
Overweight and obesity are linked to cancer - chiefalchemist
https://www.cdc.gov/media/dpk/cancer/cancer-obesity/index.html
======
0xcde4c3db
From the sidebar:

> good health is the best prescription for preventing chronic diseases

That's bad enough to approach self-parody, but in a way it's very illustrative
of the fact that apart from smoking cessation and arguably some other forms of
drug addiction treatment, we have very little in the way of _demonstrably
effective_ lifestyle interventions to prevent chronic illness. There are
mountains of epidemiological associations and sometimes even plausible
physiological mechanisms for many of these things, but it often turns out that
the obvious intervention just defies the correlation instead of changing the
outcome (cf. Goodhart's law), or changes things in a statistically significant
but practically underwhelming way.

As far as I know, obesity is mostly significant as a public health issue
because it makes _many_ conditions _modestly_ worse, not because it's the
primary cause of any given problem. Losing weight might mitigate an illness
such that you cross some diagnostic threshold and are thus "cured", but you're
still in a much different state than someone who wasn't at risk of that
illness at any weight. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to maintain a
healthy weight, just that it's wishful thinking to expect that doing so is
going to solve all or even most of your problems. In general, it's important
to recognize that health is a complex topic and not fool ourselves into
thinking we've found _the_ key to good health.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Put another way...if you have a serious medial issue being overweight can be
the difference between life and death.

Instead, we have Oprah selling "love your body" as if that love will save you
went a health crisis comes knocking.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Loving your body while you're overweight and getting to a healthier weight are
not at cross purposes. Shame causes people to dissociate with their bodies
which makes exercise and healthy eating harder.

The fact that we are encouraged to think of being overweight as a personality
flaw makes it much harder for people to lose weight. They take their weight as
evidence of their weakness which causes a detrimental cycle.

It's also true that popular notions of "healthy weight" are medically
inaccurate. Many people who are a normal healthy weight and have no medical
reason to lose weight still think they are overweight.

There are lots of good reasons to encourage people to think of themselves as
healthy at non-skinny sizes.

~~~
maccard
> Many people who are a normal healthy weight and have no medical reason to
> lose weight still think they are overweight.

Many of those people probably _are_ overweight. If your bmi is greater than 25
and you’re not weightlifting (and eating to support that), you’re almost
certainly overweight.

Many people who are overweight are using the love your body campaigns for
justification of their weight, when they are actually overweight.

~~~
erikpukinskis
How can someone with no medical reason to lose weight be overweight? That's a
contradiction. Think about what "over weight" means.

~~~
maccard
Many people who _think_ they're not overweight are in fact overweight. Just
because you believe you're a healthy weight doesn't mean you are, and just
because you are the same weight as everyone else doesn't mean you are a
healthy weight.

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ransom1538
Eating kills you. Heart disease kills 614,348 people per year & cancer kills
591,699 per year [i]. Heart disease has been linked to saturated fat for
years. Cancer is your own cells that have mutated. Each new cell is just
ticket to the cancer lotto. Obesity = more cells. Cancer & Heart disease kill
over a million per year. But we spend most of our media time on shootings and
snake bites, in reality it's that bag of Cool Ranch Doritos (which are a curse
on humanity).

[i]
[https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282929.php](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282929.php)

~~~
kmm
> Obesity = more cells

That's not true. Not only do fat cells just grow bigger (a skinny person has
just as many as a fat person), you'd expect the increase in cancers to be
mostly liposarcomas ("fat cell cancer"), which stay very rare.

Other organs might be distended or enlarged, but they don't contain more
cells.

The reason obesity leads to cancer is not very well understood, but it's
probably a complicated process involving abnormal hormone levels usual in
obese people, and the constant low-grade inflammation their body is usually
suffering from

~~~
mcculley
How can that be true? Don't fat people at least have more skin cells than
skinny people? Also, I can't imagine that enormously obese people just have
larger fat cells than skinny people. I have read that it is harder to get rid
of fat cells once they shrink, but not that we don't get more of them.

~~~
ztjio
A common misunderstanding is that organs are made up entirely of "cells" but,
they are not. There are other materials involved, such as collagen. We call
these names like "connective tissues" and they take up a lot of the space.

That doesn't mean they aren't involved, proteins can go wrong, but, that is
usually associated with other types of diseases besides cancer.

~~~
mcculley
That still leaves me confused. A skinny adult who becomes obese has the same
number of skin cells? That sounds hard to believe.

~~~
apostacy
I would like to point out also, that many people who would be described as
"skinny" would almost never become obese. Neither would they be able to put on
much muscle mass. It is a huge misconception that our bodies are just blank
templates that can become fatter or more muscular. Different bodies have
affinities for different shapes.

Someone who is very ectomorphic and "scrawny", will often have severe
difficulty gaining a substantial amount of weight.

~~~
maccard
I disagree, (would be open to sourcing from this) but there are photos of
people I know from 15-20 years ago where you would look at them and think
they’re scrawny, and now they are visibly obese.

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patcheudor
"More than half of Americans that overweight and obesity can increase their
risk for cancer."

Sorry to be 'that guy', but I'd expect official statements from the CDC to be
better proof-read as this sort of thing really does impact the credibility of
the message.

~~~
jknoepfler
You might want to append a (sic.) to the quote. I assumed you made the typo
until I read the follow-up.

