable dietary factors, such as processed red meat and smoking, and height is often clinically overlooked at screening
.
Therefore, the researchers said, height should be considered a risk factor for
colorectal cancer screening.

And the results show that the risk of almost all cancer types increases with height
.
The study compared a total of 17 common cancer types in women, of which 15 common cancers had increased incidence, among which the highest increased risk included breast cancer (17% increase), colorectal cancer (25% increase), leukemia (26% increase), kidney cancer (29% increase) and so on
.

Resources:

https://pubmed.
ncbi.
nlm.
nih.
gov/35247904/

Note: This article is intended to introduce the progress of medical research and cannot be used as a reference
for treatment options.
If you need health guidance, please go to a regular hospital
.