24 ms·

I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

612 points by codetiger 5y ago

midjji 5y ago
Not your fault, most cancers, and in particular breastcancer are entirely unaffected by all forms of healthy living.
draw_down 5y ago
Maybe our ideas about what “health” is need some work.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  Yeah. Surprisingly it turns out that people get sick even though they lift weights and eat organic.
  - copperx 5y ago
    Why is that surprising? I do not understand the assumption.
    - lambda_dn 5y ago
      People doing their regular "cardio" and eating their soya crap have the belief they are somehow never going to get ill or die. We all are, why live a dull monotonous existence only to live a few years longer in a care home not knowing who you are. I would rather live life to the max.
- mjbeswick 5y ago
  Also healthy isn't universal. What is healthy for one person and not be for another!
codetiger 5y ago
Found this link on LinkedIn and felt like sharing to more readers. One of the best Cancer stories I read recently. Very informative!
- Hnrobert42 5y ago
  This was very useful. Thank you. I know someone going through cancer treatment right now. They got some bad news a few weeks ago. Now they are taking two weeks off. They are very private about their issues, so I wasn’t sure what was happening. This article made me realize they are going through chemo and what that means. I hope it helps me be more accommodating.
refurb 5y ago
I recall a study that estimated ~2/3rds of all cancers are due to uncontrollable factors outside of lifestyle choices - genetics, random mutations, etc.
- medion 5y ago
  Being in control of the other third is fairly significant... Seems almost too significant?
  - weird-eye-issue 5y ago
    How so? What you put into and on your body for decades should have a pretty big impact on cancer
    - mellavora 5y ago
      yes, but much of it may be out of your control. See earlier post on air pollution, likewise water pollution, and add any number of other environmental impacts. Some of which you can mitigate through personal choice, but there is also a case that these are societal problems which need societal/institutional solutions.
  - xlii 5y ago
    We're on HN, so I hope to pull on technicality and not get _completely_ bashed ;-) OP mentioned (and I didn't check) that 2/3 of incidents are non-controllable, and not that we can't control 2/3 of causes, that's completely different. I'm going to naïvely assume that it's much harder to have a clean slate (no meat, no pollution etc., healthy lifestyle etc.) than to live in carcinogenic to some degree environment. As a thought exercise I'm assuming (completely sucked out of the finger) numbers in which 95% of population lives in carcinogenic environment and 5% has a clean slate. 2/3 cases being uncontrolled in such heavily swayed population would pretty much make any control pointless. If I remember correctly there's a method for calculating this, but I long forgot it. For comparison regarding chance perception "casino always wins" relates to a 1-5% house edge on games, and here we're talking about potential 33.3%. Current knowledge is that human body consist of dozens trillions of cells which regenerate on variable rate (some couple days, some couple years). There's quite a lot of times where chance can go sideways and spawn something you don't want. Those numbers are completely offtopic and without any base whatsoever (and once again, I didn't verify OPs claims). Spiraled on numbers :)
siwatanejo 5y ago
Link failing because of some TLS/SSL issue on my side.
- nomilk 5y ago
  Try here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220308070724/https://seema.page/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220308070724/https://seema.pag...
raffraffraff 5y ago
Doesn't work?
epistasis 5y ago
Individually, a person can reduce their cancer risk with a few things like not smoking, and avoiding sunburns, etc. but that does not eliminate the risk of cancer. It's not a disease that primarily comes from unhealthy living. That said, there is a toooon of cancer that we can prevent as a society though better public health messaging and better environmental laws, such as creating housing and cities that ban cars, so that we are not continually exposed to pm25 risks.
- nomilk 5y ago
  Second to not smoking is getting checked at the first sign of anything suspicious. A lot (tens of percents) of people wait months or years.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    What's suspicious?
    - wahern 5y ago
      If you have to ask you probably lack the suspicion gene.
    - rococode 5y ago
      From what I can tell as a non-medical professional, some of the most concerning warning signs are: - Sudden weight loss (>10-15 pounds without a change in exercise or diet) - Any kind of recurring pain, especially headaches - Your poop is messed up - Blood anywhere - coughing up blood, nosebleeds when you don't usually have them, blood in your poop or urine - Mood or behavior changes (helpful if you have someone close to you who may notice this) - Feeling fatigued even when well-rested - Swelling or lumps anywhere - Trouble sleeping Which is a lot of stuff, but fortunately can be summed up as "If you feel consistently worse than you usually do, go see a doctor". The key is to make your judgement of "I am indeed feeling consistently worse" within a couple of weeks, not a few months or even years while hoping it'll get better on its own. It's harder than it sounds - life is always busy and it's easy to tell yourself that your discomfort is mild and you can hold out a little longer. I waited too long to act on some bad heartburn and my few months of delay were rewarded with permanent damage to my lower esophagus...
mise_en_place 5y ago
It was the same for my father, and even the doctor’s mother whom I regularly see. I wonder if these issues are caused by the immune system becoming lax over time. For example, I know one of the treatments for arthritis is Humira, a monoclonal antibody that suppresses TNF-A (tumor necrosis alpha). It could be the immune system suppresses TNF and this causes the perfect environment for cancers to remain latent. There should be markers for a “pre-cancer” chronic condition. In multiple myeloma (what my father had) there is a clinical definition of “smoldering” myeloma which I understand to be a pre-cancerous condition. There ought to be more of those
RappingBoomer 5y ago
genetics and random chance are huge factors
antman 5y ago
Does anyone here looked into what checkups need to do yearly? I looked around, and each doctor seems to give different advice
- Hnrobert42 5y ago
  It’s a good question. It would be nice to see a list kind of like a vehicle maintenance schedule. I know it depends on age, gender, other risk factors, and how much money you have to pay for “optional” testing.
- Havoc 5y ago
  I do yearly routine blood screening but not sure whether that would pick up cancer.
barrenko 5y ago
No description of lifestyle or diet before cancer in the text.
- ohmanjjj 5y ago
  Exactly. I see people doing keto on processed factory farmed bacon and thinking they are eating healthy.
- renewiltord 5y ago
  You can find it elsewhere. It’s likely to be good, considering they seem well-informed and wealthy enough to take advantage of that information. In any case, here we go: (the husband, but likely also the wife) > Nithin starts off his day with coffee just before his workout, and then has oats and whey protein. Then for his breakfast he has egg whites and vegetables with the water of a tender coconut. Around noon, he has a glass of fruit juice along with the fiber in it, without straining it. For his lunch, he usually has some dal and some quinoa as he switched from rice to quinoa a while back because his gut feels much better with that. In the evening, he snacks on some healthy cheese and crackers. Dinner for him is usually non-vegetarian, and since he loves fish, it's mostly fish and some vegetables. https://www.mensxp.com/health/celebrity-fitness/99836-zerodha-founder-nithin-kamath-fitness-gym-workout.html https://www.mensxp.com/health/celebrity-fitness/99836-zerodh... Honestly, seems pretty good and they’re clearly in good shape.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - mjbeswick 5y ago
    He might seems in good shape, but "having a massive sweet tooth" can lead to atherosclerosis; even if you aren't fat.
heyhihello 5y ago
Seeing this and “Regrets of the Dying” both on the front-page definitely adds cause for some reflection in life at the moment.
DantesKite 5y ago
I remember reading once that if humans didn’t die of old age, on average something like 99% of all people would get cancer by the time they were ~2,000 years old.
- skrebbel 5y ago
  That's a very promising statistic! I'd have also believed it if the 99% mark was pinned around ~200 years old instead of ~2000. As a sort of hard cap on longevity, 2000 is quite a decent lifespan :-)
rags2riches 5y ago
People do all sorts of things to "be healthy". That's great, if they are doing it to have a better life. But I get the impression some are doing it in an attempt to overcome death.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Obviously everyone dies eventually, but being healthy can literally add years to one's life, so... Yes?
  - lambda_dn 5y ago
    A few years at most and that will be sitting in a care home with dementia. The body is very resilient so life life to the max.
franciscop 5y ago
There is some research that links flight attendants to higher rates of cancer, especially breast cancer and skin cancer: https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/study-examines-cancer-rates-among-flight-attendants.html https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/study-examines-cancer-rat... It seems that the title claims this person was healthy, but apparently also in a higher-risk occupation. Cannot say how much the occupation influence things, looking at the article probably very little, but I think it's relevant to mention it.
- unnouinceput 5y ago
  Also she mentioned working primarily in cities. You know, the location on our lovely planet where pollution is highest. It's a rather understated cause when searching for "why I got cancer", but pollution will do changes to your body that are still researched and still much not understood.
- Khelavaster 5y ago
  Recirculated airplane air isn't healthy. High-stress lifestyle, sleep deprivation, and androgen-boosting exercise while exhausted isn't healthy. (Did she take birth control?)
  - mjmj 5y ago
    Radiation exposure due to less atmosphere during high altitude travel causes dna damage and can be a real cancer risk. ESP people that flight often, passengers, flight attendants, pilots, astronauts, etc.
frontman1988 5y ago
> As cliché as it may sound, health really is wealth. All the money in the world can’t buy you perfect health Sometimes I feel mortality and health issues are a good reality check for the super rich who think their money can buy everything in the capitalist world. Cancer is often random, just like how it was random that she married a guy who went on to become a billionaire. You can't have everything in life.
- sumedh 5y ago
  > All the money in the world can’t buy you perfect health You can atleast buy the treatment, if you are poor you will usually just die a painful death.
shmde 5y ago
Seema is the wife of the founder of one of the biggest online stock brokerage firm called Zerodha.
- codetiger 5y ago
  How does it change anything in the article?
  - Aulig 5y ago
    It doesn't, but I found it interesting to know.
  - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
    Perspective. This is a cancer story of someone well-to-do and is very likely not to match a lot of folks' experience.
  - suyash 5y ago
    Exactly, who cares who's wife she is. Steve Jobs was one of the richest in the world but still died of cancer fairly young unfortunately. It's a deadly disease that affects millions every year and unfortunate thing is that we still don't have a guaranteed cure.
  - paulcole 5y ago
    I don’t see many articles about a homeless guy with cancer making the front page of HN. You’re right it doesn’t change the article, but knowing the context helps us understand how we ended up reading it. And then helps us question the truth of the article.
    - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
      If they are in the US, the homeless guy is more likely to simply die instead of being able to get treatment. The homeless guy couldn't have gotten a preventative scan to catch it, after all, and even if he felt it, what would he do about it? Poverty - or lack thereof - changes the story itself because not everywhere cares about its people.
11235813213455 5y ago
I think healthy/unhealthy is not just about "very healthy diet, good fitness routine, good sleep, low stress, and no other health issues" It's actually also about regularly stressing your body with things like cold/hot exposure (using natural elements/seasons), for example a pragmatic daily fitness (for example commuting with a bike) instead of a more 'artificial' fitness in a gym, an organic diet foraged yourself (with enough knowledge of course) instead of bought from shops, getting sometimes sick and recovering, reinforcing immunity
- cleancoder0 5y ago
  It's not that complicated. Some people are unlucky. There is nothing one can do to avoid disease eventually. Some people start getting sick in their 80s, some die healthy & peacefully in their sleep in their 90s and some get cancer being <10 years old.
  - danuker 5y ago
    > There is nothing one can do to avoid disease eventually. You can move where this cancer is rare. https://ourworldindata.org/cancer#the-prevalence-of-cancer-around-the-world https://ourworldindata.org/cancer#the-prevalence-of-cancer-a... Or better yet, optimize for a total healthy lifespan, not just against cancer: https://ourworldindata.org/burden-of-disease#the-global-distribution-of-the-disease-burden https://ourworldindata.org/burden-of-disease#the-global-dist...
