Take this Health Profile to get your Cancer Prevention Grade. Like the tests you used to take in school, it gives you a result between "A" and "F" based on all the cancer risk factors that you have the power to change. Risk factors that you have no control over, such as your family history, are not included in your grade. So it's possible for anyone to get an A by doing all the right things.
Even more important, the Cancer Prevention Grade profile tells you exactly which factors contribute to your risk and what you can do to reduce your risk of developing cancer. By taking the Cancer Prevention Grade profile, you'll be able to take action to reduce your chances of getting cancer. We'll tell you exactly what to do to raise your grade and improve your health. While an "A" grade won't guarantee that you'll never get a cancer, it does mean that you're doing everything possible to prevent it.
What is cancer? Cancer is not one disease, but a group of diseases that have in common the uncontrolled growth of cells. Any collection of abnormal cells is known as a tumor. The cells of a benign tumor do not spread beyond their initial location; a tumor becomes malignant when the cells spread (or metastasize) to other areas of the body. Cancer is diagnosed when a tumor is found to be malignant and thus has the potential to spread.
As we all know, cancer is a major cause of death and disability in developed countries such as the US. Over 20% of all deaths are caused by cancer of some type, although the percentage can be higher at younger ages. Thus it makes a lot of sense to try to avoid developing cancer in the first place, especially since the treatments are often only partially effective and frequently almost as unpleasant as the disease itself.
What causes cancer? Even after many years and billions of dollars of research, we still don't know exactly what causes cancer. But we do know how to identify people who are at higher risk of developing specific cancers.
A risk factor is anything that affects your chances of getting a particular disease. You can control some of them, but not all of them. Those you can't control include genetics or family history, and environmental exposures or behaviors that occurred in the past. Those you can control include your current and future behavior, including diet and exercise, and your current and future environmental exposures, such as to tobacco smoke or other chemicals. Remember that risk factors are not absolute: having one or more risk factors does not mean you will definitely get cancer, and avoiding risk factors does not guarantee you will be healthy. But they certainly affect your odds.
The Cancer Prevention Grade profile focuses on the risk factors that you can control. In essence, it estimates how well your lifestyle is protecting you from developing cancer. It does so by taking all of the known risk factors for cancer, and weighting them according to which cancers they affect and by how much. In addition, it weights the different types of cancer based on how common they are and how serious they are. Thus, risk factors that affect lung cancer are generally weighted more heavily than those the affect leukemia, because lung cancer is both much more common and typically more serious than leukemia.
The best defense against cancer is to avoid getting it in the first place. That's why risk factors are so important. By identifying which ones are raising your risk, and taking action to change those that you can, you'll reduce your chances of developing cancer. You'll probably also want to take several of our Cancer Risk Profiles, which estimate your risk for developing each of the most common types of cancer, taking into account risk factors that you can and can't control. Taken together, the Cancer Prevention Grade profile and the various Cancer Risk Profiles provide a comprehensive picture of your cancer risk and how to reduce it.