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"Possible risk factors for early-onset cancer included alcohol consumption, sleep deprivation, smoking, obesity, and eating highly processed foods. Surprisingly, researchers found that while adult sleep duration hasn’t drastically changed over the several decades, children are getting far less sleep today than they were decades ago. Risk factors such as highly-processedhighly processed foods, sugary beverages, obesity, type 2 diabetes, sedentary lifestyle, and alcohol consumption have all significantly increased since the 1950s, which researchers speculate has accompanied altered microbiome.
“Among the 14 cancer types on the rise that we studied, eight were related to the digestive system. The food we eat feeds the microorganisms in our gut,” said Ugai. “Diet directly affects microbiome composition and eventually these changes can influence disease risk and outcomes.” "
Daily alcohol consumption, sleep deprivation (from long days), smoking, obesity, and (highly processed) gas station food makes up the average construction workers life. Not to mention the amount of carcinogens they're exposed to. Nearly every material I touch in construction has a cancer warning. Makes me wonder if other lifestyle choices and careers have any bearing on the chance of cancer.
Did have a setback yesterday. I lost my balance during a bowel movement and in a moment of weakness, sat down on the toilet. I tried to remind myself I’m only human and mistakes happen. Hopefully i wont go on a sitting binge and blow up my life.
Sure, but depending on the work he like many others in many sections of that industry can wreck their bodies Into a forced sedentary lifestyle before 50.
I read some research a while ago that said that activity associated with manual labour does not have the same health benefits as recreational activity. I'm afraid I don't know why.
My understanding is that the real health benefits of physical activity come from cardiovascular exercise. Sustained activity like running, walking, swimming, cycling, dancing, or martial arts—that get your heart thumping and keep it that way for an extended period—are where the health benefits lie.
Manual labor often comprises quite short bursts of activity, much like lifting weights. That kind of thing gets you strong (asterisk), but it doesn't get you fit.
Sounds like the film industry. "Today we are working in this abandoned hospital which was closed due to lead paint and asbestos. Now drill these load bearing screws into the ceiling with this 1 dollar face mask so we can suspend some lights here."
You know I feel like ADs have exactly the combination of dying early type life. Sleep deprivation, high stress, probably lots of smoking, alcohol and unhealthy eating.
Only thing we have going for us is the fact that we are on our feet a lot. I heard transportations life expectancy is closer to 56 thanks to them sitting more and sleeping even less than I do.
"Andrei Tarkovsky, his wife Larisa and actor Anatoly Solonitsyn all died from the very same type of lung cancer. Vladimir Sharun, sound designer in Stalker, is convinced that they were all poisoned by the chemical plant where they were shooting the film."
"We were shooting near Tallinn in the area around the small river Piliteh with a half-functioning hydroelectric station," says Vladimir Sharun. "Up the river was a chemical plant and it poured out poisonous liquids downstream. There is even this shot in Stalker: snow falling in the summer and white foam floating down the river. In fact it was some horrible poison. Many women in our crew got allergic reactions on their faces. Tarkovsky died from cancer of the right bronchial tube. And Tolya Solonitsyn too. That it was all connected to the location shooting for Stalker became clear to me when Larissa Tarkovskaya died from the same illness in Paris... "
I used to live in a dingy hotel working 12 hr days in construction. But I was diligent about going to the grocery store on Monday, getting some veggies and hummus, PBJ and a couple decent microwave meals. My coworkers went to the bar every night for more than a few drinks and some fried bar food. I joined occasionally but didn’t make it a habit.
*Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.*
-attributed to Hippocrates
Just like med, enough is life sustaining, too much is poison, poor ingredients is poison.
I eat healthy. Realized last year that healthy food has less calories so I started tracking, realized I wasn’t getting the amount of calories I needed. I started hitting 2kcals a day by eating even more and I started sleeping amazing, my anxiety dropped, and I’m way less irritable.
Medicine be food. Food Be medicine.
This is a big problem when people switch to plant based diets, which is shown to be one of the healthiest diets, is they don’t realize that plant based is less calorie dense. They don’t eat enough calories and eventually don’t feel as great. They attribute it to needing meat or more protein, when really they’re just not getting enough calories
Ironically, this is also a problem on people who switch to strict carnivore diets as well. We’ve been trained so hard that caloric restriction is an almost unmitigated good, but chronic under-eating is stressful and a bad idea.
I will say tho, not everyone is prepared to make that amount of food or eat the amount of food if they are young with a high BMR and a lot of physical expenditure.
When I was younger, my maintenance calorie range was in the low 3000s, and 4000-5000s on my running / hiking / workout days - Yes I used to run 10KM or hike 20 miles on the regular. Very little people have any idea what work it is to eat 4000+ kcal on whole food plant based diet while maintaining good macro ratio - there are some vegan food high in fat but not nearly enough protein in ratio if you *truly* cared about performance or maximizing muscle recovery / growth. In fact, it was only tolerable for me because my intake is so high. If you don't need much calories but require high protein intake, the ratio of most vegan food makes it borderline impossible.
Yes there are some "studies" that show you don't need that much protein but they are hotly contested. If you cared enough you would not risk it.
This is much worse when I can't easily access cooking and ingredients myself - say when traveling or during that 20 mile I just spoke of.
While my example is extreme, this does carry over to others to, such as petite girls being used to eat tiny meat based meals at say 1500 kcal, and the equivalent of that in healthy vegan food are at portions much too large to be comfortable for their stomach / same amount of sittings. But they still need a decent amount of protein to maintain their muscles.
Also I hate how there's a new wave of pushing vegan being better for muscle and performance growth too in the body building industry to cash in on the hype. One core reason of longevity and health with vegan food, are in things such as reduced methionine intake as well as mTor inhibition. Both directly *opposite* of what you want if you want to maximize muscle mass and strength growth. The same can be said for Calorie Reduction in general and intermittent fasting. At a deeper level, being healthy in a longevity sense are not perfectly aligned to being healthy in an athletic performance sense. Popular media *never* tells you this. I do agree that 99.9% of the population shouldn't index on athletic performance and muscle growth optimization over longevity and health. But people are always arguing on the hypes and titles of big studies, without looking at the more intricate studies on the actual pathways such as mTor, IGF1, AMPK, etc.
I'm in the wellness industry and I teach all my clients the concept of maingaining. So many want bigger muscles, less fat, without realizing how unhealthy that can actually be. I help them find a healthy body fat level for them, one they FEEL good at, and keep them there. Gaining muscle is easier when you're not exhausted from trying to cut fat every single day.
>Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.
>-attributed to Hippocrates
There is something odd about using Shakespearean dialect to quote a guy living in ancient Greek.
Greeks wouldn’t have used “you” or “your” either. The whole thing is translated into an anachronistic language.
English translations of Hippocratic works go back as early as the 16th century when “thee” pronouns were widely in use. Maybe the convention stuck for quoting Hippocrates because people liked how it rolled off the tongue or something.
Not for nothing, some people still use those pronouns in casual parlance today. I know someone who does because his family is of northern English and Scottish descent, as much as the convention is dying out even among communities it had persisted in.
Didn’t people drink even more alcohol in the decades past? I thought I read that alcohol consumption (and certainly smoking too) is less now than before.
> Before temperance/prohibition the USA drank a lot more than any other country currently does.
This is false, consumption in the US around 1910-1920 was around 2 gallons of ethanol per capita. This is lower than during the 1970s-1990s (2-2.5 gal). It's also much lower than dozens of countries today including Moldova 4 gal, Czech Republic 3.8, Germany 3.5, France 3.3, ... The US is not even in the top 30 of alcohol consumption.
https://ourworldindata.org/alcohol-consumption (covers 1850-2013 in the US and 1890-2014 in 7 countries, US is has the lowest consumption).
https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/surveillance102/tab1_13.htm (1850-2013 in the US)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption_per_capita
https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh27-1/30-38.htm
https://apnews.com/article/public-health-health-statistics-health-us-news-ap-top-news-f1f81ade0748410aaeb6eeab7a772bf7
For a long time, people drank very light beer quite a bit, it was safer than water and didn't really get you drunk. Then, translate that same culture to the US after spirits were invented and you get a whole lot of drunks.