    - modo_mario 5y ago
      > You can move where this cancer is rare. I figure some of those light coloured countries have more people simply not getting a diagnosis. Additionally going to central africa as a white person might increase your chance of skincancer enough to offset any reduced of other cancers. It's probably better to just go to where people live the longest and adjust to the local diet/rythm, etc
    - mmmmmbop 5y ago
      These are really interesting maps, but I'm missing a few important data points. For the cancer one, I feel like it's misleading. E.g. Russia and Central Africa might be low in cancer because of their low life expectancy, and Central Africa additionally because of its majority black population (which I assume to be less prone to skin cancer). As a white person, I believe it would be a mistake to move to Central Africa expecting to reduce one's skin cancer risk, as evidenced by the high skin cancer rates of white people in South Africa or Australia. So for that map it would be great to be able to filter it by age group and ethnicity. The disability-adjusted life years (DALY) one seems much more useful. What stands out there is how much healthier people are on average in Western Europe compared to the U.S. Perhaps that is in part because of the more egalitarian societies and health care systems in European countries, which greatly improve the health of the less well-off. I wonder if that comes at the cost of the better-off, i.e. if say the top 10% in the U.S. are actually healthier in the U.S. than in Europe. It would be interesting to be able to filter by income level.
dschuetz 5y ago
"I am the healthiest person I know" so others might disagree? Such self-centered perception of "being healthy" is one of the reasons people fool themselves while actually having a healthy lifestyle instead of being actually healthy. Any exercise also has an impact on health, it can be not just "healthy" but also unhealthy at the same time, at the expense of overall health. Also, cancer does not discriminate lifestyles. It's chance. There is always risk. "I am healthy"-people only fool themselves that it cannot happen to them.
aosmith 5y ago
You're not alone, good luck you got this!
irjustin 5y ago
From a personal perspective, I feel that opening sentence. Genetics has had me have high blood pressure since I was 25, left handed, prostate, lung cancer in family. I put effort into low salt diets, exercise, monitoring, some small drugs, yet I know a lot of people who are significantly less healthy will outlive me. From time to time - I feel the pang of bitterness at that notion. It is 100% recognized, my overall disposition in life is _extremely_ privileged. It's still a feeling nonetheless.
- rob74 5y ago
  If it makes you feel any better, the study that claimed that left-handed people have a much shorter life expectancy has been debunked: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23988352 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23988352. Left handed myself...
- danuker 5y ago
  A lot of one's health depends on the environment. Moving to a different part of the world might be worth it: https://ourworldindata.org/burden-of-disease#the-global-distribution-of-the-disease-burden https://ourworldindata.org/burden-of-disease#the-global-dist...
rudecomment 5y ago
Got to die of something, no matter how healthy you think you are in life.
headsoup 5y ago
She doesn't actually say what she did to be healthy in the first place. That would help understand or perhaps point out areas of caution.
IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
Seems relecant to put here. Intermittent fasting has been proven to significantly lower the risk of breast cancer in particular. There was a landmark study less than 2 years ago that hit the top page of HN. "Intermittent fasting once a week for 4 seeks cuts risk of breast cancer by ~40% " The jury is still deliberating whether it also lowers the risk of other forms of cancer. Hopefullt it does!
- jraby3 5y ago
  Do you remember the fasting schedule? Can you link to the article?
- suyash 5y ago
  also non-meat diet like vegetarian or Mediterranean diet is proven better for health.
  - chillingeffect 5y ago
    95% down the page we have one of the most important ways to reduce cancer after smoking...
james4k 5y ago
There is so much we're still learning about what "healthy" even means, like dairy consumption seemingly being a high risk factor for a number of diseases. Breast cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's, to just name those I'm aware of. Not a doctor.
ComradePhil 5y ago
Here's an alternate explanation: Maybe cancer is way to common and keeps being formed in the human body... but also the body gets rid of it by itself. This is why most people who have cancer never find out about it. The few people who are always going for "regular screenings" are the only ones who find out about it and get "treatment" when it was completely unnecessary. Here's another alternate explanation: Maybe what is marketed as "healthy" by the food industry by funding scientific research and selecting results favorable to them is not really healthy.
- rgun 5y ago
  First explanation seems to be easy to verify. RCT with two groups of (similar demographic) people. Everyone is given a full body checkup for finding cancer. Half of them are treated for any cancer found and the other half are left as is. Check the longevity and status of cancer in both groups.
  - krisoft 5y ago
    > and the other half are left as is. Is that ethically acceptable?
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      At some point in our past, we might have considered a trial to “treat half the group with leeches and skip that care for the others”.
- gus_massa 5y ago
  I think you are describing overdagnosis, that is a real problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdiagnosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdiagnosis But not everyone is so lucky. Some cancers may kill you in a few months even with the best treatment currently available. And there are a big chunk of cases were a good early diagnosis is the difference between dying in one or two years or dying in ten or twenty years, or perhaps more.
lormayna 5y ago
As usual correlation don't imply causation. My uncle was a professional national level runner, he was the healtier person that I know: he ran several kilometers every day, ate correctly, no drinking, no smoking, sleep at least 8 hours/day, etc. He died from cardiovascular problems. This not means that a correct and healty lifestyle is not going to reduce the risk, but it's not the only factor.
- danuker 5y ago
  I am sorry for your loss. But I am curious what "ate correctly" meant for him. Would you be kind enough to provide some details?
  - Karuma 5y ago
    Sad to see you being downvoted like this, but I wanted to know the same thing you asked. It seems people are really sure that exercising a lot and not eating meat or whatever is the healthiest thing one can do, for weight and health reasons... But evidence says the complete opposite, most of the time. People are so fascinated about the idea that exercise and certain foods are so good, that they don't even bother to check the studies and the evidence, they just know it's true for some reason. It doesn't matter that everyone you know is going to a gym or running (a million more times than, say, 50 years ago) and yet the populations are only getting more obese by the minute. Or how athletes are dying young and have many health issues everywhere... Or that indigenous people don't even hunt or do nothing at all for a week (between each hunting trip), and yet they are so thin and don't have cancer. In other words, no one really knows yet if running several kilometers every day is good for you, or if it's actually killing you. And no one knows yet what exactly is "to eat correctly", though I'm pretty sure all the stuff we've read in those paid studies made in the last 100 years are just absolute garbage.
    - fsflover 5y ago
      > And no one knows yet what exactly is "to eat correctly" https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you...
seeekr 5y ago
As far as I can tell, cancer comes from worrying and mostly constant tension in your body.
- karmakurtisaani 5y ago
  Sorry, but this is just silly.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Not only this is false but it is a perfect example of blaming the victim.
kashif 5y ago
seed oil and sugar are big contributors - haven't met anyone who avoids both
mdtrooper 5y ago
But there are a lot reasons (it is bad news but it is the science): - you are living in a country (or place in your country) with enviroment that it increases the % cancer. I don't talk about the human or no-natural things, I am talking about the natural things such as radon gas from granite... - some cancers are from a tiny bug in the code our DNA (sometimes the code bug is from a infection of virus) And at the moment you can check all the things (the science are working to find or clear more of them...but it is the far future or near) that they begins a cancer.
Aulig 5y ago
I looked into this revently, from what I can tell, no study could show a reduction in deaths from doing mammograms. This is because they detect many cancers that would go away on their own thus unnecessarily exposing you to chemotherapy which brings other health risks. A good starting point on this topic is this video: https://youtu.be/_sg14En-Z7A https://youtu.be/_sg14En-Z7A (I was doubtful at first, but everything he says is backed up by studies)
lars512 5y ago
When a cancer like this hits, there's a surprising amount of victim-blaming that goes on. People's fear of random events like this make them look for reasons why it hit you but could never happen to them, so they scour your personal choices for any sign of recklessness. I love that the author of this kicked it off by saying she's the healthiest person she knows. It short-circuits the victim blaming and lets you see it as the unfortunate random event it is.
- justin_oaks 5y ago
  Thanks for this. I have someone in my family who staunchly believes that if you eat only the "right" foods then you'll never get cancer. It's sad to me to see this. It is denying reality and it is unnecessarily hostile to those who are already struggling. I have a sister who died of breast cancer in her late 30s. It's a slap to my face for someone to blame her for getting sick and dying. Each of needs to be able to accept that sometimes bad things happen to us regardless of the choices that make.
teekert 5y ago
One can put oneself in a low risk population by making healthy choices, but that population still has a probability of getting cancer associated with it. The risk can be inherent (you can be very healthy but with brca mutations a women will have something like an 85% probability of having breast cancer by age 45 I believe). You may also live near a gen-x dumping factory and not be aware of it, and then there is just the dumb bad luck of having errors during DNA replication and subsequently in the DNA repair mechanisms.
rayzmundo26 5y ago
Whats the heathy diet she refers to? Sugar intake? Carb intake ? She seems in physically great shape but has this been attained by eating food all day, not giving the body time to rest. Would time restricted eating have helped? All bodies are different, but having tried various diets over the years , fasting or time restricted eating seems to give me the best benefits, I look at lot younger than my age(45). I see a lot of long distance athletes in my own country(Ireland) the same age as myself that look aged, is this because of the copious amounts of high carb food that they eat to sustain their energy. Also have seen a lot of cases of heart attacks recently in these so called fit people. Sorry a bit blunt there
rstoj 5y ago
Early-onset breast cancer is most likely genetic, so the only thing that could've been done is to catch it earlier by having enhanced monitoring. Hopefully we'll learn more about the underlying genetics and have better risk assessment tests in the future to catch these earlier.
AlexAffe 5y ago
She mentions a diet rich in Protein. Even Supplements like Whey Protein Shakes. I wonder how that extra growth fuel contributes to cancer cell growth. At the very instance kf cell division, there is a small chance of the cell going 'rogue', becoming a cancer cell. In all of our bodies, all of the time. Thankfully the chance is pretty slim, but when I train a lot and eat a lot of protein, then I will have a much higher frequency of cell division. It's what I always wonder when I drink my whey protein after workout, being almost 40. Can my body handle all the growth right?
- kmm 5y ago
  Protein shakes and workouts wouldn't lead to a higher rate of cell division in the breast, would it? Those cells just go through their natural turnover, influenced mostly by estrogen (which actually has been suspected to play a role in causing breast cancer: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17113977/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17113977/ ) If anything, you'd expect cancer of the muscle, myosarcoma, to be involved with muscle growth, which thankfully is really rare. Possibly because muscle growth is mostly a matter of hypertrophy of the muscle fibers, not the growth of more muscle cells. I'd be surprised if the very real health benefits of staying active didn't way outweigh the possibly increased risk of cancer due to increased cell activity.
  - voisin 5y ago
    Isn’t whey, as a milk base, full of growth hormones meant for baby cows?
- ekanes 5y ago
  I don’t think when we work out, we get more cell division. Our muscle fibers get stronger and grow wider (vs adding more muscles).
  - ahoka 5y ago
    I just checked this once, and both can happen, but it depends on the type of exercise.
xupybd 5y ago
