
Reddit user explains aging vs cancer - ericmsimons
http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/kb39j/scumbag_telomeres/c2iutkf
======
reasonattlm
Just to be finicky, cancer is not in fact worthy of being called the
"inevitable killer of mammals," through might be accurate in calling it the
inevitable killer of mice, as said beasts are little cancer factories.

In humans, supercentenarians (110+) don't tend to die of cancer - in fact your
odds of dying from cancer appear to decline precipitously past the 80s and
90s. I'd wager we won't know definitively why this is the case before there
are good general cancer therapies in circulation, though.

The condition that presently acts as a final full stop to catch everyone lucky
enough to miss out on all of the other fun little fatal surprises at the
decaying end of life is called senile cardiac TTR amyloidosis. Some
description:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/12/an-interview-
with...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/12/an-interview-with-the-
supercentenarian-research-foundation-chairman.php)

The short of it is "gunk clogs the tubes" but the long of it is much more
involved - and like many things found in aging it has a rare youthful variant
probably caused by unlucky genes. I note that the SENS Foundation puts some
funding towards work on the narrow range of promising therapies for this
condition:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/09/sens-
foundation-f...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/09/sens-foundation-
funds-research-into-a-therapy-for-ttr-amyloidosis.php)

~~~
klenwell
I read Long For This World and both gunk and cancer were on Aubrey De Grey's
list of 7 Deadly Killers (or whatever it was). The impression I came away with
from that book was gunk was a plausible target for future technological remedy
but cancer presented a much more difficult problem (for reasons explained in
the book.)

The careful qualifications to your case above seem to catch this objection,
but based on my reading that book, I would gather that supercenternarians
dying of gunk not cancer aren't necessarily immune from cancer. They may just
be lucky in that gunk, at this period in history, got to them first.

If it isn't luck but something else, there's also the problem of extrapolating
a therapy from that. De Vere's solution to cancer was replacing every cell in
the body every 7 or 8 years to circumvent the effects of telemerase ( or
something like that, I'm not a gerontologist obviously.) It would be
interesting if these supercenternarians's bodies were doing something like
this, but it would be more interesting if it led to a more practical therapy.

------
Read_the_Genes
Thank you for linking to this interesting discussion on Reddit. Their
discussion lacks a few key points.

First, inflammation is an important cause of cellular (and DNA) damage. The
standard weapon used by your innate immune system is super-oxide, a free
radical! Avoiding chronic infections is likely to be an important key to
longevity, especially for those prone to inflammation.

Second, while "aging" is a natural mechanism by which your body defends
against cancer, "aging" quickly is not the ideal way to prevent cancer.

Your cells will stop dividing when they have reached their Hayflick limit.
This limit is not exactly caused by telomeres, but rather the lack of
telomerase (a protein that lengthens telomeres). Active telomerase is
necessary for a cell to become cancerous.

So the cell has its own built in mechanism to determine when it has divided
too many times, as well as when it has accumulated DNA damage from external
sources like UV or oxides. Your cells have "aged" when they have accumulated
too much DNA damage! So aging, in this sense, is not a good way to prevent
cancer. The aged body is filled with tumors that are near metastasis, and
undergoes drastic changes (eg. reduction in hormones) to prevent cancer
formation.

The only real way to prevent cancer is to stop cell division. This, of course,
is not ideal. How would we grow to become an adult without cell division? How
would we heal damaged tissue? The answer is actually in the growth pathways of
mammals.

It turns out that dwarfs (little people) have very low cancer rates. See for
example:
[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=defective-g...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=defective-
growth-gene-in-dwarfism)

These people lack a gene (in a pathway) that is necessary for cancer to form.
Knocking out genes in growth pathways in mice drastically reduces their cancer
rates (the mice are also small). Want to prevent cancer? Stop growing!

This is completely unrealistic, of course. However, populations with limited
activity in their growth pathways will be less prone to cancer. This extends
to short people too, not just dwarfs.

~~~
jacques_chester
Wouldn't dwarfs have less cancer simply because they have fewer cells that can
become cancerous?

~~~
pushingbits
Those dwarfs seem to get even less cancer than you would expect given the
reduced number of cells.

Also, on a related note, there's Peto's Paradox about why cancer rates are
similar across species despite vastly different sizes (mice, humans, whales).

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/02/28/the-
mere-e...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/02/28/the-mere-
existence-of-whales/)

Paper behind paywall:
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534711...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534711000152)

------
rsheridan6
If this idea is true, people who appear/feel younger in their old age should
be more prone to get cancer. A testable proposition.

