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So what? The immune system in a healthy person can eliminate most cancer. That's part of what it does. The problem is most people are not healthy -- in terms of
by pdfernhout 8y ago
So what? The immune system in a healthy person can eliminate most cancer. That's part of what it does. The problem is most people are not healthy -- in terms of eating a healthy diet similar to what Dr. Joel Fuhrman outlines as well as other healthy lifestyle aspects (lower stress, avoiding toxins, periodic calories restriction even if just eating dinner earlier, etc.). Healthy nutrition eliminates most cancer through boosting the immune system and also by avoiding mutagens. If we get rid of, say, 90%+ of cancer, that is a tremendous win even if there is still 10% to be dealt with. That is a far bigger win than most experimental therapies overall are promising.
As just one example from the video, over the course of 30 years, Korean women's rate of breast cancer went up 500% by eating less vegetables and eating more animal products, oils, and sugar. While correlation is not causation, and there are other complicating factors like younger Korean women having children later in life, and they are getting less sleep from using computers more (sleep also helps prevent cancer https://www.businessinsider.com/what-happens-when-you-dont-get-enough-sleep-2017-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/what-happens-when-you-dont-g... ), when you consider the basic nutritional science and many other studies, is a very clear example of dose-response in the Western diet causing cancer. Reverse that process, and return to a diet with more vegetables (and get more sleep), and presumably about 80% of breast cancer in Korea will go away. That would be a big win for Korean women. And not only would breast cancer rates go down, all cancer rates would go down. And so would rates of other lifestyle disease like heart disease, dementia, and diabetes.
And in any case, even if we had a magic bullet that eliminated 100% of cancer after you got it like so many researchers are pursuing using billions of dollars of research funds (so the result can be patented and profitized) -- that magic bullet would still not prevent diabetes, heart disease, and dementia which are also primarily consequences of Western diet and lifestyle. Nor would that magic bullet make most people feel tremendously better the way a healthier diet and lifestyle can.
As priorities go, we are almost totally ignoring the low hanging fruit of promoting healthy diet and health lifestyle in all sorts of ways that will prevent most of this suffering. For a community level intervention on all this, see the book "BlueZones" and related web site ( https://www.bluezones.com/services/blue-zones-project/ https://www.bluezones.com/services/blue-zones-project/ ).
"Health" insurance will pay $50,000 for a heart bypass but it will pay $0 for the vegetables that would prevent or even reverse heart disease. Likewise, health insurance will pay $100,000 for oncology drugs for cancer but $0 for the vegetables that will prevent it. As health priorities go, that is insane.
And insane national health priorities make it harder for those individuals who want to eat healthier and live healthier -- because there is less community-level social support and less supportive infrastructure (sidewalks, walking trails, nearby groceries with fresh produce, restaurants with healthier menus, employee wellness plans, nutritious school lunches, and so on.)
As one more example of how this is a broader social problem, the subsidies the USA gives to agribusiness are completed inverted compared to what humans need to stay healthy:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/8904252/ns/health-fitness/t/farm-subsidies-not-sync-food-pyramid/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/8904252/ns/health-fitness/t/farm-s...
"The government will spend $17 billion subsidizing farmers this year. Rather than focusing on the producers of good-for-you fruits and vegetables — half its subsidies go to grain farmers, whose crops feed animals for meat, milk and eggs and become cheap ingredients in processed food."