I had a mole removed yesterday. It was picked up in my yearly mole map. It's cost me thousands over the years if you add it all up but it might have just saved my life. If like me, you live near the ozone hole get a mole map. It could save your life.
aaron695 5y ago
emrahcom 5y ago
Jason Fung, The Cancer Code
cracrecry 5y ago
In our modern societies there are lots of cancer risk involved that (most) people can not see. For example using a microwave with microscopic cracks in the glass and staying nearby. All the diesel particles and exhaust car fumes and tire dust in the cities. The terrible air quality near maritime ports because of the bad quality ships do with ultra cheap fuels. The extermination of gut microbiota with the use of pesticides and the use of artificial sweeteners. Genetically engineered food that is flooded in pesticides(engineered so the plant can withstand them). The excess use of liquid oils and refined sugars that were never consumed by humans and that are correlated with cancer and cardiovascular disease. The excess use of the fridge and premade foods making essential nutrients go away as the food freezes, so you eat but starve. Contraceptive pills that are hormone bombs in your body. Chemical products like benzene that industries like energy extraction's leak on aquifers and Perfluorooctanoic acid you could generate just burning a teflon pan you forget to put oil or butter in(or using the 3d printer with exotic materials). All of those risk can be extreme but most people just can't see it. I have seen people burn out a teflon pan and not understand that they have to trow it away immediately. I have seen people handling benzene like water. You can believe that you are eating healthy because you eat lots of vegetables but if those are flooded in pesticides, then it is not so healthy.
- acadapter 5y ago
  Why does the glass matter in a microwave oven? I thought the metal box (and the metal mesh) was enough to block.
  - djtango 5y ago
    I too am curious - if I had to speculate, maybe the crack is a high surface area for microwave scattering which means the rays escape the device so is an irradiation hazard? EDIT wavelength of microwaves is 1mm so could also be efficient diffraction Long time since I've had to think about these things... Unsure...
    - vegetablepotpie 5y ago
      Microwave radiation is non-ionizing, it does not pose a cancer risk in the same sense that X-rays or UV light does. A quick DDG search found one article that matches GPs claim, but had zero citations and did not support any of its claims. I don’t know about the other claims, but the microwave cancer risk doesn’t make sense to me.
jack_pp 5y ago
I eat healthy because when I don't, I feel like shit. not because I'm afraid I'll get sick if I don't eat healthy.
- suyash 5y ago
  so the saying goes "food is medicine"
lambda_dn 5y ago
I know plenty of people who smoked/drank alcohol frequently (not alcoholic), never exercised and ate a "bad diet" and lived to 70/80 and others who "lived a healthy lifestyle" who dropped dead/died < 70. I think genetics/randomness/accidents/homicide/genocide/suicide etc are 95% the cause of mortality. Drugs/booze/smoking/obesity are much smaller than people think.
NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
> "All the money in the world can’t buy you perfect health, and it is crazy how many just ignore it. Small changes to diet and physical activity can go a long way in improving health." This is so confusing for me, with the sense of helplessness, so she saying small change to diet or physical activity, and that she was healthiest person in world but still got sick, so what is the point than ?! I mean you can do everything and still get sick, and some people drink, smoke eat junk food and never get sick, so what gives? I mean more or less it looks like lottery with different probabilities, you can do all good and still pull unlucky card, or you do all bad and you still have health lucky card. I guess, for me most depressing is how little we know about the cancer and things that causing it...
- biorach 5y ago
  It's always a lottery but one where you can massively tilt the odds on your favour by leading a healthy lifestyle.
- mtrycz2 5y ago
  1. A healthy diet and activity cannot prevent illness entirely 2. She would possibly have handled the illness not as good, if she was eating junk and out of shape. Short takeaway: we cannot influence everything about us, but we can influence activity and diet, and it does have a measurable impact on our health.
- lambda_dn 5y ago
  I guess being healthy isn't just about disease but wellbeing. You could drink/smoke/eat fast-food/never exercise and live till your 90 but you might feel shit every morning.
- sdfgdfghj 5y ago
  May be we have to look at this using the low of diminishing returns. At some point optimising your "healthy life-style" won't yield significant reduction in probability of getting sick. But on the other hand very unhealthy life-style will yield sickness with very high probability. I guess a good balance would be to allow yourself a "treat" from time to time, but generally avoid things which are well-known to cause health problems like smoking for example. Also remind yourself not to go over-board with the "healthy life-style".
catchclose8919 5y ago
This is one of the things where it matters more how healthy/unpolluted your environment is. I'd dare to say that a not-so-phisically-active moderate-smoker living in a less polluted environment has way lower cancer risk than a bio-vegan athlete buddhist monk living in a polluted industrial hellhole. I'd wish we lived in a world where we could actually address chemical, air-particulate +/- microplastics pollution seriously, and stuff like PFOAs that are still used round, without having it be totally overshadowed and drowned in noise by the "fight climate change" crowd or the "extinction rebellion" nutcases. ...like in, I'd rather have a petrol/gas plant to replace a local COAL power plant FAST, than a nuclear alternative that would take 20 years to get funding and have the delayed-as-usual building process finalized. And I'd rather have all the hydro and windpower we can built asap, and we can figure out later if we really care about the western-golden-lyre-bird or whatever going extinct because of dams or windmills. In the end, tbh, I've come to terms with a +5/7 C deg global warming (100y timeframe) happening, but not with me or loved ones dying 20 years earlier of cancer because of chemical and particulate air pollution or god-knows-what from the latest untested and unidentified pan or sportswear coating!
- pas 5y ago
  Legally mandating remote work and adding public transit options and raising the cost of daily useless commute would go a veeeeeery long way. Because the petrol not burned by driving can be used to replace the coal plants.
  - catchclose8919 5y ago
    > Legally mandating remote work That's... extremely totalitarian :) ...but legally forcing employers to allow remote work X days a week for jobs where it makes sense + solid investment in public transit would make wonders.
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      No, it's not totalitarian at all. The same as not accepting slavery, murder or cannibalism. This is totalitarianism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism
dsign 5y ago
I have read a lot of comments about reducing risks, which is a reasonable and practical approach. But given than almost all of us are going to die of one health condition or another, I think it is reasonable to budget and architect our society around/against that fact. Like, having a medical research tax apart from ordinary income tax, and of course with different accounting and governance. And it is not about funding healthcare (which is what politicians talk about in their speeches), but about funding medical research, which is a different matter altogether. A country can have universal healthcare and zero medical research, for example. Then again, I think that this distinction would be lost on most people.
bacro 5y ago
Could this be the case where she was not as healthy as she thought? I mean, we do not know if there was some vitamin / mineral deficiency or the diet for that matter that she was following exactly.
irpapakons 5y ago
One thing I was shocked to realise is that breast cancer affects 1 in 7 (14%) of women worldwide. That's so high.
sunjester 5y ago
Can't the Cancer cells be activated by just about anything?
Borrible 5y ago
Whatever healthy living for a young Indian middle class woman may be, breast cancer is correlated to multiple factors to varying degrees. But a lot of those women suffering from breast cancer have to die because it is still underdiagnosed in India. And that has probably more to do with culture, social characteristics, and the socioeconomics of India. What always amazes me is the surprise of people who think that they can never get hit, because they have done everything 'right'. Just like people who don't realize how lucky they were to have been born in a certain place at a certain time. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajco.12661 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajco.12661 https://www.firstpost.com/health/breast-cancer-in-india-is-underdiagnosed-people-dont-know-what-to-look-for-8913911.html https://www.firstpost.com/health/breast-cancer-in-india-is-u... https://www.webmd.com/cancer/guide/cancer-incidence-age https://www.webmd.com/cancer/guide/cancer-incidence-age
rishikeshs 5y ago
Does anyone have any insights on the importance of fasting or excessive calorie intake? I think I read somewhere that we are not supposed to eat this much and should feel the hunger. Can this be a reason?
- kaunteya 5y ago
  Check out this video. Some what related to your question https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=539UQ-6wC3g&t=14s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=539UQ-6wC3g&t=14s. Do check out Dr Bergs other videos also
- paulcole 5y ago
  If you think it’ll be fun feeling hungry then go nuts. It’s your life. Personally, I’ll be full.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
That's an inspiring story! I suspect that she'll do fine, but she's quite young, to have gotten it. When you are young, they tend to treat it quite aggressively. I live on Long Island, NY (AKA "Cancer Central"). Before I moved up here, I had never known anyone that has had cancer. The last 30 years (since moving up here), I have had at least one friend/acquaintance a year, that has dealt with some form of cancer. Most have survived; a few have not. I have one chap that just got done with the "Uncle Fester" routine. It looks like he'll be OK. I know of at least three other women that are dealing with breast cancer, right now. Long Island is a big fat Superfund site. It became an industrial site during WWII, and pretty much had no environmental controls. I suspect that continued for a long time, afterwards. The plus side, is that we have the best cancer treatment centers in the world, here.
nojs 5y ago
> I have been getting a full-body health check-up done regularly for many years. I’m curious how this works in other countries, because in mine doctors don’t really do “full body checkups”. You’d might get a few specific tests if you knew what to ask for, but doctors really do not do any kind of regular comprehensive exams sufficient to detect early cancer like this. If you insisted, you’re likely to just be treated like a hypochondriac unfortunately.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  They have them (at least, in NY). It's a real thing. Rich folks tend to get them. I know some rich people that get them.
loudtieblahblah 5y ago
She must've listened to the pro-PUFA crowd on Hacker News.
jll29 5y ago
First of all, I'm sorry to learn the author got cancer; I wish her all the best and continued strength. Many contributors have already made good suggestions how to reduce the risk of getting cancer, or how to deal with it; but I found most posts quite _technical_. Speaking in general terms, cancer is not a disease like a common cold. The human body sooner or later is bound to decay, which pretty much starts once one is fully grown, and mutations get less often corrected by the wonderful repair processes our bodies are equipped with. Occasionally, mutations lead to uncontrolled growth of malign tissue, some incidents of which are bound to lead to death, others not. And while it is absolutely a good idea to life healthily and to take care of one's physical and emotional well-being, one should also never deny that we are all mortals, and cancer as well as traditional diseases can and eventually will wipe any individual out. I am at peace with that, for we need to make space for the next generation (only adding people to planet earth would not be sustainable, as resources are scarce - imagine nobody would ever die). Being on this planet for a limited time period makes it more important to make the right choices, because we have only one life. Because it is a statistical process, we can forecast how many are affected, but not which individual, and everyone can try to minimize one's chances to be affected, but this does not mean they will live forever. And it's not just cancer, there are many ways one may pick the unlucky straw: it is not widely known, but the number of people who die from a heath attack in their 20s is significant. Make the best of every minute you have, and live it as if it were your last.
- forgetfulness 5y ago
  > Make the best of every minute you have, and live it as if it were your last It'd be a rather drab outlook to life if browsing Hacker News were indeed something I'd be contented with being my end.
  - paulcole 5y ago
    I don’t think it’s a drab outlook. I spend my days shitposting here and on Reddit. This is what my world is, not traveling or doing something “wonderful” and “meaningful.” If I keel over right now, would I be discontented or upset about how things ended? Not at all. This is my life. Why would I be surprised that it ended how I lived it?
yon1237 5y ago
