> Diagnosis rates in the U.S. rose in 2019 to 107.8 cases per 100,000 people under 50, up 12.8% from 95.6 in 2000, federal data show. A study in BMJ Oncology last year reported a sharp global rise in cancers in people under 50, with the highest rates in North America, Australia and Western Europe.
This is a relatively small increase over ~25 years. How much of it is due to cases like the highlighted one (which is tragic, but clearly driven by symptoms), vs increased screening?
The US "standard" age for colonoscopy, for example, was recently dropped from 50 to 45...without really good evidence (essentially, just "updated models") [1]. This inevitably leads to higher rates of false positives in younger people. Over-treatment is a real risk in places like the US, where there are financial incentives to treat.
> The US "standard" age for colonoscopy, for example, was recently dropped from 50 to 45...without really good evidence
The age was dropped in 2021, in part because of the very numbers from 2019 you quoted. It's also weird to link to the page with evidence and give an unsubstantiated "without really good evidence" summary.
> essentially, just "updated models"
is literally how science is done?
Note also that not all screening is going in this direction, again based on evidence. Prostate cancer screening has been significantly reduced; many men in the US today will likely never get a prostate cancer screening.
> in part because of the very numbers from 2019 you quoted
I gave those links to show that there are no "numbers". They based the change on modeling results. The modeling results are based on assumptions. The assumptions may or may not be valid.
> > essentially, just "updated models"
> is literally how science is done?
My PhD is in statistical modeling of biological systems. To answer your question: no. Modeling, on it's own, is not "science". I would never suggest to anyone that a statistical model is the same thing as evidence. It's a model, which is based on evidence (maybe), after a thick layer of human meddling.
Modeling can be an input to a scientific process, but it isn't "how science is done". If you want to make a big change to all of health care like this, you need to do the damned experiment -- randomize people, and see what the effect of screening at 45 (vs 50) is on a hard endpoint like overall survival.
I can't read the original article, but presumably it treads the same ground as similar articles [1], which in turn generally reference [2]. Past articles talking about screening include [3].
Generally supports the view that early screening and detection are largely responsible
> Archie Bleyer, a clinical research professor at the Knight Cancer Institute of the Oregon Health & Science University, says the surge in cases of thyroid cancer, as well as kidney cancer, is at least partly a result of “overdiagnosis” due to increased screenings, both for cancer and for other health concerns. The screenings have detected tumors and masses in those organs that “look like cancer, so they’ve got to call it carcinoma,” he explains. But they “would never have been a problem if they were never picked up,” because they typically wouldn’t spread or progress.
I think this is rapidly becoming the consensus view, but the subject is complicated. In the long term, these early detections might lead us to the point where they can become more accurate, and we are better able to distinguish between tumors and masses that would progress and those that would not, but I'm not personally very optimistic; there are two many variables -- the same imaging between multiple facets of environment/genetics/diet/metabolism/chance might have wildly different outcomes.
It's a longstanding debate in cancer medicine -- google "turtles, rabbits and birds".
What is not a debate is that increased screening inevitably leads to false-positives. It's a mathematical certainty. But yes, you hope that you find more rabbits than turtles.
Yes! That's exactly it. I've seen that metaphor before and forgot where I saw it until I searched around for what ended up being a previous comment of yours [1].
They don’t have screening for cholangiocarcinoma. It’s not common in the Midwest.
My partner discovered her cancer as a result of an unrelated condition: kidney stone MRIs showed a spot on her liver. We’ve been disappointed by every western medicine outcome for the last two years.
The Mayo Clinic was an incredibly disappointing experience. Our last interaction there, after giving some shitty news, our oncologist asked if we ate corn, like in tortillas. She had a theory it might be to blame. I pointed out corn is everything and bitterly wished her luck.
Hopefully, my partner will see her kid graduate high school in three years.
I'm sorry man. Routine cancer screening that is available to the general population is still super primitive. Right now, our lung cancer blood test is the only of its kind, and you need 20 pack-years of smoking history to get it while in trials. We're expanding to other cancers. Once these tests hit market they'll be cheap and effective, but trials in general take a very long time. I really think something needs to change with the regulatory process to get lifesaving tech to people more quickly, because although it needs to be a regulated marketplace, there is a staggering human cost to how inefficient the current system is.
> They don’t have screening for cholangiocarcinoma. It’s not common in the Midwest.
It isn't common for anyone under 70 which is why they don't spend a lot of effort on diagnosis and treatment of it. Friend of mine died from it when he was like 33 though. I hope you beat it.
