For the tl;dr crowd:
- written by a physician
- people often think that heart disease is controllable by our actions whereas they feel that cancer is not
- > people can’t change many risk factors of heart disease like age, race and family genetics
- > A more recent study published in Nature argues that there is a lot we can do. [about cancer]
- > Using sophisticated modeling techniques, the researchers argued that less than 30 percent of the lifetime risk of getting cancer was because of intrinsic risk factors, or the “bad luck.”
- > [another study] identified four domains that are often noted to be related to disease prevention: smoking, drinking, obesity and exercise
- if you limit that stuff, and not meaning 0 smoking, but "having quit within the last 5 years", no more than 1 drink a day (women) or 2 drinks a day (men), your BMI is >= 18.5 and <= 27.5 (BMI is such a shit and antiquated metric, IMO, incidentally), and perform 150mins/wk moderate intensity excercise or 75mins/wk vigorous intensity exercise, then you're in the low risk group. so the barrier to entry is not super high.
HOWever:
> No study is perfect, and this is no exception. These cohorts are overwhelmingly white and consist of health professionals, who are not necessarily like the population at large. But the checks against the national data showed that if anything, these results might be underestimating how much cancer is preventable by healthy behaviors.
[...]
Optimistic conclusion, for a skeptical cheapskate like myself,
> As we talk about cancer “moonshots” that will most likely cost billions of dollars and might not achieve results, it’s worth considering that — as in many cases — prevention is not only the cheapest course, but also the most effective.
Hard to fault this article. I'm glad you posted it, thank you.