Post No.: 0879
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Average human life expectancies globally have doubled within the last 150-200 years, and this isn’t really down to genetic evolution but environmental evolutions, such as in people’s diets and medical technologies. No country in the world today has a lower life expectancy than the country with the highest life expectancy in 1800. Fantastic news! Meow.
But because people are living longer due to medical advances and welfare for the elderly – more people will develop cancer during their lifetimes. The longer we live, the more chance we’ll develop diseases in our lifetimes – just like the more words we write, the more chance we’ll make spelling errers. Although other factors, like our DNA repair mechanisms becoming less efficient as we get old thus leading to more mutations, are at play too.
Yet we can lessen our odds of ever developing cancer – in most cases and for most people, our own individual lifestyle choices (e.g. smoking, sun tanning, obesity, sedentariness) and local environment (e.g. local pollution, asbestos) will make a huge difference. The statistics in 2018 revealed that about 2 out of 5 cancers are caused completely by lifestyle choices i.e. are entirely preventable. Only about 5-10 out of every 100 diagnosed cancers are linked to an inherited faulty gene. This means that about 90-95 out of every 100 diagnosed cancers have some roots in one’s environmental or lifestyle factors.
Scientists discovered the breast cancer genes BRCA1 and 2, and women with a particular variant of these genes have a higher risk of developing breast cancer – yet most women with breast cancer don’t carry these high-risk gene variants.
Therefore lifestyle plays a greater role than inheritance when it comes to cancer – environmental factors or lifestyle choices like smoking, an unhealthy diet, being overweight or not exercising regularly, as well as age, dramatically increase the risk of getting cancer. But children also inherit the way they’ve been brought up by their parents (who are usually their biological parents), like their consumption habits and physical activity levels, too.
Obesity is linked with many different cancers. Fat cells produce extra hormones and growth factors that tell cells within the body to divide and replicate more frequently, which increases the chance of mutated cancerous cells forming.
There are ample stories about various things that’ll cause us cancer or whatever disease bandied about in the general mass media. Virtually (if not absolutely) anything will cause us cancer or some other harm if we ingest or are exposed to too much of it – but we need some appropriate perspective rather than pandering to every single media-hyped fear story. Often the authors of the scientific studies themselves aren’t pushing any conclusions of fear; just informed caution. But the journalists reporting on those studies understand that emphasising the fear in a headline captures attention and thus boosts sales of newspapers and magazines or clicks and engagement on online articles. Journalists and/or we as news consumers may also mistake an inconclusive finding for a clear-cut one through our over-simplified comprehensions.
Stepping outside involves risks too, but it doesn’t mean we should stop living. It’s a matter of personally assessing the level of risks and costs against the level of pleasure forfeited for forgoing or limiting something in your life – although the key is to not just think of the present costs and rewards but the long-term and future ones too because some costs and rewards are delayed but will eventually catch up with us eventually.
There are often also costs that are passed onto others from our own choices, like second-hand smoke (passive smoking is just as bad as directly smoking), alcohol-fuelled violence, harming those who are cycling on or walking alongside a road with our exhaust fumes whenever we drive our petrol or diesel vehicles, or even just setting poor examples for children to copy. We’re more interconnected with others with our own actions than we may realise. We have to live – yet not at the expense of others.
Too much red meat, animal fats, processed meat, ultraviolet light, air pollution, carcinogens like from smoking and high-temperature cooking, can definitely increase the risk of you getting cancer. Even missing vaccinations can do so because some viruses can act as promoters for cancer.
When cooked with high temperatures, different oils produce different amounts of aldehydes, which are linked with cancers and heart disease. Generally, polyunsaturated oils aren’t good for cooking (e.g. sunflower, corn), monounsaturated oils are okay (e.g. olive, rapeseed), while saturated fats are actually the best for cooking (e.g. butter, lard), in terms of minimising these aldehydes. Yet consuming too much saturated fat is detrimental for us for other reasons, and mono and polyunsaturated fats are best for room-temperature use like in dressings.
Try not to reuse cooking oil too much, and store oils in a cool dark place. Of course, the risk with some of these monounsaturated oils and saturated fats is that they have a lower smoke point, where burnt particles contain high levels of acrylamide, which is carcinogenic too (although the scientific consensus is presently uncertain on this).
Red meat contains lots of bioavailable nutrients for humans – but too much red meat, and especially processed red meat, can cause bowel cancer because of the nitrates and nitrites from preservatives, and because of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from smoked meat. They can also increase the risk of heart disease because of the high levels of saturated fats compared to polyunsaturated fats. Marinades can reduce the level of PAHs when barbequing meat, and white meat is safer overall.
