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Stats Medicine

Gen X and Millennials at Higher Cancer Risk Than Older Generations (msn.com) 110

Posted by EditorDavid from the bad-news dept.
"Generation X and millennials are at an increased risk of developing certain cancers compared with older generations," reports the Washington Post, "a shift that is probably due to generational changes in diet, lifestyle and environmental exposures, a large new study suggests."

Researchers from the American Cancer analyzed data from more than 23.5 million patients who had been diagnosed with 34 types of cancer from 2000 to 2019 — and also studied mortality data that included 7 million deaths in the U.S. from 25 types of cancer among people ages 25 to 84. [The researchers reported] that cancer rates for 17 of the 34 most common cancers are increasing in progressively younger generations. The findings included:

- Cancers with the most significant increased risk are kidney, pancreatic and small intestine, which are two to three times as high for millennial men and women as baby boomers.
- Millennial women also are at higher risk of liver and bile duct cancers compared with baby boomers.
- Although the risk of getting cancer is rising, for most cancers, the risk of dying of the disease stabilized or declined among younger people. But mortality rates increased for gallbladder, colorectal, testicular and uterine cancers, as well as for liver cancer among younger women.

"It is a concern," said Ahmedin Jemal, senior vice president of the American Cancer Society's surveillance and health equity science department, who was the senior author of the study. If the current trend continues, the increased cancer and mortality rates among younger people may "halt or even reverse the progress that we have made in reducing cancer mortality over the past several decades," he added.

While there is no clear explanation for the increased cancer rates among younger people, the researchers suggest that there may be several contributing factors, including rising obesity rates; altered microbiomes from unhealthy diets high in saturated fats, red meat and ultra-processed foods or antibiotic use; poor sleep; sedentary lifestyles; and environmental factors, including exposure to pollutants and carcinogenic chemicals.
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Gen X and Millennials at Higher Cancer Risk Than Older Generations More

Gen X and Millennials at Higher Cancer Risk Than Older Generations

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    • Unless you don't count "things with seventeen syllables in their names that we put in breakfast cereals" as pollutants. I do, but.

      • That's the language of hucksters and charlatans. Lots of money has been made on it as well.

        https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by znrt ( 2424692 )

          that's witty but still firmly in charlatanland:
          a- it's not about natural-vs-artificial chemicals, but about utility chemicals that weren't present in our food/environment during the whole time we evolved. many are actually harmful
          b- proportion: eat 3 natural bananas a day and the natural chemical fructose alone will give you diabetes in the long run just the same

          • it's not about natural-vs-artificial chemicals, but about utility chemicals that weren't present in our food/environment during the whole time we evolved. many are actually harmful

            Examples?

            Aside from things once considered inedible that people often eat directly now, such as soy. Also remember that we're still evolving (notably, getting taller, living longer, having longer skulls) and virtually nothing you eat today was available even 3,000 years ago, and even if it was, good chance your ancestors never once saw it until the last 400 years or so. We've also been selecting for natural toxins [who.int] in many of our crops for over 500 years. The only thing that has been relatively constant sinc

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by znrt ( 2424692 )

              Examples?

              asbestos? lead? sacharine?

              virtually nothing you eat today was available even 3,000 years ago, and even if it was, good chance your ancestors never once saw it until the last 400 years or so

              which my intuition tells me is why cancer is more prevalent in even younger people today, as this stuy shows. but what should i know!

              also, regarding evolution ... living longer because of better hygiene and medical care, or getting taller because of better nutrition(*) in your early years isn't really evolution. our longevity is pure statistic, you wouldn't fare better than average humans if you were transported back 100k years. evolution would mean being able to digest loads of fr

              • asbestos? lead?

                These have always been present in our environment in varying amounts, so they don't seem to fit your description. Besides, I haven't personally seen them on any food labels.

                sacharine

                For what it's worth, that was invented over a hundred years ago. A lot of people panic about that one causing bladder cancer in rats in an old study, but it turns out that the mechanism for it isn't relevant in humans. Basically the same thing as getting skittish about avacado, grapes or chocolate because they're highly toxic to dogs. As

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by znrt ( 2424692 )

                  asbestos? lead?

                  These have always been present in our environment in varying amounts, so they don't seem to fit your description.

                  not in the amounts necessary to cause harm. if you use them for insulation or wall paint and expose yourself to them for hours a day that's different. besides, lead was famously used to can food.

