Well, officially debunked may be generous. Basically, over two decades of research no credible links were found between the electromagnetic fields generated by high tension power lines and cancer.
WHO - Processed meats cause cancer
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) was joined by comedian Ali Woods to look back at the best and worst moments of a rollercoaster season with the annual United Hour Awards.
Has Ten Hag been sacked yet? We're not sure and we hope not, but it's looking more likely as the days pass.
Who should replace him and why is it taking so long to make a decision?
agree with that 100% but part of my point was that it seems you almost can't live life these days without increasing your risk of cancer somehow...only way would be to live in a house in the countryside with no mobile phone, eat organic food / fish and white meat and don't drink moonshine
Well first, Chicken isn't lean. Even boneless skinless chicken breast contains saturated fat and cholesterol. I suppose its lean if you consider sausages and bacon the norm. If you want lean then Tuna may be a good option.
Second, you are going to get enough omega3s in well rounded plant based diet to where you don't have to buy Salmon or take fish oil. In fact, there are world renowned cardiologists like Caldwell Esselstyn who have made a compelling case that all oils along with animal products are the primary driver behind reduced endothelial function which protect against plaque build up by way of producing nitric oxide. The saturated fat and cholesterol in animal products impairs this process, so you can see how a lifetime of eating whatever the feck you want will dramatically increase your chance of disease later in life.
OK. I'm simplifying a little but... the carcinogens in cigarettes cause certain mutations in DNA of a cell. In certain instances, the mutations overwhelm the repair machinery. That cell survives the mutations and they result in aberrant growth and division of the cell. Smoking is the cause not some unknown thing.
Boneless, skinless chicken breast is primarily my meat of choice. I also eat drumsticks (I cut the skin off because I don't like the texture/taste). I also used to eat sardines but got bored with them.
My point is, you're discounting all the health benefits that come from eating meat, quite apart from whether or not there's an equivalent to the health benefit in a vegetarian diet. The mere presence of saturated fat and cholesterol does not equate to disease/lack of fitness. Chicken's a pretty awesome source of protein (and no there is not an equivalent among fruits and vegetables). I don't know who advises veganism or the nutty fruitarian stuff for elite athletes. The vegetarians who used to be enthused about their diet used to be the slowest and the weakest, and they were often riddled with colds, in my experience. Now, that is not representative of everybody on such a diet, but it seems an incredibly fine line for those on a vegan diet. For instance, what about vitamin b12? Do most vegans even know about b12? if not, they're certainly going to be deficient.
I'm not really discounting the health benefits but more so highlighting the fact that the risk/reward in terms of long term health benefits is more attractive when you skew things towards more clean nutrient dense foods, rather than oily, fatty, animal products.
The b12 thing has been debunked ages ago. You can easily find it these days in products like Soy or Rice milk, tempeh and various other plant based products.
While the general risk may be 5% and eating 2 slices of bacon a day might increase the risk to 6%, what if you are also overweight, have a family history, or are exposed to some of the other risk factors? Surely then your chances are far greater than 5%.
Also I would imagine swathes of people who eat processed meat, eat far more than 50g a day anyway. If you eat 100g a day for example, does that mean you up your risk percentage to 7%?
I would say a lot of people who eat processed meat regularly, eat a lot of it, and are probably far more likely to be exposed to the other risks factors to a greater degree than those who mind what they eat and stick to their 50g a day.
I'd also wonder, if processed foods are so harmless, why the industry the world over seems to spend an awful lot of time and effort trying to hide their ingredients through clean labelling policies. Take corn syrup as an example, wasn't it initially used because people were paranoid about consuming sugar, when the reality is that is actually far worse for you?
Also I would imagine swathes of people who eat processed meat, eat far more than 50g a day anyway. If you eat 100g a day for example, does that mean you up your risk percentage to 7%?
I would say a lot of people who eat processed meat regularly, eat a lot of it, and are probably far more likely to be exposed to the other risks factors to a greater degree than those who mind what they eat and stick to their 50g a day.
I'd also wonder, if processed foods are so harmless, why the industry the world over seems to spend an awful lot of time and effort trying to hide their ingredients through clean labelling policies. Take corn syrup as an example, wasn't it initially used because people were paranoid about consuming sugar, when the reality is that is actually far worse for you?
