That's funny. I tell people all the time "every single one of us represents an unbroken chain of successful reproduction going back a couple billion of year. Make good choices!" That cancer angle is real though. Plants are pretty complicated, but that any animal even exists is downright amazing.
I’ve had a hypothesis for close to twenty years now that it’s the result of regular availability of nutritionally fortified food and vitamins that’s the root cause of increasing cancer rates. I have absolutely no medical training whatsoever, and only a rural farm boys self study understanding of biology, but it is my understanding that cancers are mutated cells that grow out of control. From a growth perspective my intuitive belief would be each cell would grow like a plant, only as fast as the limiting factor(NPK or micro in for example corn). There are constantly occurring stressors in the environment that can cause an individual cell to be damaged (mutate), but until extremely recently on the evolutionary scale human also struggled to have “proper nutrition” so these mutated cells would reach a limiting factor in their growth (be it an ameno acid, vitamin, whatever). Humans had seasonally available foods, times of feast, times of famine, healthy cells were able to weather these times but the damaged ones reach the limiting factor and died. Now with fortified foods available year round, and supplemental multivitamins, they never reach that limiting factor and continue to grow and divide unrestrained. From an evolutionary perspective the bodies ability to detect and destroy mutations in individual cells would not have been anywhere close to a priority during all but the most recent times in human evolution, environmental conditions would have provide that by default through the body being under a constant state of stress. Kind of a perpetual low grade “chemo” from malnutrition (or more accurately alternating deficiencies of certain nutrients).
Coal fired steam engine for my choo choo train that takes me from my castle (with moat) to my private airport previously mentioned.
It's easy to be cynical if you've had friends or family in any kind of health care system. In most cases, the staff are amazing. Kind, compassionate, hard working. But the systems and procedures, for whatever reason, seem to fight against that. And probably the same at the pharma companies. To paraphrase a relatively famous business guy, banks don't fail because the tellers count the money incorrectly. It's not the people, it's the leadership/management.
We live a lot longer, too. More time for cancer to get us. I think there have been a few cases where archaeologists identified the cause of death of ancient humans as cancer, but so far as we know, it's rare (it also doesn't usually leave evidence on the skeleton, so who knows?). When the average lifespan was only 35-40 years, if that, cancer was pretty rare, I suspect, even not taking into account poor nutrition.
Speaking as a former employee of a large, once respected bank that is now almost universally hated, financially hobbled, and on the government’s s***list probably for at least a generation… yeah, that’s exactly correct.
I think that the “average lifespan” perception is also a bit skewed. Infant and childhood mortality rates were much higher shifting the data curve to a much lower average age. I used to help mow and trim a few “pioneer” cemeteries when I was a kid, and took interest in the stones. Lots of very young ones, quite a few early 20’s women (childbirth complications?) lots over 75 years old. Very few 15-60 year old males, a few 60-75, but most that survived childhood lived to modern averages. It’s just the high childhood morbidity that made the “average” much lower
FYI, polio is NOT fixed. It is endemic in many countries. And even if you were vaccinated as a child, for those countries a booster is recommended.
was thinking about this the other day.... One thought I had was to form a medical clinic hire a team of experts that actually all spend significant time with the patient, consult each other, and brainstorm it would be tricky to cut through the conflicting ideas, but I think there could be a great result in there someplace such as MD Chiropractor acupuncture/eastern medicine nutritionist physical therapists massage therapist functional medicine doc
I would add to your list a sociologist and or psychologist, mental stressors over time can have physical effects.
Whole life approach, not treating symptoms, addressing causes. Take diabetes, as a hypothetical debate. If a person is not producing sufficient insulin to regulate their blood sugar level would the effect of introducing externally produced insulin cause a trigger for their body to produce more or cause an atrophy of the bodies ability to produce it? Would it not perhaps be logical to address the cause of the bodies insufficient levels of insulin as the first course of action? Is the body being overwhelmed by poor diet, is there a nutritional deficiency that’s causing the body to be unable to produce it? Are there lifestyle and diet changes that can exercise the body to build up its ability to correct it?. My hillbilly logic tells me that the moment it begins to be administered as a treatment without finding the cause of its deficiency it amplifies the problem and further atrophies the bodies ability to produce it. But I’m no doctor, and there are those on this site whom are, and beings this is an obscure thread drift I doubt they will see it, but I hope they do and respond. edit: on further thought, the vast majority of patients probably just want a quick easy fix and would not follow through with extensive lifestyle changes that would be required to address the root causes and perhaps treating the symptoms is the best course of action to help them..
that exactly was the seed for my idea.... pretty much NONE of the 'chronic' medical issues I've been treated for were ever actually drilled down to find the ACTUAL cause....and in hind site after a lot of recent research and reflection one big one at least was pretty obvious. Many years and several doctors never bothered to look for it
