Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control • Hacker News Board

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#151

Post by sosborn » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 5:20 PM UTC

pkaye wrote: post #24

sosborn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's such a simple measure and it seems to be useful for predicting health issues. It is good for predicting in general populations, but can easily fall apart with individuals. It doesn't take into account what the makeup of your mass is. Muscle is denser than fat, so a muscular man and a fat man of the same height and weight would have the same BMI, but vastly different health profiles.

Why do people keep bringing up this point. Even blood tests are not perfect tools but we still make use of them. There are always some false positives and negatives. It is a combination of all the available results that a doctor will use to make a determination. If your BMI is high but you look muscular, have normal BP and cholesterol and no other concerns, they may feel that you are in good health.

That's really the same point that I'm making. BMI alone doesn't cut it.

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#152

Post by accoinstereo » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 5:28 PM UTC

MicroBerto wrote: post #108

I recently wrote an article discussing how increased fruits and vegetables can prevent mortality from cardiovascular diseases , yet not cancer.[1] My conclusion was that cancer is best prevented by removing negatives from life, not necessarily adding positives. ie avoid anything from stress to pollution to sunburn to obviously smoking. Interestingly, organic food doesn't seem to matter in the cancer equation, given t…

> "My conclusion was that cancer is best prevented by removing negatives from life, not necessarily adding positives."

But diet is a complex system. So while there might not be any magical "direct" benefit from eating a certain fruit or vegetable, they could still produce a significant positive effect.

Perhaps the biggest contribution to preventing cancer that fruits and veggies make is to curb negative behavior. They might replace sugary foods or regulate cravings or satiate (all interrelated). And then, this could feed back into promoting positive behavior: more energy which encourages more rigorous exercise. Which boosts the subject's mood and increases their sense of well-being. Which feeds back into their dietary choices. Etc.

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#153

Post by JamesBarney » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 5:28 PM UTC

bbarn wrote: post #107

amalcon wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty of quitting varies a lot from person to person. I knew a couple back in the nineties, where one partner was able to quit using the patch. It just worked for him, and was reportedly not that difficult. He was done with tobacco immediately, and done with nicotine entirely within the month. The other partner tried everything . Cold turkey, gradual reduction, patches, gum, change of location plus each of t…

I guess the point I was trying to make wasn't to brag that it was so great and easy for me to do, it's to say that maybe we have culturally made it seem harder than it is. The more press it gets the more the belief is reinforced. We have tobacco companies still cranking out the same garbage, almost with the attitude that they are forced to keep making this horrific product because people are hooked on it. They keep t…

Selection bias explains a lot of this.

Smoking is easy to quit for most people, and ridiculously hard for most smokers. When I was 17-20 50% of my friends smoked cigarettes and 80% of my friends quit by the time they were out of college a year or two without any problems. The remaining 20% of my friends couldn't quit for the world. They've tried quitting 20 different ways and never succeeded. I think the difference is some people are just wired for quitting smoking to be hard, but most people aren't. And the former population is way over represented among the smoking population.

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#154

Post by epimetheus » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

bbarn wrote: post #90

csn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yesterday I promised myself to not buy cigarettes anymore nor ask anyone to do it on my behalf. This first step only requires tremendous willpower when visiting a store, as the dispensers are placed at checkouts so I must stand right next to them when I'm in the queue.

Focus on the smell. Make it long enough (about 24 hours) to notice other smokers smell. That is the smell of other people being repulsed by you. You smell like that in every elevator, every time you introduce yourself to someone, and no amount of gum or tooth brushing covers it up. You can't smell it while you smoke, but the rest of the world can. It was enough to keep me dedicated knowing I could confidently talk to…

>Focus on the smell.

I dunno, they might need to get close and smell the breath, the smell of cigarettes to this day (from a distance) still makes me crave one, ever so slightly. Even after having quit 13 years ago (I quit in 2003). The only off-putting smell is in ashtrays or their breath/clothing. The actual burning smell though, that gets me to this day.

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#155

Post by Joof » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 5:41 PM UTC

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #82

geomark wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If there was strong evidence for causality I would make a real effort to go vegan. But I suspect it's about being thin and having a high fiber diet, which doesn't require being vegan.

There is strong evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Cornell%E2%80%93... It's the ratio of plant protein to animal protein in the diet. So no you don't need to go hard vegan. But yes, it is the diet and there is hard evidence.

