[HN Gopher] Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?
        
       Author : v4dok
       Score  : 212 points
       Date   : 2022-09-09 09:45 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
        
       | NhanH wrote:
       | I can't find a source with the full paper at all. And I'm
       | guessing that's why there is no comment here.
        
         | posterboy wrote:
         | This is the source, the full article costs only $99 on a
         | journal subscrption, all expenses paid by a university near you
         | in case you have access
        
           | wongarsu wrote:
           | If it isn't on sci-hub, does it even exist? (/s)
        
       | MonkeyMalarky wrote:
       | 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?
        
         | TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
         | Or long-term side-effects of medication, food-trends, or lack
         | of exercise?
        
         | nativespecies wrote:
         | My pet theory is plastics/microplastics. We're seeing now just
         | how prevalent they are (and how inside of us they are, too).
        
         | chiefalchemist wrote:
         | To be fair, I don't think those are random theories. There's
         | plenty of research on the ill effects of (bad) diet, pollution,
         | etc.
         | 
         | But yeah, volatile chemicals are a form of hyper-local
         | pollution. Perhaps less proof ATM, but close enough to regular
         | (?) pollution to want to avoid it. Err to the side of caution,
         | not to the side of cancer.
        
         | Jill_the_Pill wrote:
         | I also wonder about exposure in youth to nuclear weapons
         | testing fallout. That might show an identifiable spatial or
         | temporal pattern, maybe falling off in more recent years and
         | clustered among downwinders worldwide.
        
           | kaba0 wrote:
           | I don't know, radiation is very easy to measure, has a very
           | well-understood effect (the previous century was pretty much
           | about getting to learn _every_ interaction of radiation and
           | the human body), and I don't think that those fallouts even
           | measurably increase radiation level compared to the usual
           | background one.
           | 
           | In short, radiation either has an immediate, very apparent
           | and deadly effect, or a simple stochastic one that basically
           | linearly increases with radiation exposure.
        
             | ectopod wrote:
             | It's not the environmental radiation that's the problem,
             | it's ingested isotopes. See e.g. strontium and leukaemia.
        
         | Fezzik wrote:
         | This is known issue, at least of late. There was a recent
         | article posted here (can't find it right now on mobile) about
         | how that New Car Smell is caused, to some degree, by known
         | carcinogens.
        
           | kaba0 wrote:
           | Well, what isn't a carcinogen? That word gets thrown around
           | way too much -- most food items we regularly eat contains
           | several carcinogens, but besides increasing the statistical
           | chance of cancer they are not imminently dangerous without
           | further clarification on the metric of the effect.
        
             | poxrud wrote:
             | Yep, I recently found out that drinking very hot tea or
             | coffee can be carcinogenic. This is the only way that I
             | like to drink these beverages.
        
               | hanniabu wrote:
               | Due to the containers
        
               | eurasiantiger wrote:
               | And due to the heat
        
           | Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
           | Sad, that smell is amazing
        
         | rlt wrote:
         | 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...
        
           | NullPrefix wrote:
           | You could try running a cycle in the dryer with those stuffed
           | animals. Maybe the dryer filter would pick up something.
        
           | WalterBright wrote:
           | Ventilation got worse in the 70s as there was a big push to
           | eliminate leaks in houses to improve HVAC efficiency.
        
           | dcolkitt wrote:
           | Still not sure how post-Covid, we haven't concluded that
           | improving indoor ventilation should be a massive public
           | health priority.
        
             | dan_quixote wrote:
             | Because it's difficult. How do you solve for this problem
             | in a house without internal ducting in temperature extremes
             | throughout the year?
        
               | rendang wrote:
               | I'm curious, how long has ventilation ducting been part
               | of housing codes, in other words how old are houses that
               | have that problem?
        
               | parkingrift wrote:
               | Many (most?) houses in the north/north-east do not have
               | ducts. It's very rare for me personally to come across
               | central air in the NY area.
        
             | yamtaddle wrote:
             | Seems like there'd be a lot of tension between that goal,
             | and reducing energy use.
        
               | meatmanek wrote:
               | It's not 100% solvable, but it's possible to recover a
               | lot of the thermal energy of the air you exhaust and put
               | back into the air you're intaking:
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_recovery_ventilation
        
           | snowwrestler wrote:
           | Can you recommend a product?
        
             | rlt wrote:
             | I have an older generation Awair. It's a little expensive
             | but I like it.
             | 
             | I also have a couple different Austin Air purifier models.
             | Also expensive but seems to work well.
        
           | colordrops wrote:
           | Which monitor do you use?
        
         | Robotbeat wrote:
         | I actually wonder if viral epidemics are to blame? Increased
         | air travel means rare viruses can become widespread.
        
         | swayvil wrote:
        
           | TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
           | Impossible. It is safe and effective.
        
             | coding123 wrote:
             | It is telling that people are unwilling to even talk about
             | that. Telling that people fall off science for their
             | political ideologies.
        
               | yamtaddle wrote:
               | It's telling that people can't help but bring up some
               | very-recent thing they're upset about for dubious
               | reasons, when commenting on an article discussing a trend
               | going back _decades_. People are  "unwilling", in this
               | thread, because it's _irrelevant_.
               | 
               | Unless we're going for "all vaccines cause cancer", but
               | from the context ("that vaccine", "It is safe and
               | effective.") it seems we're talking about the Covid-19
               | vaccines. So, irrelevant. Whether they do or don't
               | increase cancer risk (or even if they _decrease_ it,
               | which is also possible) has no bearing on the topic at
               | hand.
        
               | swayvil wrote:
               | This vaccine is special, as we all know.
               | 
               | And it's a possible cause that I offered. The parent was
               | proposing a list. I added to it.
               | 
               | And now I have been censored. Insane.
        
               | thombat wrote:
               | The article being discussed starts with these words "Over
               | the past several decades", and you suggest as a cause a
               | vaccine that the general public wasn't exposed to just
               | two years ago. You're not being censored, you're
               | receiving feedback that you did a dumb.
        
       | oxff wrote:
       | U relax the Malthusian selection, u get side effects, simple as.
        
         | honkler wrote:
         | this. It's because of mutational load of not letting darwin do
         | its thing
        
       | irrational wrote:
       | 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 world or social media,
       | 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.
        
         | some_random wrote:
         | We know for a fact that social media causes these issues,
         | thanks to the leaking of internal Facebook documents to the
         | WSJ[1]. Whether or not it's the only source of the rise of
         | mental illness isn't clear, but it's a huge factor for sure.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039
        
         | soundnote wrote:
         | 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 behavioral
         | therapy and the stoicism it's inspired by advocate (eg. others
         | are responsible for your emotional reactions/state, so to
         | control your mood you have to control others vs. you are
         | responsible for and in control of your own emotional reactions
         | and mental state and you can improve your mood by honing
         | yourself).
         | 
         | We know CBT is effective for getting rid of dysfunctional
         | thought patterns and lessening mental health symptoms. In that
         | light, these numbers seem unfortunate but entirely predictable.
         | 
         | https://i.imgur.com/uRX0A9u.png
        
           | galdosdi wrote:
           | > 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?
        
             | soundnote wrote:
             | I literally gave one example in the post you quoted. The
             | intersectional types are vehemently against owning your
             | emotional responses in the way stoicism advocates, and
             | instead actively encourage finding more and more ever more
             | minute things that might be rationalized to be a slight
             | against themselves. On a deeper level, stoicism
             | acknowledges and is built on the idea that not everything
             | in the world is changeable, while the intersectional mode
             | of thought is exactly the opposite.
        
             | MandieD wrote:
             | For me, they're absolutely complementary. If I'm the only
             | thing I can really control, how can I do so without the
             | right to make my own decisions beyond whether or not to
             | accept a marriage proposal? Before feminism, married women
             | were legally children, at least in the parts of the world
             | I've lived in (US and Germany). In the state I live in,
             | Bavaria, my husband could have prevented me from getting a
             | driver's license or working up until about 1970.
             | 
             | A woman fighting against feminism is a woman fighting
             | against responsibility for herself.
        
           | depr wrote:
           | 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.
        
             | soundnote wrote:
             | Interesting. Will take a look, thanks.
        
