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Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging

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Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging

#91

Post by bolangi »

bluGill wrote: post #74
y-curious wrote: post #16

I’m in my early 30s and am starting to think about getting a screening. Problem is, it’s not trivial to do. You have to really upsell your doctor to get one so early, even though it’s a relatively benign procedure. There is a noninvasive testing method called Shield but it is way too flawed to be reliable (with poor positive rates for malignant tumors)

> even though it’s a relatively benign procedure. Not completely. Every once in a while they accidentally puncture the intestine with the probes and that becomes a significant medial problem. It doesn't happen often, but that is still a risk that doctors need to consider. If you are over 50 getting one every 10 years is a good idea, and there is some consideration if younger might be worth it. However so few people g…

For a screening procedure recommended as a mass conducted preventative measure in otherwise healthy people, harms must be regulated to a better standard than "doesn't happen often". The study that I read of was about serious issue occuring something like one in 120 procedures. It was done at Kaiser. Next time you're enjoying a sausage, take a moment to look at the sausage skins. If I understand correctly, our intestinal walls are quite thin, and even the colon vulnerable.

Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging

#92

Post by advisedwang »

dexwiz wrote: post #5

Something I've never seen in these analyses is drinking. Millennials are heavy drinkers. Both craft brews and cocktails were defining generational traits. Not everyone is a drinker but it appears they are heavy drinkers compared to other generations. The theory behind the ultra marathoners is that extreme distance running disrupts the epithelial layer and microbiome in the gut. Wouldn't drinking have similar effects?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6819207/

> Compared to non-/occasional drinking (≤1 g/day), light/moderate drinking (up to 2 drinks/day) was associated with a decreased risk of CRC (OR: 0.92, 95% CI: 0.88–0.98, p=0.005), heavy drinking (2–3 drinks/day) was not significantly associated with CRC risk (OR: 1.11, 95% CI: 0.99–1.24, p=0.08), and very heavy drinking (more than 3 drinks/day) was associated with a significant increased risk (OR: 1.25, 95% CI: 1.11–1.40, pI guess these sites don't bring up drinking because except for very heavy drinking the data says it's not a factor.

Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging

#93

Post by greygoo222 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #69
greygoo222 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't bother checking or disputing the accuracy of your factual claims, because it does not matter. Colorectal cancer is not the same thing as high blood pressure, or type 2 diabetes, or any other cancer that isn't colorectal cancer. Diseases are not a monolith and you cannot assume low risk of some diseases means low risk of others. That is wild guesswork passed off as logic, like measuring the shadow your testicl…

"Diseases are not a monolith and you cannot assume low risk of some diseases means low risk of others. That is wild guesswork passed off as logic..." Diseases are not a monolith, but they do tend to arise and fall in some specific clusters, and that is not "logic", good or bad (too many computer-minded people drag logic into the chaos that is biology), but rather a long-time empirical observation, albeit with some ex…

Your testicles, empirically, shrink when it gets cold. Do you think measuring their shadow is an acceptable substitute for a thermometer?

Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging

#94

Post by briHass »

recallingmemory wrote: post #86

It doesn't look like meat consumption was mentioned anywhere. Frequent consumption of red and processed meat is strongly linked to a higher risk of colorectal cancer, with studies showing a 30% to 40% increased risk for high consumption levels [1]. Processed meat, in particular, raises CRC risk by about 18% for every 50-gram daily portion [2]. Your ultra-endurance athletes might be convinced they need more protein in…

Though ostensibly supportive of your claim, the first article says it best a few pages in (surprisingly honest):

"To date, there are no clearly established biological mechanisms that could explain the role of red and processed meat in the process of CRC carcinogenesis."

In other words, we see some small signal in epidemiological studies, and we want to speculate about mechanistic causes, even though this has been tried before to no success.

Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging

#95

Post by epistasis »

recallingmemory wrote: post #86

It doesn't look like meat consumption was mentioned anywhere. Frequent consumption of red and processed meat is strongly linked to a higher risk of colorectal cancer, with studies showing a 30% to 40% increased risk for high consumption levels [1]. Processed meat, in particular, raises CRC risk by about 18% for every 50-gram daily portion [2]. Your ultra-endurance athletes might be convinced they need more protein in…

Why would meat cause a decrease in incidence for older folks but a higher incidence for younger folks?