                  Besides, I haven't personally seen them on any food labels.

                  true. i asked my friend gpt for a few that have already been banned, for your leisure:

                  Cyclamate: An artificial sweetener banned in the U.S. in 1969 due to cancer risk.
                  Red Dye No. 2 (Amaranth): Banned in

                  • true. i asked my friend gpt for a few that have already been banned, for your leisure:

                    It's best not to use those. For one thing, not all of these are banned, and some aren't even restricted. Worse, some aren't even bad at all. Take this nugget:

                    Monosodium Glutamate (MSG): While not completely banned, its use is restricted and monitored due to reports of adverse reactions in some individuals, including headaches and nausea.

                    There's literally nothing at all wrong with MSG. Some people claim it has caused them harm, but this has never been reliably reproducible. You can safely file this one under electromagnetic allergies, the sufferers of which do manifest psychosomatic symptoms virtually identical to that of stress. Others like Olean aren't necessarily harmful, just some

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by znrt ( 2424692 )

                      weren't you going to explain how "indeed height alone can be explained by selective selection"?

                    • For what it’s worth, I think he’s wrong, I think the height increase is almost entirely nutrition related. Selection does not even begin to explain why height increased by half a foot or more in a single generation; casual observation of tons of families where all the children ended up 6-8 inches taller than the parents lends me that conclusion. Mostly patents who grew up pre-world war 2, and kids who grew up after; huge difference in stature.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by znrt ( 2424692 )

                      For what it's worth, I think he's wrong

                      he is obviously very wrong, i think everyone would agree, even him. he was just being contrarian (which is ok). i just called him out on that explicitly because his intellectual dishonesty (which is not ok) in the discussion didn't seem to have an end and that was the most flagrant point. there's basically two reasons one can be dishonest in a discussion: either he has an agenda, or he has issues and needs to be right at all cost, even at the cost of truth. both suck and are terminal. i gave him two options

                    • Oh, desktop version of slashdot clipped it off with the "click to read more" bit that I may have glazed over subconsciously thinking it was a signature. Usually I don't respond to posts more than a few days old (I don't get notifications for replies, otherwise I spend too much time on the site, and I only occasionally go back and read old posts

                      Having said that, it's not just a contrarian view. I only do those on my troll account. Nutrition probably does play a role I'm sure, especially for the overall size

              • which my intuition tells me is why cancer is more prevalent in even younger people today,

                Really? We have all been exposed to the same chemicals as millenials and for just as long so it is hard to see why that would affect them more than the rest of us. However, what has happened is that medicine has improved so more and more non-cancer death sentences have been eliminated. However, the risk of cancer is impossible to eliminate since it is a copy-error. Thus, as you eliminate diseases, genetic defects (we have gene therapy now) etc. the one thing left is cancer. Basically if you live long enoug

                • Copy errors can be corrected. The issue isn't that it's impossible, it's just that we don't have a good enough means of control over the correction process to avoid making the problem worse.

                  A youtuber posted something about a biological "motor" the other day and the research being done on it. The first thing I thought of watching it was if we could control this "motor" accurately, we'd finally have a means to accurately target areas within the body for drug / gene treatment. Instead of flooding the entire

                  • A youtuber posted something about a biological "motor" the other day and the research being done on it. The first thing I thought of watching it was if we could control this "motor" accurately, we'd finally have a means to accurately target areas within the body for drug / gene treatment. Instead of flooding the entire body and hope that the treatment both gets where it needs to go in sufficient amounts, and doesn't cause problems elsewhere in transit.

                    TL;DR: Cancer can be eliminated. We just don't have accurate enough technology to do it reliably yet.

                    I'd question the feasibility of doing anything like this in stage 4 cancers. Stage 4 is where the cancer has already spread basically everywhere. Even for stage 3 this is questionable -- how are you going to find every site it has spread to? You only have to miss one. For most rapidly growing cancers, chemotherapy is already highly effective for that situation.

                    To me, Cas9 based therapy sounds more promising.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by znrt ( 2424692 )

                  Really? We have all been exposed to the same chemicals as millenials and for just as long

                  no, we're very obviously not. not only has the use of these been greatly increasing in the span of single generations, which means longer exposure, but i would also expect that exposure during first years of development to have a greater impact, very specially in long term effects.

            • Aside from things once considered inedible that people often eat directly now, such as soy.

