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well there’s the obvious pathway that people who exercise regularly tend to have fewer number of cells than those who don’t e: okay, not the pathway - but we d
by whimsicalism 2y ago
well there’s the obvious pathway that people who exercise regularly tend to have fewer number of cells than those who don’t
e: okay, not the pathway - but we do know that additional weight increases cancer risk
- anon84873628 2y agoExcept that adipose cells don't undergo mitosis. When is the last time you heard someone dying of "fat cancer"? Believe it or not, professional researchers probably tried to think of "obvious pathways" too.
- whimsicalism 2y agoi wasn’t claiming professional researchers didn’t know something, so not sure where you are pulling that from. i guess the mechanism correlating weight and cancer is more complex than “more cells more cancer”, but the correlation is still well measured and i assume a reason why physical exercise would anti-correlate as well e: also my understanding was non-adipose cell count was also correlated as weight
- anon84873628 2y agoOf course there is a correlation. You were proposing an "obvious" explanation for it based on relative cell counts, which "obviously" is not correct if you consider the nature of the tissues involved.
- whimsicalism 2y agoOh definitely. It wasn’t clear from my above comment, but I acknowledge that bit was definitely wrong and will eat crow for that. I guess the main thing I was trying to say was that we know obesity is correlated with cancer and I thought we had some understanding of the mechanism behind that, so my guess is that physical exercise is just the inverse of that mechanism?
- copperx 2y agoLipomas can turn into cancer. That's literally fat cancer.
- anon84873628 2y agoLiposarcoma is a comparatively rare type of cancer. If the parent's hypothesis is: "less exercises == higher weight == more cells == (more mitosis / mutagenic potential) == more cancer" Which tissue type is accounting for most of the weight difference (in equal height people) who do and don't exercise? You could even reverse this and look at body builders with greater muscularity than average. The number of cells itself is clearly not the cause of increased cancer risk, because neither fat nor muscle cells cause the most common cancers.
- tjpnz 2y agoCancer mortality in elephants is estimated at less than 5%. In sharks I believe it's even lower.
- whimsicalism 2y agoi would be curious if larger elephants were more likely to develop cancer than smaller elephants, less so in the between species comparison
- dahart 2y agoElephants are an outlier in terms of animal species, they have something genetic that prevents cancers. For most animals, the mass of the animal does correlate with cancer rates: “having a greater number of body cells, and a higher number of cell divisions, usually increases the chance of accumulating the mutations that can lead to cancer” https://www.livescience.com/52432-elephants-cancer-resistance.html https://www.livescience.com/52432-elephants-cancer-resistanc...
- pvaldes 2y agoThey ate a lot of fiber at least