Hongkongers still ignoring link between obesity and cancer, not prepared to do the ‘basic stuff’ to save their health
Two doctors explain that a worrying number of their patients will still not do simple things, such as eating better and getting more exercise, to protect against cancer. Hong Kong’s fragmented health system doesn’t help
The link between obesity and cancer is well documented, but health professionals in Hong Kong and Singapore report that patients are ignoring the elevated risk of cancer caused by poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle.
“The link between diabetes and cancer was first reported back in the 1920s,” says Professor Juliana Chan Chung-ngor, director of the Hong Kong Institute of Diabetes and Obesity at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
“People die from heart disease or kidney disease, but now treatments for these diseases have become better – blood pressure control is better, people are on lipid-lowering drugs or having stents put in, they’re having dialysis. But their internal environment is still not optimised.”
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“There’s not enough talk around obesity and diabetes in Hong Kong … it’s not being reinforced – the reason being that we have a very fragmented health system,” Chan says. “People go and see different doctors and get different messages and everything becomes super specialised.”
Chan’s work focuses on cancer’s causal relationship with diabetes, which can develop due to increased insulin resistance associated with a higher body mass index (BMI).
“Cells need to be in an optimal environment to survive. When you have high glucose, high lipid levels and high cholesterol, for example, it can result in a highly cancer-promoting environment,” Chan explains.