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This article is saying a lot less than the title leads on. The article states half of all cancer deaths are caused by smoking, alcohol, and obesity. Nearly ever

• blacksmith_tb 4y ago
  It seems possible that articles like this which help quantify the risk might do more to change behavior than the vague understanding that smoking, drinking, and being overweight are "bad for you". Many people will have had family or friends who developed cancer and if lucky, endured harrowing treatment and lived. Or did all that and didn't survive. Connecting those dots is a powerful motivator.
  • Godel_unicode 4y ago
    Is it? I think in the US that connection is quite well known, and yet I have seen people lose parents and grandparents that way and keep eating McDonald’s at a prodigious rate.
• photochemsyn 4y ago
  Workplace exposure to carcinogens is another major factor, as the article notes: > "In 2019, half of all male deaths from cancer, and more than one-third in women, were due to preventable risk factors including tobacco and alcohol use, unhealthy diets, unsafe sex and workplace exposure to harmful products, such as asbestos. From 2010 to 2019, global cancer deaths caused by these risk factors increased by about 20%, with excess weight accounting for the largest percentage of increase — particularly in lower-income nations."
  • loeg 4y ago
    Is unsafe sex an oblique reference to cervical cancer, or is there some other known connection I’m not aware of?
    • graeme 4y ago
      Probably hpv. Causes a variety of cancers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_papillomavirus_infection#Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_papillomavirus_infection...
    • lkschubert8 4y ago
      There is a pretty strong relationship with HPV and a few different cancers. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5120915/#:~:text=Infection%20with%20high%2Drisk%20human,region%2C%20head%2C%20and%20neck.&text=As%20reported%20previously%2C%20the%20high,and%2022.2%25%20in%20esophageal%20cancer https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5120915/#:~:tex....
    • icegreentea2 4y ago
      > The researchers used ‘unsafe sex’ as a proxy for cancer risks associated with human papillomavirus (HPV) and other sexually transmitted viruses. Cervical cancer, which is caused by certain strains of HPV, is the leading cause of cancer deaths among women in sub-Saharan Africa. HPV also plays into a variety of other cancers (throat/mouth, anal, penile, vaginal). Though cervical cancer has by far the strongest link. Throat/mouth/neck cancers are actually strongly correlated with smoking, alcohol consumption, and HPV (https://www.cancer.gov/types/head-and-neck https://www.cancer.gov/types/head-and-neck)
      • mc32 4y ago
        Was this what struck Michael Douglas?
      • freeone3000 4y ago
        It's a good thing we have a vaccine for several of the cancer-causing HPV variants now. It's essentially a vaccine against some cancers -- I would get it if you can.
        • skeeter2020 4y ago
          and yet we run into a strong religious resistance because if some skewed logic around HPV vaccine => wanton premartial sex. Once again the patriarchy strikes.
• deleted 4y ago
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• v7engine 4y ago
  I have been smoking for close to 15 years now and I'm 40. I still struggle with quitting smoking even though I tell myself daily today is the last day.
  • gibolt 4y ago
    Would be great if today actually is the last day! Maybe visit this post everytime you get an urge? Don't bring a pack with you. Make it a nuisance to even access one.
  • pandoro 4y ago
    I can recommend to read Allen Carr's "Easyway to stop smoking" if you haven't already. I had been smoking for 15 years total as well, tried to stop at least 6 times (sometimes for 18 months, with the help of Nicorette and e-cigs) and was telling myself "today is the last day" every single day. But I was constantly tempted and was always picking it up again. A lot of ex-smokers I knew kept recommending me this book with almost magical claims. I finally begrudgingly read it and stopped from one day to the next. The craziest thing is that it was actually easy to stop this time and gave me great satisfaction. I have stopped for 2 years now and am confident that I will never smoke again (contrary to all other attempts).
    • rzazueta 4y ago
      I'm not a smoker, but know many, many people who are legitimately addicted to tobacco. What is it about the content of this book that made such a change in you? I'd love to hear about your experience - it sounds like an extraordinary approach if it indeed works as well as you're saying, which makes me think it's some kind of written neurolinguistic programming thing, a technique that could be helpful in a lot of other situations.
      • deleted 4y ago
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      • md224 4y ago
        I don't smoke, but my understanding of that book is that it basically reprograms your associations re: smoking and quitting smoking. Before you read that book, quitting smoking is perceived as a loss of something that made you feel good. The permanence of this loss -- the anticipation of living the rest of your life without this source of comfort -- leads to cravings. What the Carr book does is install a new set of associations: smoking is disgusting and your life is going to be so much better once you free yourself from this completely unnecessary weight that's been dragging you down. Instead of viewing quitting as the loss of something good, you learn to view it as the act of freeing yourself from something bad. Now, when you think about a future without smoking, the anticipation is positive: you get to live the rest of your life without this terrible thing intefering with it! And all you have to do is just stop doing it! Sure, you might have a little bit of physical withdrawal for a little while, but isn't that worth it to be permanently free of this awful thing that's been ruining your life? That's the basic gist, as far as I can tell. In a way, it's just about being optimistic about a life without cigarettes instead of pessimistic.
