A recent report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology presents some puzzling news — survivors of some types of cancer seem to be more prone to developing obesity than other people. It’s well known that obesity itself can increase the risk of some types of cancer…but the converse hasn’t been widely recognized. Dr. Heather Greenlee…and her colleagues analyzed data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) from 1997 to 2014 to determine what happened to people who had survived various types of cancer.
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Examining data by 2-yearly increments[,]…the researchers found that at each point, cancer survivors…were more likely to have BMIs greater than 30 (the cut point for obesity) than were those who hadn’t had cancer. Although non-survivors also saw increases in BMIs over 30 at each time point, the increases were greater in cancer survivors.
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Possible reasons for these differential increases included the effects of chemotherapy, hormonal therapy or steroid medications. Also, fatigue associated with treatments may mean that patients are less likely to be active. Whichever reason…might explain the more rapid increase in weight for cancer survivors…
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: Cancer Survivors More Prone to Obesity
