Thinking about cancer is unpleasant.

Thinking about the possibility you might have cancer is even less appealing.

Of course, individuals who notice warning signs of cancer can take action and see a doctor. But human nature being what it is, people are sometimes more likely to explain away odd health symptoms rather than seriously address them.

This is a dangerous practice, because it can allow treatable problems to continue, sometimes beyond the point of treatability. To understand just how dismissive people can be about cancer, consider a study published recently in the journal PLOS One.

In it, researchers recruited about seventeen-hundred men and women age 50 and up. None of them had any known, active cancer.

Participants were given questionnaires asking them to indicate whether or not they had noticed various health symptoms in the past three months.

The questionnaire included some general symptoms such as sore throat, which could indicate many conditions. The questionnaire also included several widely publicized cancer warning symptoms, such as persistent difficulty in swallowing.

For each symptom a participant suffered, the questionnaire asked what caused it, how serious it was and whether the participant sought medical treatment.

It turned out that more than half the participants had experienced at least one symptom associated with cancer. But in that group, only 2 percent indicated cancer as a possible cause.

However, most of those participants had already seen a doctor about their recent symptoms.

So maybe it’s not that people fear taking action, it’s that we hate talking about cancer.

Worried you might overlook a warning sign? Talk to your doctor about how to recognize the warning signs of cancer and report anything worrisome.