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Kidney Cancer and Gender

Your kidneys, an important part of your urinary tract system, filter your blood of wastes and excess fluids. These wastes and excess fluids ultimately leave your body as urine.

Kidneys help keep your blood pressure under control and assist in keeping your body functioning in a stable manner. While experts continue to speculate about the exact causes of kidney cancer, they do acknowledge a link between gender and kidney cancer. In fact, men are twice as likely as women to develop kidney cancer.

Kidney Cancer Statistics

According to statistics, kidney cancer accounts for about 3 percent of all diagnosed cancer cases. Most people who develop kidney cancer are over the age of 50.

Men and Kidney Cancer

Why do men develop kidney cancer more often than women? Experts suspect that a link exists between smoking and kidney cancer. Historically, more men smoke than women.

In addition, some experts theorize that men who smoke develop kidney cancer more frequently than women who smoke, although some attribute the lower kidney cancer rates in women smokers to the fact that women, on average, smoke less overall than men and typically don't smoke for as long as men.

Kidney Cancer and Smoking

So, what can a man do to help prevent kidney cancer? If you smoke, talk to your doctor about ways to quit. Once you stop smoking, your risk of getting kidney cancer will start to go down, although the risk will never fall to the levels of a man who never smoked. If you do not smoke, don't take up the habit.

In addition to avoiding cigarettes, you should also avoid other tobacco products, including:

chewing tobacco
cigars
pipe tobacco
snuff.

Avoiding Kidney Problems and Kidney Cancer

In addition to avoiding tobacco products, men can make other lifestyle changes to reduce their risk of developing kidney cancer. To help prevent kidney cancer, men should:

Eat a healthy diet: Eating a low-fat, low-sugar, high-fiber diet can help reduce your risk of developing kidney cancer.
Exercise regularly: Getting at least 30 minutes of exercise on most days of the week can help keep you in shape and reduce your risk of developing kidney cancer.
Lower your blood pressure: Hypertension, commonly known as high blood pressure, has been linked to kidney cancer. In addition to altering your diet, you may need to take prescription medication to lower your blood pressure.
Maintain an ideal body weight: Being overweight or obese puts a person at greater risk for developing kidney cancer.

In addition, see your doctor on a regular basis, particularly if kidney cancer runs in your family. Your doctor will likely schedule blood and urine tests to help determine if you have any kidney problems.

Women and Kidney Cancer

Although men are more likely than women to develop kidney cancer, women can be diagnosed with this disease too. In order to reduce the risk of developing kidney cancer, women should also follow the above-mentioned recommendations.

Resources

Resnick, Martin I. (2006). Urinary Tract Cancers. Retrieved July 11, 2007, from the Net Wellness Web site: http://www.netwellness.org/healthtopics/

urinarycancer/utckidneycancer.cfm.

University of Maryland Medical Center (2007). Urological Disorders. Retrieved July 11, 2007, from the University of Maryland Medical Center Web site: http://www.umm.edu/urology-info/cancer.htm.

Wider, Jennifer (2005). Smoking Linked to Kidney Cancer.Retrieved July 11, 2007, from the Dr. Donnica Web site: http://www.drdonnica.com/news/00009004.htm.

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