• AdrianB1 4y ago
  It used to be true that people know these three are bad, but this changed a few years ago when aggressive corporate marketing on the "body positivity" changed the perception about big BMI incredibly, many people these days believe it is perfectly healthy to be seriously overweight. I am quite upset by the marketing around this matter, it is ruining lives.
• antegamisou 4y ago
  > The article states half of all cancer deaths are caused by smoking, alcohol, and obesity. Add chronic sun (UVA) exposure, #1 leading cause of skin cancer yet still not addressed by popular media.
  • Cupertino95014 4y ago
    No, don't add chronic sun. The reason it's not in there is because almost no one dies of basal cell, the most common skin cancer. Malignant melanoma is another matter, but that is much more rare, and also quite treatable. I've had several myself and know lots of other people who have, too. They're handled via outpatient surgery and there is no followup.
  • skeeter2020 4y ago
    skin cancer is a serious medical issue, but not when we're talking fatalities.
• dionidium 4y ago
  > Nearly every patient in the developed world is aware that all three of these are bad Smoking, yes, we seem to have broad support for that one (way beyond what the facts support, even, but that's probably for the best). But the other two? I don't think so. There's a lot of confusion out there about alcohol use. Most people still think small amounts are basically fine (maybe even good!), even though more recent studies [0] suggest that isn't true. And we're trending the wrong way on obesity, too. [1] [0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31310-2/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-you-be-healthy-at-any-size/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-you-be-health...
  • TaupeRanger 4y ago
    The article you linked (and in fact , no study exists) to support your claims about small amounts of alcohol. In fact plenty of evidence exists to the contrary.
    • dionidium 4y ago
      There's reason to believe those earlier studies used flawed methodologies: > But there was a problem with many of these studies: They compared drinkers to non-drinkers, instead of comparing only lighter drinkers to heavier drinkers. And people who don’t drink are pretty fundamentally different from drinkers in ways that are hard to control for in a study. Their lives probably look dissimilar. > Most importantly, they may be sicker at baseline (perhaps they quit drinking because of alcoholism, or because of a health issue like cancer). And something in these differences — not their avoidance of alcohol — may have caused them to look like they were in poorer health than the moderate drinkers. (This became known as the “sick quitter” problem in the world of alcohol research.) > Lately, researchers have been trying to overcome that problem by comparing lighter drinkers with heavier drinkers. And the benefits of modest amounts of alcohol wash away. And that even moderate amounts of alcohol are harmful: > Their findings were stark: Drinking more than 100 grams of alcohol — about seven standard glasses of wine or beer — per week was associated with an increased in risk of death for all causes, they concluded. In the US, the government suggests men can drink double that amount — up to two drinks per day — but advise women who are not pregnant to drink up to one drink per day. > A person’s risk of death shot up as they drank more. The researchers used a mathematical model to estimate that people who consumed between seven and 14 drinks per week had a lower life expectancy at age 40 of about six months; people who drank between 14 and 24 drinks per week had one to two years shaved off their lives; and people who imbibed more than 24 drinks a week had a lower life expectancy of four to five years. My sort of baseline here is that nobody would think twice about this if they weren't motivated to justify continued consumption. It's fairly obvious that it's bad for you. Source: https://www.vox.com/2018/4/24/17242720/alcohol-health-risks-facts https://www.vox.com/2018/4/24/17242720/alcohol-health-risks-...
• joe_the_user 4y ago
  Smoking and alcohol consumption are behaviors. Obesity is a condition and what behavior can change it is subject to intense debate and not at all settled imo.
  • joegibbs 4y ago
    Consuming less calories is the behavioural change that will reduce obesity. The problem is that people only do this temporarily and then start eating at a surplus again, which makes them put the weight back on. If someone quits chain-smoking they'll feel healthier, lose their cough, improve their aerobic capacity etc. If they go back to smoking they'll go back to feeling how they were. It's the same with obesity - doing short stints of dieting is like quitting smoking for a couple of months and then starting up again.
• kortilla 4y ago
  > Nearly every patient in the developed world is aware that all three of these are bad, Not so much. The whole body positive movement has swung the pendulum too far to where obese people are “healthy” now.
• dang 4y ago
  Ok, we've put smoking, alcohol, and obesity into the title above. Thanks!
• twoxproblematic 4y ago