             | johnfernow wrote:
             | From the study you linked:
             | 
             | > Our study has limitations. First, detection of an
             | interaction effect requires a large sample size. The
             | present findings require replication with a larger sample
             | of trials designed to test the interaction. The trials from
             | which the data were extracted were not designed to test
             | this hypothesis, but do provide a 'first look' into this
             | question using all available data. Given the wide
             | confidence interval around zero for the interaction
             | coefficient in the present study, it is possible that our
             | finding represents a type II error. Although none of the
             | sensitivity analyses were suggestive of possible
             | interaction effects, future studies may nonetheless still
             | reveal an interaction that we failed to detect in the data
             | available to us...
             | 
             | [?]
             | 
             | I'd be very cautious about saying "CBT is not effective for
             | lessening mental health symptoms" due to a single study.
             | From the American Psychological Association [1]:
             | 
             | > Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of
             | psychological treatment that has been demonstrated to be
             | effective for a range of problems including depression,
             | anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug use problems, marital
             | problems, eating disorders, and severe mental illness.
             | Numerous research studies suggest that CBT leads to
             | significant improvement in functioning and quality of life.
             | In many studies, CBT has been demonstrated to be as
             | effective as, or more effective than, other forms of
             | psychological therapy or psychiatric medications.
             | 
             | [?]
             | 
             | From the NHS [2]:
             | 
             | > Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can be as effective
             | as medicine in treating some mental health problems, but it
             | may not be successful or suitable for everyone.
             | 
             | [?]
             | 
             | From the Cleveland Clinic [3]:
             | 
             | > Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a structured, goal-
             | oriented type of psychotherapy (talk therapy). Mental
             | health professionals, including psychologists, therapists
             | and counselors, use it to treat or manage mental health
             | conditions and emotional concerns. It's one of the most
             | common and best-studied forms of psychotherapy.
             | 
             | [?]
             | 
             | I'm not at all suggesting that we blindly trust those
             | organizations, rather just cautioning saying it is no more
             | effective than a pill placebo due to one study.
             | 
             | [?]
             | 
             | A different study that reviewed meta-analyses came to quite
             | a different conclusion [4]:
             | 
             | > In our review of meta-analyses, CBT tailored to children
             | showed robust support for treating internalizing disorders,
             | with benefits outweighing pharmacological approaches in
             | mood and anxiety symptoms. The evidence was more mixed for
             | externalizing disorders, chronic pain, or problems
             | following abuse. Moreover, there remains a need for a
             | greater number of high-quality trials in demographically
             | diverse samples. Similarly, CBT was moderately efficacious
             | for the treatment of emotional symptoms in the elderly, but
             | no conclusions about long-term outcomes of CBT or
             | combination therapies consisting of CBT, and medication
             | could be made.
             | 
             | >
             | 
             | > Finally, our review identified 11 studies that compared
             | response rates between CBT and other treatments or control
             | conditions. In 7 of these reviews, CBT showed higher
             | response rates than the comparison conditions, and in only
             | one review (Leichsenring & Leibig, 2003), which was
             | conducted by authors with a psychodynamic orientation,
             | reported that CBT had lower response rates than comparison
             | treatments.
             | 
             | >
             | 
             | > In sum, our review of meta-analytic studies examining the
             | efficacy of CBT demonstrated that this treatment has been
             | used for a wide range of psychological problems. In
             | general, the evidence-base of CBT is very strong, and
             | especially for treating anxiety disorders. However, despite
             | the enormous literature base, there is still a clear need
             | for high-quality studies examining the efficacy of CBT.
             | Furthermore, the efficacy of CBT is questionable for some
             | problems, which suggests that further improvements in CBT
             | strategies are still needed. In addition, many of the meta-
             | analytic studies included studies with small sample sizes
             | or inadequate control groups. Moreover, except for children
             | and elderly populations, no meta-analytic studies of CBT
             | have been reported on particular subgroups, such as ethnic
             | minorities and low income samples.
             | 
             | >
             | 
             | > Despite these weaknesses in some areas, it is clear that
             | the evidence-base of CBT is enormous. Given the high cost-
             | effectiveness of the intervention, it is surprising that
             | many countries, including many developed nations, have not
             | yet adopted CBT as the first-line intervention for mental
             | disorders. A notable exception is the Improving Access to
             | Psychological Therapies initiative by the National Health
             | Commissioning in the United Kingdom (Rachman & Wilson,
             | 2008). We believe that it is time that others follow suit.
             | 
             | 1. https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-
             | families/cog...
             | 
             | 2. https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/talking-therapies-
             | medicine-...
             | 
             | 3. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/21208-c
             | ogni...
             | 
             | 4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/
             | 
             | edit: formatting
        
         | UniverseHacker wrote:
         | I don't remember hearing much about anxiety or depression, but
         | do remember hearing about things like alcoholism, domestic
         | violence, and 'laziness.' I'm pretty sure these are largely the
         | same psychological issues- it's just people used to hide it,
         | and deny it even to themselves- so you would only see the
         | resulting dysfunction. Nowadays people are getting a diagnosis
         | and treatment rather than just silently suffering and hiding
         | it.
        
         | alexalx666 wrote:
         | There seems to be an empty space that people rush to fill with
         | a newest iPhone and installing FB and Instagram instantly, I
         | guess in 90s you would use McDonalds for that
        
         | TomSwirly wrote:
         | Perhaps knowing that we aren't going to do anything significant
         | about the climate crisis, and thus devastate our environment
         | and the carrying capacity of the planet, might be what's making
         | them a bit touchy.
        
         | blablabla123 wrote:
         | But I also think "back in the days" life was more fixed.
         | Probably getting a full time job as employee, starting a
         | family, getting a house was not really optional. Now there are
         | much more choices. Add to that all the hyper-connectivity. I
         | don't really think people were better off but were just forced
         | to handle everything more calmly. Growing up in the 90s, what
         | I've found is that things changed a lot when people were
         | starting their jobs.
        
           | coenhyde wrote:
           | Not to mention living in America is like playing life on hard
           | mode; at least relative to other OECD countries. There's a
           | lot more things you have to take care of / think about in
           | America. There's a level of mental overhead that does not
           | exist in other developed countries that many Americans do not
           | realize are optional. eg health insurance, education,
           | unemployment safety net, or even little things like way too
           | many coverage options when buying car insurance.
           | 
           | When you do not have to worry about your health or physical
           | safety if you lose your job, you can chill out a little bit.
           | You don't need to bend over backwards for your job, it is
           | easier to enforce boundaries. This dynamic puts adult
           | Americans under a lot of stress, and it manifests in many
           | ways. And it propagates to the children too, through lack of
           | attention or stressful home.
        
             | opportune wrote:
             | It's hard mode if you're poor and easy mode if you're rich.
             | For the top 1-2 deciles I think most of these things are
             | much better in the US than other countries. I'm a long time
             | proponent of universal healthcare, but I've heard terrible
             | experiences in Canada and the UK in getting relatively
             | basic treatment in a timely manner.
             | 
             | I think a lot of HN doesn't understand that all the shitty
             | things about the US that people from other countries love
             | to rag on basically don't apply to many people in the US.
             | If you have a job that is in demand you will not need to
             | worry any more about these things than if you live in
             | another developed country. Especially in American corporate
             | culture, sure people are worried about their mortgage and
             | some do live paycheck to paycheck, but the culture of
             | excessive work in places like tech or finance is not
             | generally about getting thrown out to the streets with
             | cancer.
        
               | coenhyde wrote:
               | 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 excused and remain unchanged
               | in the US.
               | 
               | For context I've lived for decades in both Australia and
               | the US. Pros and cons in both cultures, and I love both.
        
               | opportune wrote:
               | 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.
        
               | coenhyde wrote:
               | 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.
        
             | Broken_Hippo wrote:
             | _There 's a level of mental overhead that does not exist in
             | other developed countries that many Americans do not
             | realize are optional. eg health insurance, education,
             | unemployment safety net, or even little things like way too
             | many coverage options when buying car insurance._
             | 
             | I occasionally try to stress how these things seriously
             | improve living standards. Just health insurance itself does
             | a great deal to eliminate stress. I can go and get a weird
             | mole checked out. I can get an MRI when I've been having
             | headaches to make sure it isn't cancer. I can get the spot
             | on my pancreas scanned every 6-12 months to make sure it
             | doesn't do weird stuff. All for less out of pocket than
             | $300 per year and my taxes are less than state + federal +
             | premiums.
        
         | dan_quixote wrote:
         | What about constant stimuli fighting for our attention by
         | exploiting our lizard-brain emotions every waking hour?
        
         | drstrous wrote:
        
         | rtev wrote:
         | The smartphone era directly seems to coincide with elevated
         | mental health problems.
         | 
         | I think porn and social media are responsible. Those two
         | things, heavily changing neurotransmitter and hormone patterns,
         | are significantly amplified when everyone has a smartphone.
        
           | eurasiantiger wrote:
           | I think video games, TV, rock'n'roll music and the bicycle
           | are responsible.
        
             | irrational wrote:
             | I think bicycles are only responsible for the drop in
             | birthdate. All that rattling around is damaging women's
             | reproductive facilities!
        
         | gnrlst wrote:
         | > 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 inferiority, i.e. your present self.
         | 
         | - The "post 9/11 world" you mention, is simply a result of a
         | general worsening of Western political relations over time,
         | which are becoming especially evident recently. That state of
         | turmoil weakens your sense of stability and security, making
         | the future look bleak - i.e. your future self.
         | 
         | - Further blows for the knockout: climate change, pollution /
         | micro-plastics / rising costs of living, etc.
         | 
         | I'm actually surprised depression, anxiety and other mental
         | disorders aren't more common...but perhaps they will be.
        
           | soundnote wrote:
           | > - The "post 9/11 world" you mention, is simply a result of
           | a general worsening of Western political relations over time,
           | which are becoming especially evident recently. That state of
           | turmoil weakens your sense of stability and security, making
           | the future look bleak - i.e. your future self.
           | 
           | The relations have not simply become worse, they have been
           | very deliberately driven to be worse:
           | 
           | https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-
           | great...
           | 
           | Just look at these hockey sticks. People talk about divisive
           | rhetoric, but hot damn.
        
