Why are so many young people getting cancer?
nature.com
nature.com
"Britain has found that the proportion of 16- to 24-year-olds engaging in heterosexual anal intercourse has risen from 12.5% to 28.5% over recent decades. Similarly, in the US 30% to 45% of both sexes have experienced it."
Still needs to be studied more as there don't seem to be any large studies yet.
"We found that colorectal tissues from 28 (51%) of 55 patients with colorectal cancer were positive for HPV DNA." [3]
[0] https://www.ucihealth.org/blog/2025/04/hpv-related-oropharyn...
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7062568/
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/aug/11/rise-in-popu...
1. The original guidance did not call for boys to get the vaccine. It does now.
2. We're talking about two different age groups. The article talks about those under 50. The group who got the HPV vaccine as part of their normal schedule are now just hitting their early 20s.
There's also still a huge number of people in the US who have HPV. It's really, really common.
"Approximately 42.5 million Americans are infected with HPV and there are at least 13 million new infections annually" [0]
Interestingly, the article calls out HPV directly as a cause of an increase in anal cancers.
"While HPV-related cervical and vaginal cancer rates have decreased since 1999, rates for oropharyngeal and anal HPV-related cancers have increased."
[0] https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/the-hpv-vaccine-acc...
It also notes this:
"Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is the leading sexually transmitted infection in the United States, and 85% of sexually active individuals will be infected at some point in their lifetime"
So, if you're not vaccinated and have had multiple sexual partners, it is rather likely you have or have had HPV.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21645515.2024.2...
Scroll down to the see the per state numbers.
https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/the-hpv-vaccine-acc...
Uh, their 30s.
1. As others have mentioned, males were excluded from vaccination until relatively recently. This seems like such a stupid decision in hindsight. When I (male) got my vaccines, I was told that it wasn't routinely done in boys "because of availability issues", which I took to mean "because it's expensive".
2. Initial vaccines offered protection against 4 strains of HPV, newer vaccines protect against 9. People who got the older vaccines remain susceptible to the other 5 strains.
3. It can take years for an HPV infection to become dangerous or cancerous.
4. This last one is speculative, but I assume that when a woman tests positive for HPV or cervical cancer, their partner is also looked at. With the rates of symptoms and cancers going down in woman, their partners might fall through the gaps: there are no routine tests for males.
"Overweight and obesity significantly increase colorectal cancer risk: a meta-analysis of 66 studies revealing a 25–57% elevation in risk" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12181496/
obesity is still a big driver and is a much harder fix. GLP-1s work but it's not one-and-done like a vaccine
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09598...
HPV may be associated with a subset of colorectal cancers. Future large-scale multicenter case–control studies with data on risk factors such as lifestyle and sexual behaviour are needed."
Is this the disagreement? How does it disagree with a study showing there might be a link, but that it needs more research - "HPV infection may play a role in colorectal carcinogenesis"?
I'm honestly really confused here. Because the study you linked _agrees_ with the one I linked.
Did you also notice that your link is from 2014 and looked at data from 22 March, 2013(!!) or earlier? Or does the age not matter in this instance, but does matter in the link I provided?
In 2019 (since dates are really important, I guess), the KFF directly stated that the vaccine is targeted to the "...9 strains of HPV associated with most cervical cancer, anal cancer, and throat cancer".
https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/the-hpv-vaccine-acc...
If you want to pay for it out of pocket, you totally can. Just ask your PCP.
however they have lower screening rates than the straights, e.g.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langas/article/PIIS2468-1...
Stats and population level studies are hard work. You need to vote somebody in who will support this, or live with the consequences.
There are common sense ways to reduce cancer risk that have been obvious to and practiced by many people for a long time, before the studies showed that they were right. For example, all of the many new synthetic materials and chemicals that have been found to be carcinogens. I just assume any novel chemistry exposure is a risk, to eat it, drink it, touch it, breathe it. I can't and don't avoid all of it, but I can avoid a lot of it in terms of dose, compared to people who don't think about this at all.
It's a good balance to care about science while still maintaining a human brain with independent thoughts.
What do you think science is? The whole point of science is questioning assumptions and applying data gathering and independent thought to analyzing that data.
Are we doing studies ourselves? Of course not. Are we reviewing a multitude of papers ourselves? We generally don't have the time.
Incidentally here's a really nicely written counter to many of the claims Malhotra has made:
> Equally, evidence that mRNA vaccines cause cancer is simply untrue. This sentence, for example “The millions of molecules of mRNA entering the cell is creating biochemical havoc, is disrupting protein metabolism, is interfering with tumour suppressor genes” is meaningless pseudoscience. There is no credible evidence that these vaccines disrupt tumour suppressors or drive any kind of process (biochemical or otherwise) that results in cancer. It is particularly crass to try to link this pseudoscience to the unfortunate incidents of cancer in the royal family and is reminiscent of the ‘died suddenly’ trope which attempted (and ultimately failed) to link the death of any young person to their vaccination status. This kind of outlandish conspiracy theory only serves to undermine the credibility of those spreading it.
https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-claims...