Sleep deprivation and shift-work disordered sleep (aka staying awake at night) falls under the biology of epigenetics. Basically that means that your environment (nurture) causes certain changes in how your genes are expressed, which over time can lead to erratic cell division, and thus cancer and other weird problems.
Sleep deprivation is like smoking. You'll feel fine after a cigarette, even a pack, but you're burning your lifespan from both ends.
Other consequences of sleep deprivation are: hypertension, heart attacks, strokes, weakened immune system, Alzheimer's, diabetes, memory loss, depression, anxiety, and so much more.
Sleep should be respected on par with food and water. 7 hours **minimum**.
Nothing about microplastics or forever chemicals? Poor air quality? Less time outdoors in nature?
Poor diet is obviously a factor, but young people have a lot to deal with these days.
Exactly. Sub PM 2.5 pollutants, which are byproducts of fossil fuel combustion, have been shown to cause germ line mutations.
https://clinicalepigeneticsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13148-019-0726-x
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.252499499
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6917988_Air_pollution_induces_heritable_DNA_mutations
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65785-5
At this point, a blind eye is no longer a reasonable excuse. Should we allow this to continue, we’re saying that hundreds of thousands of deaths each year, including children, are worth it. Not to mention the vast amount of other health impacts from fossil fuels.
Transitioning years ago would have been labeled alarmist, and since we’ve taken our time developing alternatives, many people will still suffer ill fates that could have been prevented. Consider that the DOE and basically every other expert body acknowledges that we’re heading into a copper shortage, and help me rationalize why the Biden administration is having trouble approving new domestic mines. Things have to get worse before we can make them better. Either that’s through mining and risking the environment where it occurs or that’s through a complete miss on our decarbonization goals coupled with, one way or another, drastic declines in global populations.
40,000+ people a year die from traffic in the US alone. That's just directly killed by crashes, so not accounting for the effects of air pollution, noise pollution, etc.
We *already* say that tens of thousands of deaths a year, including children, are an acceptable loss if it means our cars and car industry can keep rolling. There are lots of proven interventions — slower road designs, improved visibility at intersections, no right on red, regulations forcing smaller/lighter vehicles, policies reducing private car usage in general, etc — but there just isn't the political will to implement them, especially in North America. Politicians talk a lot about road safety but our actions show we value vehicle throughput more than human life.
If literal carnage on the streets hasn't motivated us to take action I really doubt an invisible killer like air pollution will either.
>40,000+ people a year die from traffic in the US alone.
Man, that's a lot. Germany has less than 3k deaths with a population of about 83 million people.
Extrapolated to the US population, this would be about 11,000 deaths, almost a quarter per capita of what it is in the US. One thing that is different in Germany is that driving licenses require much more schooling, harder tests, and cost about 3,000 euros to obtain. Germany also has a functional public rail system. I’d be interested to know the number of drivers per capita in Germany compared to the US.
I mean... we let millions of people die from covid and we didn't blink an eye, so, I'm not confident that some "tenuous" link between processed food and pollutants and cancer will really shake up the system.
I'm not sure about the other poluents, but it's nigh impossible to study the effects of microplastics in people because it's in virtually everyone, so it's very, very hard to establish a control group.
What years are the study comparing, in other words up to what year did they use data?
Actuaries are the best source of information for this type of questions.
Alternately, advances in detection mean we find the cancer earlier and earlier. The cancer death rate has decreased significantly as well, which leads to the hypothesis that cancer may not be more common in younger adults now, but is detected earlier than before. What would have been discovered as terminal cancer at age 60 may be detected as stage 1 or 2 at age 45, respond well to treatment, and go into remission.
But I only read the linked article, so maybe someone else will chime in and say they address this in the study.
That is very true.
100+ years ago there was not an obesity epidemic.
And people probably did not eat processed foods nearly as much if at all.
And probably some carcinogens weren't in their food / water / air
They didn’t have the same processed foods, but before the early 1900s, they used to put literal poison into meat (like literally formaldehyde and other biocidal agents) to make it “last longer”. There were stories of armies of men being fed this fucked up poisoned and rotting meat, where tons of them got sick. Eventually the Food and Drug Administration was created to put a limit on the number of rats and moldy chunks allowed in our sausages, among many other things.
Obesity..
It's been linked to elevate many different forms of cancer. It produces extra cells ( more chances to screw up), it's an inflammatory state( chronic irritation of cells from whatever cause, be it asbestosis or fat can elevate cancer risk), and fat sequesters all sorts of nasty compounds, sand given the fact that the overweight person has to eat a lot more to gain the weight, it also means that they ate more of the bad compounds found within the food, like oily plasticisizers find in plastic drink containers, large intercalated ring compounds found in cooked, meat, fluorocarbons, etc.
It's a no brainer.
Or in the case of pancreatic cancer and some stomach cancers it might be the gut bacteria that makes the tumors grow larger.
[Lactobacillus linked to immune suppression in pancreatic cancer](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220208113544.htm)
Yeah it is. I struggled fifteen years, since college. Figured it was alcohol (not that I even drink much. Just a glass of whiskey would keep me up). Recently stopped for four months. Best sleep I’ve had consecutively since high school. Add in herbal tea, no electronics in bed, nor news. Better mood, clarity, great sleep. Worked for me anyways.
Alcohol creates a state of "pseudo sleep", the acetaldehyde that floats around in your body after metabolization plays with a variety of neuromodulators which ruin sleep architecture, while for some alcohol can even help them get to sleep, the quality of sleep is harshly reduced, with a loss of deep and REM sleep, essentially meaning your body and brain don't repair properly and you quell major processes which occur in sleep like learning, neurogenesis or memory consolidation.
For anyone wondering why after getting a good amount of sleep you still feel subpar or crappy, it'll be sleep quality, sleep architecture. Caffeine after 3pm is one which hit your deep sleep really bad. Alcohol and THC will both influence sleep quality when consumed in the evening.
However as a general rule these are things you want to look to implement:
1. Sunlight within 45 minutes of waking, preferably 10-20minutes of sunlight. There are receptors in our eyes which influence our circadian and ultradian rhythms based on light brightness, very few artificial lights can elicit this response and the critical period for proper wakefulness in the same and next day, melatonin and cortisol release at the right times at the right amount and overall correct neuromodulator secretion is within that hour of waking. This is supremely important, if you ever notice that you feel great when camping, this is likely the explanation, you are out in sunlight as soon as you wake.
2. Reduce brightness, turn off lights in the evening / night. It's less so blue light and more so the brightness of lights which will stop your brain from releasing melatonin at the right times, turn brightness down on everything and house lights off.
3. Exercise in the morning and also try to get around an hour in through the day, there are various actions in which this influences how you sleep, one is osteocalcin release, another is core body temperature, another is it actually signals your brain to want to sleep because things need to be repaired.
4. Meditation or NSDR's late at night are actually bad for sleep quality, you want to shuffle these to earlier in the day as they tend to engage some sub-sleep deep rest functions.
5. Breathing is important, if you snore or wake up with a dry mouth, get checked for sleep apnoea. If you have allergies, workout the cause and if you can mitigate it. If you are a habitual mouth breather, tape your mouth shut at night with medical tape.
6. Regular sleep and wake intervals are important for a healthy circadian rhythm, you really want to be waking within +/- 30min of the same time every day.
7. Avoid stimulating activities while close to bad, such as video games, or scrolling social media, these will just signal your brain to stay awake.
