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Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

nature.com

121–130 of 280 posts

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

#121

I feel like there has been a great increase in mental health issues: anxiety, depression, etc., especially among youth. I don’t recall these being major issues from when I was a youth in the late 80s and early 90s. I’m told that I’m wrong and people just didn’t talk about it so I wasn’t aware of it. But even amongst close family members and friends it wasn’t a thing. Now, I’ve seen some claim it is the post 9/11 worl…

But I also think "back in the days" life was more fixed. Probably getting a full time job as employee, starting a family, getting a house was not really optional. Now there are much more choices. Add to that all the hyper-connectivity. I don't really think people were better off but were just forced to handle everything more calmly. Growing up in the 90s, what I've found is that things changed a lot when people were starting their jobs.

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

#122
post #112

I feel like there has been a great increase in mental health issues: anxiety, depression, etc., especially among youth. I don’t recall these being major issues from when I was a youth in the late 80s and early 90s. I’m told that I’m wrong and people just didn’t talk about it so I wasn’t aware of it. But even amongst close family members and friends it wasn’t a thing. Now, I’ve seen some claim it is the post 9/11 worl…

> but I have to wonder if there is some chemical we are exposed to more that might be causing mental disorders in addition to early onset cancers. It's always easy to point the finger at a single cause, but the reality is that it's a series of factors that together act like a sophisticated, compound "attack" to the psyche: - Social media weakens your self-confidence and makes you feel in a constant state of inferiori…

Excluding the microplastics thing, I think that your two latter points are actually both derived from the social media changes.

Life today for almost everyone in the West is better than ever before, but people are exposed to a lot of thought on social media that 1. life is worse now, 2. in your lifetime there will be terrible destruction happening, which contributes to a sense of fatalism and doom.

It is super appealing to the human psyche to think things are worse in [current-time period] than in the past. This is why there is an intuitive appeal to things like "Make America Great Again." Social media only amplifies this effect because people are exposed to things that are maximally appealing to their psyche.

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

#123

I feel like there has been a great increase in mental health issues: anxiety, depression, etc., especially among youth. I don’t recall these being major issues from when I was a youth in the late 80s and early 90s. I’m told that I’m wrong and people just didn’t talk about it so I wasn’t aware of it. But even amongst close family members and friends it wasn’t a thing. Now, I’ve seen some claim it is the post 9/11 worl…

[flagged]

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

#124

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…

Honestly the behavioral lifestyle of modern humans is so far off from what we developed that diet is probably a drop in the bucket relative to many other factors. Consider how much movement a persistent hunter in a tribe still engaging in these practices does compared to the modern human, who sits for 95% of the day. The elders in these tribes look lean and still might engage in hunts. The elders in our tribes freque…

Western lifestyles differ markedly from those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, and these differences in diet and activity level are often implicated in the global obesity pandemic. However, few physiological data for hunter-gatherer populations are available to test these models of obesity. In this study, we used the doubly-labeled water method to measure total daily energy expenditure (kCal/day) in Hadza hunter-gatherers to test whether foragers expend more energy each day than their Western counterparts. As expected, physical activity level, PAL, was greater among Hadza foragers than among Westerners. Nonetheless, average daily energy expenditure of traditional Hadza foragers was no different than that of Westerners after controlling for body size.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

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

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

I don't really agree with the parent's assessment that lack of fasting-induced autophagy is the reason for the increase in cancer, but your anecdote about 16 hour fasts is sorta irrelevant. Autophagy doesn't really kick in until 2-3 days of fasting.

I know it's technically true but it's seemed weird to me to lump skipping breakfast in with what I'd consider actual fasting, ever since I first encountered people using it that way in the context of diet fads.

Someone tells me they're fasting, I don't expect they mean 8 non-contiguous waking hours without eating (with sleep in the middle). That's, like... pretty close to a normal day. It's easy to have 16 hour "fasts" just by accident. "I only ate two meals yesterday because I was fasting". LOL WUT? Again, I know, technically true, but not a useful way to refer to it, IMO.

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

#127

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?

My pet theory is plastics/microplastics. We're seeing now just how prevalent they are (and how inside of us they are, too).

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

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bad science... > I say this for experience... > It checks out for me... Glad you've managed to avoid the pesky allure of bad science with your anecdotal approach!

If a doctor says to you ' you have hypertension because you've been eating pizza for dinner last 5 years' . Do you ask them to provide you with proof directly linking your pizza eating to hypertension? Would you just ignore their advice for lack of proof? No one will be able to provide you direct link between 'lifestyle choices' and chronic disease at an individual level.

> No one will be able to provide you direct link between 'lifestyle choices' and chronic disease at an individual level.

I wasn't implying I require that for anything. I was just pointing out that someone made broad, speculative claims about the general medical consensus of things like read meat and sugar, and then used an anecdote to support their own claims about those things. Take from that what you will! I just find it funny and worth mentioning.

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

#129

> "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 (atrazin…

> 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 No so long as sickness is so profitable. The incentives aren't there like you would think.

What about in every western country where it isn't profitable?

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

#130

> "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 (atrazin…

Even Nature stated microplastics are everywhere, yet we do not know what effects it will have. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01143-3

What do you mean, "even Nature"? They have no incentive to downplay the omnipresence of microplastics
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