BOWEL CANCER RATES MAY RISE 50%:

The UK is heading for a 50% increase in the number of new bowel cancer cases over the next 30 years, states the well respected European Journal of Cancer

In the UK, we have approximately 35,000 new cases of bowel cancer diagnosed every year, but by 2040, that figure is anticipated to rise dramatically.

Rising obesity is one of the reasons but, of course, obesity is just another symptom of poor dietary and lifestyle choices which play a major role in the development of cancer.

Carrying excess fat around the waist increases the risk of bowel cancer, even if the rest of the body is slim, experts have warned. For every extra inch on the waist above a healthy measurement, the risk of bowel cancer goes up 3%, a study found. This research is from experts at Imperial College London and the University of Leeds.

As a guide, a healthy waist measurement is defined as less than 31.5 in for women, less than 37in for white and black men, and less than 35in for Asian men.

Professor Martin Wiseman, medical and scientific adviser for the World Cancer Research Fund, which funded the Study, said "This latest study adds to the already strong evidence that carrying excess body fat increases your risk of cancer. This means that people who do have a large waist should consider losing weight even if they are in the normal BMI range.

However, what many people do not realize is what is happening inside the bowel that lies beneath these layers of fat. The length of the large bowel is approximately 5 ½ feet, and its width is approximately 2 ½ inches. It is a hollow tube, lined with mucous and bacteria, and the solid waste material moves along this tube in a clock-wise direction. However, when the bowel is irritated, (and this irritation can have many causative factors, including a bad diet, excessive alcohol consumption, smoking, over-use of antibiotics and steroid based medications and chronic constipation to name just a few) it will begin to expand and blow up just like a balloon filled with air. As such, the bowel can expand to as much as 8 or 10 inches. It's not just a build up of fat we are seeing around the middle of an ever increasing number of our population that is putting them at greater risk of bowel cancer, but a bowel that is expanding, irritated, inflamed and crying out for help! This constant irritation in the lining of the bowel may eventually lead to the formation of polyps, and most bowel cancers develop from polyps.

A person should not assume that their bowel is healthy because they "go regularly". If they are having one or two bowel movements each day, but are still plagued with bloating and abdominal pain, simple corrective measures should be taken. When my profession crops up in conversation, as it quite often does, I often get the reaction of "oh there is nothing wrong with my bowels, I go at least once or twice a day". Unfortunately, that is no indication of a healthy functioning bowel. Many of these people do have an expanded girth, and this may not be just fat, but irritation and expansion in the bowel. After a single colon hydrotherapy treatment, a person's waist measurement can reduce by as much as 2".

The tragedy of it all is that bowel cancer is such a preventable disease, and even if it is caught in its early stages, the outcome is usually good.

A healthy weight is good, but we need to address what's going on inside our bowel and heal and repair the damage that's being done. We need to be more aware of the importance of good bowel hygiene, including avoiding constipation, taking probiotics to re-colonize the bowel, following a course of antibiotics, steroids etc and making one or two changes to our diet, then we may begin to see bowel cancer rates fall.

Linda Booth