One alternative to colonoscopy at 45 that is widely used outside the US are FIT tests. They go for $30 on Amazon (and around $80 for Labcorp) and they are much cheaper and incomparably less time consuming than a colonoscopy. The idea is that you only go for a colonoscopy under 50 (and some even say 55) if the FIT test comes positive. Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor and this is not medical advice.
One side effect (heh) of those, at least in the US: If my doctor orders a colonoscopy, then the insurance covers it. But if he orders one of these tests and it indicates that I need a colonoscopy, then I pay for the colonoscopy.
Note that this may vary, depending on your insurance...
OR... Wait until your doctor orders the colonoscopy and drag your feet until you say, without letting them know of the FIT results, "I'm ready to do it now". Doctors in the US will almost always order a colonoscopy starting at 50, and often starting at 45.
The cost of the FIT tests is negligible compared to the cost of the colonoscopy, so it makes sense that you do these on your own outside the insurance system.
Note that this works well in the case of colon cancer because it has a slowly-progressing prodromal stage in the form of polyps whose weak blood vessels cause tiny amounts of blood loss into the stool.
"Over the next year, Hough and Phadnis worked with the British sugar company Tate & Lyle to make more than a hundred chlorinated sugars, finally settling on one that had three chlorine atoms and was about six hundred times as sweet as sugar. “It isn’t of any use as an insecticide,” Hough told me recently. “That was tested.” But it has proved useful as a food. In its pure form, it is known as sucralose. When mixed with fillers and sold in bright-yellow sachets, it’s known as Splenda, the best-selling artificial sweetener in America."
The majority of plant phytochemicals with properties that are beneficial to human health simply exist to protect plants against insects (i.e functionally they are poisonous insecticides). There is even a theory in pharmacology to explain this precise observation, called hormesis [1]. The type of reasoning you use that relies on the scary affective connotation of WORDS is not a meaningful way to draw scientific conclusions.
IIRC one strategy for insecticides is to entice them to eat things they can't get any energy out of to starve them. Like you could make an excellent completely nontoxic artificial sweetener that killed bugs by them stuffing themselves with it, thinking they're full, and dying of malnutrition.
Chlorinated organic compounds are found in nearly every class of biomolecules and natural products including alkaloids, terpenes, amino acids, flavonoids, steroids, and fatty acids.
When sucralose is heated above 120C (e.g. baked in an oven) it breaks down into harmful organochlorene compounds, such as Polychlorinated Biphenyls similar in toxicity to 2,3,7,8-TCDD.
2,3,7,8-TCDD is one of the most toxic dioxins known.
I don't understand the uncertainty of this whole article. "It is unclear on the
one hand which toxic reaction products are generated in detail and in which quantities they are formed"
Is a microscopic bit of harmful chemical going to do anything? We are exposed to lots of harmful chemicals all the time. Even our cleaning products are harmful.
> Is a microscopic bit of harmful chemical going to do anything?
Dioxins are generally a class of chemical where the answer is yes. Even trace amounts are horrifically carcinogenic.
In one instance, six truckloads of 2,3,7,8-TCDD-contaminated waste (not pure TCDD) mixed into used motor oil and spread over the roads of a ~420 acre town as dust control resulted in the entire town having to be permanently evacuated and disincorporated.
Also, more generally, letting catchphrase-driven handwaves from industry about how their dumping is actually ok really isn't a great way to be. Things like dumping of low-level waste (ie not actual uranium or fission products, just ordinary furniture/materials from facilities that are mildly activated) off the coast of california have increasingly been realized to be a mistake. Even "diluted into a whole ocean" (it never is), it turns out it doesn't just go away, and the plumes are in fact both detectable and potentially harmful.
You know what actually is the solution? The complete opposite, concentration and incineration (for dioxins) or permanent containment (high-level nuclear waste).
"Further, the team discovered that gut cells exposed to sucralose-6-acetate had increased activity in genes related to oxidative stress, inflammation and carcinogenicity. ‘It’s time to revisit the safety and regulatory status of sucralose, because the evidence is mounting that it carries significant risks,’ warned Susan Schiffman, the study’s corresponding author."
As an oncologist, the cause is unknown. But it's not so simple to point fingers at one cause. For example someone who is a heavy smoker (ie. a pack a day) gets cancer at a rate of 25% in their lifetime should they live to age 80. It's a delicate interplay between genetics, development, and environment. We should identify all modifiable risk factors and change our behavior to reduce exposure to them.
A 2022 study claims that a combination of vitamin D supplements, Omega-3 fatty acid supplements, and (mild/moderate) exercise reduces cancer risk by 60% or so for older adults, but the same factors apply to young people as well.