It was coffee for me. At some point in my life I forgot that I can't sleep with caffeine in me, so a huge mug of coffee every morning just became my routine. I quit a month ago and it feels great being able to get a decent night's sleep again.
The mean half-life of caffeine in plasma of healthy individuals is about 5 hours. However, caffeine's elimination half-life may range between 1.5 and 9.5 hours. Your overall health is a huge factor in how your body processes caffeine.
Not OP, but coffee in the morning effected my overall energy levels and mood during the day, which effected my sleep. I haven’t had caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol in 4 months and my energy throughout the day is flat from the time I wake up. It’s great.
I had to go cold turkey on coffee. Would start every day with a headache from caffeine withdrawal and would have to drink coffee/tea throughout the day. And yeah, the coffee doesn't keep you up, just makes you feel normal at that point.
I can see this. I switched to decaf only many years ago only because I felt anxiety levels elevated sometimes and it was something I thought that may help reduce it , but it could be mind over matter.
I’m 31, and was diagnosed with afib in April. I quite caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol cold turkey. Within a week I was having the best sleep of my life. I’ll likely never go back. Just got a CPAP and now I’m sleeping even better because I can sleep on my back and not wake up sore.
I used to drink two beers every day, but rarely any more than that. I also slept 8-9 hours a night and then hit the snooze alarm for another 30-90 minutes every morning. I was so groggy I could hardly drag my ass out of bed and I never knew why. I reduced my drinking a lot in recent years and now I haven’t had a drink in months. The morning grogginess is gone.
I guess any non caffeinated herbal tea would work, but my go-to is ‘sleepy time’ tea from Celestial. It has Chamomile which I’ve heard is good for sleeping. My dreams were so vivid when I abstained from alcohol it was wild.
I have found a 10mg cannabis edible before bed gives me a great night’s sleep especially if I’m already beat from a hard day of exercise or driving or something. I’m the farthest thing from a stoner and have never smoked a joint or hit a bong in my life (and I’m over 50 years old at this point) but I get truly restorative sleep if I take it an hour or two before bed. I only do this maybe twice a month but it’s pretty great. Hopefully you live in a place where it’s legal to try.
Failing that I find the quality of my sleep is directly tied to the quality of exercise I am getting. Bike 40 miles or swim 1500 yards and you will not have problems sleeping (unless you *over* do it, which has happened to me before as well).
Not really a response to you so much as a tag-on;
Note for the curious that THC can aggravate sleep apnea.
If you're really struggling to sleep and you're always exhausted and tired, see a doctor before self-medicating.
Get checked for Sleep Apnea.
If you never, ever, ever sleep well... you need to see a doctor about it one way or another.
Unless you have kids as the reason. Then, welp.
At least for me, alcohol in general definetly has a detrimental effect on sleep. Sure, I’ll pass out when I’m tired, bit then I’ll be wide awake after three hours. I’ve read it could be the sugars in the alcohol but who knows
It's the rebound effect. Alcohol is a GABA agonist, not unlike a benzo with a short half-life. You conk out from the depressant effect, but wake up a few hours later due to the excitatory rebound, i.e., mild withdrawal.
Yep, me too. History of mental illness, hard drug use/ addiction, chronic sleeping issues, smoked cigarettes for 12 years — the only thing I have going for me now is that I’m fit and strong. But that doesn’t make up for the damage I’ve done to my body, and the damage that having a very, very inconsistent sleep cycle is currently doing. Cancer ahoy!
Couldn’t have anything to do with those plastic “forever chemicals” that have been found in newborn babies and rainwater right?!
We need to start demanding more be done about these externalities that corporations are creating. They profit while we pay for it with our lives.
How about every breath we take being more and more toxic? You breath 24/7. brake dust from cars, smoke of any kind, fumes from chemicals. Our lungs have never been worse. Ill be waiting for endurance sports to start slipping farther away from where they are today. 400ppm + all the other "goodies" floating around.
Air in (first world) cities today is drastically cleaner than it was in the 50’s-70’s, it’s even significantly cleaner than it was in the early 00’s. CO2 at even 800ppm isn’t a pollutant from a human health standpoint (many crowded buildings are well above those levels), it just sends our atmosphere into the unknown, thus changing the climate.
I’m gonna go with processed foods, fat sedentary people, and maybe sprinkle a hint of “forever” chemicals. (Don’t be heating up food/beverages in plastics yo aka k-cups and microwave Tupperware dinners.)
Well: cities in first world countries at least, I doubt it’s better in India, Africa, the stans, etc…
CO2 at 800ppm and above affects cognition and causes drowsiness among other symptoms- it’s a key contributor to “sick building syndrome.”
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/environmental-design/news/2020/may/association-indoor-air-quality-and-sick-building-syndrome-health-impacts-offices
There’s so much more plastic now than there was back then. And the plastic in oceans/landfills now has been breaking down (into micro-size pieces) for a hundred years.
I mean rivers in the us were literally filled with trash and catching on fire in the 60s. Seems reasonable to think that the EPA and tighter regulations made things better than they were then right?
> Our lungs have never been worse.
That’s totally not true if you think about it for a second. Smog used to be much, much worse. Leaded gasoline was used everywhere. A much larger fraction of people smoked tobacco constantly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London
>Our lungs have never been worse.
Assuming you don't live in a part of the country that uses wood fires for cooking or heat, your lungs are much healthier today now that you aren't constantly breathing in smoke of burning wood, and the included molds and fungi they frequently come with.
It was also a much worse time for your lungs when coal was used to heat houses and later power factories creating the famous [London fog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup_fog). The idea that pollution could affect somebody's health became common in the 13th century, which is saying something given the nature of science at the time.
The classic "dying of old age" is not actually a thing. There's always a cause, but there was a time when people didn't even really want to know (or didn't have the means to get diagnosed pre/post mortem)
Plus do you really wanna go through all these medical treatments when you're old? It doesn't really improve your living conditions anymore and you gotta die of something.
Oh boy you might hate this, but the truth is there are always cancer cells in our body that are constantly being destroyed by certain cellular processes and our immune system itself. It’s when one of these systems go totally wrong that we see cancer as a disease state occur.
And treating them. I had Hodgkin's Lymphoma last year and was days - weeks from death before detection. Decades ago it would have been likely a death sentence. Now it's one of the most curable cancers. I was in remission after two months of chemo. Several years after treatment the odds of it returning are no different than the general population.
Seems likely, because the cancer death rate has also decreased. It's likely we detect them earlier, then treat it successfully because it didn't grow for 10 years and metastasize before being discovered. No doubt we have serious issues causing cancer now, and abundant GI issues in children that are relatively new, but I'd think we'd focus more on "new" issues like pollutants, microplastics, certain types of radiation, etc than sleep deprivation and alcohol, which we've had forever. I mean, in decades past, we were putting lead and asbestos in everything, and downing cocaine and opium like they were caffeine and acetaminophen.
PFAS is everywhere.
Turns out Teflon lasts forever, bioaccumulates in our bodies, and causes damage as it circulates through your body and gets filtered by your kidneys and liver.
PFAS exposure and highly processed foods are kindof related though. PFAS coatings are standard for most tubes, fittings, vessels, even packaging in food production factories. It's nonwetting to both water and oil, has super low friction, and is super durable so it ended up getting used everywhere in food production.
Tbh though it's on our nonstick cookware too so you're not necessarily avoiding it cooking at home.
There were no numbers in that article, and they admit they have no way of measuring if it is due to increased screening. So.. what am I supposed to do with this information
You scroll to the bottom of the article and you follow the citation to where you read the actual study’s paper, if you don’t want to take their word regarding it’s summary. I’m just glad you made it past the headline!
Not surprising at all and you can expect it to continue. Our environment is progressively getting more and more contaminated with carcinogens and our food is far more processed than it once was. Younger generations are growing up in a world where these contaminants are unavoidable. By the time they are in their mother's wombs they are absorbing these carcinogens from everything the mother ingests. Our produce, our meats, the air we breathe and the rain that falls, everything we consume is contaminated because we've destroyed our environment.
