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As we age, cancer rates go up as immune system winds down

arstechnica.com

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Re: As we age, cancer rates go up as immune system winds down

#71

Post by brooklyn_ashey »

rsync wrote: post #30
truculation wrote: post #5

If the immune system has finite resources, would reducing the lifetime drain on those resources by infectious diseases delay the age at which we can expect get cancer? For example, curing the common cold and/or developing a universal flu vaccine.

"If the immune system has finite resources, would reducing the lifetime drain on those resources by infectious diseases delay the age at which we can expect get cancer?" I would wager the opposite is true. Body systems maintain themselves and their fitness and function through use . The obvious examples are bone and muscle tissue that become stronger through stress but are you aware that breast cancer incidence is st…

It would be interesting if the cure for/long delay of cancers was in an early and vigorous exercising of our immune system with respect to viruses---if the solution was a kind of continual vaccine for colds and viruses that needed to be updated regularly. Like an immune system gym/daily workout. I wonder if there is any research being done on that end of things.

Re: As we age, cancer rates go up as immune system winds down

#72

Post by throwpupper »

throwpupper wrote: post #65
mjlangiii wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nutritionfacts.org was created for this reason, to consolidate the evidence from nutritional studies so that you don't have to. spoiler alert - the comprehensive review lead them to the conclusion to eat plants, unprocessed. But anyway, it is a nice resource to get a round up of studies on a similar topic.

nutritionfacts.org is an extremely biased site that has been created by a vegan who built his whole career on speaking about health issues. While it has the word "facts" in its title nothing prevents them from cherry-picking studies to support their original views. If you cherry-pick different studies you might actually find that consuming large amount of plants stresses our digestive system way more than a fatty ste…

I never said that you should _only_ eat steaks and potatoes, did I?

This diet recommends a pound of fatty meat per day: http://perfecthealthdiet.com/the-diet/

The book that describes the diet cites over 1000 studies and empirical evidence to prove that the diet is healthy. Now who am I to believe?

Re: As we age, cancer rates go up as immune system winds down

#73

Post by saiya-jin »

evo_9 wrote: post #37
ransom1538 wrote: post #9

I always think of these two monkeys[i] when I consider slowing down my age. [i] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...

Yeah I have gone and done it, I have decreased my calories by roughly 30% in the past year or so and dropped around 30 pounds in the process, plus an aggressive vitamin and supplement routine, along with taking metformin. I also workout 7 days a week including playing hockey 2, sometimes 3 days (and also working out before or after), the group I skate with is highly skilled and the intensity is pretty up there, I've…

You don't sound doing something particularly healthy. Aggressive vitamin routine? Taking metformin? No amount of sport will compensate for fed up liver, intestines and whatnot over the years of this.

Working out 7 days a week is properly healthy (if done correctly, I do +-same but with different activities), but for example 100 pullups/week ain't any indication of great fitness, if you do them regularly. I do cca 60 every gym session just in between various other sets to fill up the gaps & during warm up, and I don't even look muscular nor am I any bodybuilder/powerlifter and I do weight >90kg. Now if you add some proper weights on yourself, that's another story.

Looking younger - that's often a function of people you are surrounded with. In France/Switzerland where I live, I think I look for my age and nobody mentions it. When I went home for high school reunion, everybody was asking me how the heck am I doing it to look so young and don't age. Similar for family/friends. Same thing happened to me when I visited Russia. Or LA, where almost everybody was overweight.

Some cultures simply have utterly bad eating & health habits and then even +-normal person stands out.

Re: As we age, cancer rates go up as immune system winds down

#74

Post by commandlinefan »

I worked for a cancer research startup a few years ago - I was just doing IT stuff, but I worked with a lot of oncologist/cancer research types. One of the things that they often said was that every living organism will develop cancer eventually, but most things die of other causes before that happens.