That's pretty neat.

Nutrition seems difficult to study because there are so many biological mechanisms at play, but we can get a rough picture at the macro level.

Of course someone always blows findings out of proportion and decides to take things to an extreme.

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#156

Post by no_flags » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 6:20 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #119

QuercusMax wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...except fat isn't necessarily responsible for heart disease. High blood glucose and inflammation are much more likely to be responsible.

Have you any (peer reviewed) evidence of this? There is a lot of Internet hype about "carbs are bad, fat is fine" these days and other conflicting health guidelines. I am not saying its wrong, but I would like to see some proper evidence of it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20071648

http://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/science

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#157

Post by Retric » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 6:22 PM UTC

HenryTheHorse wrote: post #143

Retric wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't generalize from personal experience. I smoked less than 3 packs of cigarettes in my life, stopped 15 years ago, and I still get cravings. Alcohol on the other hand has zero pull for me.

> stopped 15 years ago, and I still get cravings. I stopped 6 years ago and have zero cravings. But I am curious how you define "cravings". Is it a physical sensation? Is it a mental "pull" when you see someone light one up?

It's associative. If I think about smoking I get a strong urge to do it. I stopped the first time I noticed the craving when seeing someone I did not know smoking and had the urge to bum a smoke.

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#158

Post by Tenhundfeld » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 6:27 PM UTC

15charlimit wrote: post #146

Tenhundfeld wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, what a nasty little, finger-pointing, stone-casting society you seem to desire. Is there anything that you'd blame on society/industry/government, or is it always 100% the individual's fault?

Who said anything about throwing stones, or pointing fingers? Nothing in my post indicates that help should be refused to individuals who make poor decisions and then try to recover from them, just that, in a free society, the onus should not be solely on the head of "a higher authority" (govt, industry, etc) to be responsible for doing so. The world you seem to desire would make cellphone manufacturers and service p…

> Start casting blame where it needs to be - on the individual(s).

Those are your words, my friend. Maybe I misinterpreted them. I didn't say individuals are 0% responsible. It's a mix, right?. Individuals deserve blame but also support. Companies deserve protection from inane lawsuits but also bear some responsibility.

> But if there's a tool that does exactly what it's designed to do, but someone uses it for a completely different purpose in a completely different way than it was designed to do, and it electrocutes them - that's on the user's head.

Sure. That doesn't apply to tobacco or sugar. We're using it in exactly the way the sellers intended. I don't know why you're stuck on the reckless driving example, when it doesn't really pertain to the general context of the article.

> I'm tired of the popular trend of infantilization that offloads the burden of one's own actions onto society/industry/government.

Sure. But my question stands. Do you think the society/industry/government ever bears >0% of the responsibility?

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#159

Post by pkroll » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #82

geomark wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If there was strong evidence for causality I would make a real effort to go vegan. But I suspect it's about being thin and having a high fiber diet, which doesn't require being vegan.

There is strong evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Cornell%E2%80%93... It's the ratio of plant protein to animal protein in the diet. So no you don't need to go hard vegan. But yes, it is the diet and there is hard evidence.

Criticism of "The China Study" pretty much ends my confidence in it: https://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fa...

Re: Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

#160

Post by nitrogen » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 7:10 PM UTC

15charlimit wrote: post #114

Pica_soO wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think it only fair to put the burden of the health damage on the company who sells addictive products. If you sell cigarettes and a customer looses part of the lung, you pay or behave to prevent. If you sell alcohol and a customer drives a car in a crowd, you pay or behave to prevent. If you are a narco and sell crack, you pay for the results. The problem is not the unknown problems with those substances, its…

By that logic, no individual is responsible for anything they ever do because just about everything is "addictive" or "habit forming" in some way. Your suggestion is terrible for a number of reasons, but primarily due to the shirking of personal responsibility that it promotes. Should Hershey be required to pay medical costs for morbidly obese individuals because they eat a dozen chocolate bars a day? Sugar is a high…

Nobody is forced to manufacture addictive products, advertise them in misleading ways, pay celebrities and filmmakers to use them conspicuously, or buy prominent product placement everywhere a person trying to quit has to go, either.

You are introducing irrelevant other ideas to distract from the core of the OP's argument, which while a bit excessive IMO, warrants an honest discussion, not hyperbolic overreaction.