That said, there is a toooon of cancer that we can prevent as a society though better public health messaging and better environmental laws, such as creating housing and cities that ban cars, so that we are not continually exposed to pm25 risks.
Colon cancer takes a decade to develop from polyp to tumour. The main purpose of a colonoscopy is to find and snip any polyps there could be in the colon. Then you'd be safe from colon cancer for a decade or more.
You would normally not feel much: the sensory nerves in the colon are only really able to feel if you have gas. And many hospitals offer sedation, so you wouldn't need to experience the procedure anyway. The worst part is the restricted diet for a week before (avoiding foods that would cling to the intestine wall) and emptying the bowels the day before. If you know that you have healthy kidneys, do ask your doctor for the good laxative that is a small dose that doesn't taste bad.
Myself I have an unusual genetic condition, so I unlike normal people, I do a colonoscopy every year. I stay awake and watch the monitor, because I actually want to see what I look like inside. At the end when you reach the small intestine, the cilia on the walls inside there are quite fascinating.
Which is what "gas and air" is in the context of my comment.
I've had like a dozen of colonoscopies (have to be checked every year cause of risk factors), and they were never really painful.
Nitrous oxide is a fairly strong anagelsic (pain medication) but a very weak sedative. That's exactly why it's often used for minor routine procedures where keeping the patient awake and reasonably alert is more valuable than keeping the patient fully sedated.
It varies by hospital trust, there is no uniform guideline.
My local NHS hospital sedates for colonoscopy as a matter of course (using fentanyl). But as you say, some don’t, and others ask the patient.
Post-care is a few day's worth of entry-level painkillers unless the patient gets a dry socket. We use acetaminophen for post-treatment rather than paracetamol, since it's better (never understood the British obsession with that stuff, it's nasty business).
Anywhere else I would walk away from a terrible joke like that, but this is HN. I'm joking.
It's also a rare joke where explaining it won't reduce the effect: by the time a Brit hits the end of the offending sentence, it's too late.
I also have to do MRI every year and it's much more frustrating for me because they always complain I'm breathing wrong, and I have asthma so it's not easy to "breath right". It takes ages.
I walked into an urgent care because I had severe back pain. They put me through a bunch of chest x-rays where they told me to inhale and hold my breath, then they bring me over to the CAT scanner and tell me to hold my breath when the light goes green. So I inhale and hold my breath. Then the tech comes out and tells me "did you inhale? don't do that, it ruins the results".
They decided not to re-run them because the odds I had something wrong even with those symptoms were apparently less than the odds of the additional CAT scan giving me cancer down the line. Certainly didn't help my peace of mind.
But the muscle relaxants and a proper desk chair seems to clear it up within a week so I guess they were right...
"Fortunately" they only have to scan my head, so no issues arise from (wrong) breathing.
Amazingly, the American Cancer Society had already done that calculation when they made their recommendation to get scoped once every 10 years.
A normal colon is quite flexible, and should not get hurt just from the endoscope being pushed through the gut.
Snipping a "normal" polyp or taking a biopsy would cause a little bleeding, but should heal up quickly. I've been told that I could see blood in my stool after it, but it's been so little that I haven't.
Does anyone know why I got cancer? No. Does it really matter? Honestly, no.
Just to re-iterate the point: Go through all the screening you can, cancer (of any form) is easer treated when caught early. Or even prevented.
There's reasons why we don't screen for all cancers all the time - one being that when you are young and healthy the false negative rate and risk of complications of the test are often higher than the chance the test catches something.
That is what I have. "Luckily", out of four siblings, I'm the only one that tested positive and therefore the only one in my family that gets checked every year.
So were no serious symptoms so, cancer is a sneaky bastard.
High risk? Sure. But the general population, no.
If you have the money, I recommend a bidet toilet seat (which I recommend anyway) before you do the prep for it - makes the whole process a breeze.
They offer "gas and air" mainly. You don't even have to have that. You are fully awake during the procedure, laughing at the live HD video feed from inside you on the big screen.
You can be fully anaesthetised but that's very rare here in the UK.
After the appointment, it's a free cup of tea, and some biscuits. You have to wait for a couple of blood pressure tests, but after 15 mins recovery you can leave and go home. The entire process from entering the clinic unti leaving is about an hour.
The process is mildly uncomfortable but not really painful. Nothing like childbirth for example.
Don't be scared. It doesn't hurt too much. And as other commenters have written, any polyps they remove could have become tumours in 10 years, and afterwards, you are effectively safe from colon cancer for a decade.
If the NHS (UK) find and remove any polyps, they'll add you to a watch list for regular colonoscopy procedures. I have one every 2-3 years, others have them annually.
Get that camera up you... It might save your life.
Are you saying you only have to fast, without laxatives/prep? How does that work? I find it hard to imagine that anyone's colon is clean enough to get a good view after only fasting for a day?
Not sure how waiting longer than 24 hours is going to get you much cleaner in any case.
The one in the UK was done without sedation and was a terrible experience. Apparently having an overly sensitive colon makes it pretty unbearable.
