Alternative health has been saying this for decades. Ketogenic diets + medicinal plants/mushrooms can do a lot, even after the fact.
"By definition," I begin
"Alternative Medicine," I continue
"Has either not been proved to work
Or been proved not to work
Do you know what they call alternative medicine
That's been proved to work?
Medicine."
-- from "Storm" which you can find on youtube or whatever.
Alternative medicine is simply any therapy that is not included in the established currently-accepted set of treatment options.
This varies by culture, time, and sometimes by individual.
Most alternatives are not better than the currently-known best. This is true today, we think, but it is definitely not true historically. (So how special is our current era?)
But when the currently-known best doesn't work well for everyone, or has deleterious side effects, any continued research will include alternatives.
I understand the fatigue embedded in your quote. It's a reasonable stance for those of us with ordinary concerns and who are far downstream from the research (including and especially retail practitioners).
But it is too broadly dismissive for real scientists and people who maintain a curiosity about the world.
> Has either not been proved to work
There's an awful lot of stuff that works, that nobody has run a large enough controlled study to prove it works. The organizations which fund medical research have specific priorities that exclude an awful lot. And a lot of things are just inherently difficult to objectively measure or control. There's no blood test for chronic muscle tension, for example.
So unfortunately, by restricting yourself to things that have been proven to work, you are possibly eliminating a lot of things that work.
But of course, trying to figure out, on your own, which stuff actually does work despite not being proven, is a long hard frustrating slog that tends to involve a lot of personal trial and error. Exactly what GP said:
> The difficult part is figuring out what's true and what's quackery.
There’s a lot of work right now into immunology and cancer, and they are discovering specific correlations as that progresses. This has nothing to do with mushroom tea, although that probably helps with acute inflammatory issues.
Bats very rarely get cancer (I tried to find the actual # of verified cases of cancers in bats, but came up short), and they have a lot of anti-cancer adaptations in their genome.
They are also really good at taming inflammation and activity of various viruses. That helps them survive infection with rabies - their systems just don't react as aggresively to the infection as ours (and most mammals') do.
This may help them against cancer as well. Not just p53 et al.
Put it another way, it seems our systems are balanced to regulate cancer during our youth and reproductive years to a low but non-zero level.
Why hasn't evolution turned the dial up another couple of notches? Could be simple metabolic cost, or could be something else.
As you say, things that happen later in the organism's life usually don't result in strong evolutionary effects.
We know that the body has cancer suppressor mechanisms, because when they fail (due to HIV or genetic mutations) people suffer higher rates of the disease. So it's reasonable to guess that evolution has chosen not to dial them up further.
It feels like the immune/inflammatory system is something we understand about as well as the brain, which is to say pretty good at a gross anatomical level, and also at the fine molecular level, but with a heck of a lot of complex system dynamics in between remaining to be mapped out.
Because evolution doesn't care about us beyond reproduction age (after which is when most cancers occur, especially considering that historically that age was between say 16 and 35).
Or even better phrased, because evolution doesn't care or plan at all, it's a blind mechanism.
If a local minimum is ok, we'll stay there for as long as some environmental or other evolutionary pressure gets to move us further.
Cancer wasn't a big issue for most of our existance as species, especially with lower life expectancies, more active lifestyles, zero obesity, zero pollutants, etc.
In evolutionary terms, modern lifestyles are not even a blip, especially post-industrial ones which don't even register.
Also, probably only bats in zoos get a cancer diagnosis. Most ills bats just die in the wild and are eaten by other animals.
Also, short-lived animals get cancer all of the time. Mice, dogs, cats.
The idea of cancer being caused by passive accumulation of mutations over time looks appealing, but does not seem to correspond to actual frequency of cancer mapped by body size (because more cells = more chances of some cell going haywire), nor to maximum age.
Anti-cancer capabilities of a given organism seem to be more important. There are gene variants that are protective against cancer, and the capability of the immune system to kill suspicious cells matters too. (Note that almost all new efficient oncological treatments in the last decade or so involve the immune system of the patient.)
Tell me the 10% of which are dangerous so that i can avoid them
Now this article blaming inflammation for cancer.
But isn’t inflammation also a useful and necessary process in the body? If it’s so harmful, should we all be taking anti-inflammatory drugs? Of course, those have their own downsides too (my doctor mentioned that ibuprofen can even affect hearing).
The immune system is highly highly complicated and directed by huge networks of genes and molecules all up- and downregulating each other depending on internal and external factors. If things go "off balance" in this system the consequences could be dire.
You dont want firefighters hosing down your house from the inside when there is no fire anymore either.
That said, I feel the need to point out that chronic inflammation has long been known to be one of the roots of cancer. Chronic inflammation can be caused by a few things but common among them is the immune system.
The framing of the article, in my quick skim, felt like it was insinuating that researchers believed that cancer arises from mutations alone, and that everyone assumed carcinogens were all mutagens.
I haven't read the paper this article is describing. It seems very interesting. But the headline and the article makes it seem like some major turning point or ground shift which IMHO it is not.
Earw0rm•1h ago
3abiton•1h ago
Earw0rm•40m ago
baxtr•32m ago
scrollop•28m ago
"There is no way dairy products can contribute to inflammation, cancer or anything bad for a person. Just ask the Milk Board!"
On the other hand:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIPksx7XLzk (it's a bit old though)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CRrI5U9HXU
jama211•28m ago