(the sentences being cited are from a different source but it's the same kind of story he tells in this testimony)
No, because framing the COVID vaccine as ‘gene therapy’ is pseudoscientific scare-tactic nonsense. I recommend reading the testimony from the American oncology society, as it explains how RNA works.
The air we breathe is one of the most overlooked things IMO. There's so many toxins especially in cities. If your apartment is unventilated or the ventilation has no filters get a high airflow air purifier now.
Most people get enough protein but only 5% of Americans get enough fibre in their diet.
Like, chicken nuggets make me slightly nauseous now. they probably always did, but i always feel/felt poor after eating, for decades. Now i know it's because it's not healthy. (obviously).
I have never heard anything negative about high fiber consumption other than "gas".
thanks for the 2+ hours away from medicine for supplemental fiber. curious if i have a medicine i am supposed to take "with food" - 350 kcal to be exact - should i avoid high fiber for that "meal"? 350kcal is a lot or a little, depending on what you're eating. It's like 5 eggs, or a small-ish candy bar.
When he called after the second test, 3 months after the first (12 weeks), you could hear the smile and excitement over the phone. "Giddy" almost. And this is a Dr. a few years from retirement, according to him...
Your PCP may not really have experience with supplemental fibers. From a safety pov, people go wrong with it by drinking insufficient water, or if they have swallowing difficulty, or if there is an insufficient gap with meds.
With regard to foods, also 1 tbsp milled flaxseed is a godsend, but drink water after eating it too.
Pantethine is a safe and interesting supplement to consider for lipid profile optimization.
Like you, I no longer crave chicken now, although I do supplement almost all micronutrients.
Because they weren't married yet I'm sure it's just compounding their financial struggles.
I was shocked when I heard they had cancer, I almost didn't believe it. Under 30 is such a young age to be diagnosed.
Let think twinkies! You can open a package of twinkies and let it sit out for a long time. A long time. A long, long time. They you can eat it. Long shelf life means it does not succumb to digestion by random microbes etc in the environment. Does the twinkie then succumb to the random microbes in your gut? I think not, but what do I know.
Then there is living food. You can take milk, put a culture in it and let it grow for 10 hours. Instant pot, heating pad, whatever. Then you eat it. It is now filled with living cultures. It tastes better to me than any store bought yogurt, costs exactly the same as the same quantity of milk. With a chopped apple, cinnamon and a tiny bit of sugar it tastes better to me that most of the faux ice cream you get these days.
What is funny to me is the conversations we have about "ultra processed food" do no address this aspect of the issue. I keep wondering why.
Mainly because the distinction you are making doesn't actually exist.
An apple doesn't "lose" anything by being stored. There are no preservatives, just refrigeration. The apple will proceed to go bad just as quickly once taken out of storage, and it will be just as nutritious as if you had eaten that same apple fresh off the tree.
You can also take that same apple that's been in storage for a year, press the juice out of it, put a culture in it, and it too will grow and be filled with living cultures. The year-stored apple is no less "living" than the milk that you also had to inoculate to turn to yogurt.
In fact, the list of edible things that will not be filled with living cultures, hours after you add a culture to them and then keep them warm for 10 hours, is very short.
"It's not at absolute zero, therefore there's some chemical process going on, therefore we don't know if it's causing significant portions of cancer"?
The number of things you can say that about is frankly infinite. You have zero reason to believe that any of the "chemical processes" that happen to an apple (or any food) in long term storage have anything to do with cancer.
This is a great example of correlation not equaling causation. You might as well say that writing years starting with a "2" could cause particular risks that account for a significant portion of cancer because of the different motions of our hand affecting our lymphatic system etc etc.
Irresponsible fearmongering with no foundation whatsoever.
Bad science is building hypothesis and promulgating it publicly alongside zero evidence whatsoever.
The discussion is about stored apples specifically causing increased cancer rates, paired with an arbitrary woo categorization of "living" vs "dead" food. OP wondered why this did not occupy a larger portion of public discourse. Again, this hypothesis exists alongside humans writing more years whose first digit is "2", as evidence-supported cancer progenitors.
> Some nutrients change, these changes could affect satiety which could affect obesity
Yes, if you walk back the "living vs dead" woo concept and expand the scope to more varieties of foods than just apples and more processing methods than passively storing otherwise intact fruit, then you exit the zero evidence crackpot zone.
Lots of crackpot woo theories are similarly half a step away from real evidence-supported theories. Another example would be biodynamic agriculture, which looks a lot like organic and integrated farming practices right up until you get to the part about burying ground quartz stuffed into the horn of a cow so you can harvest cosmic forces in the soil.
Don't be sorry! Instead of apologizing, all I ask is that you notice, read, and internalize the part where the objection is to "and therefore that's why cancer rates are increasing".