           | whimsicalism wrote:
           | 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 appealing to the human psyche to think things are
           | worse in [current-time period] than in the past. This is why
           | there is an intuitive appeal to things like "Make America
           | Great Again." Social media only amplifies this effect because
           | people are exposed to things that are maximally appealing to
           | their psyche.
        
             | brankoB wrote:
             | Life today is better if you're already established, i.e.
             | have a well paying job, own a home, etc.
             | 
             | Being young in todays world is exponentially harder than it
             | was, say, 40 years ago. Many young people have given up on
             | the idea of home ownership. I'm 26 and I've had friends
             | laugh in my face when I suggested owning instead of
             | renting. It's simply unattainable unless you're in a
             | lucrative field. I'm in Canada for reference (our home
             | price to income ratio is one of the worst in the world).
        
               | whimsicalism wrote:
               | I think you are just falling to this same nostalgia bias.
               | 
               | In terms of the material abundance that one experiences
               | today, it is just on a different level from 40 years ago.
               | 
               | Housing ownership is also not the be all end all. And
               | while the prices are higher, the rates are lower so that
               | you will not be paying a greater proportion of your
               | income on housing.
               | 
               | Compare to 40 years ago:
               | https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MDSP
               | 
               | To look at housing and say that the high price of homes
               | negates all quality of life improvements in the last 40
               | years seems wrong to me.
        
             | TomSwirly wrote:
             | > 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.
        
         | m_fayer wrote:
         | Puberty coming on ever earlier is my pet theory for what's
         | causing this.
         | 
         | It might come in a way that's uneven. An adult set of sexual
         | characteristics and drives without the corresponding
         | development in executive function must be difficult.
         | 
         | Add to that the sudden arrival of sexual characteristics and
         | attention at an age where our culture has no scripts and
         | rituals with which to handle them. Kids must feel like adrift
         | aliens, within the world and within their own bodies.
        
           | eurasiantiger wrote:
           | More likely it's the endocrine disruptor chemicals in the
           | environment that are causing earlier puberty AND increased
           | cancer rates.
        
       | wikitopian wrote:
        
         | mikedelago wrote:
         | Is there a source on this? My understanding is that current
         | trends were lower now than what they were in the past as far as
         | promiscuity goes
        
         | rendang wrote:
         | Which ones aside from HPV?
        
       | samuelizdat wrote:
       | I think a young Harvard math professor wrote about this in the
       | 90's.
        
         | jker wrote:
         | Berkeley, not Harvard. He was a Harvard graduate, but taught at
         | Berkeley, and in fact was the youngest math professor in Cal
         | history.
        
         | dr_hooo wrote:
         | Sorry, but are we supposed to get this reference, or start
         | Googling for math professor cancer?
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | vermilingua wrote:
           | Ted Kaczynski
        
             | thebigspacefuck wrote:
             | That's what I thought originally but he wasn't ever
             | professor at Harvard and he was in his 50s in the 90s so it
             | must be someone else.
        
             | calvinmorrison wrote:
             | Doctor Ted Kaczynski
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | lebuffon wrote:
       | 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 expand research in this
       | direction?
       | 
       | Could the implications for the existing cancer "industry"
       | preclude finding prophylactic methods? Asking for a friend.
        
         | kyleyeats wrote:
         | People will never accept this theory because it means having
         | more sex is giving us more cancer. Instead they'll say our diet
         | is worse (it isn't) and that we're exposed to worse chemicals
         | (we're not) than 70 years ago. We're definitely having more sex
         | but that's not allowed to be a theory. It's like theorizing
         | that cars are killing flying bug populations-- it's just a non-
         | starter. Come up with something else.
        
         | everdrive wrote:
         | Does the vaccine help you if you already have the virus?
        
         | myroon5 wrote:
         | Not even limited to cancer:
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32423720
        
         | Test0129 wrote:
         | I used to think this and I don't think so anymore. Consider a
         | company who develops the de-facto cure for a cancer. Let's say
         | a course of normal treatment to remission cost $200,000.
         | 
         | There's no reason this company wouldn't release the cure. They
         | would simple charge <COST_OF_NORMAL_TREATMENT> * <MARGIN> +
         | <OPPORTUNITY_COST> for the drug. People would pay almost any
         | amount for such a cure. The company would have no problem
         | padding it's bottom line sufficiently.
        
       | daniel-cussen wrote:
       | Free radicals in the water table. Pollution in general. Plastic
       | in the rainwater. Doesn't just affect nature. Backs up up the
       | water table, from ocean to river from the slums to the hills.
       | 
       | Good that we're doing it less and less, in some respects.
       | Pollution is poison.
       | 
       | Although there is always some. Even very primitive societies eg
       | in the Amazon Basin pollute a bit and after like ten years they
       | move to a new place, and the go in circles in the long run,
       | sustainable.
        
         | myth_drannon wrote:
         | We can scale it to planets. We pollute this planet and then
         | move to another, then another. Come back to Earth in 10 million
         | years.
         | 
         | The only small problem with that is that we are not that
         | advanced to do it.
        
