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Comment by max_ | Hacker News Reader

This is so unfortunate. Cancer used to be something I would just hear other people getting until my Dad got it. The I understood that it was very real and that I can also be a victim.

Do you guys know of any ways to reduce your risks of getting cancer? I know not smoking tobacco works.

What foods, bad habits should one avoid. What other habits can reduce cancer risks?

Are there any prophylactic techniques?

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We definitely know obvious bad behaviors can cause cancer, probably the ones you've heard of.

But I think some big part of it is genetics and/or luck. I see what happened to Jobs, and people like him - reasonably healthy people. Then I see men in my family who've routinely drank a ton and chewed tobacco, overweight, spent all day in the sun to the point of looking like leather, and live well into their 80s. Yes everyone has some anecdote that doesn't mean much, but it's hard to reconcile.

Re: Jobs specifically, if one has cancer it's best to accept it immediately and to get chemo and other treatments that work, as opposed to colon cleanses, acupuncture etc.. Had he done this his odds of survival. He reportedly expressed regret about this towards the end, per [0].

I think about this kind of thing lot, like how I think about TotalBiscuit's cancer and his regret regarding not getting seen to earlier. The profound level of regret these people must have felt during their final days must have been frustrating and saddening, but I appreciate their efforts to warn others as they have been responsible for me personally making sure I get serious signs and symptoms seen to rather than ignoring a bloody stool as though it's normal, or thinking I can treat something myself without professional advice.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/oct/21/steve-job...

Ever since I had a sometimes-cancerous soft issue tumor so rare, information on it mostly exists in academic writing to then find out it was not cancerous yet at the time it got cut out (probably, but get screened for the next few years anyway) I gave up on looking at numbers to console myself with statistics.

Not to say you shouldn't minimize your risk, but it can still hit you regardless.

Exercise. The single most effective thing you can do you keep your body healthy.

Nope not just that. Diet, not smoking not drinking will go a long way to reduce your risks too. And also keeping good vitamin D levels (highly correlated with lower cancer risk)

But is that because vitamin d protects against cancer, or because cancer lowers your vitamin D levels?

Or is it because people with higher vitamin D levels probably spend more time outdoors, and are getting more exercise?

I wish it was easier to figure this stuff out.

> Do you guys know of any ways to reduce your risks of getting cancer? I know not smoking tobacco works.

Also not drinking alcohol [1].

[1] https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/a...

Avoid sugar, alcohol, bacon, and exercise daily?

This is great advice.

Remember, though. You can still get it, even if you do all that. Having cancer is not a moral failure. Even kids may get it.

Realizing, not in a philosophical way, one way way or another, that we will die, is something that changes you. Fewer reasons to accumulate fame and money. More reasons to make yourself happy in this life.

You cant really be happy if you completely lack money either.

Sleep well and drink lots of water. Avoid the summer sun at noon, but do get some sun on your body, .. in general, get out of your basement sometimes.

Is this a widely held opinion ? It’s doesn’t seem intuitive that sleep and water have an affect on bone cancer or really any type

It is a widely held opinion, that sleep and water have good influences on your overal health and good overal health is linked to less cancer and some other benefits.

I don’t think you should avoid exercise daily.

Sadly, the English language is not precise enough for me to express what I wanted in a compact way. Recently I have been learning Ukrainian and there is a language where it is easy to precisely express this kind of thought due to the many different forms of "and", word terminations indicating expected noun context, and different rules about punctuation.

Exercise daily and avoid sugar, alcohol and bacon.

Avoid meat. It will protect against many other bad things, too(1). You can also delve into the world of longevity...

(1) https://veganhealth.org/chronic-disease-and-vegetarian-diets...

In most part - don't live old. It also helps when you don't poison yourself (indeed tobacco, polluted air, alcohol, you name it, are poisons even when tolerable in small quantities) and exercise enough.

> Do you guys know of any ways to reduce your risks of getting cancer? I know not smoking tobacco works.

We know most cancers are preventable and caused by our lifestyle/environment

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2515569/

Don't smoke, don't drink alcohol, avoid smoked food, avoid processed red meat, avoid plastic food containers/beverage containers, buy bio food or food which has grown with minimal amount of pesticide

Exercise, that'll help not being overweight/obese/diabetic

Get vaccinated against hpv (you're probably too old for that one)

Don't live in a polluted area/city center, avoid owning furniture's that release toxic gases (a lot of things treated to be fireproof or fire resistant are awful)

Wear sunscreen or long clothes, get your weird moles checked

At the end of the day we all know it deep down, you can easily prevent a lot os health issues by not being overweight/obese and avoiding alcohol/cigarettes

Only ~40% of cancers are actually preventable and even if people followed all guidelines, we'd still see around 1 in 4 people developing cancer. For most people, the second line of defense is early detection, which is important to mention so people don't say "I have such a healthy lifestyle, it's very unlikely that I'll get cancer". Millions of extremely healthy people out there develop cancer every year.

Your recommendations are good, the easiest one being the HPV vaccine when under 30s.

https://www.cancer.org/content/dam/cancer-org/research/cance...

The main cause of cancer at the end of the day is aging. The longer you live the more likely you are to get cancer. That is why most people who get cancer are above 70. Having a better lifestyle will help reduce your risks but ultimately aging is increasing your risks no matter what

It's not evolving in a good way though, lifestyle is definitely a huge contributor, and doing all these things improves your healthy lifespan anyways, no reasons not to do them in the first place.

> Results Global incidence of early-onset cancer increased by 79.1% and the number of early-onset cancer deaths increased by 27.7% between 1990 and 2019

https://bmjoncology.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000049#

There is virtually no evidence that bio food or organic food is better for you

They contain less pesticides on average and pesticides are directly linked to cancers but you do you

Also several studies mention they have higher level of nutrients, vitamin &co

Eating bio veggies won't make you cancer proof, but the again smoking a cigarette a day won't guarantee you a cancer either. It's a game of luck but some things help while other things are detrimental, I personally see no reason to buy pesticides riddled veggies when I have access to cleaner ones

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20359265/

you forgot to avoid sugar. Sugar is a huge cancer contributor.

Don’t: - Don’t smoke (even second hand so don’t stay near someone smoking), don’t drink alcohool, don’t drink sugar loaded drinks.

Beware: - Try to limit red meat, industrial food and processed sugar stuffs

Do: - Sport. Every day. Walk as much as you can.

Those are quite simple rules.

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