Hate to say it, but it's because it comes across as unscientific woo
We can measure the differences between an apple freshly picked and one preserved for a season. We can objectively see how the sugars and carbs and calories change, if they do.
Maybe there's some yet-to-be-discovered process in our bodies that deals with preserved food differently than fresh food, but if that is the case it's more likely because of the preservatives than the food being "dead"
Milk is also probably the best example of dead vs. live except you have it backwards. The milk sold in stores deliberately kills off the good bacteria to greatly extend shelf life and prevent food borne illness (pasteurization). Your point is more consistent with raw milk.
It has always been normal for certain fruits and vegetables, such as apples, pears, potatoes, etc. to be stored for months in a cellar. In the old days, you simple could not get a fresh apple outside harvest time.
Your concept of "dead food vs live food" seems rather questionable.
If anything the modern cold chain and globalized food supply and just the abundance of food in general means we have more access to fresh food than our ancestors even though they farmed and we mostly don't.
I am on the last of my onions from last year.
People have been doing this for a very long time.
Same for many root vegetables.
This isn't new: One of the early (pre-US) exports of the colonial US was apples back to Europe. They store and ship well.
There is a strong distinction line the ability to think (intelligence) and the ability to reason. (just ask google!).
There is lots of "intelligence" in this discussion. Reasoning? Not so much. Some how - and perhaps this is partly from how I phrased things - there was some impression that I meant storage of food caused cancer! But apples are indeed affected by storage. Just ask google!
And "just ask google" is the problem. You may be intelligent, and your comments may be perceived as intelligent, but does that mean they are reasoning? Nope.
And for all the people out there wanting to know whether you will have a job, and what the future with AI will be:
If you are only intelligent you are out of luck! If you can reason, there is a huge opportunity! Just ask google.
I've heard people speculate about the opposite actually: psychological stress causing the an overactive immune system, resulting in chronic inflammation and a prevalence of auto-immune disease.
I'm a layman though, would like for someone to clarify.
We recently begun eating carbs, And very very recently started eating tons of processed carbs (because now we got the tech)
We are rarely in ketosis, and because of high carbs/sugar consumption, we start developing insulin resistance. (the idea is simple, we create resistance for most drugs/substances we take, be it anti depressants, caffeine, nicotine and so on.. the same happens with insulin. each time you eat too much sugar, your pancreas needs to issue insulin, so your cells can absorb more sugar. they start being resistant to it, so your pancreas need to work stronger and issue more and more insulin)
insulin is oxidative and inflammatory. we simply weren't built to regulate our blood sugar levels down (we are only equipped with insulin to do so), we are more well equipped to spike glucose levels up (gluconeogenesis, glucagon, cortisol and so on...)
because we are rarely in ketosis, we rarely get into the autophagy state (which is the auto-recycling cell system). so our cells multiply and the most error prone structure is the mitochondria.
mitochondria can make energy either from glucose or fat(keto bodies). it will always prefer glucose, only fallback to keto bodies (fat) when there is no glucose available. the synthesis of ATP (energy) from keto bodies will need oxygen as input, and will yield water as output. if we have inflammation, there is no oxygen (that's why severe chronic inflammation can lead to cancer), also that's why we usually use ice when we hurt ourselves, that place is inflamed, and by putting ice on it, it will change temperature (which changes pressure) and boosts blood circulation, blood carries oxygen, oxygen helps with inflammation.
a cancer cell, with a problematic mitochondria, will not be able to metabolize fat(keto bodies), because it has a problematic carburetor. fact is that the PET scans look for high glucose metabolism places in your body, because the cancer cells are starving for glucose.
the cell DNA is like ECC memory, it has self correction, but the mitochondria lacks the self correction, so it's way simpler to have it gone bad.
every single day we are having tons of cancer cells in our bodies, which self destruct or are detected and destroyed by our immune system.
the Middle East is the region in the world with the least cancer rate in the globe, yet they are one of the top consumers of sugar. but in islam they do the ramadan, in which for one month they make intermittent fasting basically, which boosts autophagy.
anyway... do healthy keto, boost autophagy, avoid ultra processed foods.
actually, I will extend this a little bit more... if you want to enter in keto...
go to the grocery store and buy this:
- meat (ground meat is fine and easy to prepare) - eggs (the most fresh ones if possible) - broccoli - butter or extra virgin olive oil
the portions will depend on your body type and so on.. but you would make meat and eggs on either butter and extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, and steamed broccoli. in my case it was 250g of ground meat, 4-5 eggs and one whole broccoli.
you must eat the broccoli first (it's fiber, you can't actually use it, the bacteria in your stomach does, it will make them very happy). if you eat meat+eggs first, you will feel full and will not be able to eat the broccoli, if you eat broccoli first, you will not feel full at all. use salt and pepper and olive oil.
eat the whole broccoli, that's like an ETF of micronutrients, it's very diversified!
then eat eggs+meat no problem...