           | daniel-cussen wrote:
           | That's funny because Elon Musk in his capacity as a vehicle
           | entrepreneur has not only advanced the expansion to Mars, by
           | leaps and bounds, hey if before we could get a million people
           | there now we can get 100 million, or if we could get 100
           | million now we can get everybody out. Leaps and bounds. Costs
           | the same as a college degree to get a rocket into orbit, in
           | fuel terms. Yeah like $200000, well that's only if you get a
           | scholarship and the price of fuel doesn't skyrocket, but
           | similar. Similar.
           | 
           | So what's contradictory is he also yes made good advances
           | with batteries for cars (fixed everything honestly) but
           | really got every other carmaker feeling real threatened right
           | in the business model. A sensitive delicate place, you
           | understand. He got everybody else putting eg 20 billion like
           | Ford into researching electric cars, and partering up,
           | making...making their thing, good cars too, but I would buy
           | no other than a Tesla for a simple reason. Accidents. Fewer
           | accidents is less pollution, yes Tesla allegedly pushes it as
           | self-driving and sometimes it is (Elon gets lied to I saw it
           | once), but really the really cool thing is an incredibly bad
           | driver like me can drive a car while doing his best to pay
           | attention _together with_ the car 's safety system. Not
           | instead of. In tandem. Then you don't get all those cadavers
           | filling up the graveyard which takes up land, no joke very
           | expensive South SF...yes the human tragedy yes. But the media
           | overlooks it like nothing so for purely the sake of argument
           | I can focus on the pollution. Well maybe not, pollutes those
           | people with something toxic, there's a debate in medicine eg
           | punches are toxic, blunt force trauma is toxic. Think about
           | that. Well then they're in the hospital for weeks, then the
           | doctors pollute them perhaps [1]. Then, pollution, in the
           | junkyard. Then, you need another car, pollution in the mines
           | to purify the metal...lithium in Chile. So what's the
           | ecological alternative?
           | 
           | Basically horses, the original self-driving car, and very
           | ecological.
           | 
           | Ford said if he asked people they'd say they wanted faster
           | horses, that is what Tesla makes.
           | 
           | .
           | 
           | [1] Change of subject: they did this to me twice, to figure
           | out how to do poison you with no excuses, no loopholes, no
           | fucking consent. Shut you up before you open your mouth.
           | _Wait wasn 't it going to be just two vaccines and that'd be
           | it?_ Shut up. _Can I assay this vaccine?_ Shut up. _Can I
           | object on religious grounds?_ Ten years ago yes. Shut the
           | fuck up. Like turns out I haven 't met a single Covid death,
           | not personally obviously, you neither, through an
           | acquaintance only one, and he died because he went to a
           | hospital, caught Covid in a hospital with an existing
           | condition.
           | 
           | Yes I do know how to bitch down to social expectations under
           | the threat of being labeled as a stereotype, or like I used
           | to, sorry, I knew too much it was lobotomized.
           | 
           | Dude no excuses nothing don't take no for an answer
           | (violers's slogan), oh there was an exception but you didn't
           | qualify, learn to poison people on the schizos first, then
           | the rest. Nazi playbook, literally. First they came for me
           | man, they're coming for you now. Well didn't poison me twice,
           | hundreds of times meaning two different pills, but second
           | time, mostly dodged it. They provided no benefit and had
           | serious side effects, second one required signatures for
           | consent that were extorted out of 100% of the patients
           | (Clozapine at Clinica Rayencura, full court press, tiered
           | rewards in the Caribbean 10% you get a plane ticket 20% you
           | get a hotel room 30% you get a boat ride to the secret
           | island, shooting for that 100% consent, they got caught in
           | fact biggest suit of its kind, not big enough did it again),
           | doctors say first do no harm. No benefit just harm, poison.
           | 
           | Dude just read the consent form (consent is code for rape),
           | then recognized the name, said Oh that Abbott wants me to
           | take this pill? Fuck that. So second time around I was wise
           | and dodged, only guy in the rehab to dodge obesity and immune
           | compromise, it gives you AIDS ["Te da SIDA" -- Juan Luis
           | Lorca Tobar, like July 2018], Abbott--which I'm dying to take
           | to court. Dying to take that Abbott to court. This close to
           | giving me AIDS? What an Abbott. But due to torture that is
           | their fault in part as well, I by design can't properly
           | communicate with any lawyer within the hour I get for free,
           | who'll take the case and ride to victory fucking them in the
           | Federal Circuit...dude my dream. Someday I will get my day in
           | court, evidently not within 13 years, maybe not even 20
           | years, someday. Dude combination of the 6th and 13th
           | amendment. I can justify with exact mathematics the shrink
           | industry is treating me like a slave. And you know my code
           | compiles.
           | 
           | Let that be known. That Abbott owes me money.
           | 
           | Hey, Abbott, abbot, cleric right there in the name. Like
           | there's no hot guys studying sixty years to get their degree
           | as a cleric. They get work, or, in the club, get worked,
           | women jumping them nonstop, me too but I think my libido is
           | very damaged again lobotomy. Cleric is a pervy career path
           | basically, come on no partying til 35 and then crazy?
           | 
           | Women don't like doctors anymore, just like...eeegh. Yeah
           | money yeah, literally blood money. And even then always beta.
           | Alpha on the secret island? Yeah. Gray's Anatomy, yeah.
           | Patrick Dempsey is handsome and an actor, as counterfactual
           | as it gets, exact opposite career path, bleached his hair to
           | look gray in fact. American Medicine subsidizes those shows
           | for you to trust them.
           | 
           | There's good doctors too, that's why they call them good
           | doctors, like dumb blondes, why not just say doctors, why not
           | just say blondes? I was blond, still considered blond in the
           | modeling industry I would say dirty blond. But when I was
           | small? Blond. Smart as fuck. [And in general blondes are only
           | dumb insofar as jealousy first, secondly loss of innocence ie
           | sex diminishes their fairness depending on whom it's with
           | chimeric DNA goes everywhere, yellow felt-tip pen. Finally
           | it's a trait indicating youth, apart from that I] Proved it
           | hardcore, under a psychiatric handicap, beat the secretly
           | nationally-ranked shrink at chess. They _had_ to let me out
           | at that point, but it was a bullshit thing it was an illusion
           | to torture their patients, all I have to do is win this game
           | (which is impossible) and I 'm free. Even if you win they
           | won't let you out any sooner. Not a good doctor, not a dumb
           | blond. You can see the before and after on http://fgemm.com,
           | my whole history before during and after the torture ward,
           | which had HN access isn't that a nice perk? Another patient
           | who was a lifer said, "cuatro estrellas.". Four star hotel.
           | Lindsay Lohan that's five stars, Hollywood rehab, there's one
           | in Chile nobody said a word about, a rumor among my favorite
           | people. Great food for one, not niggardly with the calories,
           | number one, you'd think if they pretended to understand
           | milligrams they would need to understand calories, nope.
           | Should lose their degrees just for that. Cept for the
           | anorexics.
           | 
           | .
           | 
           | This where it gets interesting.
           | 
           | .
           | 
           | So one killer strategy--you really want the shrinktalk I got
           | for you? First off you will remain inside until either your
           | sponsor runs out of money or you stop insisting you're sane.
           | Dude you want to get out (not always better on the outside
           | though), dude shut the fuck up if you want to get released.
           | Just shut the fuck up. Stop saying you're not insane, never
           | accuse more than one person, play dumb because they won't
           | stop til you are dumb. Amnestic drug lobotomy.
           | 
           | .
           | 
           | I read advice on reddit, _Epic Shrinktalk_ , dude said _1)
           | take shit and 2) ask if you 're making progress._ Dude
           | playbook for May 12, 2012, right there! That was literally
           | it! I owe him royalties...let me pay them by divulging the
           | following. I took some shit (better than taking on a whole
           | gang) and I asked if I was making progress. And I had signed
           | in myself, that's when they roll out the red carpet if it's
           | legit. Now I know if you're eg a psychiatrist considering
           | treating me reading this you'll be like...the fuck? But bear
           | in mind, lobotomized into divulging compulsively, lost my
           | shit after the final third time of abduction, and second,
           | come on doc you watched _One Flew Over the Cuckoo 's Nest_.
           | You're a doctor, or a good doctor? White horses are not
           | horses, as the Ancient Chinese, School of Names, said.
           | Genius.
           | 
           | I've had much more than my share of good doctors, I'm a
           | lifer. I didn't look under a rock, I did a rock census. I
           | know there's 950-998 psychs in Chile. I know what they can do
           | and what they can't. I know the system. I bought the Law Book
           | and read as far as I could, well like any book if there's
           | five words you don't understand on the first page it's beyond
           | your level. Fifteen laws broken in my gainst. OK, so here is
           | something I did understand:
           | 
           | If you like the medication (depends on the medication,
           | Risperidone you don't have to) but if it's controlled pretend
           | you hate it. Opioid? Say you're constipated. Oh stimulants
           | uh, can I get something for my stomach ache with that? Do I
           | have to take this pill every day, I'm getting sick in my
           | throat...How do I swallow that down, like what yoghurt to mix
           | it with? Research and complain about the side effects...dude
           | literally swapping pills in the rehab, one man's trash is
           | another man's treasure--outside the rehab, because inside
           | there's no private property. Inside? One man's poison is
           | another man's cure. We hated our shit. We were both flushing
           | it. We wanted the other guy's. So trade. But like better than
           | a trade, absolute gift in both directions. No yuck from
           | saliva dude fuck it, did not care. This is coercion, this is
           | Hell, get fat if you're uninformed because you didn't read
           | this post. Dude your gut wis sticking out like a horse.
           | 
           | And this is the right forum to talk about this.
           | 
           | Look it all up, it's on http://fgemm.com
        
           | jodrellblank wrote:
           | The problem is that there aren't any other planets. Venus is
           | an inferno, Mars may as well be made of asbestos dust with a
           | side of radiation and drought, those are the most hospitable
           | ones in this solar system and we're not getting anywhere
           | further anytime soon[1]. And the amount of rockets and
           | environmental damage to launch billions of people and enough
           | spaceships for billions of people is ... a lot.
           | 
           | [1] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
           | static/2007/06/the_high...
        
         | lm28469 wrote:
         | > Doesn't just affect nature
         | 
         | Well it does, we're not outside of nature
        
         | newaccount2021 wrote:
        
       | notamy wrote:
       | 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?
        
         | lambdaba wrote:
         | The result of misguidance from health professionals, big food &
         | big pharma marketing.
         | 
         | Not acknowledging that health is largely a result of lifestyle
         | choices, and that pharmaceuticals are mostly ineffective and
         | often harmful.
         | 
         | And now for the specifics:
         | 
         | - lies/bad science about meat (particularly red meat) being
         | unhealthy
         | 
         | - lies/bad science about cholesterol & saturated fat being
         | unhealthy
         | 
         | - not attacking sugar and processed foods at the highest level;
         | should be treated like smoking if not even more harshly
         | 
         | I say this for experience, until I fell ill I had no idea about
         | either of those things. Like many of my peers, grew up with
         | tons of sugar, and many misconceptions about what is healthy
         | (although thankfully to a lesser extent than what's common
         | nowadays)
         | 
         | I'd also add that these things compound over the generations.
         | We are more sensitive than our parents. It checks out for me,
         | every generation has worsening autoimmune symptoms.
        
           | p886 wrote:
           | plus: high-PUFA oils (seed / vegetable oils) being labelled
           | as "heart-healthy"
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | hombre_fatal wrote:
             | This thread makes me wonder how many HNers base their
             | nutrition off a quack like Paul Saladino.
             | 
             | A rebuttal to the seed oil sophistry that seems to have
             | managed to permeate every diet camp: https://www.the-
             | nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-...
             | 
             | Everyone is so desperate to have a counternarrative take on
             | nutrition that they'll believe whatever fad that passes
             | through the internet.
             | 
             | The same goes with saturated fat = healthy broscience and
             | the dismissal of the lipid hypothesis.
        
             | rgrieselhuber wrote:
             | Protip: if you're ever looking for some downvotes when
             | bringing up the dangers of PUFAs, recommend that people
             | read the book Deep Nutrition.
             | 
             | There seems to be an animalistic hatred toward a book that
             | really sheds the light on why eating industrial waste is
             | not the healthiest thing in the world.
        
               | calvinmorrison wrote:
               | If people get angry and upset at a topic, I find it
               | usually requires to be brought into the limelight.
        
               | rgrieselhuber wrote:
               | Indeed.
        
           | dominotw wrote:
           | I think there is no way to directly link 'lifestyle choices'
           | and chronic diseases. All we have is intuition like yours.
           | There is always going to be aggressive push-back from people
           | who will get you on lack of data linking those two.
           | 
           | I agree about 'big pharma marketing.' part spreading
           | misinformation that all these can be 'treated' with drugs
           | that even educated fall for
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32744412
        
           | sweetheart wrote:
           | > bad science...
           | 
           | > I say this for experience...
           | 
           | > It checks out for me...
           | 
           | Glad you've managed to avoid the pesky allure of bad science
           | with your anecdotal approach!
        