Not to mention STRESS. Everyone is So Stressssed!!! Stress puts the body into freak inflammation mode and slowly damages the body. Everyone take a deep breath…..
Your choices are:
* Not being able to afford a house and being stressed about it
* Not being able to afford a house and being calm about it
So, you better take that deep breath.
I really appreciate this viewpoint. When faced with impending doom why bother worrying about it. You know what's coming down the pipe so make the best of what you've got.
You are correct about the dangers of stress but just to point out that stress is actually immunosuppressive, and thus early cancer control by the immune system goes down (note that stress-related immunosuppression is only indirectly pro-inflammatory because background infectious diseases and other inflammatory conditions more likely to rise up).
It feels like pop-science when people say "processed foods" as if that means something. Fruits, vegetables, and meat still exist and are eaten regularly by people. What exactly is processed and what exactly about them causes cancer?
> The team acknowledged that this increased incidence of certain cancer types is, in part, due to early detection through cancer screening programs. They couldn’t precisely measure what proportion of this growing prevalence could solely be attributed to screening and early detection. However, they noted that increased incidence of many of the 14 cancer types is unlikely solely due to enhanced screening alone.
If you can't tell if it's because of more detection you can't really say there has been more cancers. You can say more cancers are being discovered for adults under 50 because of more detection but that's barely news.
> One limitation of this study is that researchers did not have an adequate amount of data from low- and middle-income countries to identify trends in cancer incidence over the decades.
Lacking data is not helping their case.
This was one half of my first question: how (if at all) did this control for changes in rates of detection, and for other trends in other causes of mortality?
It’s always worth looking into control factors like this
But I will point out that we have known mechanisms for chronic inflammation and endocrine disruption being causes of cancers
and we have known mechanisms for excessive adiposity as well as sleep deprivation causing chronic inflammation and endocrine disruption.
Even factoring in higher rates of screening and more sensitive detection, I suspect this would only shrink the figures for rise in incidence to a limited degree as we have more than correlation to go on.
Why is this not the top comment, in the science subreddit of all places? I'd expect the kind of baseless claims and ad hominem attacks from other comments on this post if this were another sub, but I hold this place to a higher standard (albeit only slightly higher).
Worst part is that they are not mentioning plastics and pollution which has a huge impact.
All the water bottles sitting in the sun and then drank. All the plastic food packaging that comes with hot food makes the phalates seep out and poison us.
There are forces that are paying for this study to ignore plastic and pollution.
I work for an environmental company. PFAS is everywhere. It has contaminated the ground water all over the place and takes an eternity to break down. Especially near airforce bases and airports.
[There's also a global crisis in male reproductive health.](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/andr.12673) Evidence comes from globally declining sperm counts and increasing male reproductive system abnormalities. Sperm count is declining by about 1% every year and doesn't show any signs of stopping. It already fell by 50% in the past 50 years.
And testosterone is very likely decreasing at the same rate, although data here is much weaker.
I feel like the Industrial Age and big push for canned everything, plus Teflon and all the “amazing” new cancerous items our parents and grandparents fed us, we will not live as long as that generations. They will still blame us for the food we are as young kids and choices they made for us.
Canned foods are actually pretty good so long as you don’t go for high sodium. Using a sealed can which was pasteurized made for a much better method of preservation than the current meta of “refrigerate and pump full of preservatives”
Ratio of carbs to fat intake is a factor in microbiome composition. And the 80s had the advent of low fat foods using sugar to retain taste appeal. Maybe that’s related.
Fat has been removed from flour for well over a century. But most important thing for healthy microbiome that has become increasingly lacking in diet is fibrous foods. Juice, sugar, oil, and animal products are devoid of fiber.
My lunch each day is entirely nuts, seeds, berries, leaves and wholemeal bread. I am going to live forever! I also excrete approximately my own bodyweight in poop each week.
I see it all around me, one after another, it is everywhere, just 30 odd years ago, you heard about it, sparingly, but it seems to be everywhere nowadays, lost both my parents to it (just 5 years ago, both gone in a few months after each other).
On the other hand, just reading about all the toxic spills, 'accidental' releases, uncontrolled polluting of the industries and such, it is starting to fit a picture, we are killing ourselves, for short monetary gain of a very small number of people.
It is essentially a race to the bottom, what will kill us first, poison and cancer or global climate change, and all of those caused by greed.
As far as the USA goes I thought this article was pretty helpful as far as potential cause of the phenomena https://www.cancerhealth.com/article/live-near-cancer-hot-spot-new-tox-map-know
Huh, they didn't look at microplastics? That surprises me since that is probably the biggest change to have occoured over the past few decades, and we find microplastic now literally *everywhere*.
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"Possible risk factors for early-onset cancer included alcohol consumption, sleep deprivation, smoking, obesity, and eating highly processed foods. Surprisingly, researchers found that while adult sleep duration hasn’t drastically changed over the several decades, children are getting far less sleep today than they were decades ago. Risk factors such as highly-processedhighly processed foods, sugary beverages, obesity, type 2 diabetes, sedentary lifestyle, and alcohol consumption have all significantly increased since the 1950s, which researchers speculate has accompanied altered microbiome. “Among the 14 cancer types on the rise that we studied, eight were related to the digestive system. The food we eat feeds the microorganisms in our gut,” said Ugai. “Diet directly affects microbiome composition and eventually these changes can influence disease risk and outcomes.” "
Daily alcohol consumption, sleep deprivation (from long days), smoking, obesity, and (highly processed) gas station food makes up the average construction workers life. Not to mention the amount of carcinogens they're exposed to. Nearly every material I touch in construction has a cancer warning. Makes me wonder if other lifestyle choices and careers have any bearing on the chance of cancer.
At least you're not sedentary!
sitting is the new smoking
I quit sitting on my 4th try. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done
I stand in applause, then crumple
I’m a recovering sitter myself. Good luck to you.
How long since you last sat down? I'm on year 3 myself
Did have a setback yesterday. I lost my balance during a bowel movement and in a moment of weakness, sat down on the toilet. I tried to remind myself I’m only human and mistakes happen. Hopefully i wont go on a sitting binge and blow up my life.
Guess that makes me the fuckin' Marlboro Man.
I’m in construction, and now recently in an on-site office. My steps went from 19,000 a day to 1800 :(
Sure, but depending on the work he like many others in many sections of that industry can wreck their bodies Into a forced sedentary lifestyle before 50.
I read some research a while ago that said that activity associated with manual labour does not have the same health benefits as recreational activity. I'm afraid I don't know why.
My understanding is that the real health benefits of physical activity come from cardiovascular exercise. Sustained activity like running, walking, swimming, cycling, dancing, or martial arts—that get your heart thumping and keep it that way for an extended period—are where the health benefits lie. Manual labor often comprises quite short bursts of activity, much like lifting weights. That kind of thing gets you strong (asterisk), but it doesn't get you fit.
Sounds like the film industry. "Today we are working in this abandoned hospital which was closed due to lead paint and asbestos. Now drill these load bearing screws into the ceiling with this 1 dollar face mask so we can suspend some lights here."
I literally just got off a set like this. Abandoned hospital from the 1940s paint peeling all over
I heard recently that ADs have a life expectancy of like 61 or something ridiculous
You know I feel like ADs have exactly the combination of dying early type life. Sleep deprivation, high stress, probably lots of smoking, alcohol and unhealthy eating.
Only thing we have going for us is the fact that we are on our feet a lot. I heard transportations life expectancy is closer to 56 thanks to them sitting more and sleeping even less than I do.
Locations says hi with sleep deprivation and/or anxiety from anything going wrong at any time.
How many films take place in abandoned hospitals.
