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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?

#191

Post by soundnote »

depr wrote: post #187
soundnote wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, especially young people do have it bad. One interesting thing is that as society becomes more and more feminist, it's the young women who fare the worst, and especially the demographics most likely to be intersectional activists. Maybe not all ideologies are good for us? At a quick glance, a lot of the intersectional feminist/activist modes of thought seem to be the polar opposites of what eg. cognitive behavio…

CBT is not effective for lessening mental health symptoms. See e.g. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.116.187773 >the difference between CBT and pill placebo was a standardised mean difference of –0.22 The effect measured in this meta-analysis is a less than two point drop on a 52 point scale (Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression). That is not clinically significant.

Interesting. Will take a look, thanks.

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

#192

Post by coenhyde »

opportune wrote: post #186
coenhyde wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right and wrong. You are right that it is hard if you are poor and easy if you are rich. But you are wrong that HN or people outside of the US do not understand that it is only hard for poor people. It's just that external to the US, people care about the welfare of poor people more. The fact that you felt it necessary to state that caveat illustrates how systemic problems which victimize poor people can be ex…

I brought it up more to illustrate that the work culture of the US is not just a result of precarious financial situations due to lack of a safety net.

I would agree that it's not entirely the result of precarious financial situations. But even in tech and other high paying sectors, I would argue it still plays a factor, even if it is unconscious. Golden handcuffs are in part evident of this. Everyone in America wants to make enough money they can retire comfortably. Which is an entirely rational thing to want to do. But other countries do have higher paying pensions, so the fear of retiring destitute is less.

Also keep in mind employer expectations are a market just like any other. You as an employee compete against others willing to go lower. If you have a portion of the population in precarious financial situations, that will still impact you somewhat as they compete for jobs indirectly with you.

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

#193

Post by SamPatt »

sangnoir wrote: post #138

Wouldn't it be awful if unbridled capitalism turns out to be mankind's Great Filter? We'll be licky to become a Type I civilization after poisoning ourselves and the environment through exposure to chemicals and conditions we do not fully comprehend in return of some convenience, cheaper goods and making some a little richer.

Pollution is bad.

Pollution occurs in non-capitalist societies too. It's often much worse. Chernobyl-levels of incompetent and indifference towards environmental protection.

Non-capitalist societies also do things like concentration camps and genocides and world wars and famines which don't seem to emerge as frequently in capitalist societies.

Don't blame capitalism.

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

#194

Post by colordrops »

rlt wrote: post #92
MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #29

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?

Getting an air quality monitor was enlightening and terrifying. My child’s room (which unfortunately doesn’t have great ventilation) would sometimes hit 4000 ppb VOCs, which I tracked down to some of her stuffed animals…

Which monitor do you use?

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

#195

Post by krisoft »

Gatsky wrote: post #157
photochemsyn wrote: post #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 (atrazin…

Is this even worth doing when people are still smoking, drinking alcohol, living in polluted areas and eating red meat? These are all known risk factors with large effects on cancer risk in younger people. I think the effort is better spent as follows: - ban sale of combustible tobacco products - ban advertising of alcoholic beverages

> still smoking, drinking alcohol, living in polluted areas and eating red meat

One of these is not like the others. I can decide to not smoke, not drink alcohol and not eat red meat. It is a personal choice, and my choice doesn’t affect the health outcomes of those around me. (Mostly. Second hand smoke is a thing, but we did a lot society wise to act against that.)

On the other hand living in poluted areas is absolutely an economy thing. People don’t live in polluted places because they love the sweet buzz it gives them. They live there because by far and large that is the place they can afford to live at. And these areas are not polluted because god made them so. They are mostly polluted because industry or transportation polluted them.

In other words rich people polluting poor people. (By and large.)

I find it very interesting that you choose to ignore the one cause people can’t do anything on their own, and choose to formulate policy proposals against the ones they can.

