I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer • Hacker News Board

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#341

Post by aeetes » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 1:34 PM UTC

jll29 wrote: post #279

First of all, I'm sorry to learn the author got cancer; I wish her all the best and continued strength. Many contributors have already made good suggestions how to reduce the risk of getting cancer, or how to deal with it; but I found most posts quite _technical_. Speaking in general terms, cancer is not a disease like a common cold. The human body sooner or later is bound to decay, which pretty much starts once one…

> will wipe any individual out. I am at peace with that, for we need to make space for the next generation (only adding people to planet earth would not be sustainable, as resources are scarce - imagine nobody would ever die). Being on this planet for a limited time period makes it more important to make the right choices, because we have only one life.

This common claim that "we need to die to make room for other people" is not obviously true, good discussion here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ufjFuHmJoysXrKXYQ/what-exact...

Also, don't be so quick to accept death as a good thing: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Aud7CL7uhz55KL8jG/transhuman.... It's basically the worst thing that can happen.

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#342

Post by voisin » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

meheleventyone wrote: post #192

no1lives4ever wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The former captain of the Indian cricket team, Sourav Ganguly, recently suffered a heart attack while he was exercising. He was lucky that he was able to get prompt medical attention and recovered. But he was a fit professional athlete who was used to exercise from a young age and even he suffered from cardiac problems.

I had a heart attack last year whilst swimming and at only 39 despite swimming five times a week and having no obvious underlying issues. It feels profoundly unfair!

Did you ever get any insight from your doctors as to why it might have happened? High cholesterol? Family history? Sorry to hear that.

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#343

Post by kuhewa » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

bjarneh wrote: post #93

xbar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sincere admiration for the author's strength in the face of this terrible hardship. A person can also avoid cancer by choosing a career that is not cancer-inducing. Given the author's cabin crew history: 3.4% of female flight attendants reported having had breast cancer compared with 2.3% of women in the general population group 2.2% of female flight attendants reported having had melanoma skin cancer compared wit…

The skin cancer + flight attendant connection has to be due to white people working in the industry. People tend to fly to places with plenty of sun and warm climates. Australia's skin cancer rates are also very high, although not so much among the aboriginal population.

They are also at higher risk of breast cancer though (female aircrew)

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#344

Post by tremon » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 1:37 PM UTC

catchclose8919 wrote: post #275

goodpoint wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd wish we lived in a world where we could actually address chemical, air-particulate +/- microplastics pollution seriously, and stuff like PFOAs that are still used round, without having it be totally overshadowed and drowned in noise by the "fight climate change" crowd or the "extinction rebellion" nutcases. Most of the people you called "nutcases" are protesting against exactly the pollutants you described.

OK, I agree I'm not that informed about ER, probably I've only heard of some of their more misguided actions, maybe even overemphasized by their enemies. ...but their name and their most used description doesn't help either: first words you read are "climate change" and "biodiversity loss". No organization can focus on everything , and if they've chosen to focus on that, then from my pov. they're not focusing on what…

that maximize HUMAN health & lifespan in economically sustainable ways

Which HUMANs? Only the ones alive today, or also the ones living 100 years from now? And why focus only on economically sustainable, don't you think that ecologically sustainable, socially sustainable or even morally defensible merit equal consideration?

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#345

Post by gus_massa » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 1:38 PM UTC

ComradePhil wrote: post #76

Here's an alternate explanation: Maybe cancer is way to common and keeps being formed in the human body... but also the body gets rid of it by itself. This is why most people who have cancer never find out about it. The few people who are always going for "regular screenings" are the only ones who find out about it and get "treatment" when it was completely unnecessary. Here's another alternate explanation: Maybe wha…

I think you are describing overdagnosis, that is a real problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdiagnosis

But not everyone is so lucky. Some cancers may kill you in a few months even with the best treatment currently available.

And there are a big chunk of cases were a good early diagnosis is the difference between dying in one or two years or dying in ten or twenty years, or perhaps more.