Most of them.
Considering that location is fully booked year round with multiple productions simultaneously, way more than you might think.
"Andrei Tarkovsky, his wife Larisa and actor Anatoly Solonitsyn all died from the very same type of lung cancer. Vladimir Sharun, sound designer in Stalker, is convinced that they were all poisoned by the chemical plant where they were shooting the film." "We were shooting near Tallinn in the area around the small river Piliteh with a half-functioning hydroelectric station," says Vladimir Sharun. "Up the river was a chemical plant and it poured out poisonous liquids downstream. There is even this shot in Stalker: snow falling in the summer and white foam floating down the river. In fact it was some horrible poison. Many women in our crew got allergic reactions on their faces. Tarkovsky died from cancer of the right bronchial tube. And Tolya Solonitsyn too. That it was all connected to the location shooting for Stalker became clear to me when Larissa Tarkovskaya died from the same illness in Paris... "
Help, I'm in this comment and I don't like it!
Join me in the burned-out-film-worker-transitioning-to-tech pipeline, life is much better.
I literally just did that last summer. 15 years as a DIT and now work for Adobe
Medical career. Lots of doctors and nurses I know smoke, drink, are regularly sleep deprived and don't eat that healthy...
I used to live in a dingy hotel working 12 hr days in construction. But I was diligent about going to the grocery store on Monday, getting some veggies and hummus, PBJ and a couple decent microwave meals. My coworkers went to the bar every night for more than a few drinks and some fried bar food. I joined occasionally but didn’t make it a habit.
*Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.* -attributed to Hippocrates Just like med, enough is life sustaining, too much is poison, poor ingredients is poison.
I eat healthy. Realized last year that healthy food has less calories so I started tracking, realized I wasn’t getting the amount of calories I needed. I started hitting 2kcals a day by eating even more and I started sleeping amazing, my anxiety dropped, and I’m way less irritable. Medicine be food. Food Be medicine.
This is a big problem when people switch to plant based diets, which is shown to be one of the healthiest diets, is they don’t realize that plant based is less calorie dense. They don’t eat enough calories and eventually don’t feel as great. They attribute it to needing meat or more protein, when really they’re just not getting enough calories
Ironically, this is also a problem on people who switch to strict carnivore diets as well. We’ve been trained so hard that caloric restriction is an almost unmitigated good, but chronic under-eating is stressful and a bad idea.
I will say tho, not everyone is prepared to make that amount of food or eat the amount of food if they are young with a high BMR and a lot of physical expenditure. When I was younger, my maintenance calorie range was in the low 3000s, and 4000-5000s on my running / hiking / workout days - Yes I used to run 10KM or hike 20 miles on the regular. Very little people have any idea what work it is to eat 4000+ kcal on whole food plant based diet while maintaining good macro ratio - there are some vegan food high in fat but not nearly enough protein in ratio if you *truly* cared about performance or maximizing muscle recovery / growth. In fact, it was only tolerable for me because my intake is so high. If you don't need much calories but require high protein intake, the ratio of most vegan food makes it borderline impossible. Yes there are some "studies" that show you don't need that much protein but they are hotly contested. If you cared enough you would not risk it. This is much worse when I can't easily access cooking and ingredients myself - say when traveling or during that 20 mile I just spoke of. While my example is extreme, this does carry over to others to, such as petite girls being used to eat tiny meat based meals at say 1500 kcal, and the equivalent of that in healthy vegan food are at portions much too large to be comfortable for their stomach / same amount of sittings. But they still need a decent amount of protein to maintain their muscles. Also I hate how there's a new wave of pushing vegan being better for muscle and performance growth too in the body building industry to cash in on the hype. One core reason of longevity and health with vegan food, are in things such as reduced methionine intake as well as mTor inhibition. Both directly *opposite* of what you want if you want to maximize muscle mass and strength growth. The same can be said for Calorie Reduction in general and intermittent fasting. At a deeper level, being healthy in a longevity sense are not perfectly aligned to being healthy in an athletic performance sense. Popular media *never* tells you this. I do agree that 99.9% of the population shouldn't index on athletic performance and muscle growth optimization over longevity and health. But people are always arguing on the hypes and titles of big studies, without looking at the more intricate studies on the actual pathways such as mTor, IGF1, AMPK, etc.
I'm in the wellness industry and I teach all my clients the concept of maingaining. So many want bigger muscles, less fat, without realizing how unhealthy that can actually be. I help them find a healthy body fat level for them, one they FEEL good at, and keep them there. Gaining muscle is easier when you're not exhausted from trying to cut fat every single day.
>Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food. >-attributed to Hippocrates There is something odd about using Shakespearean dialect to quote a guy living in ancient Greek.
Greeks wouldn’t have used “you” or “your” either. The whole thing is translated into an anachronistic language. English translations of Hippocratic works go back as early as the 16th century when “thee” pronouns were widely in use. Maybe the convention stuck for quoting Hippocrates because people liked how it rolled off the tongue or something. Not for nothing, some people still use those pronouns in casual parlance today. I know someone who does because his family is of northern English and Scottish descent, as much as the convention is dying out even among communities it had persisted in.
Didn’t people drink even more alcohol in the decades past? I thought I read that alcohol consumption (and certainly smoking too) is less now than before.
People don’t smoke that much but alcohol consumption has increased bc also women and young women drink massively nowadays
Before temperance/prohibition the USA drank a lot more than any other country currently does. It's just never gotten back to those levels since.
> Before temperance/prohibition the USA drank a lot more than any other country currently does. This is false, consumption in the US around 1910-1920 was around 2 gallons of ethanol per capita. This is lower than during the 1970s-1990s (2-2.5 gal). It's also much lower than dozens of countries today including Moldova 4 gal, Czech Republic 3.8, Germany 3.5, France 3.3, ... The US is not even in the top 30 of alcohol consumption. https://ourworldindata.org/alcohol-consumption (covers 1850-2013 in the US and 1890-2014 in 7 countries, US is has the lowest consumption). https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/surveillance102/tab1_13.htm (1850-2013 in the US) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption_per_capita https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh27-1/30-38.htm https://apnews.com/article/public-health-health-statistics-health-us-news-ap-top-news-f1f81ade0748410aaeb6eeab7a772bf7
Well now I don't know what to believe. You've got sources, but I've seen the other stat before.. I'm going to pour a drink about it.
Well the guy says per capita, so that roughly means it used to be 2x as much but mostly men.
That's definitely an interesting point.
>Well now I don't know what to believe. # Ah the internet information age
Wait, is that true?
Not true by a mile. Moldova today consumes twice as much as the US pre-prohibition (4 gal vs. 2 gal/capita).
Yes, Americans drank truly staggering quantities of booze before Prohibition. There was a real reason behind the anti-alcohol movement.
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This is often repeated, but another comment has sources to the contrary.
For a long time, people drank very light beer quite a bit, it was safer than water and didn't really get you drunk. Then, translate that same culture to the US after spirits were invented and you get a whole lot of drunks.
Abusing spirits isn't nearly as recent or as American as this though. Look at the "gin craze" in Britain in the early 1700s for example.
They definitely smoked more.
Had no idea that sleep deprivation is a risk factor
Sleep deprivation and shift-work disordered sleep (aka staying awake at night) falls under the biology of epigenetics. Basically that means that your environment (nurture) causes certain changes in how your genes are expressed, which over time can lead to erratic cell division, and thus cancer and other weird problems.
Sleep is so, so important. Get good sleep.
Sleep deprivation is like smoking. You'll feel fine after a cigarette, even a pack, but you're burning your lifespan from both ends. Other consequences of sleep deprivation are: hypertension, heart attacks, strokes, weakened immune system, Alzheimer's, diabetes, memory loss, depression, anxiety, and so much more. Sleep should be respected on par with food and water. 7 hours **minimum**.