It seems that many (maybe most) cancers are kicked off by inflammation, or otherwise stressed tissues, after the conditions are just right (genetics, carcinogen, or otherwise damaged dna). Cells that are damaged enough to spread as cancer can avoid getting replicated for years or even never without a trigger. So, it could be that we aren't more exposed to carcinogens, but more frequently encounter the conditions that make the damaged cells start spreading. So, vitamin-D and Omega-3 could indeed help in that regard, and some other cause of chronic inflammation could be responsible for the upward trend.
Yes, you are exactly correct! Vitamin D and exercise share a common result. They both increase and maintain our body’s growth hormone production at healthy levels which is the prime driver of a healthy T cell cancer/virus killing immune system function!! Chronic growth hormone deficiency is at epidemic levels in adults and increasingly in young adults that is weakening our killer T cell immune system function and causing cancer at unprecedented levels!! Sadly, most physicians who read this will roll their eyes because they think they know it all! If they did we wouldn’t have such record levels of disease and death today!!
> For example someone who is a heavy smoker (ie. a pack a day) gets cancer at a rate of 25% in their lifetime should they live to age 80
I'm curious what the odds are for an 80 year old light or never smoker. Is it 24%? 2.4%? .0024%? Do you know?
Also curious how long you have to live as a non smoker to get to that equivalent 25%. I'm under the impression that everyone gets cancer if you live long enough.
Odds for a never smoker aren't well estimated, but I'd say it's in the single digits. Definitely less than 5%. It depends on one's radon exposure, asbestos exposure, exposure to gas stoves/coal burners, smog pollution, and genetic background. Many lung cancers in non-smokers are driven by single gene alterations (i.e. EGFR, ALK)
Your second question is also interesting. For a nonsmoker to get to 25% lung cancer risk, I guess he/she would have to live past 80, which few people do.
Your statement that we all probably get cancer eventually is mostly true - as we age there is an accumulation of mutations which eventually should cause cancer. Some super-elderly people in their 90s and 100s may have more senescent cells than others, and paradoxically lower their risk of new cancer later in life.
Someone here wrote "dysgenic breeding and medical progression" and was immediately so heavily downvoted that he removed that comment quickly.
Breeding sounds horrible, and I first needed to google dysgenic, which really makes that term even worse.. but still I wondered not only once:
We as civilization with our medical advances (about that I am totally happy) remove or at least change selection pressure, so isn't it inevitable that we partly also "downgrade"?
Further, given an illness that kills with lets say 50%, and that is influenced also by genetics: If we can now cure that, so make more people survive and reproduce with this, while factors and genetics stay: isn't it expected we may see this illness raise in the population?
Really seriously interested about answers.. there must be a way to properly discuss this? What's the right terms for this?
(Besides personally, my gut reaction would also be that change of environment and our lifestyle here is likely most significant factor).
> Further, given an illness that kills with lets say 50%, and that is influenced also by genetics: If we can now cure that, so make more people survive and reproduce with this, while factors and genetics stay: isn't it expected we may see this illness raise in the population?
Illness that doesn't kill before reproduction is irrelevant. Evolution is about spamming copies of yourself more than other strains of organism, and getting cancer at 45-55 is moot if you have 3 kids and a retirement plan mostly completed before then.
plus genetically we're still basically cavemen, even if you can find pressures for things like dairy or alcohol tolerance in certain populations.
I think it would be fairly easy to find evidence of directly linked survival -> passing on risk. There haven't been so many generations with modern (cancer) medicine that you couldn't trace whether many folks getting cancer young had recent ancestors who survived getting cancer young because of modern medicine.
On the other hand, if there's significant overlap between all the historical causes of infant/small child mortality that we've eliminated over centuries, and susceptibility to early cancer, that would be much harder to identify.
In general, there are going to be a lot more people reproducing successfully now than compared to a thousand years ago, let alone ten thousand years ago, and some of those people may have genes that would be disadvantageous in a more cut-throat environment that kills a lot of people before they hit breeding age.
I can't really say that scans as a plausible major causal contribution to various digestive tract cancers going from 5 per 100,000 to 6 per 100,000 before age 50 from 1990 to 2019. The proposition that any meaningful environmental pressure selected against genes that might cause you to die at 45 instead of 55 doesn't make a whole lot of sense. That is well beyond peak breeding age. These people's ancestors were always susceptible to cancer, but they either didn't live long enough to get it or environmental contaminants that actually trigger the susceptibility were not present. Now they are.