             | dominotw wrote:
             | If a doctor says to you ' you have hypertension because
             | you've been eating pizza for dinner last 5 years' .
             | 
             | Do you ask them to provide you with proof directly linking
             | your pizza eating to hypertension? Would you just ignore
             | their advice for lack of proof?
             | 
             | No one will be able to provide you direct link between
             | 'lifestyle choices' and chronic disease at an individual
             | level.
        
               | sweetheart wrote:
               | > No one will be able to provide you direct link between
               | 'lifestyle choices' and chronic disease at an individual
               | level.
               | 
               | I wasn't implying I require that for anything. I was just
               | pointing out that someone made broad, speculative claims
               | about the general medical consensus of things like read
               | meat and sugar, and then used an anecdote to support
               | their own claims about those things. Take from that what
               | you will! I just find it funny and worth mentioning.
        
             | tsol wrote:
             | Those statements of his were both at the end, when he gives
             | his opinion on the general situation. That doesn't mean the
             | main bullet points aren't supported by science
        
             | upsidesinclude wrote:
             | Are you trying to make the counter point that sugar and
             | highly processed foods are healthy?
             | 
             | There's lots of good science and history (! I guess that's
             | just a bunch of anecdotes though) which demonstrates their
             | ill effects.
             | 
             | Sometimes, a fact has been asserted widely enough that we
             | stop requiring sources, even at HN
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | altruios wrote:
               | More that he's critical of the thought process you've
               | applied. You're conclusions are correct, so no one should
               | be critical of that :)
        
               | upsidesinclude wrote:
               | Wasn't me, but sure
        
               | sweetheart wrote:
               | > Are you trying to make the counter point that sugar and
               | highly processed foods are healthy?
               | 
               | Nope, I said absolutely nothing to that effect.
        
           | vibrio wrote:
           | I agree sugar is bad, cancer reseracher Lew Cantley has
           | written very clearly scientifically about how High-fructose
           | corn syrup is very bad supported with a lot of mechanistic
           | data.
           | 
           | I also agree health is largely a result of lifestyle choices
           | for most-- it is what we can control.
           | 
           | I can't even begin to contemplating support of many of your
           | other statements. i wish you health and peace of mind.
        
             | lambdaba wrote:
             | There might be some unique harms from HFCS but I doubt
             | they're anything but minor over harm from all fructose in
             | refined form (so incl. and perhaps especially fruit juices
             | and other junk often fed to children).
             | 
             | Re: the cholesterol, check out my other comment.
             | 
             | Thank you, wishing you the same.
        
           | andrepd wrote:
           | > lies/bad science about cholesterol & saturated fat being
           | unhealthy
           | 
           | Are you saying cholesterol and saturated fats aren't
           | unhealthy? I'm confused.
        
             | lambdaba wrote:
             | Yes, check out this report from Credit Suisse that sums up
             | the state of the art research on the topic:
             | https://research-doc.credit-
             | suisse.com/docView?language=ENG&...
             | 
             | Bottom line is saturated fat is not implicated whatsoever
             | in any negative health outcomes.
        
               | tsol wrote:
               | Just as an aside: This document is interesting. Not
               | saying it isn't valid but I'm just wondering why a bank
               | produced this. It's not just an economic forecast of the
               | health foods market. It's an entire breakdown of the
               | nutrition. Who is the target audience? It looks like the
               | work of some consultants possibly
        
               | another2another wrote:
               | From the article: "A proper review of the so called "fat
               | paradoxes" (France, Israel and Japan) suggests that
               | saturated fats are actually healthy and omega-6 fats, at
               | current levels of consumption in the developed world, are
               | not necessarily so"
               | 
               | That probably means a whole ton of marketing material
               | touting Omega oils has to be thrown away.
        
             | mnd999 wrote:
             | It turned out eating high cholesterol foods didn't lead to
             | high cholesterol after all.
        
               | another2another wrote:
        
           | yojo wrote:
           | _> I 'd also add that these things compound over the
           | generations. We are more sensitive than our parents. It
           | checks out for me, every generation has worsening autoimmune
           | symptoms._
           | 
           | This may just be a function of increasing pollen
           | overstimulating the immune system. In the last 30 years
           | pollen counts have gone up 20+%[1]. Turns out trees like
           | carbon and warmer air.
           | 
           | Anecdotally both of my kids have seasonal allergies, neither
           | me nor my wife did when we were kids.
           | 
           | https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/pollen-
           | se...
        
           | kaba0 wrote:
           | Big Sugar is mostly an American problem due to the industry's
           | lobbying. If people are not exposed to that level of
           | sweetness they seriously can't even eat your bread. Also, why
           | allow that level of drug marketing everywhere? That's also
           | not a thing in other developed countries. So I really don't
           | think it is fair to call out scientists when these two
           | industries have your politicians in their hands.
        
           | itsoktocry wrote:
           | > _pharmaceuticals are mostly ineffective_
           | 
           | Something tells me you don't understand the vast scale of
           | pharmaceuticals, many of which _keep people alive_. Mostly
           | "ineffective", come on.
           | 
           | > _I say this for experience, until I fell ill I had no idea
           | about either of those things._
           | 
           | Your personal experiences and biology cannot be extrapolated
           | onto the world at large.
        
         | jinder wrote:
         | My guess: Environmental toxins, antibiotic use and poor diet
         | leading to loss of microbiome diversity/dysbiosis and
         | consequential disruption to the body's homeostatic processes.
        
           | enviclash wrote:
           | How to really take care of the microbiome?
        
             | fredrikholm wrote:
             | Diverse diet including as many types of food as possible
             | (eg. mushrooms, fermented vegetables, seaweed and other
             | 'unusual' foods), aiming for whole foods (eg. raw rice over
             | white rice).
             | 
             | Your gut bacteria is an expression of the foods that you
             | consume on a daily basis.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | jinder wrote:
             | Try to be born vaginally rather than c-section (might be
             | too late for that!), avoid antibiotics unless you
             | absolutely need them, polyphenol-rich whole food diet with
             | diverse fruits and vegetables, lots of fibre and resistant
             | starch and fermented foods. Buy organic if possible.
        
             | citruscomputing wrote:
             | Sandor Ellix Katz has some _fantastic_ books about
             | fermentation. Really, really suggest checking them out.
             | 
             | One thing that stuck out to me was when he talked about the
             | relationship between people and their environment. How
             | health is not in a vacuum, but in constant negotiation and
             | collaboration with the world around you. He uses this to
             | suggest fermenting things yourself, to engage in this
             | process with the microbes in your environment. It's easy
             | and fun!
             | 
             | Here's a 6 minute video where Katz talks about
             | fermentation, and walks you through a basic process, in a
             | beautiful and rustic kitchen I still dream about getting to
             | cook in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i77hU3zR-fQ
        
               | enviclash wrote:
               | One other aspect is also soap. Many people say it damages
               | the microbiome in your skin
        
             | tsol wrote:
             | Eat lots of prebiotic rich vegetables and fruits. Fiber is
             | food for gut bacteria. Also eat plenty of fermented foods.
             | These things increase good gut bacteria and decrease the
             | bad ones.
             | 
             | Avoid alcohol, sugar, and processed foods. These things
             | increase bad gut bacteria and decrease the good ones.
        
         | pastor_bob wrote:
         | A lot of these chronic diseases are autoimmune ones.
         | 
         | I now know plenty of young people IBD, MS, Psoriasis, and even
         | Rheumatoid Arthritis.
         | 
         | These seem to be caused by less obvious things imo (MS although
         | looks linked to epstein-barr), as otherwise general health
         | doesn't seem to be poor.
        
         | lambdaba wrote:
         | 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, without even
         | going into the content of those meals.
        
           | doliveira wrote:
           | I'm convinced that it's a mistake to be convinced that
           | there's one simple single cause for a society-level issue.
        
           | kjkjadksj wrote:
           | 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
           | frequently can hardly walk or access the second floor of
           | their house without difficulty. We went from a species that
           | has to go out and forage or hunt for resources, into one that
           | basically sits in a cave all day and poof there is a couple
           | thousand calories in front of them that they didn't have to
           | get; no species operates like this. The things that made us
           | humans and improved our fitness to allow us to survive and
           | colonize the globe, our intelligence and endurance or
           | strength, are no longer being selected for in modern life.
           | 
           | Then consider the arbitrary stress that society puts on us.
           | How you dress should not matter, what you love, how you work,
           | where you work, what you do for fun, etc, but we make people
           | hand wring about it all. We have a cruel society in many ways
           | that stifles unorthodox thought and behavior that doesn't
           | ultimately further someone else's dollar. The daily stress of
           | sitting in traffic or waiting for the bus to finally show up
           | on a hot day definitely triggers stress responses. How about
           | the fact that social media has sapped many peoples attention
           | span? The mind is no longer allowed to be bored or to rest or
           | dwell inwardly if you are constantly using every available
           | second to check a website on your cellphone. You see it in
           | kids an adults everywhere: elevator door shuts and out go the
           | phones along with any chance of serendipitous organic thought
           | that doesn't come from an advertising network.
           | 
           | Experiment with your diet, sure, but don't neglect the other
           | ills of modern life if you want to be truly heathy in body
           | and mind.
        