Actually we do, generally speaking. Cancer is caused by alterations in genes involved in cellular growth regulation. We even know specifically which genes are changed in some kinds of cancer, and this knowledge doesn't stop increasing.
Genes changing is a normal and expected thing in nature, it happens in every cell cycle (though most of the times without a measurable effect) and it's the basis of evolution as well. Cancer at it's basis is as natural as it gets. Something we have to accept as part of life.
Beyond these natural changes in genes, damage to DNA can happen at an increased rate in the presence of certain factors. Be they radiation, viruses or chemical compounds (both natural and artificial), etc... Also, some of us inherit already defective genes.
And yes, it's a freaking death lottery in many ways. A lottery for which we are all born with different odds, but odds which we can modify. You can play optimally and still lose, or play terribly and still get lucky, but that's valid for nearly every aspect of life. Being careful with our exposition to risk factors for cancer isn't much different than being a careful driver or buying a safe to protect your kids from your gun. We're essentially manipulating odds. Few things, both good or bad, are ever guaranteed.
Some things increase the odds of cancer so much that we can simplify it and say they cause them. Technically you're correct, tobacco doesn't cause cancer, it increases its risk. But saying tobacco causes cancer isn't different than saying drunk driving or excessive speeding causes deaths on the road.
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Damn good explanation right there, particularly the last few lines. You and @Wibble should have kids, you'd make a science superbeing.
Thanks. Though perhaps a blackjack game would be a better analogy than a lottery. You always lose on the long run, but if you play optimally out money lasts longer unless you're very unlucky
It isn't a good explanation; gene change is not "on the basis of evolution". Copy errors in our DNA do not operate according to any guiding force in nature and the changes he's talking about here happen in the somatic cells, not the reproductive cells. If it were otherwise, everybody who had cancer and reproduced would successfully pass their cancer on to their children. As it happens, parents can only pass a "risk" onto their children. In fact, nothing works "on the basis of evolution"; evolution is a theory that seeks to explain the rise and diversification of the natural world; it isn't a law or the protagonist of the story, if you will; it is currently the clumsy interpretation of men that mutations in the germ line and consequent differential reproduction can account for the code (which is information) in the DNA, which is not the same thing as the chemical composition of DNA itself.
Exposition also cannot mean exposure in the context he means to use it, unless he means we should be careful about our willingness to display the risk factors involved with cancer.
Agreed. When excessive speeding and/or drink driving are involved in a huge proportion of fatal accidents and such a high percentage of people who get lung cancer smoke it is valid to say cause at least in everyday usage.
What? Nonsense. It may be simplistic as I'm not an expert nor am I addressing experts, but your criticism is even more confusing.
Gene changes are, of course, the drivers of evolution. A DNA mutation won't have an impact on the organism if it doesn't result in a different gene. Gene changes in somatic cells (may) lead to cancer and in reproductive cells (may) lead to evolution. The mechanism is the same, errors in cell replication. Different cells, different results.
I believe he was saying that changes in genes are normal and these changes are what selection pressures act upon resulting in evolution but that occasionally adverse things like cancer result. A slight typo, the extra "on", probably made this slightly less clear than intended.
A DNA mutation won't have an impact on the organism if it doesn't result in a different gene? You do know genes themselves are an outdated concept? "Gene" is just a term used in the scientific community these days to refer to segments of coding DNA. You cannot change a single letter in the coding DNA without it resulting in a "different gene". Most changes in the DNA occur to the non-coding genes, whose roles are mostly associated with the regulation of the coding segments of DNA, even acting as scaffolding/structural information. The emerging field of epigentics puts a lot of old ideas about genetics to the sword, frankly.
Changes in the somatic cells, such as those associated with cancer, are not passed on to the progeny.
Gene is an outdated concept? That's new to me.
And regarding changing letters in the coding DNA without it resulting in different genes... What about the genetic code redundancy, is it an outdated concept as well? Don't we have 64 triplets for just 20 or 21 amino-acids?
I've always known that and never said otherwise.
You are being pedantic. He means a functionally different gene.
And epigenetics doesn't put old ideas to the sword as much as adding fascinating granularity to the field of study and if anything further cements existing theory in that the additional gene activation/inhibition explains observed outcomes even better than existing theory alone.
And he never said that cancerous cells could be passed on to future generations. Of course genes that predispose you to cancer can.