Historically, someone like me would have probably died prior to, say, marriage age. Now, if I wanted to reproduce, I have to ask the big question: do I want to risk saddling my child with what I have? Grandkids?
Assuming we don't edit the genes out of embryos and we're not doing something like issuing reproductive injunctions, people with genetic illnesses who aren't particularly conscientious would be adding propensities for whatever to the gene pool.
Nobody wants to discuss this because some German people were making noise about the idea eighty years ago and we can't have anything associated with that, to a point of senseless contrarity.
On one hand, modern medicine has just put human genetics and fitness at a standstill. On the other, infectious diseases we face have not been standing still.
There is no need to discuss "breeding" in this context at all. The study is over 25 years, a single generation. The germline of any species does not change that quickly.
Lots of things in the environment have changed in the last 25 years, though, correlated with any number of things (e.g. obesity.) It will take a while to establish the cause. All the glib hot-takes on HN about "chemicals" and "plastics" might turn out to be a part of the cause, but we will see.
Microplastics in every cell in our bodies, more and more food is made of lab chemical non-food substances. These are not controversial ideas. why is this baffling doctors again?
But let's talk about the things that are controversial, but really shouldn't be. Pesticides are carcinogenic. Landmark cases are making headlines but quickly sinking below the radar. Meat and diary consumption, despite the drum beat of evidence and recommendations, is accelerating at a rate that even experts find alarming. These foods are known carcinogens.
I went to a trendy bar recently and their bloody mary has skewers of smoked sausage and bacon. Sure, on one hand, yummm, bacon. On the other hand, there are whole continents of data proving without a doubt these foods cause cancer.
It's kind of a stretch to conclude that meat & dairy consumption (foundations of human civilization along with grain, humans have been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years) are on par with novel non-food substances like microplastics and sucralose in their ability to cause cancer rates to increase in recent decades.
If meat and dairy were so carcinogenic, we'd see high cancer rates in e.g. Mongolians with traditional lifestyles and diets.
"adding that liver, gastric, esophageal and cervical cancers accounted for the majority of all registered cases."
I wonder if people will ever stop rationalizing their red meat addiction, despite the decades of clear evidence of the impact it has on the GI tract in particular. Our ancestors didn't gulp down so much of it because they were so healthy, but because getting calories and dying of cancer after reproduction was a better deal than starving.
The important factors with meat consumption are: 1) how they're prepared ('low and slow' is the best method of cooking, i.e., at a relatively low temperature and for a relatively long time in order to avoid creation of AGE's and trans-fats); and 2) how they're preserved, whether through salting, smoking, application of nitrites (different from nitrates!), &c.
> The important factors with meat consumption are: 1) how they're prepared ('low and slow' is the best method of cooking, i.e., at a relatively low temperature and for a relatively long time in order to avoid creation of AGE's and trans-fats)
I daily eat beef that has been cooked by sous-vide at 155F for 48 hours and then crisp up in an air fryer at 400F for 20 minutes. Is this over doing it with regards to carcinogen production?
I think the eating beef daily part is more concerning than how it's prepared and that seems to be overdoing it.
That doesn't sound like well balanced protein sources and it's certainly not what our ancestors would have had access to. i.e. some days there'd be little to no food available, some days might only be grains/fruit/legumes/veg and then the occasional feast of meat which might last days or weeks after a hunt.
I agree with that paleo approach to diet, and your conclusions. In my case my gastroparesis prevents me from eating any significant amount of fiber and diabetes II from eating many carbs. Meat is what's left. I tolerate beef best so eat it the most.
I think that the ease of digestion and my health improvements are evidence that this is an eating pattern that we're well adapted to.
It's not the calories. It's the fats, trace nutrients, amino acids, cholesterol, etc. Otherwise we'd all have no trouble being vegetarian.
In any case, it's easy to agree that microplastics and pesticides are probably bad. Even if meat eating does cause cancer, it's harder to characterize it as an "addiction" and more as a biological tradeoff that our bodies made millennia ago.
You are pointing the finger at things you think are worrisome.
But for this particular issue, the problem is a recent significant change in cancer rates. That means that the cause is likely a recent significant change. The items you listed don't strike me as having changed significantly in decades.
Off hand, I can think of dozens of environmental factors that have changed: increase in acceptance of mental health leading to more Rx for same; vaping; marijuana use; a different mix of recreational drug use; less socializing leading to less physical activity; less air pollution; less physical activity as children due to attitude changes about their safety on their own in public; and a dozen more I didn't think of.
I wish good luck to the medical professionals who need to untangle this and find the source causes.
