There are a lot of advantages of being tall besides being able to reach the top shelf without a step ladder. More cash? That's right: tall men earn more money, reports LiveScience. On the other hand, there is also a huge disadvantage. According to a new study from the University of California Riverside, tall people may be more likely to develop cancer.
Leonard Nunney, a researcher at UC Riverside, reviewed four large population studies about the height and cancer. Nunney studied more than 10,000 cases of cancer, and when he looked at the result given a person's height, he found that the cancer risk rises by 10 percent for every four inches above the average height a person is --average being 5'4'' for women and 5'9'' for men.
"If you were comparing a five-foot guy to a basketball player who's over seven feet tall, then that basketball player would have around twice the risk of cancer across the board," he said.
In the study, which was published in Proceedinds of the Royal Society B, Nunney explained that one possible reason why tall people have an increased risk of cancer may be because of the simple fact that they have more cells (细胞) in their bodies. The more cell division happens in you, the greater the chances that cells will lead to tumour (肿瘤) growth.
Nunney found that the connection between the height and cancer risk was nearly the same with 18 out of the 23 types of cancer he tracked. He also discovered that skin cancer risk had an unexpectedly strong relationship with the height. And taller women had an increased risk of thyroid (甲状腺) cancer, as well.
