Obese people on Medicare  now have the opportunity to have regular weight loss counseling paid for when offered by a primary care provider.  Since this is considered prevention, there is no co-pay.

On November 29, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that there was enough evidence that intensive behavioral counseling was reasonable and necessary to prevent disease or disability and that Medicare beneficiaries were entitled to coverage as a preventive service.

This is particularly good news for people trying to prevent colon or rectal cancer since studies have consistently found a link between body mass index (fatness) and colorectal cancer, including the World  Cancer Research Foundation which included BMI and colorectal cancer in their 2007 comprehensive analysis reported in  Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer. Read the rest of this entry »

Although being obese increases risk for most colon and rectal cancers, the connection isn’t true in all types of colorectal cancer.

Cancers that are linked to microsatellite instability (MSI) don’t appear to be influenced by obesity, strengthening the belief that MSI cancers come about differently than the average colorectal cancer.

Overall, in a recent study, body mass index and weight gain during adult life increased risk of colorectal cancer by about 30 percent for men and 20 percent for women. However, increased risk was limited to microsatellite stable or microsatellite low tumors. Read the rest of this entry »

ECCO/ESMO UPDATE — BERLIN 2009

Being overweight was a key reason for at least 124,000 new cancers in European countries in 2008, including nearly 24,000 from colorectal cancer.

3.2 percent of new cancer diagnoses in men and 8.8 percent of women’s cancers could be attributed to excessive body mass index (BMI).  This was a dramatic increase from  2002 that found 70,000 cases of cancer directly related to obesity out of 2.2 million European cancers overall. Read the rest of this entry »