              Humans have been cultivating and eating soy beans for over 8 millennia now [wikipedia.org]. Imported soy sauce was popular here in North America in the eighteenth century [wikipedia.org]. (And no, I'm not going to try to convince you that the Charleston Soy Party led to the American Revolution!)

              Also remember that we're still evolving (notably, getting taller, living longer, having longer skulls) and virtually nothing you eat today was available even 3,000 years ago, and even if it was, good chance your ancestors never once saw it until the last 400 years or so.

              Most of those changes are attributable to better nutrition, not evolution. I'm as pro-science as the next person, but passing off bad science like this as truth is almost as dangerous as just denying evolution outright.

              The only thing that has been relatively constant since time immemorial is basically anything meat based

              Without citation from people

            • Err, we have been farming wheat and lentils and swigging beer for 5000 years at least.

            • We are not evolving since 40,000 years.
              There is no "Darwin pressure" on us.

              Everyone can live as long as he wants, can have as many kids as he wants (not talking about support)

              Evolving means: random mutations, or survival of the fittest. Surviving of the fittest (at least until reproduction) is not happening in our species anymore since millennia.

          • b- proportion: eat 3 natural bananas a day and the natural chemical fructose alone will give you diabetes in the long run just the same

            Certainly not. To get diabetes you need to kill your insulin production, or get insulin resistant (main reason).

            And Bananas do not even have a noticeable amount of sugar. Lolz.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by znrt ( 2424692 )

              or get insulin resistant (main reason).

              yeah guess what frequent or high sugar intake does.

              And Bananas do not even have a noticeable amount of sugar. Lolz.

              a medium size banana has about 14gr of sugar, more than an apple or an orange, 3 bananas would be a bit less than half a liter of coke.

              ftr the international diabetes federation estimated in 2021 that about 240 million people in the world had type 2 diabetes without knowing it, another 352 millions had prediabetes without knowing it (insulin resistance your pancreas can still cope with by increasing insulin production ... which will "kill your insulin produc

              • That must be a very strange banana breed then.

                The Bananas I eat definitely have less sugar then any apple I ever ate.

                you might aswell be one of them. lolz.

                Possible but unlikely my sugar intake is close to zero.

                But at the moment I am drinking a beer - orange juice mix. It either has 20g sugar per liter (which sounds a bit low), or 20g per suggested serving of 200ml, which sounds extreme high. (Sorry, the box printing is in Thai language so I am not 100% sure if the amounts of vitamins and sugar etc. are for

                  • You failed to make a comment.
                    I have a small Banana Forrest ... But that is only planted for the leaves.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by znrt ( 2424692 )

                      You failed to make a comment.

                      i just wanted to make sure that we're on the same page about what a banana is. that's hopefully clarified now.

                    • A Banana is a 100g object that contains 90% water.
                      So: it can not have 14 grams of sugar.

                      That was your original point.

                      And like apples with 100ds of variations, we have 100ds of Banana variations.

                      Perhaps your 14g sugar Banana is 300g in weight? No idea.

                      I actually do not eat more than roughly ten per year.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by znrt ( 2424692 )

                      A Banana is a 100g object that contains 90% water.
                      So: it can not have 14 grams of sugar.

                      That was your original point.

                      wikipedia is apparently unaccessible to you, last try:

                      A raw banana (not including the peel) is 75% water, 23% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and contains negligible fat.

                      Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz)
                      Energy 371 kJ (89 kcal)
                      Carbohydrates 22.84 g
                      Sugars 12.23 g

                      oh, look, that's pretty close to what i said, amply inside the margin of error of generic nutrition ratios, and yes, exactly my point, and the antithesis of yours which was, literally: "Bananas do not even have a noticeable amount of sugar. Lolz."

                      now you can admit that or just go your merry agile way (misunderstanding reality, pulling nonsensical metrics out of your arse and choosing to be just as clueless as before, but with lots of excuses).

        • The problem is not the analytical composition of the cereals, or the banana, it is our fabrication and labelling processes. If the product has a list of 17 syllable chemicals, it means it was obtained by mixing a small number of pure chemicals (whether synthetic or obtained through ultraprocessing of natural foods).

          You don't get the same as a fruit by mixing vitamin pills and purified sugar. What makes the fruit healthy is not the presence of absence of chemicals with complex names in their analytical comp

          • The problem is not the analytical composition of the cereals, or the banana, it is our fabrication and labelling processes. If the product has a list of 17 syllable chemicals, it means it was obtained by mixing a small number of pure chemicals (whether synthetic or obtained through ultraprocessing of natural foods).