             | bwi4 wrote:
             | 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-gatherers to test
             | whether foragers expend more energy each day than their
             | Western counterparts. As expected, physical activity level,
             | PAL, was greater among Hadza foragers than among
             | Westerners. Nonetheless, average daily energy expenditure
             | of traditional Hadza foragers was no different than that of
             | Westerners after controlling for body size.
             | 
             | https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journa
             | l...
        
               | Noumenon72 wrote:
               | 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...
        
           | vibrio wrote:
           | Interesting, what are your thoughts on the anti-CD47
           | investigational therapeutics being tested for cancer
           | indications? How do you think that antagonizing CD47 will
           | impact this 'system maintenance'. Do you think that
           | modulating autophagy is part of the problem of enhanced
           | autoimmunity, since its clear that is involved in immune
           | surveillance? There is a lot of science out there around this
           | area.
        
           | Test0129 wrote:
           | 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 other numbers that were raised temporarily with no
           | other cause.
           | 
           | I've switched over the last 6 months to eating 3 meals and 2
           | snacks a day of varying size. I climb often (vigorously, 4
           | times a week if not more) and found that fasting was simply
           | insufficient to provide the energy I needed. IF caused
           | notable performance decreases at the level I work at leading
           | to more injuries due to poorer recovery. Changing my diet in
           | this way fixed most of it. Of course, I try to eat relatively
           | clean (but chips are a weakness). I don't have a 6 pack but I
           | am also not overweight and carry enough muscle for my uses.
           | 
           | This isn't to say I am giving a license to eat what you want.
           | But _what you do with your fuel_ is probably just as
           | important as what that fuel is. The  "average person" you
           | mention is a couch potato. Of course these people not only
           | benefit from IF but literally any change in exercise! IF
           | works great for people who are not intensely active. Hence
           | why it has become popular in tech. Proper sleep (whatever
           | that means to your body) and relatively hard exercise are
           | even better predictors of all-cause mortality than any of
           | this. To me, after having done it, IF feels mostly like new
           | age woo-woo "science" and it dances around people saying it
           | flat out cures cancer. In some cases, for example prediabetes
           | and chemotherapy, "deloading" the system has evidence of
           | being effective. For the rest of us, it's a wash.
        
             | Melatonic wrote:
             | Fasting and IF are not always the same thing - personally I
             | find a bigger benefit from occasionally totally fasting
             | (for longer than one day). If anything it may be the mental
             | benefits that it brings with regards to how you view your
             | relationship with food and what foods specifically make you
             | feel good or bad.
        
             | SketchySeaBeast wrote:
             | 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.
        
             | rngname22 wrote:
             | I don't really agree with the parent's assessment that lack
             | of fasting-induced autophagy is the reason for the increase
             | in cancer, but your anecdote about 16 hour fasts is sorta
             | irrelevant.
             | 
             | Autophagy doesn't really kick in until 2-3 days of fasting.
        
               | yamtaddle wrote:
               | I know it's technically true but it's seemed weird to me
               | to lump skipping breakfast in with what I'd consider
               | _actual fasting_ , ever since I first encountered people
               | using it that way in the context of diet fads.
               | 
               | Someone tells me they're fasting, I don't expect they
               | mean 8 non-contiguous waking hours without eating (with
               | sleep in the middle). That's, like... pretty close to a
               | normal day. It's easy to have 16 hour "fasts" just by
               | accident. "I only ate two meals yesterday because I was
               | fasting". LOL WUT? Again, I know, technically true, but
               | not a _useful_ way to refer to it, IMO.
        
               | galangalalgol wrote:
               | There are some military studies that showed autophagy
               | didn't kick in until they dropped below 6% body fat. But
               | that was with 600kcal and no change in duties. So it's
               | not necessarily relevant. I do IF but I'm a couch potato.
               | If I really stick to 20hrs, it seems to work very well.
               | If I slip to even 19 I have to skip food for a day or
               | even two to get back to feeling good (clear head
               | functioning gut etc.). I am overweight still, but not
               | obese. I lose about 2lbs a week when I stick with it. I
               | am nervous about resuming excercise. I hope I can still
               | recover well. I just do strength training 3 days a week
               | for an hour, or two once I'm back to needing more warmup
               | sets.
        
             | lambdaba wrote:
             | > I climb often (vigorously, 4 times a week if not more)
             | 
             | You're very active! Even so, I wouldn't think the IF itself
             | was the problem, probably you were having trouble eating
             | enough for your level of activity with such a regimen.
             | 
             | About bloodwork, I believe you're mistakingly conflating
             | insulin and blood sugar. Blood sugar may vary in such a
             | way, but it's just a proxy because insulin is so hard to
             | measure.
             | 
             | But more to the point, I wasn't referring to intermittent
             | fasting solely, I believe even longer fasting periods are
             | required. Regardless, even IF is a far cry from what the
             | average person does.
             | 
             | I also disagree that fasting is not a panacea. It's a close
             | to one as we have. I don't think this is a subject I'm
             | likely to convince skeptics in a comment, so I will simply
             | say interested people will find reputable resources on the
             | subject, including striking anecdotes published by fasting
             | clinics (of which, for some reason, Germany has a few that
             | publish material on YouTube).
        
             | zeku wrote:
             | Are you sure you weren't just under-eating calories when
             | you fasted? Just checking.
        
           | candiddevmike wrote:
           | 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.
        
             | godshatter wrote:
             | There is a lot of "bro-science" out there concerning
             | autophagy for sure, but it is definitely a thing. Yoshinori
             | Ohsumi won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in
             | 2016 for "his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy"
             | (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2016/summary/).
        
               | hombre_fatal wrote:
               | Ohsumi's research into the mechanics of autophagy doesn't
               | seem to have much to do with the broscience around
               | autophagy.
               | 
               | In other words, the question isn't whether autophagy
               | exists. The question is over whether fanatical "one-
               | weird-trick" claims about autophagy are true and,
               | further, what the impact actually is and compared to
               | what.
               | 
               | For example, autophagy is happening all the time, not
               | just during during starvation. And it hasn't been
               | demonstrated that fasting for 3 days to increase
               | autophagy levels has a net benefit versus eating a
               | nutrient-rich diet during that timeframe.
               | 
               | Instead we just get vague but lofty claims in forum
               | posts.
        
             | lambdaba wrote:
             | 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.
        
               | verall wrote:
               | This is not necessarily a given, depending on the nature
               | of the system, it absolutely requires evidence.
               | 
               | Does my circulatory system need to fully rest so as not
               | to develop dysfunction?
        
               | dbsights wrote:
               | Explain heartbeats?
        
               | techbio wrote:
               | Relatively very frequent rest and activation, I think is
               | a charitably agreeable analogy. A heart muscle that never
               | released would not be healthy.
        
           | turkeygizzard wrote:
           | This is interesting. Does elevated insulin / anabolic rates
           | mean there's no breakdown though? At least with muscles, most
           | increases in synthesis rates are accompanied by a
           | proportional increase in breakdown too.
           | 
           | I don't have papers on hand to cite so take it with a grain
           | of salt, but I believe that just eating is enough to increase
           | both synthesis and breakdown. I think this is actually
           | healthier since you have higher turnover this way
        
           | naillo wrote:
           | > following the advice of eating small meals often
           | 
           | This must be an american thing. I've always been told the
           | opposite advice all my life. Interesting.
        
             | Test0129 wrote:
             | Eating small meals often is a way people control urge and
             | hunger. I don't think it's American only. For a LONG time
             | bodybuilding touted the 6 meals a day to lose weight
             | strategy.
        
               | naillo wrote:
               | I get that people do it, it's just that I've never gotten
               | the advice _to do it_ (non body building contexts, just
               | normal life). To  "smaata" in sweden is a widely talked
               | about thing to avoid (i.e. adviced against).
        
               | ddorian43 wrote:
               | > For a LONG time bodybuilding touted the 6 meals a day
               | to lose weight strategy.
               | 
               | Pretty sure it's to gain weight. So you're all day
               | eating.
               | 
               | To drop in weight, it's better to eat
               | lowcarb,keto,carnivore. Fat/protein is makes you more
               | full and eat less.
        
           | lambdaba wrote:
           | 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.
        
         | dani_german wrote:
         | The past 50 years have seen a huge spike in life expectancy
         | averages almost everywhere worldwide, so I'm just guessing that
         | more people than ever with genetic tendencies to have early
         | cancer onset are surviving and passing down those traits. There
         | is also more people being screened for cancer than ever before
         | so more cases are being detected when 70 years ago they
         | would've just died and no one would know why
        
       | dukeofdoom wrote:
        
         | OrvalWintermute wrote:
         | name checks out :)
        
       | dukeofdoom wrote:
       | Sleep deficient seems to be connected to some cancers.
       | 
       | Daily walking a lot seems to really be a key to longevity. Also
       | to be healthy enough that you can ignore the pharmaceutical
       | companies extensive and endless product line. Often you're just
       | trading one problem for another, or just trading short term risk
       | for long term risk or vice versa. And also have the mental
       | strength to want to go on living with health problems. If you're
       | in Canada and you get to old age, and up in an institution. Be
       | prepared to be offered Euthanasia. 3% of Canadian deaths were
       | that way last year.
        