So many interesting comments around defining a healthy lifestyle. We often look at health in general terms - i.e. how things work on average. This works really well to find generic risk factors, like smoking, excessive drinking, pollution, etc. These things are bad for everyone. Our bodies are super complex and there is huge variability between individuals. We label certain foods with specific as good and bad, but we know that there is large individual variability in the glycemic response to the same foods. So how can we know if we are eating healthy? I think future of health will need to be more individualized - I need to figure out what is healthy for me, and it's likely to be different for you. I know there are a wide range of products that try to help with this from DNA testing to glucose monitoring. A lot isn't really viable for the masses due to various factors like price, more research needed, etc. But it makes sense to me that if we better understand our individual bodies and take action that we can reduce (but probably not eliminate) certain risks - like cancer, dementia, etc.
deergomoo 5y ago
I was diagnosed with lymphoma at 24. While chemo isn’t fun (and if I ever have another lumbar puncture in my life it’ll be too soon), the mental side was much harder than the physical for me. I needed inpatient treatment, so from probably August until just before Christmas I was mostly in hospital, with the occasional week or two break. By the end I was having people bring me McDonald’s most days, because the idea of another bland hospital meal was incredibly depressing—which sounds silly writing it out, but it really started getting to me. Interrupted sleep and reduced privacy on the ward starts to wear you down too—the times where my immune system was as its lowest and I was moved to private side rooms were actually a big improvement for me, it got lonely but being able to put some music on and having my own bathroom helped a lot. Not sure what my point was with this but 0/10 would not recommend.
- moonshinefe 5y ago
  Hey, I never had that significant of an experience but I spent some weeks in the hospital myself in my 20s-early 30s and I can relate at least somewhat. It does get depressing. For me it was being next to someone in chronic pain crying out for hours every day and that's all you're around the entire time, in addition to the lack of sleep. The food thing doesn't sound silly at all to me. Hospitals are a depressing place after a while. Anyway thanks for sharing and I hope you're recovered.
- Khelavaster 5y ago
  Bland hospital meals don't properly regulate your amino acid, blood sugar, mineral, and antioxidant levels. So you end up craving different food.
- Khelavaster 5y ago
  Cruel to make people recovering from illnesses share rooms with other people. Improved recovery rates from better facilities would probably outweigh their costs..
max_ 5y ago
> Today, cancer is curable, unless it is too late before it is spotted. How valid is this? And what exactly is "spotting it early"? Stage one?
stevespang 5y ago
S_A_P 5y ago
I’m 45 and I’m just now half way through my last chemo treatment for colon cancer. I would not say I’m you for cancer but definitely on the younger end of the spectrum for this type of cancer. I probably wouldn’t have gotten the colonoscopy that found the cancer had I not been lucky enough for the cancer to cause an infection where gut bacteria passed through my colon and made me extremely sick. I treated that with antibiotics and got a colonoscopy. Results were that it was stage 3 c as I had 4 lymph nodes affected. The first step was surgery and about 12”/30cm of my colon was removed right where it meets the small intestine. This was the most difficult surgery I have been through and happens during the delta surge last summer. That means I couldn’t have visitors for the week I was in recovery. Next up was surgery for a port after 3 weeks of healing. That went in my right shoulder near my collar bone with an iv line to my jugular. Once that healed started the chemo… I didn’t take to chemo very well at first and I had a severe reaction to one of the drugs and landed in the hospital again for a few days. They could not figure out what was really happening but I basically had severe chest pain and jaw pain. They suspected heart/cardio problems and did a cardiac cath which came back normal thankfully. The fix was to reduce the dose of that particular drug by half. As time wore on the other drug in the cocktail started causing neuropathy in my fingers, feet and teeth/gums. Picture your finger tips always asleep. That can last for up 2 years but in some cases is permanent. Now that I’m on the other side of the diagnosis and treatment I still have the post treatment scan. Typically colon cancer makes its was up to the lungs and brain if left unchecked. I get that scan mid April. To me that is the scariest part. I think it would be a huge gut punch to find out that it spread even after surgery and chemo. As for life post treatment there are adjustments I have had to make: While I used to like spicy food my colon has decided that spice is a laxative now and usually sends me to the restroom within 2 hours. I have to plan my coffee intake with meetings. I have some days when things seem normal and the others when I’m going to the rest room 4-6 times per day. In my 30s I was in marathon shape until I severely broke my foot at 38. I have slowly gotten out of shape since. I think this was a bit of a lifestyle reminder for me so the plan is get back in shape and check my diet. I have quit alcohol for treatment so I’m going on about 9 months with no drinking. I don’t know if I will continue abstaining or not. I am certain that had I not had that infection I wouldn’t have gotten a colonoscopy. I think that’s the takeaway for me. Get your colons checked folks. Age 40 is the new recommendation my doc has mentioned.
uwagar 5y ago
meat eaters seem to get cancer more
temptemptemp111 5y ago
tartoran 5y ago
I feel that currently I pull the lucky health lottery ticket on a constant basis since I am healthy but cannot afford a health insurrance in the US. Every time I hear of a cancer story I am horrified and reminded of how lucky I am but aware that my luck could run out at any moment. And how many of us there are…
micromacrofoot 5y ago
It's all about risk, and a lot of risk factors are still somewhat unknown. I think about cancer like rolling dice, we all roll by the nature of existing. A smoker might be rolling a 6-sided die with cancer on one side. An athlete is still rolling a die with cancer on one side, but it's more likely a 100-sided die.
personjerry 5y ago
It's like poker. You can play optimally and still lose. You're just maximizing the odds in your favour.
Decabytes 5y ago
I work in the healthcare sector and the good news is that the standard of care amongst cancer patients continues to go up. There is a lot of time, money, and brain power that goes into this every year. It's one of the few things that people around me agree is terrible no matter your background/political affiliation and I am excited to see its advancements in the years to come. That said, some people do get unlucky and get it early, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't take care of yourself. Living a healthier lifestyle reduces your risk not just of cancer, but other health concerns as well, and also improves your recovery times when you do get sick. But make no mistake, even if humans lived 1000 years and had no other illnesses, Cancer could still happen. Just the free radicals in the oxygen you breath is enough given enough time
simpthrown8id 5y ago
I sympothize with the poster but the headline is potentially misleading. I don't think the article really qualifies her status as a healthy lifestyle individual. I'm sure she may think she leads a very healthy lifestyle but there are a lot of misconceptions out there, when it comes to health. What exacerbates it is, once people learn that some things are not healthy, they switch to alternatives without understanding that the alternatives their going to are just as bad. I know I'm going to get downvoted severly for what I'm going to post, but the truth must come out. These are all things which people generally believe are healthy but there is ample evidence out there and talk to nutritionistal scientists and they'll tell you, the following are not necessarily healthy: - eating dairy and meat (both of these can be quite carcinogenic, lots of research proves this) - even fat free dairy, even fat free meat -> check out the china study, it's quite comprehensive and enlightening, study the blue zones - excercising, running more than 20 miles per week is actually detrimental to your health (surprising i know) - eating more than 2 meals a day - the list of foods that market themselves as healthy but are not, is extremely long: certain cereals, to granola bars, etc - non dairy creamers - sorry, but these things are loaded with partially hydrogenated oils, aka trans fats. trans fats are so bad, they've been made illegal but companies can get away with putting them in products by printing 0g of trans fat on the label becuase they're allowed to round down from 0.5g to 0. You might not think that's a big deal but they make the serving size super small, so 0.5 easily becomes 1 to 2g. even 2g of trans fat is enough to make a health difference. - high protein diet can speed up MTOR production, IGF-1 levels and increase cancer risk. research has shown it's only the over 65 yr crowd that really need high protein diets for good health because their IGF-1 levels are already to low. - Oils are NOT good for you, EVEEEN if their canola oil, extra virgin olive oil. All those mediterarean diets that show better health outcomes, do so "inspite of olive oil", not because of it. Scientists have observed the impact of olive oil up close, and they will tell you, you're endothelial cells which line your arteries do NOT like Olive oil or any other kind of oil running through your system. - Not to mention, most people vastly underestimate their junk food intake because it's density is so much greater. I mean, if you eat 1/4 of your plate with cookies, your diet isn't 25% junk. it's actually more like 90% because cookies 12 times more calorie dense than vegetables and fruits. - A salad with ranch dressing on it, you'd think would be healthy but look: the 2 TBS of ranch are 240 cals and the salad is like 20 cals, so your meal is mostly just oil and sugar. And yes, it's the calorie which is the unit of account: nutrition researchers use it, and your stomach uses it to determine your fullness (satiety is yet another completely misunderstood concept ) - It is VERY EASY to underestimate the amount of saturated fat you're consuming. The WHO recommends no more than 5% of your diet from Saturated fats which is about 11g. it's not commonly known but super provable from the USDA's own database, that saturated fats are present even in healthy foods but it's the right amount. even, in your rolled oats, and your spinach and your veggies there's some saturated fat, but it's not much. but you're already getting 5g a day just from the super healthy foods, so it's very easy to go over that 11g limit.
trockbort 5y ago
It's weird everybody's on the PFAS-bad train but nobody wants to touch that fluoride itself is being injected into the water supply and being drunk by millions of people daily for their entire lives, "for their health".
acconrad 5y ago
That sucks but I wouldn't beat myself up over a diagnosis over something like that. It's largely genetic. My dad is a Vietnam vet in his 70s who drinks, smokes, and has way too much coffee. And he's fought 2 tours in Vietnam, 3 bouts of cancer, and a whole other host of issues. Some people can't be killed. Others get cancer in their 20s. You do the best that you can and try not to beat yourself up if you get an unlucky draw.
cleancasey5564 5y ago
I have no proof to offer, exceptthe report of a video I did watch myself. In 1974 a Dr made a study on animal protein and cancer. In mice test subject in a laboratory he found cancer cells in the mice needed animal protein as food to survive and grow. Versus plant protein as food which they did not grow. I have looked for this study to no avail. I am a vegan now. This is my only post here, as I only read. The ladies story compelled me to share whether it was received or not. I fully believe the government would never let a cure be known unless it was pills and expensive. Good luck. All cancer Dr's put you on a high protein diet of animal flesh. Maybe not all but it is recognized as a path forward.
nikolay 5y ago
"Healthiest" is very subjective. For example, people still believe low-fat diets are healthier and that saturated fats are evil and PUFAs are not (although people like Ray Peat call them "toxic at any dosage"). Excessive exercise is another proof that toxicity is all about the dose - because a sedentary lifestyle is possibly unhealthy, people wrongly conclude that working the hell out is any better. Also, the environment does a huge toll - you can have the healthiest lifestyle in Los Angeles, but you still inhale one of the most polluted air. Also, you drive a new car, which intoxicates you, and reverses your lifestyle efforts manyfold! Many consider eating kale to be healthy... and they drink kale juice, eat raw kale, not realizing how goitrogenic kale actually is. So, when I hear "I live a healthy lifestyle", I really interpret it usually as "I suffer from orthorexia".
biglebowski 5y ago
Cancer is not a taboo in India, why would it be? I have lived in 6 different states of India and have heard/seen relatives/friends/people openly talk about having breast cancer, lung cancer, having cancer treatments etc. I really don't understand why she repeatedly mentions that in her, otherwise, insightful post.
mjmj 5y ago
Would be curious if she did genetic testing and was BRCA or BRCA2. That increase your odds of all cause cancers quite a bit. You can live a seemly pristine lifestyle and your genetics will still get you.

