Why are cancer rates increasing so much in the UK?

Question: Why are cancer rates increasing so much in the UK?
- Keywords:
  cancer rates,
  illness,
  UK
Asked by simikohli96 to Amar, Ana, Andrea, Leah, Matt on 11 Mar 2014.
- Andrea Hanvey answered on 11 Mar 2014:
  
  Hi
  There are a number of reasons for the increasing cancer rate in the UK.
  
  1 we have an ageing population, and the most cancer cases are in people aged 65 and over
  
  2 there is more awareness about all different types of cancer now , Tv advertisements, magazine pages etc etc
  
  3 screening programmes in the UK we have a cervical screening programme where ladies from age 25 are invited for a smear every 3 years, breast screening where women over 55 are invited to have a mammogram scan of their breasts and bowel screening which involves testing a poo sample in those age 60
  
  the screening programmes mean that cancers are picked up earlier and treated, quite often these cancers wouldnt of caused any problems or been noticed until it was to late
- Matthew Lam answered on 11 Mar 2014:
  
  Cancer rate are increasing, not just in the UK, but across the world.
  
  There are a number of reasons why this is happening but the biggest reason is because we are an ageing population. The biggest risk factor for most cancers is age so as we all live longer due to advances in medicine we are putting ourselves at a much higher risk of getting cancer.
  
  Our cells don’t live forever and as we get older our cells get worse at looking after themselves. This means its much more likely that a cell could pick up a genetic mutation and become damaged in a way that makes the cell cancerous.
  
  Another important factor is diet. In the UK in particular more and more people are becoming overweight or obese due to poor diet choices. Obesity can increase your risk of getting some types of cancer so it’s not surprising that as obesity cases increase so do the cancer rates.
- Anastasia Wass answered on 11 Mar 2014:
  
  Another reason cancer rates are increasing is that we’re getting better at keeping people alive, this means not only that people are getting older but that people can get more than one cancer and still live.
- Leah Fitzsimmons answered on 12 Mar 2014:
  
  Cancer rates are increasing, but the rate by which it increases changes over time, and although we can make good predictions we can’t be sure how this will change in the future. There can also be a long time delay to find out what causes cancer, for example lots of people who start smoking in their 20’s won’t get cancer until they are in their 70’s. Also we sometimes don’t realise that something increases a person’s risk of cancer until we can see the effect it has and so for a long time people did things that increased their risk without realising. Now we test new substances and chemicals to make sure they are safe and we have learned much more about how staying healthy can lessen your chances of getting cancer, so although the rates are increasing because people are living longer and are living through illnesses that used to kill them, many preventable cancers caused by things like smoking happen much less often than they used to.

Question: Why are cancer rates increasing so much in the UK?

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