            I don't believe it really makes a difference. Ingredients on food labels are ordered by abundance in the package. If it's towards the end of the list, which is usually where that stuff is unless the product itself is the additive (e.g. corn starch,) then it's likely in no more of a large quantity than any of the ingredient lists in that article.

            You don't get the same as a fruit by mixing vitamin pills and purified sugar.

            Really depends on what it is.

            Therefore the rule of thumb that if you can read a number of naturally complex ingredients such as "ingredients: water, apple, banana" you likely get a healthy product, while if the product is composed of voluntarily added purified chemicals (ingredients: water, sugar, flavouring agents") you likely get an unhealthy one.

            Two things here:
            1) "apple" and "banana" doesn't really mean much. There's a lot of ways they can be processed and still simply be listed

            • Does not matter what you believe.
              What matters is what you know.
              And what really matters is what you can DO.

              A bonus point is: if you have a good overview about "what you do not know".

              You do not know, that you know nothing about chemistry and nutrition. But you "believe" you know. Dangerous combination.

              To get a perspective, google "micro dosing". There are thousands of things that effect your body on doses that are close to unmeasurable. LSD for instance.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          It's not the unfamiliarity of the names of these compounds to our minds that's the issue. It's whether our physiology is "familiar" with them.

          For example, take "Methionine" from the banana list. Most people don't know what it is, but it's an essential amino acid which means our body actually needs it to survive. "Butanoate" is just a common salt of butyric acid, a simple organic compound that is always present in the human gut and plays many important physiological roles. All the major chemicals which

          • It's not the unfamiliarity of the names of these compounds to our minds that's the issue. It's whether our physiology is "familiar" with them.

            Familiarity doesn't matter for metabolism. Your physiology is definitely familiar with arsenic and has definitely come into contact with it. At the end of the day we're talking about very tiny mechanisms. Arsenic will fit into the phosphorous slot just fine, but then the mechanism doesn't behave quite the same way, and that's a problem. Kind of like how a similar looking but different part can mean the difference between a safe flight and disaster.

            For example, take "Methionine" from the banana list. Most people don't know what it is, but it's an essential amino acid which means our body actually needs it to survive. "Butanoate" is just a common salt of butyric acid, a simple organic compound that is always present in the human gut and plays many important physiological roles. All the major chemicals which constitute a banana are things that are a normal part of a animal diets.

            It has free ethanol too.

            If I see stuff I don't recognize (and as a nerd I recognize a *lot*), I don't buy it. Or if I really want it, I take out my phone and google the ingredient to see what it is, what it does, and whether there's any research on it.

            This won't do you any favors unless

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by hey! ( 33014 )

              I put "familiar" in scare quotes because it is a metaphor.

              This won't do you any favors unless you just want something to brag about at the dinner table. A lot of people misuse the term Dunning-Kruger, but this is exactly the kind of thing that the term was meant for,

              Apparently irony is dead.

              • I put "familiar" in scare quotes because it is a metaphor.

                For...?

                Apparently irony is dead.

                That was covered immediately after what you quoted.

          • Missed this one:

            The preservatives are an obvious issue for the microbiome because they're *anti-microbial*.

            Only in the sense that they might be harder for bacteria to metabolize, but they don't necessarily. You make frequent use of sugar alcohols, which are definitely anti-macrobial in that sense. Many things you commonly consume and likely consider "natural" also happen to be high in such preservatives. Take this for example:

            https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com]

            I still remember that movie supersize me (all sorts of problems in it, not even counting the fact that he was consuming more than just mcdon

          • It's not the unfamiliarity of the names of these compounds to our minds that's the issue. It's whether our physiology is "familiar" with them.

            For example, take "Methionine" from the banana list. Most people don't know what it is, but it's an essential amino acid which means our body actually needs it to survive.

            One of the things that is seriously interesting is the idea that it is the food causing it. Are these things that the dreaded Boomers do not eat that Millennials and Gen Z eat with abandon?

            Because we all eat the same things. I'll give some credence that there are enough boomers amongst us who might eat more healthily, but the narrative is that we do not https://www.msn.com/en-us/food... [msn.com]

            There is also a mantra that if you cannot pronounce it, it is bad for you and you should never eat it. D-alpha toc

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by hey! ( 33014 )

              Well, I'm a boomer. Yes, we all eat the same things *now*, but kids born in the 80s and 90s didn't grow up eating the same stuff I did in the 60s by a long shot.