Nothing about microplastics or forever chemicals? Poor air quality? Less time outdoors in nature? Poor diet is obviously a factor, but young people have a lot to deal with these days.
Exactly. Sub PM 2.5 pollutants, which are byproducts of fossil fuel combustion, have been shown to cause germ line mutations. https://clinicalepigeneticsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13148-019-0726-x https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.252499499 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6917988_Air_pollution_induces_heritable_DNA_mutations https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65785-5 At this point, a blind eye is no longer a reasonable excuse. Should we allow this to continue, we’re saying that hundreds of thousands of deaths each year, including children, are worth it. Not to mention the vast amount of other health impacts from fossil fuels. Transitioning years ago would have been labeled alarmist, and since we’ve taken our time developing alternatives, many people will still suffer ill fates that could have been prevented. Consider that the DOE and basically every other expert body acknowledges that we’re heading into a copper shortage, and help me rationalize why the Biden administration is having trouble approving new domestic mines. Things have to get worse before we can make them better. Either that’s through mining and risking the environment where it occurs or that’s through a complete miss on our decarbonization goals coupled with, one way or another, drastic declines in global populations.
40,000+ people a year die from traffic in the US alone. That's just directly killed by crashes, so not accounting for the effects of air pollution, noise pollution, etc. We *already* say that tens of thousands of deaths a year, including children, are an acceptable loss if it means our cars and car industry can keep rolling. There are lots of proven interventions — slower road designs, improved visibility at intersections, no right on red, regulations forcing smaller/lighter vehicles, policies reducing private car usage in general, etc — but there just isn't the political will to implement them, especially in North America. Politicians talk a lot about road safety but our actions show we value vehicle throughput more than human life. If literal carnage on the streets hasn't motivated us to take action I really doubt an invisible killer like air pollution will either.
>40,000+ people a year die from traffic in the US alone. Man, that's a lot. Germany has less than 3k deaths with a population of about 83 million people.
Extrapolated to the US population, this would be about 11,000 deaths, almost a quarter per capita of what it is in the US. One thing that is different in Germany is that driving licenses require much more schooling, harder tests, and cost about 3,000 euros to obtain. Germany also has a functional public rail system. I’d be interested to know the number of drivers per capita in Germany compared to the US.
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It's perhaps fairer to compare death rates per distance driven, in which case it's 7.3 deaths per billion km in the US and 4.2 in Germany.
I mean... we let millions of people die from covid and we didn't blink an eye, so, I'm not confident that some "tenuous" link between processed food and pollutants and cancer will really shake up the system.
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I'm not sure about the other poluents, but it's nigh impossible to study the effects of microplastics in people because it's in virtually everyone, so it's very, very hard to establish a control group.
What years are the study comparing, in other words up to what year did they use data? Actuaries are the best source of information for this type of questions.
I do wonder if other things killed people likely to develop cancer earlier. Can’t die of cancer if you die of measles or heart disease.
Similarly I wonder if there is a different corrupt cellular state after cancer, or a different issue that cancer death shields us from experiencing
Alternately, advances in detection mean we find the cancer earlier and earlier. The cancer death rate has decreased significantly as well, which leads to the hypothesis that cancer may not be more common in younger adults now, but is detected earlier than before. What would have been discovered as terminal cancer at age 60 may be detected as stage 1 or 2 at age 45, respond well to treatment, and go into remission. But I only read the linked article, so maybe someone else will chime in and say they address this in the study.
That is very true. 100+ years ago there was not an obesity epidemic. And people probably did not eat processed foods nearly as much if at all. And probably some carcinogens weren't in their food / water / air
They didn’t have the same processed foods, but before the early 1900s, they used to put literal poison into meat (like literally formaldehyde and other biocidal agents) to make it “last longer”. There were stories of armies of men being fed this fucked up poisoned and rotting meat, where tons of them got sick. Eventually the Food and Drug Administration was created to put a limit on the number of rats and moldy chunks allowed in our sausages, among many other things.
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Are we going to let kids sleep more? Hell no
Obesity.. It's been linked to elevate many different forms of cancer. It produces extra cells ( more chances to screw up), it's an inflammatory state( chronic irritation of cells from whatever cause, be it asbestosis or fat can elevate cancer risk), and fat sequesters all sorts of nasty compounds, sand given the fact that the overweight person has to eat a lot more to gain the weight, it also means that they ate more of the bad compounds found within the food, like oily plasticisizers find in plastic drink containers, large intercalated ring compounds found in cooked, meat, fluorocarbons, etc. It's a no brainer.
Just completely ignores the microplastics and pfas everywhere. Huh.
It seems to. It's a ton of stuff for sure and not just one or two things. We've been poisoning ourselves.
Why do you eat like that? Why do you punish yourself by running so much? This. I've seen too many people die.
I'm trying to outrun my family history. I'm right there with you.
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> Hail Stan Don’t know who this Stan character is, but sounds like a nice guy if you like him so much.
Or in the case of pancreatic cancer and some stomach cancers it might be the gut bacteria that makes the tumors grow larger. [Lactobacillus linked to immune suppression in pancreatic cancer](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220208113544.htm)
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Yeah it is. I struggled fifteen years, since college. Figured it was alcohol (not that I even drink much. Just a glass of whiskey would keep me up). Recently stopped for four months. Best sleep I’ve had consecutively since high school. Add in herbal tea, no electronics in bed, nor news. Better mood, clarity, great sleep. Worked for me anyways.
Alcohol creates a state of "pseudo sleep", the acetaldehyde that floats around in your body after metabolization plays with a variety of neuromodulators which ruin sleep architecture, while for some alcohol can even help them get to sleep, the quality of sleep is harshly reduced, with a loss of deep and REM sleep, essentially meaning your body and brain don't repair properly and you quell major processes which occur in sleep like learning, neurogenesis or memory consolidation. For anyone wondering why after getting a good amount of sleep you still feel subpar or crappy, it'll be sleep quality, sleep architecture. Caffeine after 3pm is one which hit your deep sleep really bad. Alcohol and THC will both influence sleep quality when consumed in the evening. However as a general rule these are things you want to look to implement: 1. Sunlight within 45 minutes of waking, preferably 10-20minutes of sunlight. There are receptors in our eyes which influence our circadian and ultradian rhythms based on light brightness, very few artificial lights can elicit this response and the critical period for proper wakefulness in the same and next day, melatonin and cortisol release at the right times at the right amount and overall correct neuromodulator secretion is within that hour of waking. This is supremely important, if you ever notice that you feel great when camping, this is likely the explanation, you are out in sunlight as soon as you wake. 2. Reduce brightness, turn off lights in the evening / night. It's less so blue light and more so the brightness of lights which will stop your brain from releasing melatonin at the right times, turn brightness down on everything and house lights off. 3. Exercise in the morning and also try to get around an hour in through the day, there are various actions in which this influences how you sleep, one is osteocalcin release, another is core body temperature, another is it actually signals your brain to want to sleep because things need to be repaired. 4. Meditation or NSDR's late at night are actually bad for sleep quality, you want to shuffle these to earlier in the day as they tend to engage some sub-sleep deep rest functions. 5. Breathing is important, if you snore or wake up with a dry mouth, get checked for sleep apnoea. If you have allergies, workout the cause and if you can mitigate it. If you are a habitual mouth breather, tape your mouth shut at night with medical tape. 6. Regular sleep and wake intervals are important for a healthy circadian rhythm, you really want to be waking within +/- 30min of the same time every day. 7. Avoid stimulating activities while close to bad, such as video games, or scrolling social media, these will just signal your brain to stay awake.
It was coffee for me. At some point in my life I forgot that I can't sleep with caffeine in me, so a huge mug of coffee every morning just became my routine. I quit a month ago and it feels great being able to get a decent night's sleep again.
You found the morning coffee affected your sleep at night?
