Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?
nature.com
nature.com
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.
No so long as sickness is so profitable. The incentives aren't there like you would think.
Healthcare is crazy profitable. Insurance companies, healthcare providers, suppliers etc form a decent chunk of most western economies, the US of A in particular.
https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/2020-military-pfas-site...
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.
Tell this to my mom.
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.
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.
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.
But at the end of the day we all know there are significant potential benefits to [testing cars every year]. Not only that, more demand can increase jobs [in testing centres] in the first place.
The question isn’t whether there are benefits. It’s whether the benefits exceed the costs. You need to actually measure those to find out. You can’t just assume it. Jobs in testing centres and labs are not a benefit. If they are doing useless work they don’t just cost money. They cost the potential output from the jobs those people could have done instead. The TSA doesn’t just massively inconvenience millions every year to almost zero benefit. It also wastes the labor of tens of thousands of people who could have done something better and more useful with their lives.
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).
How does letting people have undiagnosed cancer in their 30s and 40s fit in with this?
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.
Remind me to never use you as a medical provider.
I think the effort is better spent as follows:
- ban sale of combustible tobacco products
- ban advertising of alcoholic beverages
https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/html/10.10...
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.
Air pollution has a relatively small effect compared to the others.
Lifestyle modification can only go so far when the stress of living remains high. Swap the burnt stuff with something that puts less tar in your lungs, maybe, but any further is… sigh.
There's also a post on HN yesterday about research into air pollution from pm2.5 particles triggering cancer.
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
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.
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.
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?
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For context I've lived for decades in both Australia and the US. Pros and cons in both cultures, and I love both.
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.
Do you have any idea what living in third (or even second) world countries is like?
> at least relative to other OECD countries.
Such as Turkey? Or Mexico? Why do you think Mexicans escape to the US? Because their life was too easy and they wanted to have more of a challenge?
> Such as Turkey? Or Mexico? Why do you think Mexicans escape to the US? Because their life was too easy and they wanted to have more of a challenge?
They come the US because the quality live in the US is superior ... I didn't say it wasn't.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039
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.
>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.
> 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-cogni...
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/
edit: formatting
It is not one study, it is a meta-analysis.
The quotes from the meta-analysis you mention do not show mention anything concrete; there are words and phrases like "robust", "evidence-base is very strong", "higher response rate". They barely tell you anything. One needs to see the numbers, not the researchers interpretation of them.
What a non sequitur. Why would feminism and stoicism have any incompatibilities?
Why would there be any conflict between "I should try to not let shit get to me" and "Also, I should campaign for there to be less shit around to get to me"?
Those are just two different ways to deal with having shit, and one in no way impedes the other.
Am I misunderstanding your claim?
> The intersectional types are vehemently against owning your emotional responses in the way stoicism advocates
A woman fighting against feminism is a woman fighting against responsibility for herself.
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.
2. Toxic mass media
3. Devisive, polarizing politicians
4. Being constantly threatened with nuclear death from a madman half a world away
Humans have to be able to visualize a better tomorrow to be propelled toward it. Do you see a better tomorrow? Maybe people are depressed and anxious because deep down, in the recesses of our collective consciousness, we already know how all of this ends.
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.
In short, radiation either has an immediate, very apparent and deadly effect, or a simple stochastic one that basically linearly increases with radiation exposure.
I also have a couple different Austin Air purifier models. Also expensive but seems to work well.
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
> 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!
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
Nope, I said absolutely nothing to that effect.
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.
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.
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.
Re: the cholesterol, check out my other comment.
Thank you, wishing you the same.
Are you saying cholesterol and saturated fats aren't unhealthy? I'm confused.
Bottom line is saturated fat is not implicated whatsoever in any negative health outcomes.
That probably means a whole ton of marketing material touting Omega oils has to be thrown away.
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...
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.
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
Your gut bacteria is an expression of the foods that you consume on a daily basis.
Avoid alcohol, sugar, and processed foods. These things increase bad gut bacteria and decrease the good ones.
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
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.
Does my circulatory system need to fully rest so as not to develop dysfunction?
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
This must be an american thing. I've always been told the opposite advice all my life. Interesting.
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.
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.
Autophagy doesn't really kick in until 2-3 days of fasting.
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.
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).
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.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
> 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...
[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.
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.
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.
There's probably other environmental factors, radiation, diet, etc going on too.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I also noticed for people born after 1995 there are 18% identify themselves as non-binary these days, I wonder this is also from the same cause, i.e. industrial food related, but I don't have concrete data to back this up.
Longevity is improving slowly, hope one day we can fully catch cancel from onset, I'm aware of quite a few who were taken away by cancers in their 50s or early 60s, sadly.
I wonder about this too. We have a lot more PFAS chemicals in our environments (and bodies) these days and they are known to be endocrine disruptors. It seems plausible that these could be affecting sexual development/identity.
Also have to point out that until very recently we had no reliable data. If you stop burning witches and then it seems like everyone is becoming a witch, that is probably not what is happening. What is happening is that people are admitting it.
The best we have from the past are anonymous surveys and those tended to be done by colleges or by people like Kinsey. That is not going to give you a random sample even if we assume everyone on those surveys was fully aware of how they felt and 100% honest.
I have kids in k-12, and both them and I observed this trend over the years. There might be a biological reason behind it, further boosted by the culture wind these days.
You can only look at this comparative historical thing in certain developed countries with long histories of detecting all cancers.
For soap, it sounds like maybe 3500 years ago? (Which is 1000 years after it was invented.) https://time.com/5831828/soap-origins/
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.
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.
1. The "unbridled" qualification is deliberate, and very different from what I'm guessing is your idealized version.
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.
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.
What if these companies did find a cure, and after running the numbers, determined it was less profitable? Wouldn't 'death by a thousand costs' be more profitable a one-time cure (or limited rounds)? Just because people would be willing to pay almost any amount does not mean they can pay almost any amount.
(Personally, I think they would release a cure if they could find one, but I have heard arguments as to why it would be less profitable, and I am curious about your opinions.
These companies are evil, but it's not entirely their faults. I think they are a manifestation of a sick society -- with each answer to our hopes and prayers the Monkey Paw curls.)
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.
The only small problem with that is that we are not that advanced to do it.
[1] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high...
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.
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[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 Clínica 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.
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This where it gets interesting.
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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.
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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
Well it does, we're not outside of nature