But yeah, the stigma around a doctor introducing a tube/camera up your ass is just that. You dont lose anything and you dont become any more/less anything. The prep is a bit rough but nothing unbearable as well.
I am 40 now, but will deffo get to it yearly once I'm 45.
However, I have a hunch that frequent colonoscopies are maybe not a good idea.
Doubts:
1. We know more but we don't know all things creating colon cancer. Knowing the existence of cancers caused by viruses, disinfection procedures applied on the device could matter a lot.
2. Even if we disinfect properly, we know of a notorious little fellow: H.pylori, which can go down to the intestines. "Helicobacter pylori infection is associated with colon adenomatous polyps detected by high-resolution colonoscopy." https://bmcgastroenterol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/...
3. H. pylori (which serves just as an example, there can be other bad guys) is really hard to get rid of with disinfectants. It builds up resistance over time so it's doubtful that our disinfectants currently in use will stay as effective as well.
4. Frequently putting a foreign object to different people's colons (yes, I know it's disinfected) would increase the probability of transmitting such unknown risks.
I didn't talk about perforation risk. Just the possibly transmissible cancer risk.
So I remain doubtful that it's completely harmless It's necessary but every year? Doubtful without more data.
Finally, thanks for the people who invented and use it to save lives. I wanted to share my doubts on frequent colonoscopies
Did you read the part where the commenter said that they have an unusual genetical condition and that's the reason they have yearly colonoscopies?
In the US, insurance isn't going to pay for it unless a doctor says it is medically necessary.
Same here, but I stopped watching the monitors; I just watch a movie on my phone; makes it go (much) quicker for me => I hardly notice anything if the movie (or tv show) is good.
A person can also avoid cancer by choosing a career that is not cancer-inducing. Given the author's cabin crew history:
3.4% of female flight attendants reported having had breast cancer compared with 2.3% of women in the general population group
2.2% of female flight attendants reported having had melanoma skin cancer compared with 0.98% of women in the general population group
1.2% of male flight attendants reported having had melanoma skin cancer compared with 0.69% of men in the general population group
7.4% of female flight attendants reported having had non-melanoma skin cancer compared with 1.8% of women in the general population group
3.2% of male flight attendants reported having had non-melanoma skin cancer compared with 2.9% of men in the general population group
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12862322/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5559846/
Perhaps aircraft should add an UV-A blocking layer to their windows?
I don't think increased radiation levels would contribute differentially to skin cancer, because we're talking about gamma rays.
I would also think the exposure to jet exhaust. For me, that smell evokes a nostalgia for picking up grandparents at the airport. It is probably hazardous to work at an airport and breathe it all the time.
The thin Al skin of an aeroplane might as well be nothing at all by comparison.
The average annual exposure per person in the US would be about 3.3 mSv (without medical radiation from xrays and such)[0], mostly from natural background radiation. There are high regional differences[1], could be as low as 1 mSv or as high as 20 mSv. Human made factors play a role as well, e.g. coal burning (e.g. in power plants) will dose people living close by with radioactive elements in coal ash.
Anyway, a busy crew member can do maybe the equivalent of 100 such flights a year, which would be roughly an additional dose of 3.5 mSv per year.
Their total annual exposure would then come out as double the average (US).
For comparison, an xray can be as low as 0.1 mSv for a chest one, but a whole body PET scan comes in at about 23 mSv.
So I'd conclude that being a flight crew member would of course somewhat increase your radiation-induced health risks, but maybe not as bad as people might think.
Looking at other health factors for crew members, like in-flight air quality, increased exposure to fuel (kerosene) fumes and burn products working in airports and planes, or work/sleep schedules might offer additional/better explanations for the increase in cancer in this group compared to the average population.
[0] the world average is about 2.4 mSv, Germany comes in at 2.2 mSv, Japan 1.5 mSv. Didn't find a good number for India, where the article author lives.
[1] E.g. here is a map of Germany for radon concentrations in living spaces https://www.bfs.de/SharedDocs/Bilder/BfS/EN/ion/environment/...
Kerala in India is among the places with the highest natural radioactivity: https://www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/jess/095/03/0397-0407
100 flights? More like 3-500.
This is where flight attendants spend their non-work life :-)
The radiation from the flight could be a factor of course; but being from Norway myself, and getting burned like a cooked lobster every time I go to Spain etc. I can't imagine that stuff being healthy to do regularly (or perhaps at all).
Here is an anecdote - growing up we used to have local festivals in the temples where they would distribute meals in banana leaves almost exclusively in all the temples. Fast forward these have been replaced with single usage low grade plastics and cups which when served hot I honestly fear leech plastic into food. The number of cars in any metropolitan cities have exploded - older forms of transportation like rickshaws are almost gone (not that I am saying I condone the poor rickshawalas having to pull weights twice their own but just setting context). Traditional Indian meals involved less frying and using ghee, which has higher smoke temperature compared to soybean which is also very poor quality.
It's way cheaper than treatments and medicines once you're sick and the best part, you don't get sick that much.
And that's something private healthcare can't provide, or at least not as effectively as the public healthcare.
