The World Cancer Research Fund has added eight new lifestyle guidelines to its list of recommendations for cancer prevention. These changes include increased physical activity and consumption of healthy foods that are low in caloric density.

A study conducted by UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers, which was recently published in the journal Nutrition and Cancer, set out to determine how following these new guidelines would impact individuals with a high risk of prostate cancer.

A total of 2,212 men were enrolled in the study. Tests subjects included both white and African American participants. The Gleason grading system and the levels of prostate specific antigens in the blood were used to determine how aggressive the cancer was.

What the research team found was that men who followed fewer than four recommendations had a 38 percent higher risk of prostate cancer, compared to men who followed more than four.

The team also discovered that eating less than 500 grams of red meat each week reduced the risk of developing aggressive tumors in all study participants.

“Most men are at risk of prostate cancer, but it is the level of aggressiveness of disease that is most clinically relevant,” research team leader Lenore Arab, a professor in the departments of medicine and biological chemistry, told Medical News Today. “These findings suggest that even men with prostate cancer can take control of their disease and moderate its aggressiveness through diet and lifestyle choices.”

Researchers from Case Western Reserve School of Medicine say diet is one of the most easily controlled and important factors involved in inflammation and prostate disease. This also includes benign prostatic hyperplsia, prostatitis and prostate cancer.

A study that was previously published in the American Cancer Society’s peer reviewed journal CANCER revealed that exercise does in fact reduce prostatic cancer risk.

According to the World Cancer Research Fund, lung cancer is the most common cancer worldwide in men contributing more than 16 percent of the total numbers of new cancer cases diagnosed in 2008. Lung, prostate and colorectal cancer contribute approximately 40 percent of all cancers. Stomach and liver cancer also contribute more than five percent.

Overall, there were an estimated 12.7 million cancer cases in 2008, of these 6.6 million cases were in men and 6.0 million in women. This number is expected to increase to 21 million by 2030.

Here’s the full list of the World Cancer Research Fund’s cancer prevention recommendations: http://www.wcrf.org/cancer_research/cup/recommendations.php