~~~
michaelpinto
My understanding is that we all have cancer cells in our body — the problem
becomes when they get triggered. There may be something in the immune system
that has something to do with this. What depresses me with this subject is
that it seems like the more we know about it the more we understand how much
more we really need to learn. Also as I get older I keep coming across more
members of my peer group (and people I know who are older) who get some form
of cancer. It seems like we've made some progress in my lifetime, but it's too
slow for my tastes. In my dream of dreams someone would come up with a silver
bullet.

~~~
Read_the_Genes
We all have tumors in our bodies, not cancer. Cancer is when the tumor
metastasizes, and begins to grow out of control.

Perhaps instead of hoping for a silver bullet to cure cancer, determine
when/if your body is full of tumors, and do everything you can to prevent them
from accumulating any more DNA damage.

~~~
nitrogen
I think one of us may be confused about the definition of metastasis. From
(<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metastasis>) it appears that
metastasis typically happens _after_ a cancerous tumor has been around for a
while, when some cancerous cells escape the tumor and start dividing
elsewhere.

------
gxs
One of the things he mentions is to not stress. How do you do this? I'm not a
worry wart or anything, but sometimes it seems like I can't help my body's
natural response to certain situations.

~~~
zachcb
I think he means to just try to avoid stress. The way I do this is--

A) Avoid situations which I know will be stressful. Not all situations that
are stressful are harmful in the long run, though. For me, meeting people is
stressful, but it pays itself off as if you're lucky enough to come off as
likable you may have new friends, which will reduce your stress. People who
socialize have been shown to live longer and be happier, according to Richard
Restak in his book "Think Smart."

B) If you're troubled by something stressful (which has already occurred), I
find it best to locate the exact thing that is stressing you and why it's
stressing you. If it's an exam coming up, I try talking it over with people
and venting. This has helped me a lot. I'll recant Think Smart again, where
Dr. Restak recommends asking yourself these questions:

"Am I going to allow this experience to determine the course of the rest of my
life? Or am I going to take control of my life? What can I learn from this
experience?"

He goes on to say:

"Mentally reformulating things in this way will increase your feeling of
control and protect your brain from stress-induced damage. This is important,
since loss of a sense of control is the main contributor to the stress
response. No matter how stressful the situation, if you retain control of your
attitudes and responses this along will lessen your stress--even if you can't
affect the situation responsible for the stress."

Couple quotes:

"Not being able to govern events, I govern myself." -Michel de Montaigne
(useful for stressful situations)

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing
itself, but to your estimate of it. This you have the power to revoke."
-Marcus Aurelius (had to remind myself of this today)

Hope this helps.

------
davi
I subscribe to the Disposable Soma theory of aging.
[http://medicine.jrank.org/pages/1758/Theories-Biological-
Agi...](http://medicine.jrank.org/pages/1758/Theories-Biological-Aging-
Disposable-Soma.html) [1]

In this scheme cancer is just one example of the balance between somatic
maintenance and reproduction rate.

[1] _The disposable soma theory of aging predicts that species and cohorts in
a population expecting, on average, to have high survival and low reproductive
rates should invest more heavily in protecting their somas than species and
populations that expect a short lifespan and to reproduce rapidly_

------
gregwebs
Any discussion on cancer is very incomplete without an acknowledgement that
pre-civilization cancer was much more rare, and in some hunter-gatherer
societies almost unknown. Good Calories Bad Calories has a good discussion of
this and other health issues in some remote areas. Some members of those
societies lived into old age, and some members of our society get cancer at
young ages. Along these lines, I would be very interested in reading about
cancer rates of animals in natural environments. One must assume that the talk
of mice getting cancer is referring to lab mice.

