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Why are so many young people getting cancer?

nature.com

11–20 of 254 posts

Re: Why are so many young people getting cancer?

#11

My wild guess before reading the article: unhealthy food. A big part of which is herbicides and pesticides. I will now read the article.

My personal bugbear is the lack of sleep & entirely tied to the phone for that.

I remember being in my 20s and not being able to sleep, but the most distracting thing I could reach for was a pile of books in my bedside table.

Now, I can't sleep, there's an endless stream of things to keep me awake.

The jokes about "5G gives you cancer" is probably not as funny, if you think about the sleep you miss while you doom scroll.

Re: Why are so many young people getting cancer?

#12

My wild guess before reading the article: unhealthy food. A big part of which is herbicides and pesticides. I will now read the article.

Plastics, the increase in background radiation, pesticides, and or a side effect of extra calories are all possibilities. Daily allergy medicines might also be a factor as those reduce immune response slightly.

Re: Why are so many young people getting cancer?

#13

My wild guess before reading the article: unhealthy food. A big part of which is herbicides and pesticides. I will now read the article.

I believe that county specific studies seem to support your thesis. For instance, countries that eat less processed food (eg Italy) and have stricter rules about pesticides didn't see an increase in stuff like colorectal cancer [1]. Some cancers incidence did grow, but others decreased keeping incidence more or less the same.

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03008916241297078

Re: Why are so many young people getting cancer?

#14
post #5

My wild guess before reading the article: unhealthy food. A big part of which is herbicides and pesticides. I will now read the article.

Your guess is not wild at all, and the article implies that (at least until the payment popup shows up) My grandmother used to grow her own vegetables and fruits and had a minimal chicken farm for eggs until the early 2000s, all in her regular backyard, it's not ancient history or something that required a lot of real state. Now there's a 15-story building and no land whatsoever where her house used to be.

As a kid I used to do that with my family: Grow our own everything.

I'm currently trying to get back to it, until then I try to eat ecological and as much as I can cooked by myself. It is hard though, not everybody can aford a plot of land (ideally next to some decent sized town)

Re: Why are so many young people getting cancer?

#15
No till farming is probably helping. I learned this year what that really means by seeing farms where they spray herbicide to kill the plants,then they plant new seed while the old dead is still standing around. They then use herbicide as a desiccant to kill the plant at harvest. They probably use pesticides too. The cycle then repeats. I was so disgusted as seeing new crops sprouting amongst the dead vegetation. It must be engineered for that. I came to the inescapable conclusion that the farmers are poisoning everyone rather than have to offer real jobs to native born laborers.

Buckets of *cide, herb and insect, through the cycle. Those no till fields full of crops are some of the most disgusting things I have ever seen. That soil will have applications and applications of *cide soaked in it top to bottom. Like eating plants from a toxic waste dump.

Disgusting. That's the critical national need for glycosphate. Feeding us all engineered stuff from toxic waste dumps so farmers can not need workers or mowing and tilling equipment.

Re: Why are so many young people getting cancer?

#16
post #11

My wild guess before reading the article: unhealthy food. A big part of which is herbicides and pesticides. I will now read the article.

My personal bugbear is the lack of sleep & entirely tied to the phone for that. I remember being in my 20s and not being able to sleep, but the most distracting thing I could reach for was a pile of books in my bedside table. Now, I can't sleep, there's an endless stream of things to keep me awake. The jokes about "5G gives you cancer" is probably not as funny, if you think about the sleep you miss while you doom scr…

> I remember being in my 20s and not being able to sleep, but the most distracting thing I could reach for was a pile of books in my bedside table.

Back when I was young in the 90s, this was exactly how I spent the last 5-6 hours of my days, reading books in my bed until the sun came up in the morning and I actually started getting tired.

Now, I sleep much better, the bed and bedroom is limited to just two activities, sleeping and funtime with partner, otherwise I never just chill in the bed or have anything else interesting in there. And if I can't sleep, I go up again and do something else until I'm tired enough to actually lay down in the bed. Probably helps a ton, as even with the phone on the nightstand next to me, I do fall asleep relatively quick.

Re: Why are so many young people getting cancer?

#19

My wild guess before reading the article: unhealthy food. A big part of which is herbicides and pesticides. I will now read the article.

Upon reading: A bit unclear but yes it seems like unhealthy food + new microbe mutations + obesity They talk about obesity as a separate cause than ultra processed food, I thought it was quite related, something I need to look into

I’m not obese or overweight and while my main meals (breakfast and dinner) are generally very healthy - I can still eat a lot of trash (ultra processed)food as snacks.

I’m sure that could have an effect.

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