Edit: of course country averages are mildly pointless, since it can strongly vary between different places in that country, so it might be worth to check on the city level
This combined with Sweden being a fairly cold country (with people keeping their windows shut) was a recipe for disaster with the further combined effect of smoking and radon gas leading to quite a few fatalities.
These days multi-family housings are regularly inspected to make sure that Radon gas amounts aren't too high (even if the required limits are fairly high in an international context).
At the end of the day, the outcome is still random. You'll still come across chain smokers that live to be 100 and people like Seema in the post, who get cancer despite doing everything "right". It doesn't seem fair - because it isn't, it's random. The best we can do is change the odds, not guarantee the outcome.
Humans are in quite an unlucky position when it comes to developing cancer, due to our relatively small size and long lifespan. Cancer doesn't affect smaller animals so much, as they generally don't live long enough for it to develop. Larger animals that live long lifespans aren't affected so much, such as elephants and whales.
You won't always know there was cancer, though: How often do you hear about Grandpa's prostate or that mole your cousin had removed?
And yes, I've met all sorts of folks like this. I worked in a pharmacy for years.
You just assume everyone will talk about such things.
Also: families usually go to the same doctor so even if you don’t personally know something, your doctor probably will.
As far as I can tell, the US and Norway are similar - but heck, I'm an immigrant and haven't actually looked into this.
Perhaps not that scientifically savvy but this video presentation by a medical doctor does highlight the anomaly of the Middle East population that have significantly least mortality due to cancer, most probably because of their lifestyle and habit.
[1]Why Does the Middle East Have the Lowest Cancer Rates in the World:
We’re still grasping at straws
Its nice that we have all these distinct populations to give clues to a broader solution, but there is still nothing to emulate, no rubric to follow, just a couple things to help you feel like you’re in slightly more control than you actually are
All these rates of cancer stats per capita are based on detecting the cancer, which we are notoriously bad at. It is either by happenstance or because its too late. We don't know how fast it grows, some practically overnight, some over decades. The delta changes as well. When detection methods get more personalized and better, I think the rates will go up dramatically while also providing the biggest chance at fixing and figuring out real prevention methods.
For more scientifically savvy research please check this recent video presentation from Dr. Leeper, Professor of Surgery and the Chief of Vascular Medicine at Stanford University. He's a cardiologist and co-founder of two biotechnology companies, 47 Inc. and Bitterroot Bio, that aim to prevent cancer and cardiovascular disease.
[1]What do cancer and heart disease have in common?
Ban / substantially reduce both, please.
Uh, like green spaces? Those aren't economically valuable, but they're immensely valuable to humans.
It's more about people hoarding lots of land for parking, roads for cars that are unsafe for use by non-car users, and then also vertical space above short buildings that goes unused.
So Copper is used to make melanin the skin pigment which then converts 99.9% of UV radiation into heat. Now if the copper in your diet is going towards the melanin production there is less for Interleukin-2 which helps white blood cells become more accurate. Ironically, people eat more leafy greens (salds) during the summer months when UV levels are highest so there is a seasonal environmental element to factor in as well.
Too much copper though and it will make you paranoid (dopamine-noradrenaline), and the female oestrogen pill (oestrogen) increases or retains more copper in the body which might probably explains some young womens reports of not feeling too brilliant when young and on the pill.
- Sudden weight loss (>10-15 pounds without a change in exercise or diet)
- Any kind of recurring pain, especially headaches
- Your poop is messed up
- Blood anywhere - coughing up blood, nosebleeds when you don't usually have them, blood in your poop or urine
- Mood or behavior changes (helpful if you have someone close to you who may notice this)
- Feeling fatigued even when well-rested
- Swelling or lumps anywhere
- Trouble sleeping
Which is a lot of stuff, but fortunately can be summed up as "If you feel consistently worse than you usually do, go see a doctor".
The key is to make your judgement of "I am indeed feeling consistently worse" within a couple of weeks, not a few months or even years while hoping it'll get better on its own. It's harder than it sounds - life is always busy and it's easy to tell yourself that your discomfort is mild and you can hold out a little longer. I waited too long to act on some bad heartburn and my few months of delay were rewarded with permanent damage to my lower esophagus...
- New moles.
- Moles that increases in size.
- An outline of a mole that becomes notched.
- A spot that changes colour from brown to black or is varied.
- A spot that becomes raised or develops a lump within it.
- The surface of a mole becoming rough, scaly or ulcerated.
- Moles that itch or tingle.
- Moles that bleed or weep.
- Spots that look different from the others.
Info directly from here: https://www.cancer.org.au/cancer-information/causes-and-prev...
It’s just that everything can be cancer and nothing. Some cancers have obvious symptoms others not so much. Any unexplained and rapid weight loss seems to be the most obvious. I don’t want to look up all the symptoms. Everything from gastric issues, back pains to moles and warts can be due to cancer.
We've not been doing colonoscopies nearly as long and we still don't do them to the general population (Even if your country recommends you get them once you reach a certain age: Healthcare is sparse in many areas of the world). This does mean that we really don't know how prevalent it is except in some populations. And even then, we probably don't know since we do not routinely do them to younger folks.
I'm sure there are all sorts of other issues with this, but I'm a layperson and I'm guessing you are too.