612 points by codetiger 5y ago

midjji 5y ago

Not your fault, most cancers, and in particular breastcancer are entirely unaffected by all forms of healthy living.

draw_down 5y ago

Maybe our ideas about what “health” is need some work.

throwaway4good 5y ago
Yeah. Surprisingly it turns out that people get sick even though they lift weights and eat organic.
- copperx 5y ago
  Why is that surprising? I do not understand the assumption.
  - lambda_dn 5y ago
    People doing their regular "cardio" and eating their soya crap have the belief they are somehow never going to get ill or die. We all are, why live a dull monotonous existence only to live a few years longer in a care home not knowing who you are. I would rather live life to the max.
mjbeswick 5y ago
Also healthy isn't universal. What is healthy for one person and not be for another!

codetiger 5y ago

Found this link on LinkedIn and felt like sharing to more readers. One of the best Cancer stories I read recently. Very informative!

Hnrobert42 5y ago
This was very useful. Thank you. I know someone going through cancer treatment right now. They got some bad news a few weeks ago. Now they are taking two weeks off. They are very private about their issues, so I wasn’t sure what was happening. This article made me realize they are going through chemo and what that means. I hope it helps me be more accommodating.

refurb 5y ago

I recall a study that estimated ~2/3rds of all cancers are due to uncontrollable factors outside of lifestyle choices - genetics, random mutations, etc.

medion 5y ago
Being in control of the other third is fairly significant... Seems almost too significant?
- weird-eye-issue 5y ago
  How so? What you put into and on your body for decades should have a pretty big impact on cancer
  - mellavora 5y ago
    yes, but much of it may be out of your control. See earlier post on air pollution, likewise water pollution, and add any number of other environmental impacts. Some of which you can mitigate through personal choice, but there is also a case that these are societal problems which need societal/institutional solutions.
- xlii 5y ago
  We're on HN, so I hope to pull on technicality and not get _completely_ bashed ;-) OP mentioned (and I didn't check) that 2/3 of incidents are non-controllable, and not that we can't control 2/3 of causes, that's completely different. I'm going to naïvely assume that it's much harder to have a clean slate (no meat, no pollution etc., healthy lifestyle etc.) than to live in carcinogenic to some degree environment. As a thought exercise I'm assuming (completely sucked out of the finger) numbers in which 95% of population lives in carcinogenic environment and 5% has a clean slate. 2/3 cases being uncontrolled in such heavily swayed population would pretty much make any control pointless. If I remember correctly there's a method for calculating this, but I long forgot it. For comparison regarding chance perception "casino always wins" relates to a 1-5% house edge on games, and here we're talking about potential 33.3%. Current knowledge is that human body consist of dozens trillions of cells which regenerate on variable rate (some couple days, some couple years). There's quite a lot of times where chance can go sideways and spawn something you don't want. Those numbers are completely offtopic and without any base whatsoever (and once again, I didn't verify OPs claims). Spiraled on numbers :)

siwatanejo 5y ago

Link failing because of some TLS/SSL issue on my side.

nomilk 5y ago
Try here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220308070724/https://seema.page/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220308070724/https://seema.pag...

raffraffraff 5y ago

Doesn't work?

epistasis 5y ago

Individually, a person can reduce their cancer risk with a few things like not smoking, and avoiding sunburns, etc. but that does not eliminate the risk of cancer. It's not a disease that primarily comes from unhealthy living. That said, there is a toooon of cancer that we can prevent as a society though better public health messaging and better environmental laws, such as creating housing and cities that ban cars, so that we are not continually exposed to pm25 risks.

nomilk 5y ago
Second to not smoking is getting checked at the first sign of anything suspicious. A lot (tens of percents) of people wait months or years.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  What's suspicious?
  - wahern 5y ago
    If you have to ask you probably lack the suspicion gene.
  - rococode 5y ago
    From what I can tell as a non-medical professional, some of the most concerning warning signs are: - Sudden weight loss (>10-15 pounds without a change in exercise or diet) - Any kind of recurring pain, especially headaches - Your poop is messed up - Blood anywhere - coughing up blood, nosebleeds when you don't usually have them, blood in your poop or urine - Mood or behavior changes (helpful if you have someone close to you who may notice this) - Feeling fatigued even when well-rested - Swelling or lumps anywhere - Trouble sleeping Which is a lot of stuff, but fortunately can be summed up as "If you feel consistently worse than you usually do, go see a doctor". The key is to make your judgement of "I am indeed feeling consistently worse" within a couple of weeks, not a few months or even years while hoping it'll get better on its own. It's harder than it sounds - life is always busy and it's easy to tell yourself that your discomfort is mild and you can hold out a little longer. I waited too long to act on some bad heartburn and my few months of delay were rewarded with permanent damage to my lower esophagus...

mise_en_place 5y ago

It was the same for my father, and even the doctor’s mother whom I regularly see. I wonder if these issues are caused by the immune system becoming lax over time. For example, I know one of the treatments for arthritis is Humira, a monoclonal antibody that suppresses TNF-A (tumor necrosis alpha). It could be the immune system suppresses TNF and this causes the perfect environment for cancers to remain latent. There should be markers for a “pre-cancer” chronic condition. In multiple myeloma (what my father had) there is a clinical definition of “smoldering” myeloma which I understand to be a pre-cancerous condition. There ought to be more of those

RappingBoomer 5y ago

genetics and random chance are huge factors

antman 5y ago

Does anyone here looked into what checkups need to do yearly? I looked around, and each doctor seems to give different advice

Hnrobert42 5y ago
It’s a good question. It would be nice to see a list kind of like a vehicle maintenance schedule. I know it depends on age, gender, other risk factors, and how much money you have to pay for “optional” testing.
Havoc 5y ago
I do yearly routine blood screening but not sure whether that would pick up cancer.

barrenko 5y ago

No description of lifestyle or diet before cancer in the text.

ohmanjjj 5y ago
Exactly. I see people doing keto on processed factory farmed bacon and thinking they are eating healthy.
renewiltord 5y ago
You can find it elsewhere. It’s likely to be good, considering they seem well-informed and wealthy enough to take advantage of that information. In any case, here we go: (the husband, but likely also the wife) > Nithin starts off his day with coffee just before his workout, and then has oats and whey protein. Then for his breakfast he has egg whites and vegetables with the water of a tender coconut. Around noon, he has a glass of fruit juice along with the fiber in it, without straining it. For his lunch, he usually has some dal and some quinoa as he switched from rice to quinoa a while back because his gut feels much better with that. In the evening, he snacks on some healthy cheese and crackers. Dinner for him is usually non-vegetarian, and since he loves fish, it's mostly fish and some vegetables. https://www.mensxp.com/health/celebrity-fitness/99836-zerodha-founder-nithin-kamath-fitness-gym-workout.html https://www.mensxp.com/health/celebrity-fitness/99836-zerodh... Honestly, seems pretty good and they’re clearly in good shape.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mjbeswick 5y ago
  He might seems in good shape, but "having a massive sweet tooth" can lead to atherosclerosis; even if you aren't fat.

heyhihello 5y ago

Seeing this and “Regrets of the Dying” both on the front-page definitely adds cause for some reflection in life at the moment.

DantesKite 5y ago

I remember reading once that if humans didn’t die of old age, on average something like 99% of all people would get cancer by the time they were ~2,000 years old.

skrebbel 5y ago
That's a very promising statistic! I'd have also believed it if the 99% mark was pinned around ~200 years old instead of ~2000. As a sort of hard cap on longevity, 2000 is quite a decent lifespan :-)

rags2riches 5y ago

People do all sorts of things to "be healthy". That's great, if they are doing it to have a better life. But I get the impression some are doing it in an attempt to overcome death.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
Obviously everyone dies eventually, but being healthy can literally add years to one's life, so... Yes?
- lambda_dn 5y ago
  A few years at most and that will be sitting in a care home with dementia. The body is very resilient so life life to the max.

franciscop 5y ago

There is some research that links flight attendants to higher rates of cancer, especially breast cancer and skin cancer: https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/study-examines-cancer-rates-among-flight-attendants.html https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/study-examines-cancer-rat... It seems that the title claims this person was healthy, but apparently also in a higher-risk occupation. Cannot say how much the occupation influence things, looking at the article probably very little, but I think it's relevant to mention it.

unnouinceput 5y ago
Also she mentioned working primarily in cities. You know, the location on our lovely planet where pollution is highest. It's a rather understated cause when searching for "why I got cancer", but pollution will do changes to your body that are still researched and still much not understood.
Khelavaster 5y ago
Recirculated airplane air isn't healthy. High-stress lifestyle, sleep deprivation, and androgen-boosting exercise while exhausted isn't healthy. (Did she take birth control?)
- mjmj 5y ago
  Radiation exposure due to less atmosphere during high altitude travel causes dna damage and can be a real cancer risk. ESP people that flight often, passengers, flight attendants, pilots, astronauts, etc.

frontman1988 5y ago

> As cliché as it may sound, health really is wealth. All the money in the world can’t buy you perfect health Sometimes I feel mortality and health issues are a good reality check for the super rich who think their money can buy everything in the capitalist world. Cancer is often random, just like how it was random that she married a guy who went on to become a billionaire. You can't have everything in life.

sumedh 5y ago
> All the money in the world can’t buy you perfect health You can atleast buy the treatment, if you are poor you will usually just die a painful death.

shmde 5y ago

Seema is the wife of the founder of one of the biggest online stock brokerage firm called Zerodha.

codetiger 5y ago
How does it change anything in the article?
- Aulig 5y ago
  It doesn't, but I found it interesting to know.
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  Perspective. This is a cancer story of someone well-to-do and is very likely not to match a lot of folks' experience.
- suyash 5y ago
  Exactly, who cares who's wife she is. Steve Jobs was one of the richest in the world but still died of cancer fairly young unfortunately. It's a deadly disease that affects millions every year and unfortunate thing is that we still don't have a guaranteed cure.
- paulcole 5y ago
  I don’t see many articles about a homeless guy with cancer making the front page of HN. You’re right it doesn’t change the article, but knowing the context helps us understand how we ended up reading it. And then helps us question the truth of the article.
  - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
    If they are in the US, the homeless guy is more likely to simply die instead of being able to get treatment. The homeless guy couldn't have gotten a preventative scan to catch it, after all, and even if he felt it, what would he do about it? Poverty - or lack thereof - changes the story itself because not everywhere cares about its people.

