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Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

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Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#42

Free radicals in the water table. Pollution in general. Plastic in the rainwater. Doesn't just affect nature. Backs up up the water table, from ocean to river from the slums to the hills. Good that we're doing it less and less, in some respects. Pollution is poison. Although there is always some. Even very primitive societies eg in the Amazon Basin pollute a bit and after like ten years they move to a new place, and…

We can scale it to planets. We pollute this planet and then move to another, then another. Come back to Earth in 10 million years. The only small problem with that is that we are not that advanced to do it.

The problem is that there aren't any other planets. Venus is an inferno, Mars may as well be made of asbestos dust with a side of radiation and drought, those are the most hospitable ones in this solar system and we're not getting anywhere further anytime soon[1]. And the amount of rockets and environmental damage to launch billions of people and enough spaceships for billions of people is ... a lot.

[1] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high...

Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#43

If we're going to throw out random theories for the cause like diet and pollution, what about all the volatile chemicals off-gassing from freshly manufactured goods?

To be fair, I don't think those are random theories. There's plenty of research on the ill effects of (bad) diet, pollution, etc.

But yeah, volatile chemicals are a form of hyper-local pollution. Perhaps less proof ATM, but close enough to regular (?) pollution to want to avoid it. Err to the side of caution, not to the side of cancer.

Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#45
post #9

The most disturbing part, to me, is this: > The early-onset cancer epidemic might be one manifestation of increasing trends in the development of many chronic diseases in young and future generations. Why are chronic diseases trending upwards? Is it the obvious things (pollution, microplastics, obesity, massive drain on mental health from the modern lifestyle, etc.), or is there something else going on?

Just adding a bit about the subject at hand: I am convinced the cancer epidemic is due to us grossly misusing our biological equipment: we are meant to feast & fast, and not have insulin's anabolic effects constantly activated. Fasting is crucial for "system maintenance", via autophagy (self-eating of damaged cells). Average person constantly stimulates insulin with following the advice of eating small meals often, w…

Interesting, what are your thoughts on the anti-CD47 investigational therapeutics being tested for cancer indications? How do you think that antagonizing CD47 will impact this 'system maintenance'. Do you think that modulating autophagy is part of the problem of enhanced autoimmunity, since its clear that is involved in immune surveillance? There is a lot of science out there around this area.

Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#46
post #9

The most disturbing part, to me, is this: > The early-onset cancer epidemic might be one manifestation of increasing trends in the development of many chronic diseases in young and future generations. Why are chronic diseases trending upwards? Is it the obvious things (pollution, microplastics, obesity, massive drain on mental health from the modern lifestyle, etc.), or is there something else going on?

Just adding a bit about the subject at hand: I am convinced the cancer epidemic is due to us grossly misusing our biological equipment: we are meant to feast & fast, and not have insulin's anabolic effects constantly activated. Fasting is crucial for "system maintenance", via autophagy (self-eating of damaged cells). Average person constantly stimulates insulin with following the advice of eating small meals often, w…

I've done fasting for a while. It's not the panacea that it's touted as. I was a pretty religious (figuratively) 16 hour fast person. I have several years of bloodwork to show marginal if any changes to baseline. In some cases, for example with blood sugar, there's a small window where insulin actually spikes during a fast. I had several unusual blood sugar readings if I took them around the 15 hour mark along with other numbers that were raised temporarily with no other cause.

I've switched over the last 6 months to eating 3 meals and 2 snacks a day of varying size. I climb often (vigorously, 4 times a week if not more) and found that fasting was simply insufficient to provide the energy I needed. IF caused notable performance decreases at the level I work at leading to more injuries due to poorer recovery. Changing my diet in this way fixed most of it. Of course, I try to eat relatively clean (but chips are a weakness). I don't have a 6 pack but I am also not overweight and carry enough muscle for my uses.

This isn't to say I am giving a license to eat what you want. But what you do with your fuel is probably just as important as what that fuel is. The "average person" you mention is a couch potato. Of course these people not only benefit from IF but literally any change in exercise! IF works great for people who are not intensely active. Hence why it has become popular in tech. Proper sleep (whatever that means to your body) and relatively hard exercise are even better predictors of all-cause mortality than any of this. To me, after having done it, IF feels mostly like new age woo-woo "science" and it dances around people saying it flat out cures cancer. In some cases, for example prediabetes and chemotherapy, "deloading" the system has evidence of being effective. For the rest of us, it's a wash.

Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#47
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just adding a bit about the subject at hand: I am convinced the cancer epidemic is due to us grossly misusing our biological equipment: we are meant to feast & fast, and not have insulin's anabolic effects constantly activated. Fasting is crucial for "system maintenance", via autophagy (self-eating of damaged cells). Average person constantly stimulates insulin with following the advice of eating small meals often, w…

> following the advice of eating small meals often This must be an american thing. I've always been told the opposite advice all my life. Interesting.

Eating small meals often is a way people control urge and hunger. I don't think it's American only. For a LONG time bodybuilding touted the 6 meals a day to lose weight strategy.

Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#48
post #9

The most disturbing part, to me, is this: > The early-onset cancer epidemic might be one manifestation of increasing trends in the development of many chronic diseases in young and future generations. Why are chronic diseases trending upwards? Is it the obvious things (pollution, microplastics, obesity, massive drain on mental health from the modern lifestyle, etc.), or is there something else going on?

The result of misguidance from health professionals, big food & big pharma marketing. Not acknowledging that health is largely a result of lifestyle choices, and that pharmaceuticals are mostly ineffective and often harmful. And now for the specifics: - lies/bad science about meat (particularly red meat) being unhealthy - lies/bad science about cholesterol & saturated fat being unhealthy - not attacking sugar and pro…

> lies/bad science about cholesterol & saturated fat being unhealthy

Are you saying cholesterol and saturated fats aren't unhealthy? I'm confused.

Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#49
> "However, the effects of individual exposures remain largely unknown. To study early-life exposures and their implications for multiple cancer types will require prospective cohort studies with dedicated biobanking and data collection technologies."

What that means is analytical body-burden data collection should be a medical norm, for a variety of substances: polychlorinated biphenyls, triazine herbicides (atrazine), industrial solvents like trichloroethylene, brominated fire retardants, nitrosoamines, plastic-sourced phthalates, perchlorates, hydrazine, hexavalent chromium and so on.

Collecting such individual data via blood & urine samples (possibly fat biopsies & breast milk as well) on a yearly basis should really be part of a standard medical checkup procedure. That would provide a dataset which could be used to address that question.

This is hardly a new proposal, for example see this 2001 PBS report, in which journalist Bill Moyers got his body burden test results:

https://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/problem/bodyburden.html

The results are not unusual. Each of us has some load of industrial chemicals stored in or passing through our bodies. These chemical residues – termed the "chemical body burden" – can be detected in blood, urine and breast milk.

Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#50
post #8

I say this as often as I can. We have a vaccine that prevents cervical cancer with ~83% efficacy. Following the "bread-crumbs" seems like a good strategy to me. We have this little beasty in wild. Human T-lymphotropic virus type 1, but no vaccine. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/human-t-lym... We have correlation with cancer with other viruses. Hep C for example. How many more clues do we need to exp…

I used to think this and I don't think so anymore. Consider a company who develops the de-facto cure for a cancer. Let's say a course of normal treatment to remission cost $200,000.

There's no reason this company wouldn't release the cure. They would simple charge * + for the drug. People would pay almost any amount for such a cure. The company would have no problem padding it's bottom line sufficiently.

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