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Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

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141–150 of 280 posts

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

#141
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 appeal…

> Life today for almost everyone in the West is better than ever before,

I'm 60. You've just got to be joking.

When minimum wage was $3.30, a one-bedroom apartment cost $285. Now the same apartment is well over $2000.

My university tuition averaged about $1200 a year - that was about 10 35-hour weeks at minimum wage. But I got small scholarships that paid for it. My girlfriend worked in a sub shop two nights a week and had a summer job. No one went into debt.

One working parent could support a stay-at-home parent and pay off a mortgage.

Or you could work part-time and have a modest life and pursue your dream.

People just walked into career jobs right out of university.

Listening to young people today, unless they're in one of a small number of very much in demand fields, the idea of stability, steady advancement, or buying a home seem impossible.

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

#142
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I disagree with the comment you are replying to, but I also disagree with yours too.

Healthcare is crazy profitable. Insurance companies, healthcare providers, suppliers etc form a decent chunk of most western economies, the US of A in particular.

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

#143

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…

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…

Yes. Every time fasting comes up (because it ALWAYS come up) there's a ton of claims made but it almost always reduces down to the same effects that reducing your calories would have. Eat less, eat better, and get active.

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

#144
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-gat…

A 2019 article in Scientific American suggested that the Hadza example shows our bodies are adapted to require lots of exercise without paying a metabolic cost for it:

> Our bodies are evolved to require daily physical activity, and consequently exercise does not make our bodies work more so much as it makes them work better. Research from my lab and others has shown that physical activity has little effect on daily energy expenditure (Hadza hunter-gatherers burn the same number of calories every day as sedentary Westerners), which is one reason exercise is a poor tool for weight loss. Instead exercise regulates the way the body spends energy and coordinates vital tasks.

They compare the human need for exercise to the evolution of ram ventilation in sharks. By developing a system based on the assumption of constant movement, you become a more efficient forager. But if you stop moving, you die.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-evolved-to...

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

#145
Given that there's no accurate global historical measurements of cancer, anything of this sort is going to be heavily biased by the measurement.

You can only look at this comparative historical thing in certain developed countries with long histories of detecting all cancers.

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

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autophagy keeps getting brought up with such pseudoscientific bullshit explanations that I can't help but see it as snake oil. Furthermore, depending on who is describing it, the window for autophagy to kick in is anywhere from 8-48+ hours.

I don't know what science you need to understand a system that is constantly active and is never fully allowed to rest will develop dysfunction. Anyway, as the sibling reply says, there is plenty of reputable research available to satisfy your curiosity if you wish.

Explain heartbeats?

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

#147
My bet is on hormonal changes due to modern living and/or it's impact on the gut microbiome. I'm mid thirties with low body fat and somewhat athletic and got diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer last year with no history in the family. My support groups regularly get new people around my age.

It's scary to think that in the next few years these cancers will no longer be an old person's illness because chemo is absolutely devastating.

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

#148

> "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…

It would be nice to have this information to see if any trends are discovered (all of this is theoretical, I question whether measuring excreted compounds rather than stores is is relevant but that’s a separate point) however it is unclear what value this information will provide and seems unlikely it will generate anything actionable.

With that in mind, it’s hard to justify the colossal costs that would be involved in administering such a program. Young (Annual urinalysis is not indicated as part of the general work up for patients of any age, so this would be adding a whole extra step in specimen collection and not just adding on a test.

Healthcare is generally a zero sum game and if we divert $ and lab resources to something like this that means other tests and procedures are not being done.

A small prospective study as the authors suggest would be interesting, yet still expensive. It’s a huge stretch to say everyone should be getting this and ignores the harm that this would cause.

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

#150
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…

Does the vaccine help you if you already have the virus?
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