According to Dr. Tushar Patil, Medical Oncologist, Jupiter Hospital, Pune Not just the numbers have increased, the age of incidence of cancer is also markedly low today, causing a sense of alarm among doctors and experts.

For example, while there is no comprehensive data to suggest the increase in cancer incidence in Pune, clinical evidence estimates a rise of 3 to 4 percent every year in the number of cases diagnosed over the past decade, more than half of whom are diagnosed in advanced stages.

While most common cancers in men are head and neck cancers, in females cervical and breast cancers are in majority. With rapid urbanization and change in lifestyles of women, breast cancer is rapidly becoming more rampant as compared to cervical cancer, especially in urban areas where women are delaying marriages and pregnancies.

Increasing urbanization, lifestyle changes, high levels of industrial and environmental pollution, and the inadvertent entry of chemicals in the human food chain are factors that are spurring an alarming rise in cancer incidence in India. Early age of menarche, late menopause, late childbearing, less or no breastfeeding are factors that increase women’s risk of suffering from breast cancer. Breast cancer has already become the leading cancer among women in urban areas where such lifestyle changes have occurred in the past 2 decades as compared to rural areas where cervical cancer incidence still remains higher than breast cancer. Lack of awareness is one of the leading challenges faced by India in fighting cancer. Cancer if detected early can be treatable.

Therefore, adopting healthy lifestyles such as
-Regular exercise
-Eating food on time & Maintaining a balanced weight
-Intake of nutritional food - reducing intake of packaged foods which contain added preservatives
-Lots of antioxidants in the diet, including fruits and vegetables
-Quitting habits like smoking and alcohol
-Avoiding excessive exposure to chemicals

 Can help in preventing cancers.

This article is written exclusively for minicircle.in by Dr.Tushar Patil. Dr.Tushar Patil practices as Consultant - Medical Oncology at Jupiter Hospital, Pune