       | aaron695 wrote:
        
       | elektor wrote:
       | Link to full text paper: https://docdro.id/BLOY55z
        
       | uwagar wrote:
       | wonder if its covid vaccine induced especially the platform
       | established by mrna based vaccines could be triggering a mass
       | replication of haywire cells.
        
         | jjcon wrote:
         | Considering the trend started in the 90s and hasn't shown any
         | particular jump in the past couple years that isn't supported
         | by this research.
        
           | uwagar wrote:
           | dont forget excess deaths.
        
       | cjbgkagh wrote:
        
       | sangnoir wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | SamPatt wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | sangnoir wrote:
           | Assuming everything you claim on the overall superiority of
           | capitalism is correct, that doesn't still doesn't make it
           | perfect. I am merely pointing out one of the imperfections -
           | an unoriginal one at that: _unbridled_ capitalism[1] does not
           | correctly factor externalized costs, up to, and including
           | mankind 's long-term survival.
           | 
           | 1. The "unbridled" qualification is deliberate, and very
           | different from what I'm guessing is your idealized version.
        
       | mlindner wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | hammock wrote:
       | How much is climate change to blame for this epidemic?
        
       | swader999 wrote:
       | Gee wonder what could have caused that.
        
         | plmpsu wrote:
         | They're looking at the past several decades...
        
       | mihaic wrote:
       | 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 slightly cheaper industrial
       | process.
        
         | graaben wrote:
         | My wife (early 30s) was recently diagnosed with thyroid cancer
         | and it's been absolutely shocking to hear how many other young
         | women just in our social circle have also had it.
        
         | zackmorris wrote:
         | 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 problem is that flareups can by cyclical
         | and not get detected by thyroid tests for years, until the
         | damage is permanent.
         | 
         | Also I've been researching how gluten sensitivity can destroy
         | the lining of the small intestine in Crohn's disease. That
         | damage can cause permanent loss of ability to absorb nutrients.
         | It's unclear if the rise of the severe non-Crohn's gluten
         | sensitivity we're seeing causes similar but smaller injuries,
         | lumped into pseudo-science terms like leaky gut. The western
         | high-sugar diet is highly inflammatory, disrupting the
         | endocrine system and eventually leading to metabolic syndrome,
         | neuropathy, possibly even multiple sclerosis (MS). The
         | epidemiological studies aren't there to show that definitively,
         | but I feel that's due to factory farm industry/pharmaceutical
         | lobby suppression of government funding for those studies.
         | 
         | I believe my issues started due to self-medicating my stress
         | and depression with a finger of rye whiskey or cheap beer way
         | too many nights of the week, chronic dehydration from working
         | out, and not knowing how hard casein protein supplements and
         | whole wheat/barley/rye are on the gut. Switching to half a
         | glass of red wine with dinner each night, eating rice/corn
         | instead of wheat, and avoiding all FODMAPs/milk/tree nuts for a
         | year drastically improved my health to the point where I'm back
         | at my old strength in the gym and consider my issues to be in
         | remission as long as I avoid certain triggers.
         | 
         | Anyway, I wasn't sure where to chime in on this, because the
         | corruption of our food supply and rise of severe mental health
         | issues are all connected. When I burned out, I lost the ability
         | to take care of myself for about 6 months as bills started
         | piling up. Burnout from anxiety can be devastating to
         | neurodivergent thinkers like me who already struggle with ADHD
         | and/or autistic symptoms. I didn't truly begin my healing
         | journey until the pandemic. So simple tasks like getting
         | insurance, going to the doctor or seeking counseling feel can
         | feel insurmountable. I'm still trying to get ahead of the curve
         | enough to take more tests and get some definitive answers. But
         | I'm grateful beyond words to have gotten this far and be able
         | to write this now.
         | 
         | If anyone has experienced anything similar to what I'm saying,
         | do you remember what year your symptoms started, or when your
         | friends and family started reporting them?
         | 
         | Edit: deleted my rant about globalization's affect on our food
         | supply/climate/health.
        
           | walleeee wrote:
           | 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
        
       | tinglymintyfrsh wrote:
        
         | beebmam wrote:
         | > Cancer is easily explained from an evolutionary optimization
         | perspective
         | 
         | Anything that "easily explains" cancer should be thrown right
         | out as unscientific. Cancer is many diseases, many of which are
         | profoundly different from the others in both mechanisms of
         | action and causes.
         | 
         | I kindly ask that you don't use such confident sounding
         | language, either deluding yourself or others into believing
         | your statements as true, when much of what you state is an
         | untested (and probably unfalsifiable) hypothesis.
        
           | cerol wrote:
           | _> Anything that  "easily explains" cancer should be thrown
           | right out as unscientific._
           | 
           | Thank you.
           | 
           | As someone who's recently lost a loved one to cancer, I've
           | lost count of how many times I've wanted to choke people for
           | coming out with these "simple cancer theories".
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | photochemsyn wrote:
       | > "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 (atrazine), industrial solvents
       | like trichloroethylene, brominated fire retardants,
       | nitrosoamines, plastic-sourced phthalates, perchlorates,
       | hydrazine, hexavalent chromium and so on.
       | 
       | 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.
       | That would provide a dataset which could be used to address that
       | question.
       | 
       | This is hardly a new proposal, for example see this 2001 PBS
       | report, in which journalist Bill Moyers got his body burden test
       | results:
       | 
       | https://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/problem/bodyburden.html
       | 
       |  _The results are not unusual. Each of us has some load of
       | industrial chemicals stored in or passing through our bodies.
       | These chemical residues - termed the "chemical body burden" - can
       | be detected in blood, urine and breast milk._
        
         | caeril wrote:
         | Don't hold your breath. One example:
         | 
         | Coronary calcium deposit scans are cheap and extremely
         | effective at giving a probabilistic window of possible future
         | heart attack, but doctors don't order them _prior_ to a CVD
         | event, and insurance doesn 't cover them as a pre-CVD elective.
         | 
         | Instead we're told: We have no way of knowing if or when you'll
         | experience infarction, it's one of God's Great Mysteries. Just
         | don't eat eggs and pray.
         | 
         | You're absolutely right, but the entire medical industry has no
         | intention of actually reducing mortality. It's a cash grab from
         | top to bottom, and preventative monitoring of the kind you
         | suggest already has precedent in coronary calcium scanning.
         | It's not going to happen if it reduces the overall predicted
         | revenue per patient.
         | 
         | In the same way that a single triple-bypass surgery is far more
         | lucrative than a hundred coronary calcium scans, a full course
         | of cancer treatment is absurdly more profitable than regular
         | tissue carcinogen testing.
        
           | adewinter wrote:
           | I would take a citation on literally any single one of your
           | statements
        
           | 10u152 wrote:
           | If they're cheap and you're concerned couldn't you just get
           | one out of pocket ?
        
           | haldujai wrote:
           | "Just don't eat eggs and pray."
           | 
           | If you avoid smoking, have a healthy diet, get adequate
           | exercise and consequently maintain a healthy weight you'll do
           | far more to prognosticate your MI risk than a calcium score.
        
         | haldujai wrote:
         | 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 (< 50)
         | healthy adults shouldn't even really be getting annual checkups
         | (in my professional opinion and per several guidelines) and
         | annual blood work is definitely not indicated.
         | 
         | 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.
        
           | idontpost wrote:
           | > Young (< 50) healthy adults shouldn't even really be
           | getting annual checkups (in my professional opinion and per
           | several guidelines) and annual blood work is definitely not
           | indicated.
           | 
           | Remind me to never use you as a medical provider.
        
             | haldujai wrote:
             | Here are some resources to read.
             | 
             | https://europepmc.org/article/nbk/nbk82767#_vaphysical_s5_
             | 
             | https://www.cfp.ca/content/cfp/63/11/824.full.pdf
             | 
             | https://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e7191?ijkey=34070a9e7bf
             | 5...
        
           | vehementi wrote:
           | > Young (< 50) healthy adults shouldn't even really be
           | getting annual checkups (in my professional opinion and per
           | several guidelines)
           | 
           | How does letting people have undiagnosed cancer in their 30s
           | and 40s fit in with this?
        
             | bigfudge wrote:
             | The reason is that many medical tests have high false
             | positive rates, and the follow procedures have side effects
             | (sometimes). When you administer tests and followups at
             | population scale for a disease with a low prior probability
             | you will do more harm than good, on the average.
        
             | haldujai wrote:
             | An annual physical exam isn't really powered to detect
             | cancer in the modern world, it's a relic from the past.
             | 
             | If you develop cancer in your 30s (sadly too many people) a
             | physical exam or blood test almost certainly wouldn't have
             | made the difference.
             | 
             | We have mammograms for breast cancer and women > 40.
             | Unfortunately there isn't enough evidence to support a
             | screening program for people younger than that where the
             | pretest probability for malignancy is so low and there are
             | harms associated with tests.
        