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tyingq
Curious if it's cause, or shared effect. Like perhaps the diet of an obese
person generally has a higher amount of carcinogens, or lacks in some key
antioxidants...in addition to making you overweight.

~~~
tosstossy
Obese people probably produce elevated levels of insulin-like growth factors
over time due to their dietary choices. IGF-1 is already understood to
increase cancer rates.

Intermittent fasting studies tend to focus on IGF-1 levels in the interests of
slowing aging, which is of course strongly related to cancer prevention.

------
sabujp
it doesn't really matter if it is or not, some studies say yes others say no.
Bottom line is it sucks to be fat and overweight, e.g. you have less energy
and life is just less fun.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I used to weigh well over 300lbs, and I eventually took up a hobby that made
me want to lose it badly enough to go through the trouble of making my body
eat half of itself.

I don't get to order pizza. I don't get to pick up something from a fast food
joint on the way home. I can't go to a restaurant with friends. I have to
avoid gatherings where free food will be present. I dread the days a coworker
brings in donuts. I've had to get used to going to bed hungry. I usually don't
have much energy at all because my caloric intake has to be restricted so much
to prevent me from gaining weight back, so I take stimulants to suppress
appetite and make it possible to get through the day without falling asleep at
my desk. I am a slave to the scale.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I disagree with your statement. Oh, it
sucked to be fat alright, because people treated me like shit just for
existing and because it was embarrassing every time I broke a chair, but I
wouldn't say I had less energy and I definitely wouldn't say I had less fun
either.

~~~
xinyhn
My personal experience is very similar and you described it in a way better
than I could. And then add on to that the requirement to do that day in and
day out for the rest of your life.

Thank you for sharing.

------
fasteo
Slightly OT, but I was just reading some fascinating comments in [1]. The post
was about cancer and mitochondria.

Particularly for me, the series of comments about how the nervous system can
play a role in cancer development (via inflammation promoting activity) is
fascinating.

There are even some comments from Carlos Monteiro, a controversial
cardiologist. He postulates that cardiac glycosides (used to treat cardiac
problems) are also a potent anti-cancer drug.

[1] [https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2017/10/01/is-
cancer-...](https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2017/10/01/is-cancer-a-
mitochondrial-disease/)

[2]
[http://www.infarctcombat.org/cm/homepage.html](http://www.infarctcombat.org/cm/homepage.html)

------
stewbrew
Not exactly news but worth being mentioned from time to time.

------
nikolay
Obesity is due to the Metabolic Syndrome, i.e. it is strongly linked to
diabetes. Watch the presentation below, which I recorded at our church, which
is about the leading UCLA research on linking diabetes and cancer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSo-p7DafpA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSo-p7DafpA)

------
jakeogh
Relevant (fascinating!) talk from another thread[1]:
[https://overcast.fm/+FaTQX2SRE](https://overcast.fm/+FaTQX2SRE)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15424339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15424339)

------
musgrove
Point taken, but who wrote that? It's hard to establish credibility when your
authors write like a 3rd grader.

~~~
nradov
Public health officials do sometimes intentionally write at a 3rd grade level
in order to reach the widest possible audience.

~~~
DrScump
Are you suggesting that bad grammar and usage in a scientific article increase
one's audience?

------
rammy1234
irrespective of cancer being linked with being Obese, it is always better to
remain active. naturally our body is not designed to have a sedentary
lifestyle. So study can be taken as a reminder to stay active and not being a
couch potato. take frequent breaks and have some active lifestyle.

------
vorotato
and mental health issues (ex: depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD), binge eating disorder, and night eating syndrome.) are linked
to obesity.

------
baldfat
The more the cells the higher the chance for a mutation?

The older we get the more opportunity for cell mutation?

------
qazpot
I don't understand why any comments in support of this article are being
downvoted. Is it now politically incorrect to support agree with scientific
studies?

Reminds me of climate change deniers.

~~~
odiroot
Well, climate change science doesn't offend anyone. The science from the
article does.

~~~
Godel_unicode
This (ignoring facts one finds offensive) is a very serious problem in our
society, does anyone know of research into how to work around it?

~~~
devonkim
Most of the research I’m familiar with is related to cognitive biases from
areas related to political science or religious beliefs and it’s very obvious
now that facts are not a way to get people to believe things that were
initially spurred by emotional reasons. Most of the stuff I’ve seen basically
says it’s impossible to get people to get past their cognitive dissonance
problems without making something very personal that requires them to adapt or
risk more or less a form of identity loss. In fact, facts may cause people to
bank even more on their existing beliefs and seek out “alternative facts” that
support their current beliefs. This is a similar mechanic to how some anti-
LGBT politicians have relented on their publicly known positions when some of
their immediate family members have come out as homosexual. This is not
consistent either - many such persons are simply disowned by their families
and in extreme cases of bigotry result in an honor killing.

My personal, not-very tested belief is that there is a strong biological
component to political alignments and if you put that person in a different
culture they’d gravitate toward similar values on a relative scale.

------
Toine
In other news, fire burns.

~~~
marindez
In what way is it obvious that obesity leads to cancer?

~~~
jlebrech
putting more unhealthy things into your mouth causes cancer, pretty obvious

~~~
shats
it's actually quite easy to consume a caloric surplus with only "healthy"
foods. beans, steak avocado, nuts are all examples of "healthy" foods with
high nutrient density and high caloric density.

~~~
jlebrech
I just noticed you slipped in steak
[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/health/report-links-
some-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/health/report-links-some-types-
of-cancer-with-processed-or-red-meat.html)

If you overeat of a Standard American Diet you increase the risk of heart
disease and cancer.

------
nonbel
Cell division is not perfect, each time there is a chance of error. This is
why _anything_ that results in a net increase in cell division will be linked
to cancer.

Obesity means you have more cells than other people... to have more cells
there must have been more cell divisions. The role of mitogenesis in cancer
has been realized for many, many years[1], so I'm not sure why there is still
any controversy about it.

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC54830/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC54830/)