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

#196

Post by galdosdi »

soundnote wrote: post #183
irrational wrote: post #97

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…

Yeah, especially young people do have it bad. One interesting thing is that as society becomes more and more feminist, it's the young women who fare the worst, and especially the demographics most likely to be intersectional activists. Maybe not all ideologies are good for us? At a quick glance, a lot of the intersectional feminist/activist modes of thought seem to be the polar opposites of what eg. cognitive behavio…

> At a quick glance, a lot of the intersectional feminist/activist modes of thought seem to be the polar opposites of what eg. cognitive behavioral therapy

What a non sequitur. Why would feminism and stoicism have any incompatibilities?

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

#197

Post by Broken_Hippo »

Gatsky wrote: post #162
phkahler wrote: post #3

>> Increased use of screening programmes has contributed to this phenomenon to a certain extent, although a genuine increase in the incidence of early-onset forms of several cancer types also seems to have emerged. How do they separate these two. Early testing is becoming more common so you expect to see more cancer simply due to looking for it. Doc: Early screening has increased the 5-year survival rate for various…

The only cancer routinely screened for in people under 50 is cervical cancer. Even then, the test detects precancerous lesions mainly. As such, ascertainment bias is not a major methodological concern.

Ok. Overall, though, there aren't a lot of cancer screenings otherwise either. You might get a colonoscopy, but you probably aren't checking for bone cancer either.

But you would probably get an MRI of your brain if you were having headaches. An ultrasound to check for gallstones, a CT scan to see if that's your appendix that is hurting. And we are getting way more scans than we used to. A lot of tumors are found as a result of modern imaging technology. More are found by self-examination: We know to watch moles and to do breast or testicular exams at home, for example.

When we find precancerous stuff, we can often keep an eye on it and/or do something about it, hopefully before it gets out of hand.

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

#198

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

Gatsky wrote: post #157
photochemsyn wrote: post #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 (atrazin…

Is this even worth doing when people are still smoking, drinking alcohol, living in polluted areas and eating red meat? These are all known risk factors with large effects on cancer risk in younger people. I think the effort is better spent as follows: - ban sale of combustible tobacco products - ban advertising of alcoholic beverages

In a practical sense, if you do not track something, you have no way of knowing whether it has an impact and whether it outweighs currently known carcinogens. And why immediately go after something people actually willingly put in their bodies as opposed to something that ends up there... somehow?

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

#199

Post by lambdaba »

lambdaba wrote: post #20
notamy wrote: 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 just want to add a thought about how human biology evolved: australophitecus already was hunting, and subsequent evolution selected for the best hunters. Humans became such successful hunters that we hunted megafauna to extinction. Obviously that environment doesn't exist anymore but biologically speaking, we have simply not evolved for abundance. On the contrary, we are able to go for very long without eating. Even people at their ideal weight have about 100k calories stored. That's 30 days of high energetic expenditure. Interestingly, anyone who has done a long (3-5+ days) fast knows one drops in a mental and physical state that feels very much tailored to better hunting. Reduced need for sleep, antidepressive and procognitive effects, etc.

[edit]: I guess the part about humans evolving with scarcity is not entirely accurate, what we can see for sure is there is some adaptation to surviving without eating; this is not a common trait, other species have much inferior ability to store fat.

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

#200

Post by walleeee »

zackmorris wrote: post #177
mihaic wrote: post #140

Anecdotally, I've found out in recent year about many women having serious thyroid issues. I'm sure more people being open about their health increases this, but the sheer frequency seems absurd. Whatever industrial chemicals we're ingesting need to be drastically controlled, and this poisoning needs to be branded so that the general population knows about it. I don't want years of my life to be an externality to a s…

Not just women either. After going through a profound burnout in 2019 which caused me to develop chronic digestive issues, I worry that I injured my thyroid because I've had chills since even before having COVID. The proteins in gluten are similar to ones in the thyroid, so when the body becomes sensitized to something like wheat, it can also start attacking the thyroid (see autoimmune diseases like Hashimoto's). The…

I started having mental health and digestive symptoms similar to yours in mid 2020 and have also had tentatively good results with a gluten-free and inflammation-minimizing diet. I didn't know about the connection between gluten sensitivity and thyroid issues, thanks
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