you gonna feel very very full... do not eat any sugar/carbs.. it can take up to 3 days for entering in ketosis..
you can eat 2 to 3 times a day, eat only when you are genuinely hungry (your hunger will change drastically on how it's built over time)
then slowly entering in ketosis..
the rationale is that you need to cut off the garbage.. meat has high quality protein and fat, so does eggs (an egg has everything needed to begin a freaking life, fun fact: no carbs/sugar in it...)
and the broccoli has micronutrients and make your gut bacteria happy.
the quality of those 3 foods will depend on some things..
for the broccoli, it's the soil... is it contaminated or not? where did it grow?
for the eggs, is the chicken healthy? did she get sun? did she eat insects, worms, or just genetic modified ration?
same for the cattle...
but you are limiting a lot the potential contaminations sources..
But the thing is... just restrict potential contaminated food sources.
One example, vegetable oils... God had NO participation in the creation of those.. think about it..
How do you make extra virgem olive oil? you take the olive, then press it.. boom. olive oil..
How do you make avocado oil? Same thing! How do you make cocoa butter? same thing..
Butter is just raw milk shaken, you shake shake shake and you get butter!
These are natural fats.
Now just make a quick google/YouTube search on how is canola/soybean/sunflower/cotton oils made... it's a very complex, multi machinery step, that uses hexane (from crude oil) and other chemicals...
the majority of carbs today are made by processing food. the word (processing) means subtraction, removing things of the food.. they take like a genetically modified corn, process it and then can make some kind of "food", focusing on texture.
because our minds get addicted not only for the taste, but on the texture.. that's what the patents are for...
Many traditional foods from around the world have relied on nasty, toxic chemical processes since before chemistry was a real science. If anything, modern understanding of chemistry has made the removal of nasty chemicals much more complete and precise.
for example... corn.. we got genetically modified corn, that grows in contaminated soil... eating corn that is genetically modified is bad, eating corn that is not genetically modified but has grown in contaminated soil is bad, now eating gmo corn that has grown in contaminated soil is super bad.. + pesticides and whatever...
all of this is getting into your body....
if you take animals like cattle and chicken, they are eating grass or insects (actually chickens will eat ration from gmo but ok..)
eating meat from cattle is going to yield less contamination, because it has been filtered by nature (grass) + cattle (liver) and so on... there is a chain of filtering..
if the chicken doesn't get sunlight (vitamin d), the eggs will be depleted of vitamin d, and so on...
I mean, even in fish. it's way safer to eat sardines than big fishes (for mercury buildup for example)
in the 1900s one chicken would took 4-5 months to be ready to be killed.. today it's ready within 5-7 weeks... you can ask old folks how the taste of chicken has changed from when they were young to today...
That's true but it doesn't mean that the contamination has an actual effect, so vibes. This is not a minor point at all.
> eating meat from cattle is going to yield less contamination, because it has been filtered by nature (grass) + cattle (liver) and so on... there is a chain of filtering..
Assuming your argument of contamination is true does not make this assertion true. Why do you assume their livers do filter things instead of going through bioaccumulation?
> if the chicken doesn't get sunlight (vitamin d), the eggs will be depleted of vitamin d, and so on...
Chickens get supplemented with vitamin D in their feed.
> in the 1900s one chicken would took 4-5 months to be ready to be killed.. today it's ready within 5-7 weeks... you can ask old folks how the taste of chicken has changed from when they were young to today...
This is true. You still need to prove how the dietary profile has changed.
If contamination has no effect, why does lard come with a transgenic warning on the packaging? the pig is not genetically modified, but because it consumes gmo food, it's fat becomes contaminated... Why do large fish carry massive, measurable mercury traces? By your logic, you could pour chlorine into a plant's soil, wait a week, and eat it without an issue because "contamination might not have an effect."
> "Why do you assume their livers do filter things instead of going through bioaccumulation?"
Because that is literally what a liver and kidneys do. yours is not the only one that do filter. futhermore, cattle are ruminants, pigs, chickens, and fish are not. they have a completely different digestive system that filters out significantly more toxins before they ever reach the meat, followed by pigs, chickens, and lastly fish.
> "Chickens get supplemented with vitamin D in their feed."
vitamin d supplements are not the same thing as getting direct sunlight. also their food is mainly genetically modified. you know there are different kinds right? cage free, free range and pasture raised. which one do you think has the better nutrient dense meat and eggs quality?
> "This is true. You still need to prove how the dietary profile has changed."
it changed because of synthetic growth hormones, GMO grain feeds, completely different, accelerated industrial breeds and so on..
if you honestly think its "vibes," i highly recommend you test your theory:
1. never ever go outside. stay indoors and only consume vitamin d pills 2 only eat ultra processed, genetically modified foods, and high sugar snacks 3. only use vegetable oils! never ever consume natural oils/fats 4. if you have a garden, pour chlorine on your garden vegetables and eat them a few weeks later. (if they survive it) 5. never fast. eat 6+ times a day to keep your insulin spiked at maximum capacity
In my jurisdiction no such warnings exist. You should check what level of paranoia your region handles because it may be based on evidence or in scaremongering.
