According to research just published in a scholarly journal, the taller a person is, the greater their risk of having cancer. Two separate research studies were done for men and women, and the conclusions were the same in each.
The studies’ findings could explain why men are at greater risk overall of non-sex specific cancers; on average, men are over 5 inches taller than women. And according to the study, every 4 inches is a 13% increase in odds of having some type of cancer. The NY Times reports that epidemiologist Geoffrey C. Kabat drew careful conclusions from the studies. “We know that cancer is a disease in which hormones and growth factors modify things…Height itself is not a risk factor, but it really appears to be a marker for one or more exposures that influence cancer risk.” In other words, as TIME writes, tall may be popular and beautiful, but it’s also dangerous.
With 13-year-old YouTube star Talia Joy Castellano’s recent death of nerve cancer and Angelina Jolie’s double mastectomy, cancer has recently been very present in the news.