So, from the tone of your message I infer the following opinions of yours
- We shouldn't eat chemical non-food
(whatever that means)
- We shouldn't eat meat and diary
So then how do you get a balanced diet? "Chemical" non-food supplements? Expensive (both ecological, and for my personal wallet) vegan options such as nuts?
These sorts of submissions are sure to attract armchair nutritionists and epidemiologists. Judging by the comments so far, they've predictably come in droves.
What always bothers me is that HN immediately starts discussing these submission as if it were a personal responsibility issue rather than a public health issue. You're not even going to make a dent in these cancer numbers by appealing to people's personal responsibility to follow a healthier diet.
For others, the mechanism of action is acetylcholine esterase inhibition, essentially insect-sized nerve gas dosing, metabolized by things bigger than insects, and then there are nicotine analogues for more neurotoxic action.
Interesting that colorectal, kidney and stomach cancers are some of the largest increases which could point to something in the food supply.
It's surprising that the rates increased in Western Europe that also have more stringent standards on food additives. This could mean something wide spread like microplastics rather than food dyes.
> also have more stringent standards on food additives
It is hard to measure how cancerous a substance is.
Standards seem to be quite porous for a variety of reasons. For example existing allowed substances that get withdrawn indicate that the standards are imprecise.
It’s more a North American problem. Europe has far stricter food safety standards, whereas the U.S. lets corporations poison the population for profit.
Europe has different, but relatively similar, food safety standards. Some things are more "strict" on one side of the ocean, some are more "strict" on the other, and some are just different points of view with arguable benefit for either perspective.
> U.S. lets corporations poison the population for profit.
Europe is also quite well known for regulatory capture in the food industry.
Industry and academic rankings for food safety put high income countries on both sides of the pond at the top of the rankings.
Most of "food safety" is ensuring that foods don't have contaminants and a regulatory system that effectively ensures that.
Though the Europeans seem not to be exempt from the phenomenon at hand: as the article points out, the study found “a sharp global rise in cancers in people under 50, with the highest rates in North America, Australia and Western Europe.”
Baffled, lol. Micro plastics, hormones, preservatives, the capitalization of food production (food "product"). What is sold in major American grocery stores barely classifies as food.
Americans are being poisoned by the food we eat, how it's produced, packaged, distributed.
The only people baffled by it are those old enough that they were raised on actual food and don't understand what has happened the last few decades.
Yeah, but I don't think it has anything to do with the introduction/production of foreign proteins in the body by way of a genetic process delivered by and within a highly toxic lipid nanoparticle.
35 y/o male with stage 4 colon cancer here. You can creep my past comments on this site. Hopefully I can get down to MDAnderson for some clinical trials later this year.
I don't buy the "we're just better at detecting it" argument entirely. No millenial is getting routine colonoscopies. I don't know what the solutions are, but I hope they come pretty fucking quick.
There is a graph that's rate of change, as opposed to rate of occurrence.
Rate of change was already climbing through the 80's along with the other age groups, then dipped in the early 90's for about 10 years and then started climbing again for the age range 15-39 while the older age ranges decreased.
That would lead me to believe any environmental cause has been around for a while and it's likely that all the focus has been on screening 40+ and not enough screening for those under 40.
"Cancer is hitting more young people in the U.S. and around the globe, baffling doctors. Diagnosis rates in the U.S. rose in 2019 to 107.8 cases per 100,000 people under 50, up 12.8% from 95.6 in 2000, federal data show."
The more I’ve learned over the years about health has now lead me down the path to practice periods of fasting.
Anyone trying to eat a perfect Whole Foods diet may also still consume the occasional garbage food. I feel like fasting is a missing tool in the toolbox we don’t hear about enough.
Doing periods of 2 to 5 day fasts just seems to kind of reset things. Give organs a break that would otherwise never have a break. Many benefits to speak of..
But excited to see what the science shows in the coming decades.
There just seems to be something inherently natural feeling about feast and fast. Human ancestors were probably not eating 3 good size meals every single day forever without EVER giving there systems a break. The body seems to benefit from having a break from the constant toxin ingestion.
Just gonna put this out there that this is dangerous, faddy advice. Fasting is a road to eating disorders and is much harder on your organs than eating nutritious food.
If it "works for you" thats fine but I hope someone will always put it out there that fasting is dangerous, unsupported by evidence and more dangerous than you can know.
Fasting gives you a dopamine dump to give you the energy to find food. Not because it is in anyway good for you. Fasting makes people feel good after ending the fast because your body is relieved to no longer be starving. These dynamics are well understood in the context of eating disorders where "health fasting" is a well known symptom and excuse.