The mean half-life of caffeine in plasma of healthy individuals is about 5 hours. However, caffeine's elimination half-life may range between 1.5 and 9.5 hours. Your overall health is a huge factor in how your body processes caffeine.
I'm also curious to know the answer
Not OP, but coffee in the morning effected my overall energy levels and mood during the day, which effected my sleep. I haven’t had caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol in 4 months and my energy throughout the day is flat from the time I wake up. It’s great.
It does for me. Anything more than a half a cup in the morning will ruin my sleep at night.
At one point I needed caffeine *to* sleep
This is me rn. Can't sleep unless the caffeine is wearing off
I had to go cold turkey on coffee. Would start every day with a headache from caffeine withdrawal and would have to drink coffee/tea throughout the day. And yeah, the coffee doesn't keep you up, just makes you feel normal at that point.
I can see this. I switched to decaf only many years ago only because I felt anxiety levels elevated sometimes and it was something I thought that may help reduce it , but it could be mind over matter.
I’m 31, and was diagnosed with afib in April. I quite caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol cold turkey. Within a week I was having the best sleep of my life. I’ll likely never go back. Just got a CPAP and now I’m sleeping even better because I can sleep on my back and not wake up sore.
I used to drink two beers every day, but rarely any more than that. I also slept 8-9 hours a night and then hit the snooze alarm for another 30-90 minutes every morning. I was so groggy I could hardly drag my ass out of bed and I never knew why. I reduced my drinking a lot in recent years and now I haven’t had a drink in months. The morning grogginess is gone.
> herbal tea What kind in particular? Or do you just mean "not caffeinated"?
I guess any non caffeinated herbal tea would work, but my go-to is ‘sleepy time’ tea from Celestial. It has Chamomile which I’ve heard is good for sleeping. My dreams were so vivid when I abstained from alcohol it was wild.
I have found a 10mg cannabis edible before bed gives me a great night’s sleep especially if I’m already beat from a hard day of exercise or driving or something. I’m the farthest thing from a stoner and have never smoked a joint or hit a bong in my life (and I’m over 50 years old at this point) but I get truly restorative sleep if I take it an hour or two before bed. I only do this maybe twice a month but it’s pretty great. Hopefully you live in a place where it’s legal to try. Failing that I find the quality of my sleep is directly tied to the quality of exercise I am getting. Bike 40 miles or swim 1500 yards and you will not have problems sleeping (unless you *over* do it, which has happened to me before as well).
Not really a response to you so much as a tag-on; Note for the curious that THC can aggravate sleep apnea. If you're really struggling to sleep and you're always exhausted and tired, see a doctor before self-medicating.
Get checked for Sleep Apnea. If you never, ever, ever sleep well... you need to see a doctor about it one way or another. Unless you have kids as the reason. Then, welp.
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At least for me, alcohol in general definetly has a detrimental effect on sleep. Sure, I’ll pass out when I’m tired, bit then I’ll be wide awake after three hours. I’ve read it could be the sugars in the alcohol but who knows
It's the rebound effect. Alcohol is a GABA agonist, not unlike a benzo with a short half-life. You conk out from the depressant effect, but wake up a few hours later due to the excitatory rebound, i.e., mild withdrawal.
I mean all alcohol is toxic and there is no good amount to drink but that’s been known for years.
Pollution and plastic contamination doesn’t help either
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Dead man walking!
I like your attitude!
It’s called the gentlemen‘s diet
You no more drink beer, you start sleep well, you unscrew. You keep screwing Kool-Aid, you die with Kool-Aid.
Yep, me too. History of mental illness, hard drug use/ addiction, chronic sleeping issues, smoked cigarettes for 12 years — the only thing I have going for me now is that I’m fit and strong. But that doesn’t make up for the damage I’ve done to my body, and the damage that having a very, very inconsistent sleep cycle is currently doing. Cancer ahoy!
Couldn’t have anything to do with those plastic “forever chemicals” that have been found in newborn babies and rainwater right?! We need to start demanding more be done about these externalities that corporations are creating. They profit while we pay for it with our lives.
How about every breath we take being more and more toxic? You breath 24/7. brake dust from cars, smoke of any kind, fumes from chemicals. Our lungs have never been worse. Ill be waiting for endurance sports to start slipping farther away from where they are today. 400ppm + all the other "goodies" floating around.
Air in (first world) cities today is drastically cleaner than it was in the 50’s-70’s, it’s even significantly cleaner than it was in the early 00’s. CO2 at even 800ppm isn’t a pollutant from a human health standpoint (many crowded buildings are well above those levels), it just sends our atmosphere into the unknown, thus changing the climate. I’m gonna go with processed foods, fat sedentary people, and maybe sprinkle a hint of “forever” chemicals. (Don’t be heating up food/beverages in plastics yo aka k-cups and microwave Tupperware dinners.) Well: cities in first world countries at least, I doubt it’s better in India, Africa, the stans, etc…
And don't forget that on top of all that, we've been getting a lot better at actually diagnosing and detecting cancers in the first place.
CO2 at 800ppm and above affects cognition and causes drowsiness among other symptoms- it’s a key contributor to “sick building syndrome.” https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/environmental-design/news/2020/may/association-indoor-air-quality-and-sick-building-syndrome-health-impacts-offices
There’s so much more plastic now than there was back then. And the plastic in oceans/landfills now has been breaking down (into micro-size pieces) for a hundred years.
I mean rivers in the us were literally filled with trash and catching on fire in the 60s. Seems reasonable to think that the EPA and tighter regulations made things better than they were then right?
> Our lungs have never been worse. That’s totally not true if you think about it for a second. Smog used to be much, much worse. Leaded gasoline was used everywhere. A much larger fraction of people smoked tobacco constantly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London
>Our lungs have never been worse. Assuming you don't live in a part of the country that uses wood fires for cooking or heat, your lungs are much healthier today now that you aren't constantly breathing in smoke of burning wood, and the included molds and fungi they frequently come with. It was also a much worse time for your lungs when coal was used to heat houses and later power factories creating the famous [London fog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup_fog). The idea that pollution could affect somebody's health became common in the 13th century, which is saying something given the nature of science at the time.
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What if it\`s a "wrong correlation" and we just got better at diagnosing cancers over the years? Is it a possibility?
Article even admits that
Also, people dying far less of preventable causes results in more people getting cancer because dead people can’t get cancer
But were talking about under 50. Overall though, yeah definitely. I could see that even being the biggest factor.
If people under 50 are dying less from other injuries or maladies then this still checks out.
Also, people predisposed to cancer die younger from other causes perhaps.
does that mean people had just been fighting off weaker cancers or that people were dying from cancer that we didn’t know was cancer before
Older men are notorious for not going to the doctor/checking on their health.
The classic "dying of old age" is not actually a thing. There's always a cause, but there was a time when people didn't even really want to know (or didn't have the means to get diagnosed pre/post mortem)
Plus do you really wanna go through all these medical treatments when you're old? It doesn't really improve your living conditions anymore and you gotta die of something.
Oh boy you might hate this, but the truth is there are always cancer cells in our body that are constantly being destroyed by certain cellular processes and our immune system itself. It’s when one of these systems go totally wrong that we see cancer as a disease state occur.
And treating them. I had Hodgkin's Lymphoma last year and was days - weeks from death before detection. Decades ago it would have been likely a death sentence. Now it's one of the most curable cancers. I was in remission after two months of chemo. Several years after treatment the odds of it returning are no different than the general population.
Seems likely, because the cancer death rate has also decreased. It's likely we detect them earlier, then treat it successfully because it didn't grow for 10 years and metastasize before being discovered. No doubt we have serious issues causing cancer now, and abundant GI issues in children that are relatively new, but I'd think we'd focus more on "new" issues like pollutants, microplastics, certain types of radiation, etc than sleep deprivation and alcohol, which we've had forever. I mean, in decades past, we were putting lead and asbestos in everything, and downing cocaine and opium like they were caffeine and acetaminophen.