              Today 60-90% of a typical American's diet ultraprocessed foods. Millenials and Boomers have spent roughly the same number of years living in this food culture; it didn't exist in the 60s and 70s.

              There is also a mantra that if you cannot pronounce it, it is bad for you and you should never eat it.

              That's not quite right. If it *appears on the ingredient list* and you can't pronounce it, you shouldn't eat the product without at least checking out wha

              • Well, I'm a boomer. Yes, we all eat the same things *now*, but kids born in the 80s and 90s didn't grow up eating the same stuff I did in the 60s by a long shot.

                Umm...?

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by hey! ( 33014 )

                  Yes, that was the camel's nose in the tent. I had the occasional can of beef-a-roni or box of hamburger helper. The thing is those things were *treats*, a break from all the home-cooked shit we lived on. And that wasn't that great.

                  The behavioral change is driven by advances in industrial food science, which enables companies to transform cheap ingredients into ultrapalatable food-products. One of the landmark products was Doritos -- originally a rather non-descript and bland tortilla chip that had mode

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by znrt ( 2424692 )

        he does too.

    • And it's the improved testing. Incidence rates in TFA are detection rates.

      It's also worth noting that treatment has improved. Gen X and younger are better off again, despite headlines.

    • Dioxins in the spaghetti-Os perhaps? As a latch key child I ate them every day. Should I be worried?

    • Probably just better diagnostics finding cancer earlier.

    • Sedentary lifestyle, obesity, eating crap snack food and fast food.
      What could go wrong?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hodr ( 219920 )

      So the boomers who are still alive and presumably lived every bit as long or longer with the same pollutants as the GenX and younger are somehow immune? If it's pollution, even NEW pollution, unless it's wholly contained within something boomers don't participate in this doesn't seem like a valid explanation.

      It's odd how the generation that grew up surrounded by asbestos and lead, that breathed the most smog, drank the worst water is somehow the ones not as highly affected by "pollutants".

      It seems more lik

  • Cancer rates will be ever increasing as average lifespans get longer and people get richer. Most cancers are a combination of wealth disease and not dying early enough for cancer to kill you.

    Gen X is supposed to live to 90-100, they eat out significantly more than their parents and much of that expensive food (ultra processed is expensive) is high in sugar.

    • Re:Gen X/Millenials eat worse, live longer (Score:4, Insightful)

      by znrt ( 2424692 ) on Saturday August 03, 2024 @01:27PM (#64678052)

      mmm, about that:

      We previously reported that incidence rates increased in successively younger birth cohorts for eight cancer types—six of which are obesity-related—alongside steeper or exclusive increases in young adults (age 25–49 years) over time in the USA

    • This isn't a result of longer lives, since GenX and Millenials are experiencing it before reaching old age.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        younger cohorts test higher for eight cancer types—six of which are obesity-related
        they also get successfully treated for said cancer (at least in the US) with some cancer treatments having 98% success rates, which makes them more susceptible for more cancer later in life. They also live longer, so "old/retirement age" is shifting from early 60s to now late 60s to early 70s.

        • They also live longer, so "old/retirement age" is shifting from early 60s to now late 60s to early 70s.

          How do we prove this if all of them aren't yet there? This is the weirdest comment I've read in all of this. That's like saying nine year olds will live even longer than current 90 year olds. How do you even go about proving such a claim? And it's not wise to use "well more of them made it to X age than the previous generation made it to X age, because that completely ignores the possibility of a cliff to drop off at some future point. For all we know, most Gen X have livers that are ticking time bombs

          • Unless there is some kind of black swan event, the precursors for longevity are there: wealth, access to food, need to do dangerous jobs, medical progress in areas such as cancer treatment, gene therapy and access to concierge medicine. Everything that has made the wealthier portion of the current generations extend their lives, millennials and gen-x have access to earlier, more people currently have access to it even in low income brackets.

