Serious Causes And Risk Factors Of Pancreatic Cancer

Sedentary Lifestyle

An individual living a sedentary lifestyle has a higher risk of developing pancreatic cancer than a moderately active individual. The most common component of this risk factor is how a sedentary lifestyle is typical in overweight or obese individuals. A sedentary lifestyle is known to cause an individual to become overweight or obese because they do not burn the same amount or more calories than the amount they are consuming in their diet. Obesity causes conditions and diseases linked to pancreatic cancer, such as diabetes and chronic pancreatitis. The pancreas is responsible for the production and secretion of insulin, a hormone that controls the levels of glucose in an individual's blood. Intolerance of glucose or an inability of the cells to absorb glucose from the bloodstream can cause the pancreas to have to work much harder to control blood glucose. As the pancreas becomes worn out from this workload, its overall function begins to decline. Due to high cell turnover in such conditions, the patient is at an increased risk of developing cancer in the pancreas. Regular physical activity has proven to increase an individual's glucose tolerance, which lowers the risk of developing pancreatic cancer.

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Smoking

One of the biggest risk factors for developing pancreatic cancer is smoking cigarettes regularly. Around twenty percent of all cases of pancreatic cancer are attributed to smoking cigarettes. Individuals diagnosed with cancer who are smokers have a forty percent greater risk of dying from pancreatic cancer than a pancreatic cancer patient who does not smoke. The mechanisms that cause carcinogenesis in the pancreatic cells in an individual who is a smoker have not been studied extensively. However, the increased risk of carcinogenesis in the pancreas in regular smokers is thought to be related to the induction of chronic pancreatitis. Chronic pancreatitis causes damage to the pancreatic cells that have to be repaired or replaced. This damage increases the chance of a cancer-causing mutation to occur in the DNA of one of the pancreatic cells. When a mutation in the pancreatic cells causes them to grow and replicate out of control, the individual develops pancreatic cancer.

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