Drinking plenty of water could help cut a man’s risk of developing bladder cancer by almost a quarter, according to a new study presented at an international conference of the American Association for Cancer Research, reports the Daily Telegraph.
The researchers are not entirely sure how the increased fluid intake is protective, but hypothesize that it could be due to the fact that the water flushes out potential carcinogens before they can damage tissue in the bladder, explained study author Jiachen Zhou.
Researchers from Brown University in Rhode Island surveyed 47,909 male volunteers over a 22-year span. They found that those men who drank over 2,531 mL of water a day were 24 percent less likely to be diagnosed with bladder cancer over the course of the study.
The researchers also found that the men – who had been between the ages of 40 and 75 years old at the outset of the study – tended to drink less liquid as they got older.
While the study authors caution that more research is needed before these results can be applied to the general population, Zhou said doctors should feel comfortable advising their patients to drink plenty of fluids.