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Cancer rates are rising in young people

scientificamerican.com

91–100 of 162 posts

Re: Cancer rates are rising in young people

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or its the chemistry. Every few years some new plastic/common nonstick pan coating/other common substance that you've definitely ingested repeated gets pulled from the market because it causes cancer, and it turns out that the giant chemical company producing it knew for 25 years and covered it up.

I took all the plastic out of my kitchen. Cast iron or stainless steel pots and pans. No coatings. Seasoned cast iron is as non-stick as any flourocarbon coating. Glass or ceramic drinking glasses, serving and prep dishes and bowls. Wood or metal utensils and wood cutting boards. You can only do so much though, almost all of our food is processed and prepared with plastic equipment and packaging somewhere in the supp…

Even canned goods have a plastic liner these days.

Re: Cancer rates are rising in young people

#92
post #70

I went thru very aggressive cancer treatment a few years ago (am a woman in my late thirties) for a type that was def not lifestyle caused nor hereditary. So far so good. I have received great care but no one has given me so much as a hypothesis as to what caused it. The type I had is rising amongst women under 50. If I had to hypothesize, stress and trauma are large contributors. I don't think by any means that prev…

if I can ask what kind of stress was it? Because most stress comes from lifestyle

That is true if you can afford to isolate yourself from the rest of the world. Otherwise, social interactions are a source of stress over which you don’t have much control even if you give up on social media. Or the way society works in general. Or the state of politics. Or the environment. “It’s your lifestyle” is an easy answer that is far from complete. It is also a common way of blaming the victim. It is very difficult for most people to extract themselves from their social situation.

Re: Cancer rates are rising in young people

#93
post #75

I wonder what our increasingly clean world has to do with this. I think there has been an uptick in autoimmune disorders that has been sometimes attributed to a lack of stuff like dirt and bacteria in our normal environments. I know that gut autoimmune issues are a huge risk factor for colon cancer. Although, my personal main suspect would be obesity. Cancer and obesity go together really well.

all of these intuitions are right, it's the stress, the environmental pollutants, the empty calories, the nutritional deficiencies, and, as you said, excessive hygiene and underexposure to pathogens particularly during childhood (even cesarian birth contributes to gut dysbiosis), overreliance on pharmaceutical drugs that do more harm than good, all in all a gross misunderstanding of what constitutes health and how the human body works

Re: Cancer rates are rising in young people

#94
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanted to add: we should also hold vendors of these things accountable.

Driving through some towns recently I saw fast food chains as the main source of food for people. These corporations are like vultures feeding on people who are not able to control their own behavior. Looking at the people you could see years of overeating of very unhealthy food as they were extremely overweight, sometimes by hundreds of pounds. I used to live in Japan and the population looked normal and healthy. Co…

I live in N. GA part of the year and compared to SoCal, it is damn near impossible to even get a salad. The food available outside of the grocery store is pure garbage. It definitely contributes to a lot of negative ills

Re: Cancer rates are rising in young people

#95
post #8

How much of this is explained by the increase in obesity in young adults? I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first specific cancer TFA mentions is colorectal. In the last sixty years the obesity rate has tripled with morbid obesity growing nearly ten fold.

By explained do you mean cause and effect? What is the link between the two? More cells = more that can become cancerous?

There is a correlation between obesity and poor gut microbiome, which could be an explanation for some colon cancers. (There are a lot of caveats and uncertainty, but this is an active field of study).

Re: Cancer rates are rising in young people

#97

Might make sense to net zero tax sugar (and hand consumers the taxes at the end of the year). Obesity is the main correlate according to most of these studies.

It does, and most importantly, parents should be warned and assisted to not feed these products to their children, it's insane we let children form these powerful addictions and that it's legal to advertise it.

We need drastic measures for this, I think the vast majority of people are aware of the harm by now, it certainly wasn't the case when I was growing up, but not taking action now is unconscionable.

Re: Cancer rates are rising in young people

#98
post #22

36 y/o male with stage 4 colon cancer. Diagnosed in 2016. Lifelong triathlete / healthy eater. I think it's easy to write this off and just better screening, but I think that's certainly a necessary, but not sufficient explanation. I'm open to other ideas, but I have to imagine some of this is due to changes in our environment and food supply. plastics everywhere, pesticides in our food, pollution in the air.

Doesn't make sense at all to have 30 something people with cancer, but we see more and more, although the treatment improves. My personal opinion is mandated flame retardants in foams, mattresses and cushions and other plastics. Smokers die less from fire but everybody else breath poison.

How did you come to this conclusion?

Why not microplastics, fine particle pollution, noise (urban living around lots of cars and/or heavy industry), mental stress, lack of sleep, lack of healthy connections, lack of time outdoors and healthy exercise, and similar things?

Seems weird to me to pick one arbitrary class of chemicals when all of the things I listed have been worsening.

Re: Cancer rates are rising in young people

#99
post #22

36 y/o male with stage 4 colon cancer. Diagnosed in 2016. Lifelong triathlete / healthy eater. I think it's easy to write this off and just better screening, but I think that's certainly a necessary, but not sufficient explanation. I'm open to other ideas, but I have to imagine some of this is due to changes in our environment and food supply. plastics everywhere, pesticides in our food, pollution in the air.

How is your circadian rhythm? In bed before 10, low lights at night, bright light in the morning? Some interesting observational studies around circadian rhythm in colorectal, as you may have seen already.

Re: Cancer rates are rising in young people

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tax is a disincentive, not a restriction of freedom. As in, if you want that sugar, you will pay extra for it due to the increased strain on the healthcare system you likely will add to down the line. You can still consume as much as you want at the end of the day.

If it turns out that there is no increased strain on the healthcare system (because, for example, people who consume a lot of sugar die younger and so don't require as much old-age care), would you then advocate removing the disincentive?

This is way over-simplified. Dying young does not mean that they don’t need expensive invasive treatment before they do, possibly for a couple of decades. It’s also a completely inhumane way of looking at these problems.
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