~~~
ericmsimons
In pre-civilization, how would they have known that someone had cancer?

~~~
gregwebs
A better question (and maybe the one you are asking) is how would we know if
someone outside of civilisation actually had cancer. You have to draw on
various sources of evidence. It is possible to see evidence of health issues
in skeletons, the most obvious example pertinent to this discussion might be
something like bone cancer. The most convincing evidence on the issue is
observational. It comes from people from civilization documenting populations
that are hunter-gatherers or pastoralist and sometimes partly subsistence
agriculturalists. As mentioned, there is a discussion of this type of evidence
in GCBC by Gary Taubes. Doctors from civilisation would go to the frontier,
deal with disease in the frontier populations, and note an extraordinary lack
of disease in the native populations. The best documented groups are various
groups in Africa, the Inuit, and some Pacific islanders like the Kitavans.
Finding a case of cancer in an Inuit was worthy of publication in a journal.
In the case of the Kitavans a researcher actually went there specifically to
study their health. There was not a single overweight individual that had
lived on the island their whole life. There were (a few) ~100 year old
individuals without any sign of disease. They could recount the _one_ time in
their populations recent history that it appeared that someone from the island
had cancer. People there (that don't die from accidents) presumably die from
infections, not from cancer and other degenerative diseases.

~~~
ericmsimons
That's really interesting, thanks for sharing that. I always assumed that
before modern medicine identified cancer, people thought that they were dying
of other diseases & what not when in reality they had cancer. Is there any way
that scientists can figure out if people from centuries ago died from cancer
(excluding bone cancer)?

~~~
gregwebs
It is all a very vague science to try to look back in time. Centuries is not
that long ago, and one can try to assume that remote indigenous populations
are still similar. Lets assume we are talking thousands if not tens of
thousands of years ago. There are a lot of things that scientists can try to
interpret from skeletal and other bone remains, only some of them that would
be a _direct_ link to cancer. This is a good overview of some of the science
that goes on for that in a context that is relevant to the discussion at hand:
[http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/03/paleopathology...](http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/03/paleopathology-
at-origins-of.html)

Personally I am convinced that cancer is just one of many _degenerative_
health issues. If you follow that line of reasoning, than the frequency of
degenerative issues in skeletal remains are likely related to the frequency of
cancer and any other degenerative health issue. As one example, if you simply
see caries (cavities) in the remains of the teeth, that would also mean cancer
was more likely to occur. (very healthy indigenous cultures have almost no
cavities). Obviously this is very loose logic, and certain groups are more
likely to have certain issues that are more or less likely to show up in
skeletal remains, but I believe the general principle is sound.

------
nphase
So the natural question is - what can one practically do to try to postpone
DNA damage as much as possible?

~~~
bronson
3rd paragraph: "If you have a healthy diet low in sugar, high in antioxidants,
in theory you can reduce DNA damage, keeping your DNA looking younger", etc...

Eat your leafy greens.

~~~
JunkDNA
With respect to antioxidants, there had been mounting evidence recently that
antioxidants could paradoxically increase cancer risk. The evidence so far is
that there are cellular pathways that spool up in the presence of oxidants and
can cause cells to undergo cell death. Antioxidants can hinder these pathways
from firing and instead, allow cells to linger around longer than they should.

------
schiptsov
That is nice explanation. As our ancestors used to say - Clarity is an
evidence. ^_^

There is another simple point - who on earth will ever publish a study which
proves that the whole ready food and fast food industry makes us sick, that
the whole idea of office work (and driving a car!) is deeply wrong and that
just vegetarian diet and regular exercise, e.g. agriculture work, and
community of our equals is what we need because it defines what we are? ^_^

Of course, the study that shows that common sense has some sense will never be
widely pushed through media. First, who will give you money to prove things
that everyone knew but forgot? And corporations, who need to push more crap to
get more profit, will stop it on very early stage, because that is the best
strategy for them.

So, yes, diet, exercise and proper state of the mind (avoidance of stress,
attachments, passions) _together_ makes us healthy and younger, but people
knew this for aeons without any Wikipedia articles. ^_^

------
mrbgty
It sounds like we have enough information in understanding the problems of
aging and cancer that we're at a point where solving these problems is
possible.

------
waivej
I keep thinking something I heard in a yoga class: "The pain that is to come
is to be avoided."

------
Helianthus
Unfair title--the redditor himself says that while his hypothesis is
scientific and has some cellular evidence, it is still a more or less unproven
principle.

~~~
ericmsimons
Fair point - I would edit it, but it's locked down now. I didn't intend to
mislead HN readers with this title.

------
maeon3
Additional ideas to consider:

1\. Human stem cells will reproduce indefinitely without aging in a controlled
environment.

2\. Some turtles live 200 years, do they have a different DNA aging and cancer
management program?

3\. I thought aging was due to the polymerase having run out of buffer
telomere junk data, cuts into the in-use data DNA files that are responsible
for managing the refreshing of your body. src
<http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/cancer/animations.html>