> Why do large fish carry massive, measurable mercury traces?
Because large fish are apex predators and apex predators have always had a large amount of contaminants. This holds true now and throughout history, it's not a modern phenomenon.
> By your logic, you could pour chlorine into a plant's soil, wait a week, and eat it without an issue because "contamination might not have an effect."
This is what happens with pesticides, we spray crops and then wait days to weeks for the offgassing or biodegradation. For the record continue to spray crops with water with human and animal feces for nutrition as has been the case throughout human history
> futhermore, cattle are ruminants, pigs, chickens, and fish are not. they have a completely different digestive system that filters out significantly more toxins before they ever reach the meat, followed by pigs, chickens, and lastly fish.
You need to show some evidence of solid studies that show bioaccumulation of toxins because mechanistic effects (or your random theorizing as a layman) are not sufficient proof.
> vitamin d supplements are not the same thing as getting direct sunlight.
You need to show proof of this.
> also their food is mainly genetically modified. you know there are different kinds right? cage free, free range and pasture raised. which one do you think has the better nutrient dense meat and eggs quality?
You need to show proof that the nutrition profile is drastically better. Some free range food tastes different for sure but you need to show me that there's a large enough difference. I am not arguing about the ethics of modern factory farming though.
> 1. never ever go outside. stay indoors and only consume vitamin d pills 2 only eat ultra processed, genetically modified foods, and high sugar snacks 3. only use vegetable oils! never ever consume natural oils/fats 4. if you have a garden, pour chlorine on your garden vegetables and eat them a few weeks later. (if they survive it) 5. never fast. eat 6+ times a day to keep your insulin spiked at maximum capacity
I mean hundreds of millions of people do this and most of these things have been studied, quite literally to death.
* We know the effects of vitamin D supplementation (favorable compared to more than moderate sun exposure as direct sun exposure brings risks of melanoma)
* We know the effects of GMO: no known effects at all, no specific mechanism of action of because GMO is meaningless unless you can tell me of specific genetic changes that trigger the creation of some toxin in the target organism
* We know the effects of ultraprocessed foods: largely attributable to high palatability that leads of greater body mass and spikes in glycemic index if not supplemented with fiber or physical activity.
* There have been hundreds of studies on vegetable oils and not a single one has shown negative effects beyond what you might get from excess calories. Have you actually read these studies? You talk about "natural" oils, which is a completely meaningless term.
* The garden thing is a stupid analogy and dependent on the chemistry of whatever chemical in question you're talking about. You know that chemistry is an exact science and we can know empirically how different substances biodegrade right?
* Fasting has some marginal health benefits but is ultimately just a method of calorie restriction, which is healthy overall. No human randomized control trial has shown fasting to be better than alternative methods of dieting.
* Likewise, the number of times you eat does not have and known impact when you equate for calories.
I've only seen mechanically extracted extra virgem olive oil.
I've seen some mixtures of like 80% vegetable oils with 20% natural extra virgin olive oil..
if you think about the human being a black box, and food (macro nutrients, fiber, carbs, protein and fat) being inputs, you could test it and find how to break the system, make it weak, obedient and addicted...
Also:
Look at where the “fat” is being stored.
Realize it’s not all “fat” from calories - it’s inflammation, and toxin diversion.
Fat doesn’t get stored in your eyebrows in front of your sinus,
that’s swelling from eating what the body sees as toxic,
and often breathing poison indoors.
We think we can always break down, or excrete, 100% of what we ingest, inhale.
We are wrong.
Today I have introduced many carbs back, like sweet potato, cassava, white rice, and fruits etc.. even some orange/grape juice. I just try to stay away from ultra processed foods and occasionally do some fasting.
About our ancestors, I mean... I think it would depend on where in world they were, what was available, and so on... But the majority of fruits didn't existed, and we didn't dominated agriculture and so on... I am not coming from the angle of "we need to go back to eating like our ancestors", but more like in "yeah, they didn't had food all the time, so they kind of were forced into ketosis and autophagy because of fasting"...
I mean, if you do a fast, you know that in like the 24-48 hours window you get a powerful focus, my guess is that the human would focus on hunting. but as you said, we didn't eat too much carbs as today, and the carbs were different as well.. take for example our wheat, it's mainly genetically modified, and so on...
about the ice, yeah.
about the cancer rates, take a look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cancer_ra...
it's not as easy to say "oh it's ramadan and that's it", but you can clearly see that the Middle East region and africa, which have tons of muslims, have lower cancer rates. intermittent fasting is done in ramadan. it will help with autophagy and health (if done properly).. but I agree that there are tons of other factors as you stated.
and because you cited smoking, I wanna share something. I've recently changed my mind about smoking.