It's crucial to note that most studies on intermittent fasting have been short-term and conducted on animals, focusing on immediate changes like glucose levels rather than long-term health outcomes. This lack of extensive scientific data calls for caution in adopting intermittent fasting, especially for individuals with specific health conditions or vulnerabilities.
Usually it's more like skipping breakfast and not snacking after dinner. Skipping lunch isn't much of a fast if you're eating breakfast at at 7am and dinner at 7pm. But eating dinner at ~7pm and having your next meal be lunch is ~16 hours without eating.
> Fasting gives you a dopamine dump to give you the energy to find food.
The hunger-hormone ghrelin actually has substantial and broad benefits to health, including an evolutionary sharpening of cognitive functions [1], albeit possibly at the cost of a narrowing of focus to food-related topics.
The fast/feast cycle was recently found to recapitulate in humans the improvements in health biomarkers typically observed with caloric restriction, with less detrimental effects on the immune system and bone density [2].
Anyway the line between dietary restriction that improves health and an eating disorder is a fine and dangerous one. The difference is made by meticulously monitoring your micronutrient requirements to avoid any deficiencies. Assuming otherwise optimal nutrition, caloric + protein restriction is consistently associated with improvement in health biomarkers. But long-term human trials with hard endpoints like longevity and suitable controls don’t exist and are impractical.
There are certainly complicated physiological effects caused by fasting however the heterogeneity and limited number of studies make it difficult to draw definitive conclusions
Mental deficits are associated with fasting across a review of a variety of studies
Fasting can also cause other mental issues:
"Additionally, fasting was found to be associated with alterations in mood, including worsened mood, heightened irritability, difficulties concentrating, and increased fatigue, as well as an increase in depressive score in mentally healthy humans"
All in all it remains highly suspect that fasting has anything but long term and short term negative effects. As I said in another comment it makes sense to me that so called "health fasting" tends to be more common among people who are already vulnerable and at risk for disordered eating. I will continue to spread awareness about the link between "health fasting" (as well as other health and diet based fads) and actual life threatening eating disorders.
There is a huge lack of research into eating disorders generally and even less research into the interaction of health fads and eating disorders. I encourage everyone to advocate and support any and all research in this area to combat misinformation spread by "health" gurus and companies looking to make a quick buck.
Well fasting is hardly a consumerist conspiracy, as that would be a contradiction.
It’s likely that the downsides are a necessary trade off for a longer lifespan. The body reduces its metabolism in order to conserve resources and survive long enough until access to sustenance returns. The most dramatic change is the loss in libido; maintaining an active reproductive system has significant metabolic demands, so they are deprioritised. It’s possible that what we consider “healthy baseline” in the contemporary age of caloric abundance is actually a hyper-active state that accumulates rapid damage and dietary restriction brings metabolism down to a frugal and entropy-conserving state.
Edit: those two fantastic papers should provide you with all the help you will ever need in your efforts:
Critiques of caloric restriction (CR) studies include issues with control groups in animal research where these groups might eat more than usual complicating comparisons. Also, CR's benefits could vary based on eating habits and may not apply to everyone. There's a concern that extreme CR can weaken the immune system among other issues like bone density loss etc. The overall impact of CR on health and longevity clearly needs more research to be understood.
While its undeniable that some of the strains of mice and fruit flies did live longer, extrapolating that to humans and associating that with "health fasting" is questionable at best. If this becomes a viable technique for human health and life extension it ought to be undertaken in a supervised and managed way with the assistance of health professionals. Not sold as a magic treat-yourself cure for all ailments on the internet.
All in all CRL outside of an academic and scientific setting is almost certainly just going to spread dangerous misconceptions about health and our bodies.
> "Well fasting is hardly a consumerist conspiracy, as that would be a contradiction."
No fasting clearly isnt but most of these "health fasting" diet types also shill other dangerous "health" advice from juice "detoxes" to radioactive "aura cleansers"
About that "CALERIE" trial:
"many of them had BMIs that fall in the overweight category at the start of the trial. This means that any health benefits observed cannot be fully decoupled from the weight loss most participants experienced on their restricted diets. It is already well-known that going from being overweight to a healthy weight has a positive impact on the body; however, the trial results do not clearly answer the question of whether metabolic changes due to calorie reduction beyond a normal diet can improve health. Moreover, the trial was too short to determine the long-term effects, good or bad. "
So like I said above portraying this as somehow proven to be healthy in humans is a vast oversimplification of a complicated field and really isnt related to "health fasting" at all
Uhh. This is so strange. I now realise that you're not really interested in engaging attentively, you just have a bizarre fixation with fighting against fasting.
