I’m 35 and I may suddenly have lost the rest of my life

  A cure that has been "well known" for centuries

She turned to alternatives, tried everything from vegan diet to juicing to vitamin c (intravenous twice a week over 6 months). No salt diet. Stone heat mattress. Hydrogen rich water. She exercised daily getting as much sun because someone told her that's good.

That didn't stop the metastasis spreading all over her body. She passed away 8 months after her diagnosis, coincidentally exactly what the doctor guessed when pressed for her honest prognosis.

You accuse the pharma industry of preying on the desperate for money, but in my experience it was the opposite. Pharma told her sorry nothing we can do. In desperation she turned to alternatives. I was willing to believe anything if it cured my mum.

Do you think they are so stupid that they'd not immediately funnel the money into researching other diseases that aren't cancer? Or that this one thing is somehow a cure-all for all cancers? What do you think vaccines that prevent infections that can lead to cancer? Shouldn't they, theoretically, be losing money developing such things? Wouldn't the drug companies be able to better sell their drugs by advertising they were the company that beat cancer? Furthermore, wouldn't that also make all the governments that have taxpayer-funded health care stupid or part of the conspiracy as well? Why would a country like Norway pay for chemo if a simple vitamin proved to actually work?

I very highly doubt those sorts of claims, plus any that claim to have a "wonder drug" for cancer. Cancers seem to vary widely and have a variety of initial causes, after all, and some of the most promising developments seem to be tailored to either the individual or the type of cancer (HPV vaccines, for example, among others).

Well it's not being suppressed and it's been studied since 1970. TDLR; It may help patient quality of life during chemo, it reduces tumors in some models but it reduces effectiveness of chemo in other models.

Here, read this: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/cam/patient/vi...

(Warning - it's from the National Cancer Institute Complementary Medicine section so it's not considered a valid approved treatment in the US. That means something where cancer is subject.

Death rate throughout Everest's entire history is around 4%, and around 2% from 2000 to present. That's also skewed a bit by 2014 and 2015 being particularly bad years; it was 1.4% between 2000 and 2010, and 2016 and 2017 are both around 1%.

If you have a 10% figure in your head, you must be thinking of K2 or another more dangerous mountain.

Without being too long-winded, if you just consider the underlying economics of insurance, you'll get the best deal by purchasing and maintaining a policy for a longer period and with a payout that best matches your current and expected salary. If you're healthy, relatively young (<40), and confident you can keep paying premiums for the life of the policy, an employer-sponsored policy is just unequivocally a bad deal.

That last aspect is key--maintaining the policy for the entire term. Your risk increases significantly as you get older. If you don't maintain the policy for the entire term, you've basically thrown most of your money away. The fact that people are very likely to change jobs multiple times in middle-age (especially programmers!) means that you're not only introducing gaps in coverage, but increasing the likelihood that you either fail to buy a new employer-sponsored policy, have an employer that has a worse policy, or one that has no policy at all. That to my mind is a huge downside; difficult to quantify but so significant I don't think we need bother precisely quantifying.

Also, only small polices (<$350,000 or so, I think) will issue without a blood test. For someone making even only $50,000/year, $350,000 is much too low and not worth the money. The best premium/payout ratio will be a much higher multiple of your current salary. Think inflation. $350,000 20 years from now isn't going to go very far, and you're much more likely to die in year 19 than year 1. In my limited experience, those small employer-sponsored policies look like good deals compared to private policies, but those aren't the policies you should be comparing. When you look at proper policies (the ones that require a health check, like $750k or $2m), the private policies have more competitive premiums.

One final tidbit: employer-sponsored premiums are pre-tax, while private policies aren't. OTOH, payouts on the former are taxable, while (at least for term life) the latter are tax exempt. Normally pre-tax is a better deal, like with health insurance and retirement funds. And it _could_ be, theoretically. But it's not. A $1m employer-sponsored policy is really only going to payout about $750,000 or less, but the premiums aren't discounted to match even considering the pre-tax advantage. I don't remember how much time I spent crunching the numbers--most of my calculations were back-of-the-envelope--but I'd be surprised if my conclusions were wrong in this regard.

Basically, just buy a private policy. I purchased _less_ than policygenius.com (and standard financial advice) recommends based on my current compensation because I didn't want to end up in a situation where I allowed the policy to lapse because of the premiums. Again, that's just throwing money away. At some point you just have to pull the trigger because you can become paralyzed thinking about this too much. I probably erred to low, but I'm absolutely sure I didn't err in choosing to buy a private policy.

And remember, if the issuer isn't sending someone out to your house to draw blood[1], your policy is much, much too small. The questionnaire you fill-out for policygenius.com or anywhere isn't for naught, especially the compensation answers. IIRC, I had to send in proof of my compensation after I chose a policy and put things in motion. Unless you're actually getting a poverty wage, any cost-effective policy will require a health check, and the best premium/payout ratio will be in the range of something like 10x-15x your current annual salary, rounded up or down to match the nearest, most standard policy amount.

[1] They sent someone to me. At the time my employer-sponsored policy required me to go to a doctor. I don't know which is more common, but FWIW at least some issuers send someone to your door[2], which is very convenient. When I initially joined my then employer I did elect their sponsored policy. But I never got around to going to a doctor for the required health check so it never activated.

[2] The lady was nice and her job seemed like a pretty cool gig for a phlebotomist.

I half wish we didn't have these kinds of comments about weight loss; it comes from the Puritan-work-ethic-suffering-is-laudable style of thinking, and implicitly carries messages like: a) weight loss must include suffering, b) it must include hard work or you aren't earning it, c) 'quantity of trying' is something in and of itself which is praiseworthy, regardless of what is tried or how effective it was, d) crazyness is a proxy for trying hard by implication of exhausting all less-crazy options, regardless of whether that's actually true, e) defending 'why someone didn't lose weight' and whether they endured enough suffering to be allowed to live without criticism is more important than understanding, empathising, fixing, almost anything.