Re: As we age, cancer rates go up as immune system winds down

#75

Post by debacle »

cies wrote: post #70
throwpupper wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nutritionfacts.org is an extremely biased site that has been created by a vegan who built his whole career on speaking about health issues. While it has the word "facts" in its title nothing prevents them from cherry-picking studies to support their original views. If you cherry-pick different studies you might actually find that consuming large amount of plants stresses our digestive system way more than a fatty ste…

> If you cherry-pick different studies you might actually find that consuming large amount of plants stresses our digestive system way more than a fatty steak with potatoes. You really, REALLY, believe with all information being out there nowadays that a diet of only "fatty steak with potatoes" will be healthier for humans that the "balanced WFPB diet" that is nutritionfacts.org claims is scientifically proven to be…

The keto diet's main difficulties are the prevalence and preponderance of available sugary foods, the near inability to eat socially, and the extreme difficulty in adopting the diet in the first 3 weeks for people regularly consuming 200g+ of carbohydrates a day.

The raw diet is mostly a trendy thing people write about. The bioavailability of nutrients in many raw foods is just too meh.

We know what the best diet is. A plant and fish based diet with small amounts of other meat. Meat that doesn't subsist on a diet primarily of corn or other, less edible things. This diet is completely unsustainable on a global scale and would result in even more ecological havoc.

The discussion between plants or plants + meat is complicated, but for now I'm going to ignore it because there's more important considerations:

- Companies are making our produce harder to digest as they try and make products with a longer shelf life.

- Eating industrially produced meat (of any sort) is very unhealthy and in many ways unsafe.

- This entire discussion removes dairy from the equation, which is a large part of the puzzle for most people.

- The low-carb vegan and the low-carb omnivore are far better off than anyone consuming 200g+ of carbohydrates a day.

- Hydroponically grown carrots taste gross.

Re: As we age, cancer rates go up as immune system winds down

#76

Post by ngvrnd »

commandlinefan wrote: post #74

I worked for a cancer research startup a few years ago - I was just doing IT stuff, but I worked with a lot of oncologist/cancer research types. One of the things that they often said was that every living organism will develop cancer eventually, but most things die of other causes before that happens.

it seems plausible or maybe even likely that everyone develops cancer many times, or at least the beginnings of it, but the immune system kills it over and over.

Until it doesn't.

Re: As we age, cancer rates go up as immune system winds down

#77

Post by josephv »

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #26

Really? I figured as we age our cancer rates will plummet while our immune systems only strengthen, which is why the leading cause of the death in the elderly is extreme sports.

I'm with you, upvoted for voicing the absurdity of the title. The article, which I refuse to read completely, seems like mediocre pop health science and this website has devolved into giving it, at this point at least 16 hours of frontpage time.

I'll summarize it: "We don't understand cancer but we'll keep throwing shit at the wall until something sticks, and we're going to write up a bunch of shit and you shits read it so we can pay for throwing more shit."

Re: As we age, cancer rates go up as immune system winds down

#78

Post by sgt101 »

sgt101 wrote: post #60
njarboe wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that individual genetics and behaviors are very important for these kind of health studies. Some things are quite clear and apply to all humans. For example: you need vitamin C in your diet or you will get scurvy. Then less general rules that might not apply to you given your genetics and behavior. Vitamin D supplements? Maybe, but probably won't hurt. Drinking Milk? Very variable on its benefits and costs to…

Why would cell phone data help?

Genuine question... answers?

Re: As we age, cancer rates go up as immune system winds down

#80

Post by joncrane »

gojomo wrote: post #12
truculation wrote: post #5

If the immune system has finite resources, would reducing the lifetime drain on those resources by infectious diseases delay the age at which we can expect get cancer? For example, curing the common cold and/or developing a universal flu vaccine.

Via mechanisms similar to either the hygiene hypothesis or hormesis , it's possible those might backfire. This is highly speculative, but: * the hygiene hypothesis suggests that allergies and auto-immune disorders can arise from having insufficient immune-system challenges, especially when young. Lacking the calibration from an 'expected' or 'optimal' level of dirt/allergens/infectious-diseases, the immune system sta…

If you think about it, this is exactly what immunization is.
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