Not smoking, maintaining a healthy body weight, getting enough exercise, eating a balanced diet, and consuming alcohol only in moderation have long been considered key components of a healthy lifestyle. Numerous studies have already shown that individual factors are associated with the risk of several types of cancer.
However, the impact of combining these behaviors on a broad spectrum of different—including rarer—types of cancer has been less well studied to date.
For the current report, researchers from DKFZ analyzed data from 287,745 participants in the UK Biobank who did not have cancer at the start of the study. Over a median follow-up period of 11.5 years, 12,947 of them received a cancer diagnosis.
Five Factors for a Healthy Lifestyle
To make lifestyle factors comparable, the research team considered five factors: smoking behavior, alcohol consumption, diet, physical activity, and body weight. One point was awarded for each behavior classified as healthy. This resulted in a lifestyle score ranging from zero to five points. In the main analysis, individuals with four or five points were compared to those who scored zero or one point.
The result: People with a high lifestyle score had a 29 percent lower risk of developing cancer during the follow-up period than those with a low score. For 13 of the 27 types of cancer examined individually, a statistically significant association was found between a healthier lifestyle and a lower risk of developing the disease. These included lung, colorectal, stomach, liver, pancreatic, kidney, and bladder cancers, as well as postmenopausal breast cancer.
Study Expands Evidence to Rarer Cancers
Many of these findings confirm earlier studies in which similar associations had already been described for various types of cancer. “However, we also demonstrate the associations between lifestyle and cancer risk for some rarer cancers for which significantly less data was previously available,” says study leader Michael Hoffmeister of the DKFZ. “For example, soft tissue sarcoma is a relatively rare type of cancer whose association with an overall healthy lifestyle has been studied only to a limited extent so far,” adds Jie Ding, the study’s first author.
Smoking and obesity are particularly significant
The importance of smoking and obesity for cancer prevention was once again particularly evident. Smoking was statistically significantly associated with twelve of the cancer types studied, and being overweight with ten. The other lifestyle factors examined were linked to fewer types of cancer.
The researchers also estimated the proportion of cancer cases in the study population that can be statistically attributed to incomplete adherence to the five recommendations for a healthy lifestyle (population-attributable fraction, PAF). The estimates were particularly high for laryngeal cancer at around 66 percent, lung cancer at around 52 percent, and oropharyngeal cancer at around 30 percent. Significant proportions were also found for esophageal, stomach, pancreatic, liver, and colorectal cancers.
“The strength of this current study lies in the fact that it comprehensively and consistently confirms existing findings within a very large study population,” says Michael Hoffmeister. The results of this observational study thus underscore an encouraging message for cancer prevention: A healthy lifestyle is associated with a lower risk of numerous types of cancer.
Publication:
Ding J, Schöttker B, Brenner H, Hoffmeister M. Healthy lifestyle and cancer risk: a pan-cancer analysis in the UK Biobank prospective cohort. British Journal of Cancer (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41416-026-03613-9.
