A new study released by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the US has found that the majority of cancers are the result of bad luck rather than lifestyle habits or family history.
The study, which appeared in the January 2 edition of the journal Science, indicated that more than two thirds of cancers are the result of random mistakes in cell divisions rather than factors such as bad diet, lack of exercise or genetics.
By and large, the result of the study was that the more cells need to divide to stay healthy, the more likely cancer is to develop. Put simply, this means that the factors contributing to the development of cancer are often random and beyond our control.
This explains why some cancers are more likely to develop than others. For instance, colon cancer is more prevalent than cancer of the small intestine because cells divide twice as fast in the colon as those in the upper bowel.
Smoking still adds to your risk of developing cancer.Despite this luck, author of the study and professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Bert Vogelstein said that you can still add to your risk of developing cancer by smoking and making other poor lifestyle decisions.