And epigenetics doesn't put old ideas to the sword as much as adding fascinating granularity to the field of study and if anything further cements existing theory in that the additional gene activation/inhibition explains observed outcomes even better than existing theory alone.
And he never said that cancerous cells could be passed on to future generations. Of course genes that predispose you to cancer can.
It does in that the theory of evolution predicted that the coding DNA was the only DNA that would be functional and the great seas of DNA surrounding such segments would be the junk left over from billions of years of evolution. Selection constraints in fact demanded such junk DNA because it's well accepted that without the junk material to "randomly sort" without adversely affecting a species, the selection constraints required for evolution to occur in the timespans allowed by the fossil record would make every single species extinct hundreds of times over. This is quite a complicated field of science, and it doesn't help that people like Richard Dawkins continue to popularise an outdated view of genetics because it better suits their worldview.
I still fail to understand what that PhD level technical dwelling into molecular genetics has to do with my post. It negates nothing of what I meant. I love genetics and find that content interesting, but it looks you went nitpicking just for the sake of it. And you didn't stop at that, you also literally made up flaws in my argument, such as implying I said we inherit cancer mutations.
I only really wanted to point out that copy errors in the DNA don't occur because of a guiding natural force like evolution, which as I said before is not a law to govern such changes. Where you say, "it's on the basis of evolution as well", I take umbrage, but if you mean to say gene changes are the basis of evolution, then that's fine.
Well, that's exactly what I meant. Wibble was astute to notice that my "on" was a typo. On/in are still among my struggles with English grammar, to such an extent that I still don't see a difference between both sentences. I never wanted to imply a deterministic cause for mutations. I've edited that out.
Is saying "a is on the basis of b" akin to saying "a happens because of b"?
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Ah OK, no problem. Don't worry about it. I am a writer so I am very fussy about grammar and tend to be a bit literally-minded. English is a "fussy" language, and I think you type it very well if it's your second language. :^)
I'm fussy too so I'm glad to learn that. And yes, it's my second language.
Mine to as I'm now Australian.
Also to be pedantic, neither the theory of evolution nor natural selection predicts anything about coding/non-coding DNA and no evolutionary biologist has (or should have) used the term "junk DNA" in a long long time even if journalists, even science journalists, often like the term. The main change that may result from the discovery of epigenetic heredity (and some would say that epigenetic should only be used as a term when heredity is involved) is that we may (and I suspect it is quite likely) confirm that epigenetics may itself function as a heritable trait in a traditional genetic sense in some cases and a heritable cause of evolution wholly or partly independent of tradition genetic inheritance in others. It has certainly been shown that non-coding DNA is at least sometimes subject to adaptive evolution. While I think the jury is still out based on my readings I also think that it is most likely that epigenetics will become accepted as another driver of evolution alongside things like natural and sexual selection and (more controversially) a mechanism of inheritance that interacts with genetic inheritance in complex and interesting ways. To me this will be incredibly important but IMO not to the point where it puts anything to the sword and merely (not really the right word as it is very interesting and important) allow us to further build on existing knowledge. I fully expect the full interaction between genetics and epigenetic to be complex enough to make my brain bleed.
Unless I've missed something (which is quite possible) I don't think this statement is "well accepted". Why would "fast" evolution necessarily result in fast extinction without epigenetics? In any case periods of "fast" evolution were only approximately 5 times faster than they are today, usually in response to a huge change e.g. meteor strike compounded by prior climate change, which is easily slow enough to be explained by adaptive gene based evolution. Not that I am for a moment suggesting that epigenetics is irrelevant but just the the exact role it plays is far from fully clear.
BTWI was interested to read that epigentics seems to play a large role in the expression of at least some genetically "caused" cancers - surely a huge research area for the future?
Get your facts right son...
So what is processed meat?
Processed meat has been modified to either extend its shelf life or change the taste and the main methods are smoking, curing, or adding salt or preservatives.
Simply putting beef through a mincer does not mean the resulting mince is "processed" unless it is modified further.
Processed meat includes bacon, sausages, hot dogs, salami, corned beef, beef jerky and ham as well as canned meat and meat-based sauces.
Red meat is a darker colour than white meat and includes beef, lamb and pork because of higher levels of proteins that bind to oxygen, haemoglobin and myoglobin in blood and muscle.
Are we not saying the same thing dad?