11235813213455 5y ago

I think healthy/unhealthy is not just about "very healthy diet, good fitness routine, good sleep, low stress, and no other health issues" It's actually also about regularly stressing your body with things like cold/hot exposure (using natural elements/seasons), for example a pragmatic daily fitness (for example commuting with a bike) instead of a more 'artificial' fitness in a gym, an organic diet foraged yourself (with enough knowledge of course) instead of bought from shops, getting sometimes sick and recovering, reinforcing immunity

cleancoder0 5y ago
It's not that complicated. Some people are unlucky. There is nothing one can do to avoid disease eventually. Some people start getting sick in their 80s, some die healthy & peacefully in their sleep in their 90s and some get cancer being <10 years old.
- danuker 5y ago
  > There is nothing one can do to avoid disease eventually. You can move where this cancer is rare. https://ourworldindata.org/cancer#the-prevalence-of-cancer-around-the-world https://ourworldindata.org/cancer#the-prevalence-of-cancer-a... Or better yet, optimize for a total healthy lifespan, not just against cancer: https://ourworldindata.org/burden-of-disease#the-global-distribution-of-the-disease-burden https://ourworldindata.org/burden-of-disease#the-global-dist...
  - modo_mario 5y ago
    > You can move where this cancer is rare. I figure some of those light coloured countries have more people simply not getting a diagnosis. Additionally going to central africa as a white person might increase your chance of skincancer enough to offset any reduced of other cancers. It's probably better to just go to where people live the longest and adjust to the local diet/rythm, etc
  - mmmmmbop 5y ago
    These are really interesting maps, but I'm missing a few important data points. For the cancer one, I feel like it's misleading. E.g. Russia and Central Africa might be low in cancer because of their low life expectancy, and Central Africa additionally because of its majority black population (which I assume to be less prone to skin cancer). As a white person, I believe it would be a mistake to move to Central Africa expecting to reduce one's skin cancer risk, as evidenced by the high skin cancer rates of white people in South Africa or Australia. So for that map it would be great to be able to filter it by age group and ethnicity. The disability-adjusted life years (DALY) one seems much more useful. What stands out there is how much healthier people are on average in Western Europe compared to the U.S. Perhaps that is in part because of the more egalitarian societies and health care systems in European countries, which greatly improve the health of the less well-off. I wonder if that comes at the cost of the better-off, i.e. if say the top 10% in the U.S. are actually healthier in the U.S. than in Europe. It would be interesting to be able to filter by income level.

dschuetz 5y ago

"I am the healthiest person I know" so others might disagree? Such self-centered perception of "being healthy" is one of the reasons people fool themselves while actually having a healthy lifestyle instead of being actually healthy. Any exercise also has an impact on health, it can be not just "healthy" but also unhealthy at the same time, at the expense of overall health. Also, cancer does not discriminate lifestyles. It's chance. There is always risk. "I am healthy"-people only fool themselves that it cannot happen to them.

aosmith 5y ago

You're not alone, good luck you got this!

irjustin 5y ago

From a personal perspective, I feel that opening sentence. Genetics has had me have high blood pressure since I was 25, left handed, prostate, lung cancer in family. I put effort into low salt diets, exercise, monitoring, some small drugs, yet I know a lot of people who are significantly less healthy will outlive me. From time to time - I feel the pang of bitterness at that notion. It is 100% recognized, my overall disposition in life is _extremely_ privileged. It's still a feeling nonetheless.

rob74 5y ago
If it makes you feel any better, the study that claimed that left-handed people have a much shorter life expectancy has been debunked: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23988352 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23988352. Left handed myself...
danuker 5y ago
A lot of one's health depends on the environment. Moving to a different part of the world might be worth it: https://ourworldindata.org/burden-of-disease#the-global-distribution-of-the-disease-burden https://ourworldindata.org/burden-of-disease#the-global-dist...

rudecomment 5y ago

Got to die of something, no matter how healthy you think you are in life.

headsoup 5y ago

She doesn't actually say what she did to be healthy in the first place. That would help understand or perhaps point out areas of caution.

IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago

Seems relecant to put here. Intermittent fasting has been proven to significantly lower the risk of breast cancer in particular. There was a landmark study less than 2 years ago that hit the top page of HN. "Intermittent fasting once a week for 4 seeks cuts risk of breast cancer by ~40% " The jury is still deliberating whether it also lowers the risk of other forms of cancer. Hopefullt it does!

jraby3 5y ago
Do you remember the fasting schedule? Can you link to the article?
suyash 5y ago
also non-meat diet like vegetarian or Mediterranean diet is proven better for health.
- chillingeffect 5y ago
  95% down the page we have one of the most important ways to reduce cancer after smoking...

james4k 5y ago

There is so much we're still learning about what "healthy" even means, like dairy consumption seemingly being a high risk factor for a number of diseases. Breast cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's, to just name those I'm aware of. Not a doctor.

ComradePhil 5y ago

Here's an alternate explanation: Maybe cancer is way to common and keeps being formed in the human body... but also the body gets rid of it by itself. This is why most people who have cancer never find out about it. The few people who are always going for "regular screenings" are the only ones who find out about it and get "treatment" when it was completely unnecessary. Here's another alternate explanation: Maybe what is marketed as "healthy" by the food industry by funding scientific research and selecting results favorable to them is not really healthy.

rgun 5y ago
First explanation seems to be easy to verify. RCT with two groups of (similar demographic) people. Everyone is given a full body checkup for finding cancer. Half of them are treated for any cancer found and the other half are left as is. Check the longevity and status of cancer in both groups.
- krisoft 5y ago
  > and the other half are left as is. Is that ethically acceptable?
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    At some point in our past, we might have considered a trial to “treat half the group with leeches and skip that care for the others”.
gus_massa 5y ago
I think you are describing overdagnosis, that is a real problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdiagnosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdiagnosis But not everyone is so lucky. Some cancers may kill you in a few months even with the best treatment currently available. And there are a big chunk of cases were a good early diagnosis is the difference between dying in one or two years or dying in ten or twenty years, or perhaps more.

lormayna 5y ago

As usual correlation don't imply causation. My uncle was a professional national level runner, he was the healtier person that I know: he ran several kilometers every day, ate correctly, no drinking, no smoking, sleep at least 8 hours/day, etc. He died from cardiovascular problems. This not means that a correct and healty lifestyle is not going to reduce the risk, but it's not the only factor.

danuker 5y ago
I am sorry for your loss. But I am curious what "ate correctly" meant for him. Would you be kind enough to provide some details?
- Karuma 5y ago
  Sad to see you being downvoted like this, but I wanted to know the same thing you asked. It seems people are really sure that exercising a lot and not eating meat or whatever is the healthiest thing one can do, for weight and health reasons... But evidence says the complete opposite, most of the time. People are so fascinated about the idea that exercise and certain foods are so good, that they don't even bother to check the studies and the evidence, they just know it's true for some reason. It doesn't matter that everyone you know is going to a gym or running (a million more times than, say, 50 years ago) and yet the populations are only getting more obese by the minute. Or how athletes are dying young and have many health issues everywhere... Or that indigenous people don't even hunt or do nothing at all for a week (between each hunting trip), and yet they are so thin and don't have cancer. In other words, no one really knows yet if running several kilometers every day is good for you, or if it's actually killing you. And no one knows yet what exactly is "to eat correctly", though I'm pretty sure all the stuff we've read in those paid studies made in the last 100 years are just absolute garbage.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    > And no one knows yet what exactly is "to eat correctly" https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you...

seeekr 5y ago

As far as I can tell, cancer comes from worrying and mostly constant tension in your body.

karmakurtisaani 5y ago
Sorry, but this is just silly.
goodpoint 5y ago
Not only this is false but it is a perfect example of blaming the victim.

kashif 5y ago

seed oil and sugar are big contributors - haven't met anyone who avoids both

mdtrooper 5y ago

But there are a lot reasons (it is bad news but it is the science): - you are living in a country (or place in your country) with enviroment that it increases the % cancer. I don't talk about the human or no-natural things, I am talking about the natural things such as radon gas from granite... - some cancers are from a tiny bug in the code our DNA (sometimes the code bug is from a infection of virus) And at the moment you can check all the things (the science are working to find or clear more of them...but it is the far future or near) that they begins a cancer.

Aulig 5y ago

I looked into this revently, from what I can tell, no study could show a reduction in deaths from doing mammograms. This is because they detect many cancers that would go away on their own thus unnecessarily exposing you to chemotherapy which brings other health risks. A good starting point on this topic is this video: https://youtu.be/_sg14En-Z7A https://youtu.be/_sg14En-Z7A (I was doubtful at first, but everything he says is backed up by studies)

lars512 5y ago

When a cancer like this hits, there's a surprising amount of victim-blaming that goes on. People's fear of random events like this make them look for reasons why it hit you but could never happen to them, so they scour your personal choices for any sign of recklessness. I love that the author of this kicked it off by saying she's the healthiest person she knows. It short-circuits the victim blaming and lets you see it as the unfortunate random event it is.

justin_oaks 5y ago
Thanks for this. I have someone in my family who staunchly believes that if you eat only the "right" foods then you'll never get cancer. It's sad to me to see this. It is denying reality and it is unnecessarily hostile to those who are already struggling. I have a sister who died of breast cancer in her late 30s. It's a slap to my face for someone to blame her for getting sick and dying. Each of needs to be able to accept that sometimes bad things happen to us regardless of the choices that make.

teekert 5y ago

One can put oneself in a low risk population by making healthy choices, but that population still has a probability of getting cancer associated with it. The risk can be inherent (you can be very healthy but with brca mutations a women will have something like an 85% probability of having breast cancer by age 45 I believe). You may also live near a gen-x dumping factory and not be aware of it, and then there is just the dumb bad luck of having errors during DNA replication and subsequently in the DNA repair mechanisms.

rayzmundo26 5y ago

Whats the heathy diet she refers to? Sugar intake? Carb intake ? She seems in physically great shape but has this been attained by eating food all day, not giving the body time to rest. Would time restricted eating have helped? All bodies are different, but having tried various diets over the years , fasting or time restricted eating seems to give me the best benefits, I look at lot younger than my age(45). I see a lot of long distance athletes in my own country(Ireland) the same age as myself that look aged, is this because of the copious amounts of high carb food that they eat to sustain their energy. Also have seen a lot of cases of heart attacks recently in these so called fit people. Sorry a bit blunt there

rstoj 5y ago

Early-onset breast cancer is most likely genetic, so the only thing that could've been done is to catch it earlier by having enhanced monitoring. Hopefully we'll learn more about the underlying genetics and have better risk assessment tests in the future to catch these earlier.