Nitrates and nitrites are used to combat botulism though, so it’s oversimplistic to say that things are clearly good or bad for our health – you’d rather a small risk of cancer than a high risk of botulism! And although nitrates (which convert into nitrites) found in meat preservatives seem to be generally bad for our health – nitrates found in mainly green, leafy vegetables seem to be generally good for our health. That’s why over-generalisations can be misleading, and a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
A high consumption of, or almost any amount of processed, red meat firmly does more harm than good; but different scientists or experts can genuinely disagree on their advice, like whether a modest consumption of red meat is better or worse than no consumption of red meat at all?
The relationship between saturated fat and health is also actually complex. Recent research has been showing that saturated fat doesn’t seem to increase the risk of heart disease; although saturated fat still contributes to one’s calorific intake and there are still other obesity-related diseases apart from just cardiovascular disease.
There’s a strong correlation between the reduction in tobacco advertisements, alongside the increase in warning labels on cigarette packaging, with the reduction in smoking rates in the UK. We can only say it’s a correlation but it’s a strong one. Tons of scientific research proves beyond doubt that smoking increases the chances of developing cancer anyway. Heavier taxes on tobacco products and the banning of smoking in public areas have also influenced some people’s decision to quit smoking or not take it up in the first place.
Now although e-cigarettes aren’t as damaging as normal tobacco cigarettes, it doesn’t make them good for us! The global traditional tobacco companies own a few major e-cigarette brands too, and they try to promote vaping as healthy – but they’re not risk-free. Vaping or ‘heated tobacco products’ are still not as healthy as not vaping at all. It’s like losing a toe isn’t as bad as losing a foot but you still wouldn’t want to lose a toe! Vaping, like alcopops, with all their added flavours, attracts young people to consume them. They’ve still got addictive nicotine and many unknown compounds.
An individual with genes that predispose them to a higher risk of nicotine addiction won’t suffer from hazardous smoking habits and consequences in their life if they never ever get to try a cigarette – perhaps because they find it difficult to get hold of cigarettes in the first place due to strong laws and regulations.
So a ‘nanny state’ can get results! (Don’t most people who had them love their nannies and understand that they cared for them well?) Information campaigns alone rarely work when it comes to these kinds of things.
Civilised governments should be caring. Or even from a cold calculus perspective, governments could collect more taxes by encouraging people to smoke more, because taxes are collected per cigarette sold – but it comes with greater costs to the health, and thus economic productivity, of a nation, thus it’d actually lead to a net loss for the treasury. It’s a similar situation with high obesity rates and preventable obesity-related diseases, although obesity is more complex. The costs of obesity arising from individuals making poor nutritional choices are sustained by a society collectively via lost productivity and/or an overstretched healthcare system.
Some people decry a ‘nanny state’ or are suspicious of those who want to help them, yet expect the state to save them and pay for it when they get ill from their preventable ills! (The difference between, say, an accident that could be argued to have been self-inflicted or preventable, with a malady that was borne from years of alcohol or tobacco consumption, is that the former happens suddenly, while the latter is like noticing the brick wall you’re about to crash into from a year away yet still not steering away from it until you smack it.)
When it comes to children – they must be taught, encouraged, guided and supported. We cannot just take the attitude of ‘you can do whatever you like’. We erect safety gates on the tops of stairs or guards in fronts of fires, and put cleaning fluids and sharp objects out of reach. Humans aren’t like some other animals, where the mother lays the eggs or gives birth then will never be seen by their offspring again. Humans nurture their young and have a responsibility to raise their offspring with time and attention. The kids may complain, but only in the future will they understand and appreciate that it was for their own long-term welfare. Adults evidently aren’t always rational either, and need some nudging in the right directions too. Civilisation is an advancement over the rest of the animal kingdom, and on how human ancestors used to live.
Caring parents know that junk food advertisements and the like are working against them when they’re trying to get their own children to prefer healthier options. Caring parents would appreciate it if these advertisements were more strongly regulated. And caring governments are in some respects like caring parents – they make rules that look after our health and they fight against those entities that wish to compromise it.
We should take responsibility for ourselves too though! Exercise decreases the risk of developing cancer because it increases the activity of DNA repair mechanisms, and a diet high in antioxidants (preferably sourced from fruit and vegetables rather than supplements) may help combat the oxidising effects of fuzzy free radicals. Read Post No.: 0609.
Many people however biasedly think that diseases like cancer, diabetes or mental illness will only affect other people, hence they’re not sufficiently concerned. The culture, or seeing other people around us like our peers or role models eating whatever they’re eating and in the amounts they’re eating or being overly sedentary or overweight and not thinking that it’s a problem, normalises such behaviours and sights. We can also compare ourselves to the worst rather than the best when it comes to negative behaviours like poor health habits. (You can use the Twitter comment button below if you think this sounds like you!) And we may expect medicine to always come to our rescue if we do develop any problem.
Meow. All this adds up to a risky cocktail of living only for the moment.
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