I mean.. those cuban old folks that just chew tobacco all day... they die old. also we never hear about "smoking weed will give you lung cancer"...
that's because smoking tobacco... kind of doesn't give you cancer right away.. I mean, tobacco, specially when cured, will develop carcinogens, sure. but it will be like cooking food in a scratched teflon pan...
it's a plant, like marijuana, but it has been industrialized!
I've said to some people I know that smokes cigarettes: "Go to the tobacconist and buy rolling papers, filters, and shredded natural tobacco."... when they smoke they feel much more of a taste of the tobacco itself, feel it way stronger, and feel an absence of other taste which is only in the industrial cigarette.
idk how to explain cause I don't smoke. but I can only guess that those 9999999 chemicals are just gone... they might be added in the industrial process to further addict people idk..
I understand the desire to make a coherent narrative that fits your beliefs but please recognize the limits in our ability to make causal statements about the causes of cancer.
but the biochemistry doesn't change, you just need to see the human system as... a system, like any other system. Yes it will vary depending on genetics, environment and so on, but the base model is still the same.
the system inputs: constant glucose spikes require constant insulin, which drives inflammation and shuts down autophagy, which is bad for cellular and specially mitochondrial repair. what's the output?
also, I don't think it's necessary to mention but... this is not the sole root cause for all cancers in all of history. this is not the "cure". it is not the holy grail... but ask yourself.. what lifestyle are young people having today?
Those hunter-gatherers of the past certainly did eat whatever carbs they could find - wild roots, tubers etc. Gathering plant-based food was easier than hunting. Most Westerners today eat way too much meat, so I wouldn't recommend replacing carbs with that.
We can do things to help the microbiome recover, like safe fermented foods, probiotic blends, and fiber.
Buckets of *cide, herb and insect, through the cycle. Those no till fields full of crops are some of the most disgusting things I have ever seen. That soil will have applications and applications of *cide soaked in it top to bottom. Like eating plants from a toxic waste dump.
Disgusting. That's the critical national need for glycosphate. Feeding us all engineered stuff from toxic waste dumps so farmers can not need workers or mowing and tilling equipment.
For European lentil growers it’s illegal to use roundup. But if the roundup has been applied outside of the EU it’s not toxic nor forbidden anymore and it can be eaten by humans.
That’s one of many many many examples. We live in an insane society.
However, there are better ways to do no-till that don’t require large herbicide input. No-till is really good for reducing the amount of water needed to farm and preserving soil structure, which is beneficial for all kinds of reasons. It’s not inherently a bad thing.
No-till is a soil management technique, not crop management. It doesn't require any chemicals, and the goal is to increase soil life, not kill everything.
"in the United States, the incidence of advanced colorectal cancer has increased by about 3% each year since around 2010 in people between the ages of 20 and 49. In 2023, colorectal cancer became the leading cause of cancer death in this age group."
Also in TFA:
"Uterine cancer and liver cancer diagnoses and deaths are rising in young women"
The increases in colorectal and liver cancers seem to point to unhealthy food, probably combined with other factors that reduce the resistance of the body to unhealthy food, like pollution, lack of physical exercise and of good sleep.
Another factor that’s often overlooked is tailpipe emissions.
I have cancer, I'll take anything that has at least preliminary trails...
Now those adverse events are showing up but you will still insist that it cannot possibly have anything to do with what-cannot-be-named without even checking
- Infectious Diseases
- Sexual Habits
- Obesity
- Agricultural Chemicals
- Dietary Shifts
- Food Processing & Storage
- Microplastics and Forever Chemicals
- Environmental & Indoor Pollution
- Sleep Deprivation
- Covid Vaccines
That is quite insane. When things become hard or impossible to understand, even hardcore atheists turn towards secular religion.
Urbanization means exposure to chemicals and pollution and stress, and even if there are higher life expectancy, it's probably correlated with wealth since cities are increasingly for affluent people.
- older parents
- higher bmi
- processed food
- pesticides
- less exercise
- more stress
- hpv
- air quality
- pfas
- lack of sleep
I think it's worse then we all think right now.
- Obesity and sugary drinks/food
- Various chemicals we use in agriculture, food products, cleaning, etc
- Lack of sleep
- Lack of exercise
- Stress
- Pharmaceuticals. And to be clear because I know this will be more controversial, I'm not anti-pharma, but lots of people today are being prescribed daily medication at ever young ages. We know many of these pharmaceuticals can marginally increase certain cancer risks.
- Low Vit D levels – seriously everyone should be supplementing
- Vaccines? Probably not, but I dunno... Call me a conspiracy theorist if you want, but if you're on your 5th Covid shot I feel like you might be putting your body at some marginally increased inflammatory risk there. Vaccines are quite literally deigned to induce inflammation to boost immune response after all.
