In Brief:
Here's yet another reason to avoid obesity throughout your life: Doing so may improve your chances of survival if you're diagnosed with colon cancer.. Abdominal obesity even prior to the diagnosis of colon cancer was associated with an increased risk of dying after contracting the disease, according to study author Anna Prizment, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota Masonic Cancer Center, in Minneapolis.. Women with the disease who have an unhealthy waist-to-hip ratio and a large waist are at increased risk of death, Prizment added.. It is expected to kill more than 51,000 people - including nearly 25,000 women - in the United States in 2010, according to the American Cancer Society.. "But not so many studies have examined how obesity affects survival of the colon cancer patient," Prizment said.. Prizment expanded on the unhealthy waist-to-hip ratio and large waist associations that she found were associated with a higher risk of dying from colon cancer.. Until the new study, findings about excess body size in colon cancer patients and risk of death have been mixed and conflicting, said Dr. Peter Campbell, director of the tumor repository for the American Cancer Society..