I already brought up osteopenia and the effect on the immune system two posts ago. Furthermore, they are discussed at length in 2 of the sources I linked. Yet you repeated this point as if it was something completely new. It contributed nothing to adding further context and moving this particular conversation forward. I also never brought up the CALERIE trial (which btw had an average BMI of 25 and excluded anyone abouve 28); however, I did post a source to a different trial in healthy (normal weight) people, which you didn't engage with. You actually didn't engage directly with a single point of mine.
All in all, it seems I'm just wasting my time expecting a nuanced conversation that I can learn something new from. You're just eager to repeat a memorised script.
Youre right I havent really engaged with the specific sources you cited and to some extent probably wrongly assumed you to be advocating health fasting as a cure-all. I apologize this was probably not a productive way to go about having this conversation.
This is partly a knee-jerk reaction as I have had subjective experiences with vulnerable and at risk loved ones and acquaintances falling for faddy scam health advice and triggering underlying EDs and other health problems. It is way more common than you think.
While I dont have any sources or other good information to provide I can say that I think we really need more research into EDs hereditary nature, long term health effects, psychological effects among other factors before this technique begins to be widely used.
Like you said earlier "the line between dietary restriction that improves health and an eating disorder is a fine and dangerous one." I really think this is very true. Specifcally I worry about people who dont know they are genetically predisposed to EDs and attempt to do health based dietary restriction. This could be catastrophic for those individuals.
I don't encourage people to fast but it's also not true that it's unsupported by evidence. It's an ancient and widespread practice in nearly all of the major world belief systems. Billions of people fast, and there is a massive cross-cultural body of writings about the effects of it.
Which is not the same as modern peer-reviewed medical study, no. But it's not "no evidence" either.
I take the stance that health fasting is vastly different in effects from fasting as a religious observance. For instance the frequency and duration of so called "Health fasting" among other factors including the fact that "health fasting" seems to self select for people already at risk of disordered eating.
Yeah I think I agree with that. I'm skeptical of fasting outside of a specific tradition and guidance. But don't like to see the value of those traditions dismissed either.
You fast from food for five days straight? I regularly fast for religious reasons and don't flinch from a two day fast a few times a year but five is intense.
I did five days one time, and broke the fast by eating watermelon. A few minutes later I vomited just pure watermelon pulp. It wasn't even gross, it was like there was no digestive liquids in my stomach to do anything to it. I had to teach my body to eat again. You do this regularly?
Why? I’ve seen arguments (highly simplified) that cancerous cells are more resource hungry than healthy ones, and fasting might help (selectively) starve them to death — leaving only the healthiest cells surviving.
The "occasional garbage food (that isn't straight up poison)" is quite literally irrelevant. You can fast for many reasons but this is really a silly one to mention
> Give organs a break that would otherwise never have a break. Many benefits to speak of..
Meaning no offense but this seems like such a silly claim to make. I'm sure it's appealing to feel like you've found a way to hack the system but... color me skeptical. Our bodies evolved over millions of years to operate continuously and generally do so quite successfully for 60-80 years with no special effort required.
That said, I do look forward to seeing Tiktok videos touting the benefits of intentionally induced cardiac arrest to give your heart a break. Or holding your breath for long periods to give your lungs a break.
I don't think that argument really holds up. IME people who are highly interested in fasting, cleanses, or "resting their organs" claim to feel like they're being overwhelmed by "toxins" and need to do those things despite eating a very health conscious diet.
The national library of medicine isn’t quite as extreme as the suggest that certain cancers are prevented, but does indicate support of fasting having positive outcomes for human systems:
A comment below states some cancers risks have a great increase from obesity, so the claim of intermittent fasting reducing cancer risk may to have some credence.
How sad that the FDA sucks so badly at their job that people are now like: "I have to try not to eat in order to reduce the amount of poison I'm ingesting from all of our food". Regulatory capture at work I guess.
Maybe evicting him won't solve all the issues but, given past outcomes, we may be surprised just how many it does?
…and maybe, we're getting tired of occupying a position where we need to exhaustively refute Dibbler every time he makes a claim about the crap he's selling?
What is the most effective and cost/time efficient method of detecting cancers? I'm thinking some sort of general blood test that looks for a wide variety of markers.
I want to just get one of those every year like clockwork, the same way I have to do my taxes or regenerate my human skin, just so I don't get blindsided by some late stage diagnoses a few years down the road.
Many people blaming the usual suspects: microplastics and general pollution. These things no doubt contribute significantly.