           | nightski wrote:
           | Hmm, you could use that argument to dissuade all of
           | scientific research. Science is zero sum, if we devote
           | resources to it then you are taking them from someone else!
           | 
           | But at the end of the day we all know there are significant
           | potential benefits to this type of testing. Not only that,
           | more demand can increase jobs & labs in the first place.
           | 
           | Just because the system is dysfunctional is not a good
           | argument for ceasing progress.
        
             | haldujai wrote:
             | Suggesting we perform niche lab examinations annually on
             | the entire population is not scientific research, that's
             | jumping straight into a screening program.
             | 
             | Such an initiative would require more lab resources than
             | currently exists in the US.
             | 
             | I'm questioning whether this is the best use of $100-200
             | billion a year. Instead, I suggested a small study
             | (appropriately powered) to further investigate.
        
           | scythe wrote:
           | >I question whether measuring excreted compounds rather than
           | stores is relevant
           | 
           | I would have to figure that chemicals sitting in fat cells
           | that rarely divide are probably not causing cancer. Cancer
           | occurs mostly in epithelial tissue; in my case, the germ
           | cell. Excreted compounds are probably a better measure of
           | actual blood levels. I'm not a nephrologist or anything,
           | though.
           | 
           | >A small prospective study
           | 
           | will almost certainly find nothing, because the rate of
           | early-onset cancer is too low to detect changes in a small
           | population. You probably need >100k participants to have a
           | good chance of finding anything.
           | 
           | >it is unclear what value this information will provide
           | 
           | I mean, that's the billion-dollar question, isn't it? Should
           | probably try to control for obesity first, it's the most
           | obvious candidate (changes since 1990, so not, e.g.,
           | smoking), but it certainly wasn't my problem (BMI 21).
        
             | haldujai wrote:
             | A billion dollars is not enough for what's being proposed
             | here.
        
           | WFHRenaissance wrote:
           | > Young (< 50) healthy adults shouldn't even really be
           | getting annual checkups (in my professional opinion and per
           | several guidelines) and annual blood work is definitely not
           | indicated.
           | 
           | Tell this to my mom.
        
             | saiya-jin wrote:
             | I am sorry for whatever happened/happens to your mom. That
             | being said, when looking at cold hard data, this is a valid
             | point.
             | 
             | We all have various weird stuff in us, the older the more.
             | Cystes, weird bulges, benign cancers that wont kill us for
             | 50 years. If you are a male say above 40 or 50, you
             | probably have some very early (or not) prostate cancer.
             | 
             | Often you need an invasive procedure to get more info. Even
             | then its quite often not 100% clear if surgery is overall
             | safer and better than keeping and monitoring.
             | 
             | We like this idea of omnipotent medicine but its a pipe
             | dream. Difficult procedures are extremely expensive
             | regardless of location (US stands apart as always but still
             | a valid point), and even ignoring price there simply isnt
             | enough staff/equipment. Covid and often selfish clueless
             | people certainly didnt help.
             | 
             | Medicine tries to fix as much as it can, which is mostly
             | not enough. The hard part is accepting that when it becomes
             | about a close one. There is no easy solution.
             | 
             | Source: wife is an emergency/gp doctor, went through this
             | countless times. And much worse, even smart people become
             | completely irrational, cruel or selfish very easily in such
             | situations.
        
               | mdavidn wrote:
               | I interpreted the comment to mean, "my mom always reminds
               | me to go get a checkup that I don't need."
        
         | BrianOnHN wrote:
         | > 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.
        
           | titzer wrote:
           | It's not so much that sickness is profitable as the abject
           | laziness and refusal to properly dispose of chemical
           | byproducts in industry, as that costs money which hurts the
           | bottom line. This is absolutely rampant worldwide and
           | governments are corruptly influenced to look the other way to
           | more or less degree depending on the country you are in.
        
           | soperj wrote:
           | What about in every western country where it isn't
           | profitable?
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | lostlogin wrote:
             | 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.
        
               | soperj wrote:
               | I'm specifically not talking about the states, and
               | talking about countries with public health care.
        
         | ITI03 wrote:
         | Contaminated ground water around military bases from the use of
         | fire extinguishing foams.
         | 
         | https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/2020-military-pfas-site...
        
         | adamredwoods wrote:
         | Even Nature stated microplastics are everywhere, yet we do not
         | know what effects it will have.
         | 
         | https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01143-3
        
           | istinetz wrote:
           | What do you mean, "even Nature"? They have no incentive to
           | downplay the omnipresence of microplastics
        
             | krab wrote:
             | I understand it as "not only alarmist sources but also a
             | reputable journal".
        
         | Gatsky wrote:
         | 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
        
           | krisoft wrote:
           | > 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.
        
             | saiya-jin wrote:
             | Well people can certainly move to some extent. Nobody with
             | functional brain considers metropoles to be healthy place
             | to live. People stay there mostly for the money, I know I
             | do and I accept the risks (and working on improving the
             | situation).
             | 
             | Moving to mountainous/overall remote regions is relatively
             | cheap. But people like easy life, close work, shopping,
             | services and so on.
             | 
             | World is certainly not as binary as you paint it
        
               | is_true wrote:
               | Most people don't even think about the impact where they
               | live has in their health
        
             | Gatsky wrote:
             | In fact, all these things have socioeconomic determinants.
             | 
             | Air pollution has a relatively small effect compared to the
             | others.
        
           | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
           | 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?
        
           | pasquinelli wrote:
           | has smoking, drinking, and eating red meat gone up in the
           | past several decades? because, according to the first
           | sentence of the abstract early onset cancers have gone up in
           | the past several decades.
        
             | eurasiantiger wrote:
             | PFOS in the environment has gone up in the past several
             | decades.
        
       | andrenotgiant wrote:
       | Does Betteredge's law of headlines apply to academic papers?
        
       | phkahler wrote:
       | >> 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 cancers.
       | 
       | Patient: Of course it has, but will I live any longer?
        
         | Gatsky wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | copperx wrote:
           | Colon cancer guidelines have changed screenings to 45.
        
           | Broken_Hippo wrote:
           | 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.
        
           | smt88 wrote:
           | Lots of cancers are screened in younger people outside of
           | routine: melanoma, colon cancer, breast cancer, etc. are all
           | things that doctors will test for if a person has certain
           | signs (like a suspicious mole or rectal polyps).
        
         | letsgo39 wrote:
         | You should be able to see the 'real' increase from death rates,
         | assuming the cause of death is correctly identified as cancer
         | pre or post mortem.
        
           | SigmundA wrote:
           | Cancer death rates are going down [1], which to me means we
           | are probably better at treating cancer but also probably
           | finding it more often even when not life threatening and
           | might have gone on unnoticed in an earlier time.
           | 
           | Also we are getting better at treating other diseases and
           | living longer, leading to being more likely to get cancer
           | since if you live long enough you will almost certainly get
           | some form of it.
           | 
           | 1. https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/update-on-cancer-
           | de...
        
             | cerol wrote:
             | It's slow progress, but we can dream of a day where getting
             | a cancer diagnosis is not a death sentence, but rather
             | something like HIV. Not really curable, but with the right
             | treatment, you can live a fairly normal life. You die
             | _with_ cancer, but not _of_ cancer.
        
           | importantbrian wrote:
           | This is the reason most medical studies look at all cause
           | mortality. Cause of death reporting is prone to all kinds of
           | medical judgement and human error that cause reporting
           | specific causes of death to be problematic.
        
         | pclmulqdq wrote:
         | Early-stage cancer survivorship rates are much higher, and
         | early detection catches cancers at an earlier stage. Studies
         | have been done that show the benefit of early screening,
         | separate from the bias.
        
           | throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
           | Do those studies account for the (emotional and monetary)
           | cost of false positives from those early detection?
        
             | pclmulqdq wrote:
             | I don't think monetary cost was accounted for, and I assume
             | by emotional cost you don't mean the hits to someone's
             | health due to emotions (which are accounted for). It's
             | really hard to get diagnosed with a cancer, but early
             | detection is very helpful for improving outcomes.
             | 
             | In the US (in particular), there is a lot more monetary
             | cost to someone's late-stage cancer treatment, and then
             | eventual death, than there is to early-stage cancer
             | treatment, so I would assume that early screening tests are
             | monetarily net beneficial based on the reduction in cancer
             | deaths.
        
       | illuminerdy wrote:
        
       | jah242 wrote:
       | For context, looking at UK data:
       | 
       | 1. Yes incidence of cancer in 25-49 year olds has increased 22%
       | from 1993 to 2018 - but that is 22% on a very low number which
       | means it is still a very low number. When you account for
       | increased screening, greater awareness, and better testing, the
       | increase is likely even smaller.
       | 
       | https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...
       | 
       | 2. Better treatment (and more effective screening) means
       | mortality rates per 100k from all cancers in 25-49 has dropped
       | c.40% over the same period (despite higher incidence).
       | 
       | https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...
       | 
       | So whilst this is obviously important to study. At least the UK
       | data doesn't seem too terrifying but I m no expert.
        
       | bitwize wrote:
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | rajamaka wrote:
         | Source very much needed
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | dev_throw wrote:
       | 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.
        
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