Obesity, excess drinking and a sedentary lifestyle are increasing cancer in those who are middle-aged. The numbers in their forties and fifties diagnosed with the illness has risen by a fifth in the last 30 years.
Better treatment, national cancer screening programmes, improved testing and drugs has meant that more cancers are detected at an earlier age.
Drinking two glasses of wine on a daily basis increases a woman’s risk of death should she already have breast cancer .
A recent Cancer Research UK study states that the chances of surviving cancer by ten years have doubled to nearly 50 per cent.
Cancer experts state that specific tumours which were considered common in older-age are now widespread amongst the younger generations. 60,000 Britons aged between 40 and 59 are diagnosed with cancer each year, according to the figures.
Prostate cancer rates in middle-aged men have increased six fold in the last 30 years. There are almost 4,000 new cases each year.
This is the most common kind of cancer in males and the average man has a 1 in 9 chance of being affected by it at some point in his life.
Rates of breast cancer in women in their forties and fifties have increased by 60 per cent in the same period, with there being around 17,110 cases per year. 1 in 8 women will go on to develop this disease at some stage in her life.
Other cancers which affect the stomach, kidney, bowel, throat and mouth have increased amongst the middle-aged, many being linked to obesity, little exercise and excess drinking of alcohol.