To quote from a blog about going the other way - muscling up:

Just because we’re tired doesn’t mean we had a good muscle-building workout, just that we had a tiring one. Depending on what you’re doing, there’s a good chance there’s a workout that’s less tiring but does a better job of stimulating muscle growth.

Similarly, being full doesn’t mean we ate enough calories, just that we ate a filling meal. Maybe there’s a less filling meal that provides more calories and nutrients.

And in the same idea, just because someone tried hard and suffered to lose weight, doesn't mean they did the most effective things to lose weight. Just because they felt starving doesn't mean they were sustaining long term calorie deficit, just because they tried for years doesn't mean they found a good way and it didn't work, but that they spent years doing things which didn't work. Just because they suffered while exercising doesn't mean it was an optimal calorie burning workout, just that it was unpleasant..

The two (effort/suffering and fat loss) aren't necessarily directly connected at all, yet we discuss as if one is a proxy for the other. It might well be that fat loss implies effort, but effort does not imply fat loss. Or it might be that effective fat loss doesn't necessarily imply effort although that's one way for it. I anecdotally note P.J. Eby's comment once that he'd tried an awful lot of weight loss attempts, but it wasn't until he found Vitamin K supplements that he started to see progress. Vitamin K supplements aren't hard work or major suffering (and undoubtedly they aren't a panacea for all obese people).

The wider context of the quote is:

we’re going to slip, we’re going to “fail”. That’s part of the process. A setback is just an opportunity for us to figure out what went wrong, what needs adjusting, and how to move forward more effectively. A setback shouldn’t be seen as a failure, and it certainly has nothing to do with our ability to build muscle. The moment we stop thinking about change as binary—either as success or failure—but rather as a process that’ll evolve, the more likely we are to actually reach our goals.

So when looking at our routines and our efforts, we need to look at them objectively. If our routine was failing, which part is holding us back? What piece is missing?

If our routine is working but is tough to maintain, what part was enjoyable and sustainable? What is wearing us down? What’s the part that’s actually responsible for our results? What’s useless filler that just wears us down?

This is how we gradually develop lifestyles that work for us—making things more effective, more enjoyable, easier. This is how we get to consciously decide who we want to become. Then eventually those habits become what we do automatically—unconsciously.

In that context, of a life and a way to live, what benefit of talking about "I tried hard", in the past tense, at all?

It's almost tautological to say people who tried hard and are still fat, weren't trying the right things - and yet actually saying that is liable to bring about a reply describing in detail how much effort and suffering and time was involved, as if the sentence was "you didn't try hard enough". Which it isn't.

Empathizing with disease, with medications, with psychological problems, with car-park focused urban sprawl, with disability, with thyroid problems and metabolic disorders and absorption disorders and poor education and stressful busy lives and constraints on money and food availability and susceptibility to peer pressure - these are all things that can usefully and helpfully be discussed. Praise of "they tried something and suffered for it, so if anything was going to work, suffering was going to work, and it didn't work", should fade from the world. It's unproductive, unhelpful, and focuses on all the wrong things.

( - quote source: http://bonytobeastly.com/why-skinny-guys-fail-build-muscle-w... )

Make your body absorb less calories than it uses. The simplest (not easiest) way is then to eat less. Most people who have "tried to lose weight" but did not manage it just tried lightly. They tried every new miracle weight loss program thinking 50lb could be lost fast before summer.

The thing is there are no miracle cure: you have to learn what has plenty of calories and eat or drink less of it. You have to learn to say no to food. You have to learn that throwing excess food is ok once you're done eating (which is the main problem for people coming from low income environment I think). For people who eat as a way to curb their depression, you also have to work on this illness if you want them to lose weight. You may also have to cut contact with family or friend who will sabotage you (crab in a bucket mentality).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/9298574/

Someone comes alongs and says "show me a study!!" No, we don't have studies for every single possibility.

I am so sorry for your loss. I hope you find peace.

* A false positive for a terminal condition or cancer may have a poor effect on the patient's mental well-being AND make them less likely to submit to testing in the future (see e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23540978 - "We conclude that the experience of having a false-positive screening mammogram can cause breast cancer-specific psychological distress that may endure for up to 3 years, and reduce the likelihood that women will return for their next round of mammography screening."). Depending on your false positive rate, that may result in worse outcomes overall.

* I had an MRI on my head a few years ago, and a _very_ small growth (<2mm IIRC, small enough that some future scans weren't even certain it was there) was identified. Everyone involved is certain that it is an irrelevant finding, but I'm now stuck with yearly MRIs - both a cost to the NHS and a nightmare for me (it sets off an anxiety disorder).

* Parent suggests getting a hsCRP test. Whilst potentially useful, it's also non-specific - it'll be raised by pretty much any recent illness/injury/general inflammation, and will always be raised if, e.g., you have arthritis. You would likely need further testing to determine the cause (not necessarily free of risk/cost), and your false positive rate is likely to be higher if you are testing without other reasons to suspect it will be useful.

That's not to say all preemptive tests are a bad idea -- that's clearly not the case -- but as I initially said, it's a balancing act. Blindly added more early testing will not necessarily improve patient outcomes overall; they may in fact have a detrimental effect.

Has to involve nasty chemicals, radiation and flesh-cutting if it's going to work. Because, erm, that's what the profiteering psychos running this world are saying.

Is that the best you're capable of? Have you actually seen people in cancer "treatment"? What about your brain, what are you using it for instead?