- More radiation emitting devices – not sure about this one because I haven't done any research, but when I was younger people used to talk about this quite seriously and now it feels like something only conspiracy theorists say. I suspect there is some amount of truth to it even if 5G isn't going to literally give you cancer.
I think it would be more surprising if we didn't see an increase in cancer rates to be honest.
> - More radiation emitting devices
Yeah you should absolutely not be going out in the sun for your vitamin D if you believe the latter to be a cause because the sun emits many orders of magnitude more radiation than human made devices in daily use.
Forever chemicals like PFAS are a runner-up. The fluorocarbon tail mimics lipids, so the body tries to use them, which damages/kills cells. They circulate around the body endlessly like allergens. Cancer happens after cells have split too many hundreds of times trying to heal damage. So accelerating damage accelerates cancer.
Since cancer is a multifactorial disease, we can only assign weights for each cause. And since healthcare (at least in the US) has been hijacked by regulatory capture to prop up big agribusiness and pharma, we can't do anything in the short term to limit our exposure to dangerous substances.
Meaning that we're left with diet and exercise as the main preventatives. I don't buy that drinking/smoking/drugs or other lifestyle choices are the main causes of cancer (although they certainly contribute) since they've been around for hundreds of years and we have solid data on those risk factors. I look at it more as, a body functioning healthily can recover from abuse better than a body on the brink of failure. Yet we have created a way of life around chronically elevated cortisol and mental health drugs to combat systemic burnout, then wonder why we're all dying. It's so weird.
Like with most problems today, I blame the rich and powerful for abdicating their spiritual duty to help others since they have the means to do it. Instead, they pull up the ladder behind them, or even participate in malfeasance since it profits them and their cronies. Imagine what a few billion dollars put towards mRNA vaccines, CRISPR and pure research would do for cancer. Yet our titans of industry have their sights set on space or bunkers or whatever, actively working to cut government spending on research. It's so weird..
A way forward is maintaining the body so we're ready for anything on a personal level, while working towards systems change on the public level. Otherwise, what are we good for?
This warning on freshwater fish is perhaps the saddest thing I have read in an endless stream of stories on the profit-driven destruction of our environment:
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2023/01/ewg-s...
Also I learned recently that 10% ethanol has the same antiknock effect of tetraethyllead (TEL), but they suppressed it because the fossil fuel industry didn't want biofuels to eat into their profit margins. Better to shower the world with lead and reduce IQ levels, evidently.
I will now read the article.
My grandmother used to grow her own vegetables and fruits and had a minimal chicken farm for eggs until the early 2000s, all in her regular backyard, it's not ancient history or something that required a lot of real state.
Now there's a 15-story building and no land whatsoever where her house used to be.
I'm currently trying to get back to it, until then I try to eat ecological and as much as I can cooked by myself. It is hard though, not everybody can aford a plot of land (ideally next to some decent sized town)
They talk about obesity as a separate cause than ultra processed food, I thought it was quite related, something I need to look into
I’m sure that could have an effect.
I remember being in my 20s and not being able to sleep, but the most distracting thing I could reach for was a pile of books in my bedside table.
Now, I can't sleep, there's an endless stream of things to keep me awake.
The jokes about "5G gives you cancer" is probably not as funny, if you think about the sleep you miss while you doom scroll.
Back when I was young in the 90s, this was exactly how I spent the last 5-6 hours of my days, reading books in my bed until the sun came up in the morning and I actually started getting tired.
Now, I sleep much better, the bed and bedroom is limited to just two activities, sleeping and funtime with partner, otherwise I never just chill in the bed or have anything else interesting in there. And if I can't sleep, I go up again and do something else until I'm tired enough to actually lay down in the bed. Probably helps a ton, as even with the phone on the nightstand next to me, I do fall asleep relatively quick.
802.11g was good enough for that, no need for 5G.
What is forcing you to doom scroll rather than putting the phone in a different room before going do bed?
As individuals, there's nothing we can do other than exert willpower, and we should. But as a society we should also be asking questions about the supply side of these bad habits.
As an individual, pretending you have free will and can opt to not do things you know are bad for you is probably better than doing those things while complaining that society isn't stopping you from hurting yourself
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03008916241297078
Also, not all ready meals are crap. You can buy premium frozen meals from restaurant suppliers but they aren't cheap.
The main difference is that TV dinners were designed to be heated in an oven rather than a microwave, back when microwaves were less common.
One example: long ago I used to buy Bush's baked beans in a can. They had a vegetarian version which I assumed was healthier, and it even tasted better than the original. But one day I compared the labels and found the vegetarian version had more added sugar and more calories per serving.
We were fed a massive amount of misinformation about healthy foods in the 1980s. Hopefully things will improve from now on.
[1]: ubiquitous flame retardants, which in America they put in every couch, carpet, and mattress
[2]: ubiquitous microplastics pollution,
[3]: joint effect of Obesity and Ultra-Processed Foods
[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2022&q=flame+retar... [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo... [3] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/13/micropla...
