alt Hacker NewsWhy are so many young people getting cancer?
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The comments in this thread are amusing because everyone is confident they know the cause of this (complex and multifaceted) issue and of course each of their explanations is different.
Some experts weigh in: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/he...
Are more young people getting cancer? How much? What kinds?
I know of two women under the age of 30 who got cancer, they were spouses/girlfriends of friends of mine. I didn't know them well personally, and only met them a handful of times at outings.
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.
PFAS
I think it's endocrine disruption from microplastics. Hormones act like relays in the body, so when one system goes, a cascade of failures often follows (the most famous being diabetes). The body goes into maladaptive modes of operation to survive, which aren't sustainable, so epidemic changes kick in, eventually creating a breeding ground for tumors.
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?
for millions of years we were constantly fasting, then we hunted and killed animals, eating their protein and fat, no carbs, we were constantly in ketosis
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..
My wild guess before reading the article: unhealthy food. A big part of which is herbicides and pesticides.
I will now read the article.
We're speedrunning so we don't get to live in a token based reality
No till farming is probably helping. I learned this year what that really means by seeing farms where they spray herbicide to kill the plants,then they plant new seed while the old dead is still standing around. They then use herbicide as a desiccant to kill the plant at harvest. They probably use pesticides too. The cycle then repeats. I was so disgusted as seeing new crops sprouting amongst the dead vegetation. It must be engineered for that. I came to the inescapable conclusion that the farmers are poisoning everyone rather than have to offer real jobs to native born laborers.
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.
Of my close friends of my youth, two have died of cancer before the age of 40. Fuck cancer.
This would be a great thing for all of the AI companies to devote some energy towards. Especially with their reputations in decline. Surely there must be some patterns the AIs could find if we had enough data about the people who died from cancer.
If I had one unqualified guess free — and boy am I unqualified here — I’d wager it’s those „zero sugar“ stuffs.
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.
Chronic inflammation is almost certainly part of this and lots of things about our modern ways of living cause higher levels of inflammation.
- 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.
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I would just point everyone to scientific research about smoking in 1969ties. High endorsement and no risk at all.
Current "safe" dosage on coffeine is like 8 shots a day. No side effects!
The normalization of anabolic steroid usage is likely a large contributor to certain cancers in men.
What I find interesting is the concept of dead food versus live food. This is just something I wonder about. For example a dead apple is one that was picked a year ago, sold today, kept in storage until now. Long shelf life - is the crucial change in our eating that I can see. When was the last time you had a fresh apple? Does the food industry want us to consider the health benefits of a dead apple versus a living apple?
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.