            • the precursors for longevity are there

              If they have access to those things. That's a massive assumption given that there's a growing gap between those who do and don't have access to those things.

              millennials and gen-x have access to earlier, more people currently have access to it even in low income brackets

              No they don't. Lower income brackets are routinely undergoing emergency treatment as opposed to preventive. That's literally a sure fire sign of that being an untrue statement for low income brackets. How many rich people being narcamed on the side of the street versus lower income folks? How many lower income people eating diets that are driving t

      • As Gen X, I was raised to believe not to trust anyone over 35. So I'm already old age by my own definition!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      They also tend to get a lot less exercise, although the modern U.S. isn't conducive to encouraging exercise. When I was a wee lad, we had pick up games of hockey, basketball, baseball, and football. Now, it is hard to find a place to play, and hockey in the north outdoors is becoming impossible due to climate change. And if all your friends are glued to their screens, they do not want to play real games preferring the synthetic version.

      Even several years ago a Big Midwestern University, they had the Boy Sco

    • Didn't life expectancy in the US drop over the last couple years?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        Yes, due to an increase in suicide and overdoses (border, drug, crime, COVID, ... policy) it went down 0.1 and 0.5 years in 2021 and 2022, in 2023 and 2024 it went up again to now 79.25 which is higher than where it started despite suicide still rising by significant numbers.

  • Millennial and Gen X aren't mentioned in the study (Score:5, Informative)

    by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Saturday August 03, 2024 @01:10PM (#64678008)

    It should be pointed out that the paper [thelancet.com] never mentions Millennial and Gen X. The paper just shows 14 charts with generally rising cancer incidence rates for later birthyears. On some of the charts, there is sort of a knee, but not necessarily a sharp knee. On some of the charts, there is no knee at all. And the resolution of the birthyears is 5 years and isn't aligned with the concept of social generations.

  • I wonder if there has been attempt to correlate it with the introduction of Saccharine, which I remember coming into play during my youth. I mean, hey it was identified as cancerous 40 years ago.

    But I remember my mom bringing home the first Diet xxxx drinks.

    Lifestyle plus new diets? Probably.

    And guess what, in the U.S., at least, you can still buy Saccharine sweetner.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I am lucky in that I find almost all sweeteners (including saccharine) repulsively chemically tasting, so I never looked into them. But yes, I do remember this coming up far to regularly to not have a kernel of truth.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mmell ( 832646 )
        I'm with ya there. The blue stuff and the pink stuff both taste like the green stuff in my car's radiator.

  • Here you go. We have really screwed the younger generation over.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mmell ( 832646 )
      Y'aint kiddin' there. Mostly, because we were told exactly what was up, most of us were willfully deaf and blind, personally I watched with horror even while I, too, participated in burning gasoline, eating twinkies and generally living quite well on the whole (although I always could tell pink slime from ground beef, I still ate my share of McD's and fed it to my kids. Ain't love grand?)

  • Most of these cancers are probably environmental/diet but I read recently that women who have children at a young age, have a lower incidence of breast cancer vs women who have no children. And this protective mechanism is even stronger in young women who have multiple children. They believe a protective mechanism takes place in the breast tissue when breast feeding.

    But women who have children later in life have a higher incidence of breast cancer than women who never had them. They believe women having c

  • Cancers are expensive to society, because they kill off acquired skills and acquired knowledge, and (because carcinogens will tend to result in clusters) not just on an individual basis but in related groups.

    The rightwingers in many countries oppose restricting known carcinogens, and have crippled environmental government agencies from limiting them.

    This despite the fact that life expectancy is falling in the US and both cancers and dementia (which is likely to have a significant environmental component) ar

  • ...is obesity.

    But don't worry, Slashdot is hard at work demonizing artificial sweeteners ... (shakes head)

  • Before more money is spent on such studies shouldn't we just make absolutely clear to everybody that vigorous and consistent exercise and nutrition based on simple single ingredient natural foods and the associated elimination of highly processed pseudo-foods is the best path to a healthy life? I think a big part of this is that Big Pharma doesn't have a business model to profit from a pill that instills common sense.

  • Oh sure, it could be the red meat right? Or the saturated fat, I like from a natural butter and eggs? You know, things people have been eating for tens of thousands of years if not longer? Or I don't know, the rampant poisons, pesticides, and weird unpronounceable preservatives that were putting into every single consumer level product? But yeah, could also be those natural food products from the past doing it....

  • Get to bed early. Set that alarm clock for 5 AM and jog a couple of laps around the neighborhood before breakfast.

    Can't get up that early because "night owl" is in your genes? If your circadian rhythm is trainable, but you can't do it perhaps it's the inability to modify poor behavior that's genetic. Too bad. I guess it just sucks to be you.

  • So I quit smoking for nothing

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