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I know. In my view, cancer, heart disease, and diabetes have essentially been cured already because we know how to prevent almost all cases of those diseases.
Just because people won't follow the treatment, doesn't mean the treatment doesn't exist.
How does one prevent all cancers?
I didn't say "all".
Eating real food and avoiding environmental exposure to known carcinogens will prevent more than 90% of cancers. There are still a small number of cancers that seem to be based on underlying genetics and we don't know how to prevent those, yet.
I don't think that's right in my experience. A small percent is genetic (we usually see these early). Then after 50 years old or so it's mostly bad luck. I've seen plenty of people who do everything right who end up with bad cancers- never smoke, marathon runners, eat clean etc. Which is why motto is anything in moderation- you can optimize for whatever fad you think think prevents X Y or Z but end up with W or Q disease or hit by a bus. Not worth the stress.
My guess is 75% is a combination of genetics, bad luck and time. Your DNA undergoes countless replications and repairs after decades and shit happens after a while.
How much have age-adjusted cancer rates changed over time?
We know our underlying genetics aren't significantly different, so either that change is due to our luck changing or it's environmental.
This is at the heart of the bowel cancer debates at the moment, because it's very clear that just a few decades ago people under 50 were not getting it, and now they are, seemingly all the bloody time. I know 3 people personally who have had it, and 2 of them are dead.
One of the main theories is that exposure to E. coli and lots of antibiotics early in life changes the gut microbiome and allows more harmful species to colonise that do a lot more damage to DNA and cells , which over time leads to more mutations and hello bowel cancer.
This is quite scary as my daughter had e-coli some years back, but i make sure both kids eat daily walnuts and drink fermented drinks like kefir and there's a good one in bulgaria with a probiotic strain called ayran. Just want to stack the deck in our favour,
Lifestyle goes hand in hand i think, more stress, poor work life ballance, shit health in general for many, and microplastics in everything.
I've read about there being an important distinction between cancer starts and actual malignancies, too.
The Japanese supposedly have high rates of cancer starts, presumably from smoking a lot, but low rates of cancer death, which is ascribed to their lifestyle.
Sorry when I mean genetics (outside of the obvious inherited disorders that appear early), I mean that some families seem to have many members live longer to late 80s and 90s while other families have lots of cancer or die in their 60s and 70s. If your grandparents and parents lived long it's a good sign.
True, but if my grandma smoked a bunch and died early of lung cancer, that doesn't really tell me much about my cancer risk if I don't smoke.
genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger
i think most people know the basics but i also think that most people just wouldn't follow the advice anyway