AlexAffe 5y ago

She mentions a diet rich in Protein. Even Supplements like Whey Protein Shakes. I wonder how that extra growth fuel contributes to cancer cell growth. At the very instance kf cell division, there is a small chance of the cell going 'rogue', becoming a cancer cell. In all of our bodies, all of the time. Thankfully the chance is pretty slim, but when I train a lot and eat a lot of protein, then I will have a much higher frequency of cell division. It's what I always wonder when I drink my whey protein after workout, being almost 40. Can my body handle all the growth right?

kmm 5y ago
Protein shakes and workouts wouldn't lead to a higher rate of cell division in the breast, would it? Those cells just go through their natural turnover, influenced mostly by estrogen (which actually has been suspected to play a role in causing breast cancer: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17113977/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17113977/ ) If anything, you'd expect cancer of the muscle, myosarcoma, to be involved with muscle growth, which thankfully is really rare. Possibly because muscle growth is mostly a matter of hypertrophy of the muscle fibers, not the growth of more muscle cells. I'd be surprised if the very real health benefits of staying active didn't way outweigh the possibly increased risk of cancer due to increased cell activity.
- voisin 5y ago
  Isn’t whey, as a milk base, full of growth hormones meant for baby cows?
ekanes 5y ago
I don’t think when we work out, we get more cell division. Our muscle fibers get stronger and grow wider (vs adding more muscles).
- ahoka 5y ago
  I just checked this once, and both can happen, but it depends on the type of exercise.

xupybd 5y ago

I had a mole removed yesterday. It was picked up in my yearly mole map. It's cost me thousands over the years if you add it all up but it might have just saved my life. If like me, you live near the ozone hole get a mole map. It could save your life.

aaron695 5y ago

emrahcom 5y ago

Jason Fung, The Cancer Code

cracrecry 5y ago

In our modern societies there are lots of cancer risk involved that (most) people can not see. For example using a microwave with microscopic cracks in the glass and staying nearby. All the diesel particles and exhaust car fumes and tire dust in the cities. The terrible air quality near maritime ports because of the bad quality ships do with ultra cheap fuels. The extermination of gut microbiota with the use of pesticides and the use of artificial sweeteners. Genetically engineered food that is flooded in pesticides(engineered so the plant can withstand them). The excess use of liquid oils and refined sugars that were never consumed by humans and that are correlated with cancer and cardiovascular disease. The excess use of the fridge and premade foods making essential nutrients go away as the food freezes, so you eat but starve. Contraceptive pills that are hormone bombs in your body. Chemical products like benzene that industries like energy extraction's leak on aquifers and Perfluorooctanoic acid you could generate just burning a teflon pan you forget to put oil or butter in(or using the 3d printer with exotic materials). All of those risk can be extreme but most people just can't see it. I have seen people burn out a teflon pan and not understand that they have to trow it away immediately. I have seen people handling benzene like water. You can believe that you are eating healthy because you eat lots of vegetables but if those are flooded in pesticides, then it is not so healthy.

acadapter 5y ago
Why does the glass matter in a microwave oven? I thought the metal box (and the metal mesh) was enough to block.
- djtango 5y ago
  I too am curious - if I had to speculate, maybe the crack is a high surface area for microwave scattering which means the rays escape the device so is an irradiation hazard? EDIT wavelength of microwaves is 1mm so could also be efficient diffraction Long time since I've had to think about these things... Unsure...
  - vegetablepotpie 5y ago
    Microwave radiation is non-ionizing, it does not pose a cancer risk in the same sense that X-rays or UV light does. A quick DDG search found one article that matches GPs claim, but had zero citations and did not support any of its claims. I don’t know about the other claims, but the microwave cancer risk doesn’t make sense to me.

jack_pp 5y ago

I eat healthy because when I don't, I feel like shit. not because I'm afraid I'll get sick if I don't eat healthy.

suyash 5y ago
so the saying goes "food is medicine"

lambda_dn 5y ago

I know plenty of people who smoked/drank alcohol frequently (not alcoholic), never exercised and ate a "bad diet" and lived to 70/80 and others who "lived a healthy lifestyle" who dropped dead/died < 70. I think genetics/randomness/accidents/homicide/genocide/suicide etc are 95% the cause of mortality. Drugs/booze/smoking/obesity are much smaller than people think.

NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago

> "All the money in the world can’t buy you perfect health, and it is crazy how many just ignore it. Small changes to diet and physical activity can go a long way in improving health." This is so confusing for me, with the sense of helplessness, so she saying small change to diet or physical activity, and that she was healthiest person in world but still got sick, so what is the point than ?! I mean you can do everything and still get sick, and some people drink, smoke eat junk food and never get sick, so what gives? I mean more or less it looks like lottery with different probabilities, you can do all good and still pull unlucky card, or you do all bad and you still have health lucky card. I guess, for me most depressing is how little we know about the cancer and things that causing it...

biorach 5y ago
It's always a lottery but one where you can massively tilt the odds on your favour by leading a healthy lifestyle.
mtrycz2 5y ago
1. A healthy diet and activity cannot prevent illness entirely 2. She would possibly have handled the illness not as good, if she was eating junk and out of shape. Short takeaway: we cannot influence everything about us, but we can influence activity and diet, and it does have a measurable impact on our health.
lambda_dn 5y ago
I guess being healthy isn't just about disease but wellbeing. You could drink/smoke/eat fast-food/never exercise and live till your 90 but you might feel shit every morning.
sdfgdfghj 5y ago
May be we have to look at this using the low of diminishing returns. At some point optimising your "healthy life-style" won't yield significant reduction in probability of getting sick. But on the other hand very unhealthy life-style will yield sickness with very high probability. I guess a good balance would be to allow yourself a "treat" from time to time, but generally avoid things which are well-known to cause health problems like smoking for example. Also remind yourself not to go over-board with the "healthy life-style".

catchclose8919 5y ago

This is one of the things where it matters more how healthy/unpolluted your environment is. I'd dare to say that a not-so-phisically-active moderate-smoker living in a less polluted environment has way lower cancer risk than a bio-vegan athlete buddhist monk living in a polluted industrial hellhole. I'd wish we lived in a world where we could actually address chemical, air-particulate +/- microplastics pollution seriously, and stuff like PFOAs that are still used round, without having it be totally overshadowed and drowned in noise by the "fight climate change" crowd or the "extinction rebellion" nutcases. ...like in, I'd rather have a petrol/gas plant to replace a local COAL power plant FAST, than a nuclear alternative that would take 20 years to get funding and have the delayed-as-usual building process finalized. And I'd rather have all the hydro and windpower we can built asap, and we can figure out later if we really care about the western-golden-lyre-bird or whatever going extinct because of dams or windmills. In the end, tbh, I've come to terms with a +5/7 C deg global warming (100y timeframe) happening, but not with me or loved ones dying 20 years earlier of cancer because of chemical and particulate air pollution or god-knows-what from the latest untested and unidentified pan or sportswear coating!

pas 5y ago
Legally mandating remote work and adding public transit options and raising the cost of daily useless commute would go a veeeeeery long way. Because the petrol not burned by driving can be used to replace the coal plants.
- catchclose8919 5y ago
  > Legally mandating remote work That's... extremely totalitarian :) ...but legally forcing employers to allow remote work X days a week for jobs where it makes sense + solid investment in public transit would make wonders.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    No, it's not totalitarian at all. The same as not accepting slavery, murder or cannibalism. This is totalitarianism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism

dsign 5y ago

I have read a lot of comments about reducing risks, which is a reasonable and practical approach. But given than almost all of us are going to die of one health condition or another, I think it is reasonable to budget and architect our society around/against that fact. Like, having a medical research tax apart from ordinary income tax, and of course with different accounting and governance. And it is not about funding healthcare (which is what politicians talk about in their speeches), but about funding medical research, which is a different matter altogether. A country can have universal healthcare and zero medical research, for example. Then again, I think that this distinction would be lost on most people.

bacro 5y ago

Could this be the case where she was not as healthy as she thought? I mean, we do not know if there was some vitamin / mineral deficiency or the diet for that matter that she was following exactly.

irpapakons 5y ago

One thing I was shocked to realise is that breast cancer affects 1 in 7 (14%) of women worldwide. That's so high.

sunjester 5y ago

Can't the Cancer cells be activated by just about anything?

Borrible 5y ago

Whatever healthy living for a young Indian middle class woman may be, breast cancer is correlated to multiple factors to varying degrees. But a lot of those women suffering from breast cancer have to die because it is still underdiagnosed in India. And that has probably more to do with culture, social characteristics, and the socioeconomics of India. What always amazes me is the surprise of people who think that they can never get hit, because they have done everything 'right'. Just like people who don't realize how lucky they were to have been born in a certain place at a certain time. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajco.12661 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajco.12661 https://www.firstpost.com/health/breast-cancer-in-india-is-underdiagnosed-people-dont-know-what-to-look-for-8913911.html https://www.firstpost.com/health/breast-cancer-in-india-is-u... https://www.webmd.com/cancer/guide/cancer-incidence-age https://www.webmd.com/cancer/guide/cancer-incidence-age

rishikeshs 5y ago

Does anyone have any insights on the importance of fasting or excessive calorie intake? I think I read somewhere that we are not supposed to eat this much and should feel the hunger. Can this be a reason?

kaunteya 5y ago
Check out this video. Some what related to your question https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=539UQ-6wC3g&t=14s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=539UQ-6wC3g&t=14s. Do check out Dr Bergs other videos also
paulcole 5y ago
If you think it’ll be fun feeling hungry then go nuts. It’s your life. Personally, I’ll be full.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

That's an inspiring story! I suspect that she'll do fine, but she's quite young, to have gotten it. When you are young, they tend to treat it quite aggressively. I live on Long Island, NY (AKA "Cancer Central"). Before I moved up here, I had never known anyone that has had cancer. The last 30 years (since moving up here), I have had at least one friend/acquaintance a year, that has dealt with some form of cancer. Most have survived; a few have not. I have one chap that just got done with the "Uncle Fester" routine. It looks like he'll be OK. I know of at least three other women that are dealing with breast cancer, right now. Long Island is a big fat Superfund site. It became an industrial site during WWII, and pretty much had no environmental controls. I suspect that continued for a long time, afterwards. The plus side, is that we have the best cancer treatment centers in the world, here.

nojs 5y ago

> I have been getting a full-body health check-up done regularly for many years. I’m curious how this works in other countries, because in mine doctors don’t really do “full body checkups”. You’d might get a few specific tests if you knew what to ask for, but doctors really do not do any kind of regular comprehensive exams sufficient to detect early cancer like this. If you insisted, you’re likely to just be treated like a hypochondriac unfortunately.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
They have them (at least, in NY). It's a real thing. Rich folks tend to get them. I know some rich people that get them.

loudtieblahblah 5y ago

She must've listened to the pro-PUFA crowd on Hacker News.

jll29 5y ago

First of all, I'm sorry to learn the author got cancer; I wish her all the best and continued strength. Many contributors have already made good suggestions how to reduce the risk of getting cancer, or how to deal with it; but I found most posts quite _technical_. Speaking in general terms, cancer is not a disease like a common cold. The human body sooner or later is bound to decay, which pretty much starts once one is fully grown, and mutations get less often corrected by the wonderful repair processes our bodies are equipped with. Occasionally, mutations lead to uncontrolled growth of malign tissue, some incidents of which are bound to lead to death, others not. And while it is absolutely a good idea to life healthily and to take care of one's physical and emotional well-being, one should also never deny that we are all mortals, and cancer as well as traditional diseases can and eventually will wipe any individual out. I am at peace with that, for we need to make space for the next generation (only adding people to planet earth would not be sustainable, as resources are scarce - imagine nobody would ever die). Being on this planet for a limited time period makes it more important to make the right choices, because we have only one life. Because it is a statistical process, we can forecast how many are affected, but not which individual, and everyone can try to minimize one's chances to be affected, but this does not mean they will live forever. And it's not just cancer, there are many ways one may pick the unlucky straw: it is not widely known, but the number of people who die from a heath attack in their 20s is significant. Make the best of every minute you have, and live it as if it were your last.

forgetfulness 5y ago
> Make the best of every minute you have, and live it as if it were your last It'd be a rather drab outlook to life if browsing Hacker News were indeed something I'd be contented with being my end.
- paulcole 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s a drab outlook. I spend my days shitposting here and on Reddit. This is what my world is, not traveling or doing something “wonderful” and “meaningful.” If I keel over right now, would I be discontented or upset about how things ended? Not at all. This is my life. Why would I be surprised that it ended how I lived it?