Well this got a little derailed. Epigenetics aside, are we in agreement that we do know what causes some cancers or not?
Nope! That's my point. Not all processed meat have chemical preservatives in it and/or have an unhealthy amount of saturated fats in it. For example, there’s a big difference between sausages with a high meat grade & lack of chemical preservatives and the cheap frozen crap you’ll often find in the supermarkets, son.
I still think we are making the exact same point. My original sentence:
The part of processing that is the issue isn't chopping up etc, it is adding preservatives etc.
Can you buy me a beer later, dad?
Get lost you cheeky brat. The Muther and I brought you up differently.
@OP Rodger Daltrey's bound to say that, doesn't he run a fish farm?
BRCA1
He's right. You can inherit a BRCA mutation but only because it was already in your parents reproductive cells (sperm or egg), either because they inherited it themselves or because the mutation happened in their gametes. The mutation didn't arise from their somatic cells.
It's to do with known mutation rates. Simply put, we, as a species, undergo far too many mutations. Think of it like this, allowing for the simplistic language, an individual undergoes a mutation that improves his eyesight in the dark by a fraction, right. Well, by even the most conservative estimates of mutation rates in humans, he's also going to be picking up hundreds of other mutations, all told, and a percentage of those will be in the germ line. When he passes on his genes to his children, he will be passing on not just the odd incredibly rare mutation that benefits an organism in a given environment, he will also be passing on an array of other mutations so long as they aren't so severe that they hinder his reproductive capabilities. This makes them, by the probabilities involved nearly neutral mutations, which is just another term for "slightly harmful". Since selection doesn't work at the level of genes, but at the level of the organism, it cannot select out the good mutation from the many bad ones, so in order to solve this paradox, population geneticists hypothesised that the vast majority of these mutations were occurring in the 98% or so of junk DNA in the human genome, where changes to the DNA are allowed to accrue without affecting the organisms "fitness". These they called "neutral mutations". Simply put, they were hoping that given enough time, a random sorting of these segments of the DNA could result in new segments of coding DNA, resulting in beneficial adaptations in an organism, but that they would also soak up the great number of mutations every individual is currently collecting in his/her genome without degradation to the integrity of the genome.
Yes, no denying that. But he seemed to be saying cancer is not heritable. Risk factors for cancer certainly are.
I'd say yes, but that depends on what you mean by the question. We understand the genetic basis of cancers. What we do not know is every risk factor for these mutations. It's a continuous learning process. On the one hand, we're continuously exposed to new stuff from the environment, on the other hand it's hard to isolate every factor out there in an epidemiological study.
If @Arruda had sad the basis for natural selection is random variation, instead of saying its the basis for evolution, I think the post would've been perfectly correct.
He was just saying the mutations on somatic cells aren't inheritable. And he's right. If you suffer a mutation on your lung cells that causes a cancer that mutation will die with you. If you suffer a mutation in your sperm line then that mutation will pass on to your children and be part of both their germline and somatic cells, hence becoming heritable. By refering to somatic cells he meant only the first kind of mutations.
Aaargh. Got the confusion.
He meant that somatic mutations won't be selected for since they aren't inherited; reading your original post I didn't see you claim that.
I thought what you were saying was that random variations arise in cells, and that is normal, for example, random variation is the basis of natural selection, and (separately) random variations can lead to cancer.
About mutations leading to cancer: My professor in undergrad was a fan of the Warburg theory
metabolic switch before mutation.
It's fascinating though, and I listened to a talk ~2 months ago by someone who researches it. He has branched out and was talking about methionine in the diet as a risk factor, it causes the epigenetic methylation marks to go haywire if it is overconsumed. They had done mouse studies and a limited human trial, but I can't remember details.
He meant that somatic mutations won't be selected for since they aren't inherited; reading your original post I didn't see you claim that.
I thought what you were saying was that random variations arise in cells, and that is normal, for example, random variation is the basis of natural selection, and (separately) random variations can lead to cancer.
About mutations leading to cancer: My professor in undergrad was a fan of the Warburg theory
metabolic switch before mutation.It's fascinating though, and I listened to a talk ~2 months ago by someone who researches it. He has branched out and was talking about methionine in the diet as a risk factor, it causes the epigenetic methylation marks to go haywire if it is overconsumed. They had done mouse studies and a limited human trial, but I can't remember details.
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