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Cancer
More of us are getting cancer but more of us are surviving it. This means that if you have any symptoms you're worried about, you have two more good reasons to see the GP sooner rather than later.
Do more people get cancer?
Yes. The number of people diagnosed is up 12% on the mid-1990s. There were 603 cases per 100,000 people in 2011-13 compared to 540 per 100,000 in 1993-95. If you think about it, it's not surprising that more of us get cancer – people are living longer and earlier diagnosis and screening programmes mean that cancer is picked up at an earlier stage.
Leading cause of death in men?
Yes. But the point is that more of us are surviving the disease. In 2013, 284 out of every 100,000 people in the UK died from cancer (around 162,000 people). A decade ago this was 312 in every 100,000. So the death rate is down 10%. More people are living with and after cancer than ever before.
So what does it mean for me?
It means that if you have symptoms you're concerned about you have even more reason to see your GP as soon as possible. Common symptoms of cancer include:
- Unexplained bleeding
- Unexplained weight loss
- A lump or swelling
- Unexplained pain
Cancer Research UK reckon that 40% of cancers could be prevented by changes in our lifestyles such as not smoking, taking more exercise, cutting down on alcohol, reducing sugar, eating more fruit and veg and avoiding too much red meat.
On this page are links to our FAQs for the cancers men often ask about. We will be adding to this list. Meanwhile, if you're concerned about other cancers visit Cancer Research UK.
You might also be interested in this Men's Health Guide from the World Cancer Research Fund. (The graphics above are taken from this publication.)
Types of cancer
Lifestyle FAQs
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The Men’s Health Forum need your support It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking. In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to. It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for. We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing. Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can.
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