yon1237 5y ago

So many interesting comments around defining a healthy lifestyle. We often look at health in general terms - i.e. how things work on average. This works really well to find generic risk factors, like smoking, excessive drinking, pollution, etc. These things are bad for everyone. Our bodies are super complex and there is huge variability between individuals. We label certain foods with specific as good and bad, but we know that there is large individual variability in the glycemic response to the same foods. So how can we know if we are eating healthy? I think future of health will need to be more individualized - I need to figure out what is healthy for me, and it's likely to be different for you. I know there are a wide range of products that try to help with this from DNA testing to glucose monitoring. A lot isn't really viable for the masses due to various factors like price, more research needed, etc. But it makes sense to me that if we better understand our individual bodies and take action that we can reduce (but probably not eliminate) certain risks - like cancer, dementia, etc.

deergomoo 5y ago

I was diagnosed with lymphoma at 24. While chemo isn’t fun (and if I ever have another lumbar puncture in my life it’ll be too soon), the mental side was much harder than the physical for me. I needed inpatient treatment, so from probably August until just before Christmas I was mostly in hospital, with the occasional week or two break. By the end I was having people bring me McDonald’s most days, because the idea of another bland hospital meal was incredibly depressing—which sounds silly writing it out, but it really started getting to me. Interrupted sleep and reduced privacy on the ward starts to wear you down too—the times where my immune system was as its lowest and I was moved to private side rooms were actually a big improvement for me, it got lonely but being able to put some music on and having my own bathroom helped a lot. Not sure what my point was with this but 0/10 would not recommend.

moonshinefe 5y ago
Hey, I never had that significant of an experience but I spent some weeks in the hospital myself in my 20s-early 30s and I can relate at least somewhat. It does get depressing. For me it was being next to someone in chronic pain crying out for hours every day and that's all you're around the entire time, in addition to the lack of sleep. The food thing doesn't sound silly at all to me. Hospitals are a depressing place after a while. Anyway thanks for sharing and I hope you're recovered.
Khelavaster 5y ago
Bland hospital meals don't properly regulate your amino acid, blood sugar, mineral, and antioxidant levels. So you end up craving different food.
Khelavaster 5y ago
Cruel to make people recovering from illnesses share rooms with other people. Improved recovery rates from better facilities would probably outweigh their costs..

max_ 5y ago

> Today, cancer is curable, unless it is too late before it is spotted. How valid is this? And what exactly is "spotting it early"? Stage one?

stevespang 5y ago

S_A_P 5y ago

I’m 45 and I’m just now half way through my last chemo treatment for colon cancer. I would not say I’m you for cancer but definitely on the younger end of the spectrum for this type of cancer. I probably wouldn’t have gotten the colonoscopy that found the cancer had I not been lucky enough for the cancer to cause an infection where gut bacteria passed through my colon and made me extremely sick. I treated that with antibiotics and got a colonoscopy. Results were that it was stage 3 c as I had 4 lymph nodes affected. The first step was surgery and about 12”/30cm of my colon was removed right where it meets the small intestine. This was the most difficult surgery I have been through and happens during the delta surge last summer. That means I couldn’t have visitors for the week I was in recovery. Next up was surgery for a port after 3 weeks of healing. That went in my right shoulder near my collar bone with an iv line to my jugular. Once that healed started the chemo… I didn’t take to chemo very well at first and I had a severe reaction to one of the drugs and landed in the hospital again for a few days. They could not figure out what was really happening but I basically had severe chest pain and jaw pain. They suspected heart/cardio problems and did a cardiac cath which came back normal thankfully. The fix was to reduce the dose of that particular drug by half. As time wore on the other drug in the cocktail started causing neuropathy in my fingers, feet and teeth/gums. Picture your finger tips always asleep. That can last for up 2 years but in some cases is permanent. Now that I’m on the other side of the diagnosis and treatment I still have the post treatment scan. Typically colon cancer makes its was up to the lungs and brain if left unchecked. I get that scan mid April. To me that is the scariest part. I think it would be a huge gut punch to find out that it spread even after surgery and chemo. As for life post treatment there are adjustments I have had to make: While I used to like spicy food my colon has decided that spice is a laxative now and usually sends me to the restroom within 2 hours. I have to plan my coffee intake with meetings. I have some days when things seem normal and the others when I’m going to the rest room 4-6 times per day. In my 30s I was in marathon shape until I severely broke my foot at 38. I have slowly gotten out of shape since. I think this was a bit of a lifestyle reminder for me so the plan is get back in shape and check my diet. I have quit alcohol for treatment so I’m going on about 9 months with no drinking. I don’t know if I will continue abstaining or not. I am certain that had I not had that infection I wouldn’t have gotten a colonoscopy. I think that’s the takeaway for me. Get your colons checked folks. Age 40 is the new recommendation my doc has mentioned.

uwagar 5y ago

meat eaters seem to get cancer more

temptemptemp111 5y ago

tartoran 5y ago

I feel that currently I pull the lucky health lottery ticket on a constant basis since I am healthy but cannot afford a health insurrance in the US. Every time I hear of a cancer story I am horrified and reminded of how lucky I am but aware that my luck could run out at any moment. And how many of us there are…

micromacrofoot 5y ago

It's all about risk, and a lot of risk factors are still somewhat unknown. I think about cancer like rolling dice, we all roll by the nature of existing. A smoker might be rolling a 6-sided die with cancer on one side. An athlete is still rolling a die with cancer on one side, but it's more likely a 100-sided die.

personjerry 5y ago

It's like poker. You can play optimally and still lose. You're just maximizing the odds in your favour.

Decabytes 5y ago

I work in the healthcare sector and the good news is that the standard of care amongst cancer patients continues to go up. There is a lot of time, money, and brain power that goes into this every year. It's one of the few things that people around me agree is terrible no matter your background/political affiliation and I am excited to see its advancements in the years to come. That said, some people do get unlucky and get it early, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't take care of yourself. Living a healthier lifestyle reduces your risk not just of cancer, but other health concerns as well, and also improves your recovery times when you do get sick. But make no mistake, even if humans lived 1000 years and had no other illnesses, Cancer could still happen. Just the free radicals in the oxygen you breath is enough given enough time

simpthrown8id 5y ago

I sympothize with the poster but the headline is potentially misleading. I don't think the article really qualifies her status as a healthy lifestyle individual. I'm sure she may think she leads a very healthy lifestyle but there are a lot of misconceptions out there, when it comes to health. What exacerbates it is, once people learn that some things are not healthy, they switch to alternatives without understanding that the alternatives their going to are just as bad. I know I'm going to get downvoted severly for what I'm going to post, but the truth must come out. These are all things which people generally believe are healthy but there is ample evidence out there and talk to nutritionistal scientists and they'll tell you, the following are not necessarily healthy: - eating dairy and meat (both of these can be quite carcinogenic, lots of research proves this) - even fat free dairy, even fat free meat -> check out the china study, it's quite comprehensive and enlightening, study the blue zones - excercising, running more than 20 miles per week is actually detrimental to your health (surprising i know) - eating more than 2 meals a day - the list of foods that market themselves as healthy but are not, is extremely long: certain cereals, to granola bars, etc - non dairy creamers - sorry, but these things are loaded with partially hydrogenated oils, aka trans fats. trans fats are so bad, they've been made illegal but companies can get away with putting them in products by printing 0g of trans fat on the label becuase they're allowed to round down from 0.5g to 0. You might not think that's a big deal but they make the serving size super small, so 0.5 easily becomes 1 to 2g. even 2g of trans fat is enough to make a health difference. - high protein diet can speed up MTOR production, IGF-1 levels and increase cancer risk. research has shown it's only the over 65 yr crowd that really need high protein diets for good health because their IGF-1 levels are already to low. - Oils are NOT good for you, EVEEEN if their canola oil, extra virgin olive oil. All those mediterarean diets that show better health outcomes, do so "inspite of olive oil", not because of it. Scientists have observed the impact of olive oil up close, and they will tell you, you're endothelial cells which line your arteries do NOT like Olive oil or any other kind of oil running through your system. - Not to mention, most people vastly underestimate their junk food intake because it's density is so much greater. I mean, if you eat 1/4 of your plate with cookies, your diet isn't 25% junk. it's actually more like 90% because cookies 12 times more calorie dense than vegetables and fruits. - A salad with ranch dressing on it, you'd think would be healthy but look: the 2 TBS of ranch are 240 cals and the salad is like 20 cals, so your meal is mostly just oil and sugar. And yes, it's the calorie which is the unit of account: nutrition researchers use it, and your stomach uses it to determine your fullness (satiety is yet another completely misunderstood concept ) - It is VERY EASY to underestimate the amount of saturated fat you're consuming. The WHO recommends no more than 5% of your diet from Saturated fats which is about 11g. it's not commonly known but super provable from the USDA's own database, that saturated fats are present even in healthy foods but it's the right amount. even, in your rolled oats, and your spinach and your veggies there's some saturated fat, but it's not much. but you're already getting 5g a day just from the super healthy foods, so it's very easy to go over that 11g limit.

trockbort 5y ago

It's weird everybody's on the PFAS-bad train but nobody wants to touch that fluoride itself is being injected into the water supply and being drunk by millions of people daily for their entire lives, "for their health".

acconrad 5y ago

That sucks but I wouldn't beat myself up over a diagnosis over something like that. It's largely genetic. My dad is a Vietnam vet in his 70s who drinks, smokes, and has way too much coffee. And he's fought 2 tours in Vietnam, 3 bouts of cancer, and a whole other host of issues. Some people can't be killed. Others get cancer in their 20s. You do the best that you can and try not to beat yourself up if you get an unlucky draw.

cleancasey5564 5y ago

I have no proof to offer, exceptthe report of a video I did watch myself. In 1974 a Dr made a study on animal protein and cancer. In mice test subject in a laboratory he found cancer cells in the mice needed animal protein as food to survive and grow. Versus plant protein as food which they did not grow. I have looked for this study to no avail. I am a vegan now. This is my only post here, as I only read. The ladies story compelled me to share whether it was received or not. I fully believe the government would never let a cure be known unless it was pills and expensive. Good luck. All cancer Dr's put you on a high protein diet of animal flesh. Maybe not all but it is recognized as a path forward.

nikolay 5y ago

"Healthiest" is very subjective. For example, people still believe low-fat diets are healthier and that saturated fats are evil and PUFAs are not (although people like Ray Peat call them "toxic at any dosage"). Excessive exercise is another proof that toxicity is all about the dose - because a sedentary lifestyle is possibly unhealthy, people wrongly conclude that working the hell out is any better. Also, the environment does a huge toll - you can have the healthiest lifestyle in Los Angeles, but you still inhale one of the most polluted air. Also, you drive a new car, which intoxicates you, and reverses your lifestyle efforts manyfold! Many consider eating kale to be healthy... and they drink kale juice, eat raw kale, not realizing how goitrogenic kale actually is. So, when I hear "I live a healthy lifestyle", I really interpret it usually as "I suffer from orthorexia".

biglebowski 5y ago

Cancer is not a taboo in India, why would it be? I have lived in 6 different states of India and have heard/seen relatives/friends/people openly talk about having breast cancer, lung cancer, having cancer treatments etc. I really don't understand why she repeatedly mentions that in her, otherwise, insightful post.

mjmj 5y ago

Would be curious if she did genetic testing and was BRCA or BRCA2. That increase your odds of all cause cancers quite a bit. You can live a seemly pristine lifestyle and your genetics will still get you.