Health Promotions

Bowel Cancer - The Facts

Why a Red Apple?

Apples are a nutritious source of dietary fibre. Fibre provides a protective effect against digestive diseases including bowel cancer.

The bad news…

• One Australian dies of bowel cancer every two hours.
• That's compared to one road death every five hours and one death from breast cancer every four hours.
• 10,000 Australians per annum are diagnosed with bowel cancer, of that 4,500 will die (nearly 50%).
• According to national averages, 1 in 18 men and 1 in 27 women will develop bowel cancer. It is the most common internal cancer and the second most common in women (apart from skin cancer).
• Bowel cancer accounts for 14% of cancer deaths in Australia.

The good news…

• If detected early enough bowel cancer is very treatable and even curable.
• Bowel cancers begin as benign growths of the lining of the large bowel, called 'polyps'. Polyps can be detected in a number of ways including colonoscopy and barium X-ray of the bowel. Almost all polyps can be removed without an operation, during a colonoscopy. Once removed the polyp can no longer develop into a cancer.
• Even if a bowel polyp becomes a cancer, patients still have a good chance of survival. In its early stages most bowel cancer can be cured by surgery (and most surgery does NOT involve a bag or colostomy).
• Checkups with your GP are essential to avoiding bowel cancer. It is recommended you start having checkups at 50-55 years of age.

Are you at risk?

• A family history of bowel cancer significantly increases the risk.
• Age increases the risk (all people over 50 should be appropriately screened).
• An unbalanced diet low in high-fibre foods including vegetables, legumes and grains increases the risk.

Warning symptoms

• A change in the usual pattern of your bowels, such as the development of persistent constipation, diarrhoea or irregularity in someone whose bowels have previously been regular.
• Blood in the stool.
• Iron deficiency anaemia, where testing of the blood shows a low "haemoglobin" and depleted reserves of iron.
• Abdominal pain.

Source: Bowel Cancer & Digestive Research Institute Australia www.gutdisorders.com