Sedentism is likely another cause. Seems kids are more sedentary these days. Sitting still and consuming phone/video entertainment.
But another, perhaps even more serious suspect: stress & depression.
It's unbelievable just how physically damaging emotional stress can be.
I think that people want to stay baffled and stay blaming material exogenous causes, rather than look at themselves, their culture, and what they're doing (and not doing) to their youth.
Increasing surveillance & "safety" culture. Talk of rights, but not responsbilities, not purpose. Abandonment of religion and the deep traditional values, purpose. The massive increase in population and competition. Pressure to work hard and earn. But no matter how much you do, how hard you work, you'll still never be able to afford that house. You're just living to support the elderly, the lucker generations. Feels just like being born into servitude. No dreams to follow, no passions, even simple ones, like just wanting a place to live and a family. Can't even have that. We see our futures, and it's grim. We're resigned to the grim darkness, and our bodies resigns with us.
> microplastics things no doubt contribute significantly.
Where do you get this "no doubt" from. Can you point to a paper showing microplastics are relevant to cancer?
microplastics is just a boogyman word - a placeholder for modern-day fear - no different from 5G. The word du-jour changes over the decades (think back to whatever was feared when you were younger).
These "puzzled and alarmed" Doctors need to watch the Netflix documentaries: "What the Health" and "Game Changers". There are others too, including 'Forks and Knives".
They will realize what the big pharma and animal products industries are up to.
I can't read the article because of the paywall, but as someone diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer at 36, please fight to get screened if you show any of the symptoms. For me, it felt like IBS in the beginning. Don't end up like me.
These "puzzled and alarmed" Doctors need to watch the Netflix documentaries: "What the Health" and "Game Changers". There are others too, including 'Forks and Knives".
They will realize what the big pharma and animal products industries are up to.
Plant-based diets save health and lives. Wish I knew this much earlier on.
↑ obesity → ↑ chronic general inflammation → ↑ cancer risk
These two effects are widely known and the transitive property is clear. The first google result of a NIH study has ~4-8% of all cancers being directly attributed to obesity which is a lot and could well be an underestimate given the difficulty of attribution. Many cancers that have a clear genetic trigger may have been prevented or at least delayed by an immune system that wasn't impaired by obesity.
More like making people sick is an economic externality. The worst case scenario is a class action lawsuit years after the C-suite has cashed out and whatever income was left to the company coffers has already accrued gains from investments. Even then all one has to do is create a subsidiary to inherit the lawsuit and declare bankruptcy.
I agree with you, though. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the people dumping chemicals everywhere are investing in oncology pharmaceuticals while they wait for the class actions. They know what they're causing.
If there was any real desire to understand causes, comprehensive yearly body burden screening for industrial, agricultural, and food additives as a standard medical practice. Then look to see if there's any strong correlations with cancer in young people. See this from 2001:
> "...samples of Bill Moyers' blood and urine were analyzed. Eighty-four distinct chemicals were found. His test results – much like a chemical fingerprint – revealed evidence of hazardous chemicals in common use – as well as compounds banned for more than a quarter century – and others so obscure that almost no public information is available to identify what products might have resulted in Moyers' exposure."
As far as why such an obvious program isn't being carried out, it's because politicians wouldn't fund it due to lobbying pressure by the guilty parties. I don't think even the East Palestine victims of the train bomb that was set off there are getting regular body burden screens right now, for example.
> As far as why such an obvious program isn't being carried out, it's because politicians
Occam's razor: perhaps simply because the idea can't work.
"Eighty-four distinct chemicals" - so what? There is already an uncountable number of man-made chemicals yet we are not all dieing of cancer at grossly accelerated rates beyond what's natural. Weak signals are hard to find in noisy data.
BBQed food is carcinogenic - does that mean we should ban the uncountable number of chemicals caused by a BBQ?
Well, maybe 95% of those 84 persistent chemicals are harmless - but if gastrointestinal cancer cases in young people consistently correlated with the other 5%, then you know where the problem lies.
It's a pretty straightforward approach, and while testing labs cost money, at scale it would be a relatively minor cost.
This is a relatively small increase over ~25 years. How much of it is due to cases like the highlighted one (which is tragic, but clearly driven by symptoms), vs increased screening?
The US "standard" age for colonoscopy, for example, was recently dropped from 50 to 45...without really good evidence (essentially, just "updated models") [1]. This inevitably leads to higher rates of false positives in younger people. Over-treatment is a real risk in places like the US, where there are financial incentives to treat.
[1] old guidelines: https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recomme...
new guidelines: https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recomme...