Additionally, the risks you quantify for general cancer incidence are at the bottom odds ratios listed at the end for early-onset. Speculating that ultra-endurance athletes eat tons of meat, without any evidence, seems quite misplaced.

Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging

#96

Post by reenorap »

elric wrote: post #21
parl_match wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be the damage of repetitive motion, it may be chemicals released into the bloodstream from endurance athletics. It may be something else. Without knowing the root cause, it's impossible to figure out the "sweet spot"

Could be a lot of things. Lots of long distance runners consume a lot of sugary gels to keep going. Not sure what the typical composition is, but likely lots of glucose and no fibre. The marathon runners I know also seem to eat tons of junk food, they can get away with it from a weight perspective because a long run will burn it off, but it could have other consequences. Point being: there's a lot about long distance…

But the rates of obese people who presumably consume a lot of sugars and carbs are 1/10th the rate of ultra marathon runners. It's scary to think that such conditioned athletes could be subject to this horrible disease.

Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging

#98

Post by reenorap »

y-curious wrote: post #16

I’m in my early 30s and am starting to think about getting a screening. Problem is, it’s not trivial to do. You have to really upsell your doctor to get one so early, even though it’s a relatively benign procedure. There is a noninvasive testing method called Shield but it is way too flawed to be reliable (with poor positive rates for malignant tumors)

I've decided to invest $2000/year and get an MRI scan every year. My first one, the baseline, showed nothing remarkable, thank God. I'm scheduled for my second one in a few weeks, I want to be able to catch anything weird very early on. I think it's worth it despite what all the know-it-alls say.

Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging

#99

Post by recallingmemory »

briHass wrote: post #94
recallingmemory wrote: post #86

It doesn't look like meat consumption was mentioned anywhere. Frequent consumption of red and processed meat is strongly linked to a higher risk of colorectal cancer, with studies showing a 30% to 40% increased risk for high consumption levels [1]. Processed meat, in particular, raises CRC risk by about 18% for every 50-gram daily portion [2]. Your ultra-endurance athletes might be convinced they need more protein in…

Though ostensibly supportive of your claim, the first article says it best a few pages in (surprisingly honest): "To date, there are no clearly established biological mechanisms that could explain the role of red and processed meat in the process of CRC carcinogenesis." In other words, we see some small signal in epidemiological studies, and we want to speculate about mechanistic causes, even though this has been tri…

I would point to the conclusion of the study: "Red and processed meat consumption and its interaction with the gut microbiota are found to be major associated factors. The CRC-associated gut microbiota is made of pro-inflammatory or pro-carcinogenic bacteria and opportunistic pathogenic bacteria that enrich the tumor microenvironment by promoting disease progression."

I would also add that the World Health Organization after evaluating 800 studies classified processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen back in 2015, indicating a strong causal link to colorectal cancer, placing it in the same risk category as tobacco. [1]

While I linked to a single study in my original comment, I believe the results are more than a small signal.. enough for the WHO to come out and say processed meat does in fact have a causal link to CRC.

1: https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/2015/11/03/report-s...

Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging

#100

Post by briHass »

pessimizer wrote: post #78
y-curious wrote: post #16

I’m in my early 30s and am starting to think about getting a screening. Problem is, it’s not trivial to do. You have to really upsell your doctor to get one so early, even though it’s a relatively benign procedure. There is a noninvasive testing method called Shield but it is way too flawed to be reliable (with poor positive rates for malignant tumors)

> I’m in my early 30s and am starting to think about getting a screening. This is a pretty stupid thing to do unless you've had some sort of symptom or family history. Your protection from illness due to screening is statistical, and jumping out of the calculated recommendation just makes it more likely to hurt you (false positives, false negatives, injuries from the procedure) than to benefit you. Desperately trying…

From a 'public health' perspective, it makes perfect sense to limit the frequency of screening procedures by age and other broad risk-factors, but that doesn't help at the individual level if you fall on the unlucky side of those statistics.

Most cancers are still very much lethal once they progress to a certain point, and the best treatment we know of is early detection. Many of the cancer screens are harmless or don't add significant risk of death, so it really comes down to money and medical resource availability (also solved with money.)

I don't see much difference in someone paying out-of-pocket for a full-body MRI/colonoscopy vs. them spending way above average on any other item that slightly reduces the risk of dying (how many smoke alarms and fire extinguishers does your home have?)

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