Second, I do not think anyone is claiming that microplastic pollution is not ubiquitous, because that is obvious. That microplastics get consumed is also probably not that controversial. The extent to which microplastics get consumed but do not exit the other end of the pipe is an empirical question that has methodological challenges.
Third: I think there are some subtleties here involving the size of plastic particles. Microplastics is a catch-all term these days, but a more formal definition puts microplastics at plastic particles that range from 5 mm to 1 μm (micrometer), while nanoplasticsare 1 μm down to 1 nm (nanometer). micro- and nano- plastics can require different techniques to detect.
Have diets really gotten noticeably unhealthier over recent decades? I'm not sure that's the case. We used herbicides and pesticides 20 years ago too, of course. It's becoming increasingly clear that fiber intake is linked to cancer rates, but again I'm not sure diets 20 years ago had higher fiber on average.
Maybe, or maybe it's the bottomless pockets of the sugar industry lobby.
> Have diets really gotten noticeably unhealthier over recent decades?
Diet is only one of the factors on obesity and it's health consequences, you also have stress, sleep deprivation, lack of exercises, loneliness and isolation.
The obesity epidemic is by far the most important public health problem in the developed world, but discussing this publicly, and thus effectively addressing it, is very difficult.
I can't help but think about the same thing with "co-sleeping". It's been discouraged altogether on the basis that it increases the incidence of sudden death syndrome in newborns, which sounds like a sensible policy until you notice that co-sleeping actually only increases risk of SDS with obese and/or smoking parents. But you have to actually read the research for that, and it's never communicated like this.
An uninformed comment before you read the article isn't helping anyone.
Most people will have a pre-conceived opinion about this, just like they would have an opinion about politics. Put "Trump" or "DEI" or some other word in the title, and the exact same thing happens.
"Silent Spring" came out over sixty years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring
got massive coverage including a worldwide CBS News broadcast back then
Government and industry were never held to account and instead deregulated everything
We still allow leaded gas to be sprayed all around airports where everyone is exposed during travel and neighborhoods nearby
Golf Course neighborhoods are some of the highest cancer rates in the country
We've learned nothing and now the environment is so saturated with toxins that the immune system is under attack from birth
* too much rage bait videos raising rage hormones
* too much performing for social media
* suppressing expression for fear of cancellation
* exposure to too many varieties of food/cuisine
* video games
* anime
Yes, these are all tongue-in-cheek but come on, the random speculation here is all ridiculous
Since 2000 organic food went from niche to mainstream.
See https://www.epa.gov/agriculture/organic-farming - "Pesticides derived from natural sources (such as biological pesticides) may be used in producing organically grown food"
I won't bother to read the article.
tl;dr ultra processed foods and pesticides
No way you can just replace (also very very not good for you) sugar with something else and end up with all the upsides and no downsides.
It breaks our ape brain intuition that anything good must also be bad. But consider all the food tech you take for granted while singling out zero-cal sweeteners.
Aspartame is listed as possibly carcinogenic now after having "0 problems" for decades and having that same claim of being some of the most tested food additives on the planet. Most artificial sweeteners are also still linked to problems with insulin response, weight gain, and diabetes which are the things we were trying to prevent by drinking them in the first place. Do some more research and you'll find things like links to cognitive decline, clotting with things like xylitol, depression, gut microbiome problems / even possibly intestinal wall integrity issues (sucralose-6-acetate).
The science was settled (and probably mostly funded by the companies that sold the products) right up until it wasn't. Now there seems to be huge concerns. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these substances are banned within our lifetime.
The actual question is: would drinking that stuff with sugar have caused more damage to health? And the answer will likely be yes. Because we _know_ just how bad sugar is for you. Particularly diabetes, microbiome changes, addictive behavior, obesity of course, cardiovascular issues...
If you'd look at sugar in isolation, as a new substance that stuff would never be allowed in any country at all.
That said, the topic here was on cancer, and even the WHO announcement about aspartame being possibly carcinogenic clarifies it's not for normal ranges of consumption. I think you're trying to make a boogie man out of scientists and researchers by mischaracterizing the complex work they do. If you feel that things have suddenly reversed course it's because you haven't been following the research.
But research kept coming in. In 2013 CSPI changed their sucralose recommendation from "safe" to "caution". Then in 2016 it changed it again to "avoid". [1] Insulin sensitivity was more of a concern as of 2018 [2]. Sucralose + carbs causing further insulin problems was added in 2020 [3].
There's several more but I'm not going to make an exhaustive list. The point is the more research done the more the sweeteners go from almost completely benign (which you could easily say about sucralose ~2010) to problematic. So saying "the science is in, these sweeteners don't cause cancer" seems off-putting to me after going through the journey of so much of the science being wrong. It reminds me that we didn't classify processed meat as carcinogenic until 2015. And we only classified nitrates as "probably carcinogenic" in 2010.
[1]https://www.cspi.org/new/201602081.html
Such a mystery.