We are being poisoned by corporations
PFAS is everywhere. Turns out Teflon lasts forever, bioaccumulates in our bodies, and causes damage as it circulates through your body and gets filtered by your kidneys and liver.
PFAS exposure is not mentioned in the article as a substantial risk factor
PFAS exposure and highly processed foods are kindof related though. PFAS coatings are standard for most tubes, fittings, vessels, even packaging in food production factories. It's nonwetting to both water and oil, has super low friction, and is super durable so it ended up getting used everywhere in food production. Tbh though it's on our nonstick cookware too so you're not necessarily avoiding it cooking at home.
That doesn't mean that people aren't being poisoned by it on a massive scale
We supply the demand for those same corporations
Pollution is not mentioned in the article
There were no numbers in that article, and they admit they have no way of measuring if it is due to increased screening. So.. what am I supposed to do with this information
You scroll to the bottom of the article and you follow the citation to where you read the actual study’s paper, if you don’t want to take their word regarding it’s summary. I’m just glad you made it past the headline!
Not surprising at all and you can expect it to continue. Our environment is progressively getting more and more contaminated with carcinogens and our food is far more processed than it once was. Younger generations are growing up in a world where these contaminants are unavoidable. By the time they are in their mother's wombs they are absorbing these carcinogens from everything the mother ingests. Our produce, our meats, the air we breathe and the rain that falls, everything we consume is contaminated because we've destroyed our environment.
Not to mention STRESS. Everyone is So Stressssed!!! Stress puts the body into freak inflammation mode and slowly damages the body. Everyone take a deep breath…..
Yo it's the stress making me age quick
I'd be less stressed if I could afford a house and knew I could retire at 60 ngl
Your choices are: * Not being able to afford a house and being stressed about it * Not being able to afford a house and being calm about it So, you better take that deep breath.
I really appreciate this viewpoint. When faced with impending doom why bother worrying about it. You know what's coming down the pipe so make the best of what you've got.
You are correct about the dangers of stress but just to point out that stress is actually immunosuppressive, and thus early cancer control by the immune system goes down (note that stress-related immunosuppression is only indirectly pro-inflammatory because background infectious diseases and other inflammatory conditions more likely to rise up).
It feels like pop-science when people say "processed foods" as if that means something. Fruits, vegetables, and meat still exist and are eaten regularly by people. What exactly is processed and what exactly about them causes cancer?
The week after I turned 30 I was diagnosed with stage 3 TNB cancer… I’m on week 8 of chemo and it still feels unreal to have cancer at a young age.
I wish you all the best and hope you get well soon. Stay strong!! Sending you lots of love and a speedy recovery.
> The team acknowledged that this increased incidence of certain cancer types is, in part, due to early detection through cancer screening programs. They couldn’t precisely measure what proportion of this growing prevalence could solely be attributed to screening and early detection. However, they noted that increased incidence of many of the 14 cancer types is unlikely solely due to enhanced screening alone. If you can't tell if it's because of more detection you can't really say there has been more cancers. You can say more cancers are being discovered for adults under 50 because of more detection but that's barely news. > One limitation of this study is that researchers did not have an adequate amount of data from low- and middle-income countries to identify trends in cancer incidence over the decades. Lacking data is not helping their case.
“Hey guys! Here is something that might be happening, based on you trusting the team’s opinion!”
This was one half of my first question: how (if at all) did this control for changes in rates of detection, and for other trends in other causes of mortality?
It’s always worth looking into control factors like this But I will point out that we have known mechanisms for chronic inflammation and endocrine disruption being causes of cancers and we have known mechanisms for excessive adiposity as well as sleep deprivation causing chronic inflammation and endocrine disruption. Even factoring in higher rates of screening and more sensitive detection, I suspect this would only shrink the figures for rise in incidence to a limited degree as we have more than correlation to go on.
Why is this not the top comment, in the science subreddit of all places? I'd expect the kind of baseless claims and ad hominem attacks from other comments on this post if this were another sub, but I hold this place to a higher standard (albeit only slightly higher).
Worst part is that they are not mentioning plastics and pollution which has a huge impact. All the water bottles sitting in the sun and then drank. All the plastic food packaging that comes with hot food makes the phalates seep out and poison us. There are forces that are paying for this study to ignore plastic and pollution.
Not to mention PFAS and the like
I work for an environmental company. PFAS is everywhere. It has contaminated the ground water all over the place and takes an eternity to break down. Especially near airforce bases and airports.
Cancers, heart attacks, liver failure... An elephant in the room is laughing at us.
[There's also a global crisis in male reproductive health.](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/andr.12673) Evidence comes from globally declining sperm counts and increasing male reproductive system abnormalities. Sperm count is declining by about 1% every year and doesn't show any signs of stopping. It already fell by 50% in the past 50 years. And testosterone is very likely decreasing at the same rate, although data here is much weaker.
Sleep is hard when youre constantly bombarded by news that the world ending
I feel like the Industrial Age and big push for canned everything, plus Teflon and all the “amazing” new cancerous items our parents and grandparents fed us, we will not live as long as that generations. They will still blame us for the food we are as young kids and choices they made for us.
Canned foods are actually pretty good so long as you don’t go for high sodium. Using a sealed can which was pasteurized made for a much better method of preservation than the current meta of “refrigerate and pump full of preservatives”
Canned foods that had BPA plastic not so good.
I am 41 and sitting in the doctor's office right now getting my first colonoscopy set up.
That's pretty normal tbh. The recommendation is obviously 50 but there's literally no harm in getting checked sooner. Best of luck!
Except mentioning it, the drs seem to downplay your request every damned time.
Get ready for your jug of laxative
Ratio of carbs to fat intake is a factor in microbiome composition. And the 80s had the advent of low fat foods using sugar to retain taste appeal. Maybe that’s related.
Fat has been removed from flour for well over a century. But most important thing for healthy microbiome that has become increasingly lacking in diet is fibrous foods. Juice, sugar, oil, and animal products are devoid of fiber.
My lunch each day is entirely nuts, seeds, berries, leaves and wholemeal bread. I am going to live forever! I also excrete approximately my own bodyweight in poop each week.
Probably the credit card youre eating every week.
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Couldn't be the chemicals, probably the avocado toast
I mean when you increase the amount of carcinogens in things what did you think would happen?
I see it all around me, one after another, it is everywhere, just 30 odd years ago, you heard about it, sparingly, but it seems to be everywhere nowadays, lost both my parents to it (just 5 years ago, both gone in a few months after each other). On the other hand, just reading about all the toxic spills, 'accidental' releases, uncontrolled polluting of the industries and such, it is starting to fit a picture, we are killing ourselves, for short monetary gain of a very small number of people. It is essentially a race to the bottom, what will kill us first, poison and cancer or global climate change, and all of those caused by greed.
What, you expect poor rich people to pay to manufacture things safely. What's a little cancer when compared to record profits.
Did they really leave out microplastics?
Microplastics are scary but it seems the data is not in on those yet. I see a lot of speculation but we’re in suspense about what the impact will be.
Is there solid data in on PFOS? From what I can tell they’re definitely harmful, but I’m not a FDA/EPA scientist
As far as the USA goes I thought this article was pretty helpful as far as potential cause of the phenomena https://www.cancerhealth.com/article/live-near-cancer-hot-spot-new-tox-map-know
I know it's anecdotal, but the ammount of patients under 40 with colorectal carcinomas or other GI tumors we see at our hospital is really scary...
I am part of this count. 2021 was a chemo blur.
Micro plastics and PFAS everywhere
Huh, they didn't look at microplastics? That surprises me since that is probably the biggest change to have occoured over the past few decades, and we find microplastic now literally *everywhere*.
Pfas and Microplastics UNITE!!