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#346

Post by fsflover » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 1:39 PM UTC

Karuma wrote: post #308

fsflover wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And no one knows yet what exactly is "to eat correctly" https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you...

Yeah, thanks for that link. That's exactly the kind of garbage I was talking about. They just take information out of (food-industry-sponsored) horrible studies, or just repeat the same old stuff they've been repeating since those first studies were published. That page even has the obligatory "stay active" in a "what to eat" recommendation. Five-star stuff. No wonder we've all become obese since these studies and ar…

> They just take information out of (food-industry-sponsored) horrible studies

Any proof?

> or just repeat the same old stuff they've been repeating since those first studies were published

No. They used to tell that milk was necessary for the health, but now they tell a different story based on actual independent research.

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#347

Post by voisin » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 1:40 PM UTC

kmm wrote: post #174

AlexAffe wrote: post #149

She mentions a diet rich in Protein. Even Supplements like Whey Protein Shakes. I wonder how that extra growth fuel contributes to cancer cell growth. At the very instance kf cell division, there is a small chance of the cell going 'rogue', becoming a cancer cell. In all of our bodies, all of the time. Thankfully the chance is pretty slim, but when I train a lot and eat a lot of protein, then I will have a much highe…

Protein shakes and workouts wouldn't lead to a higher rate of cell division in the breast, would it? Those cells just go through their natural turnover, influenced mostly by estrogen (which actually has been suspected to play a role in causing breast cancer: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17113977/ ) If anything, you'd expect cancer of the muscle, myosarcoma, to be involved with muscle growth, which thankfully is re…

Isn’t whey, as a milk base, full of growth hormones meant for baby cows?

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#348

Post by ryandvm » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 1:47 PM UTC

codeflow2202 wrote: post #312

catchclose8919 wrote: post #204

This is one of the things where it matters more how healthy/unpolluted your environment is . I'd dare to say that a not-so-phisically-active moderate-smoker living in a less polluted environment has way lower cancer risk than a bio-vegan athlete buddhist monk living in a polluted industrial hellhole. I'd wish we lived in a world where we could actually address chemical, air-particulate +/- microplastics pollution ser…

This. I live in Belgium coming from Italy and it's scary how many people I know gets cancer here. Like someone i know every few months gets it (and I'm not talking about just old people. A couple guys i know got it in their 20s). And it's all people relatively healthy. Compare that to Italy where nobody I know does any effort to be healthy, eats lots of red meat (we do like our pork meat but it's all local stuff), sm…

Vitamin D deficiency is probably playing a not insignificant part in what you're seeing.

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#349

Post by derbOac » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 1:48 PM UTC

indigochill wrote: post #319

gameswithgo wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is like poker, not chess. You can make the best choices and often you will still lose.

Spun another way, in poker, although you're dealt an unplayable hand most of the time, the key to success is (a) patiently not playing bad hands and (b) recognizing the good hands and capitalizing on them correctly. That said, no matter how well you play, the game does end eventually. I like to think that, like poker, despite the variance, you have some degree of influence on how well the game ends.

It's more complicated than that though: life is more like a variant of poker where no one even agrees on the rules or what the goals of the players are.

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#350

Post by codeflow2202 » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 1:50 PM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #322

codeflow2202 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I live in Belgium coming from Italy and it's scary how many people I know gets cancer here. Like someone i know every few months gets it (and I'm not talking about just old people. A couple guys i know got it in their 20s). And it's all people relatively healthy. Compare that to Italy where nobody I know does any effort to be healthy, eats lots of red meat (we do like our pork meat but it's all local stuff), sm…

> This made me realize that the best thing you can do for your health is just picking the right place to live. Imagine you’re completely wrong about this — because it’s a very dangerous assumption to be completely confident in. What’s another answer for why Belgians seem to get cancer more often than Italians?

Well this doesn't mean that you can smoke all day if you move to Umbria and be safe. But what I noticed is that in some places smoking is much riskier than others.

And apparently it's not just a feeling of mine. Belgium is the 6th worst place in the world (just after the USA) for age adjusted cancer rates: https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer/global-cancer-data-by-cou...