Gastric Cancer – Risk Factors and Prevention
The cause of stomach cancer is unknown. But specialists agree there are factors increasing or decreasing the risk of developing gastric cancer.
Risk factors:
• Age and gender: the disease is more common in men over 55 years old.• Your birth country: the incidence of gastric cancer is extremely high in Japan, Chile, and Iceland.
• A diet high in salt and nitrates and low in vitamins A and C increases the risk for stomach cancer, also a diet high in consumption of red meat.
• Cigarette smoking.
• Alcohol abuse.
• Blood type A.
• Infection with the Helicobacter pylori bacterium or Epstein-Barr virus.
• Obesity.
• Pernicious anemia (a severe inability to produce red blood cells, due to a deficiency of vitamin B12).
• Previous stomach surgery.
• Personal history of gastrointestinal cancer, previous abdominal radiation.
• Menetrier’s disease, a very rare condition associated with large folds in the stomach and low production of stomach acids.
• Family history of stomach cancer.
• Hereditary nonpolyposis colon cancer (HNPCC) syndrome and Li-Fraumeni syndrome.
Protective factors:
• Studies have suggested that eating foods that contain beta-carotene and vitamin C may decrease the risk of gastric cancer.
It’s important to keep in mind that stomach cancer prevention doesn’t guarantee that you won’t get the disease. Also, most people with a particular risk factor for cancer do not actually get the disease.
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