to think people who think cancer is caused by lifestyle choices are ignorant?

[user19201881]

I have a work colleague who thinks that cancer is always caused by lifestyle choices - drinking, smoking, obesity etc. I have had cancer and find this sort of attitude quite upsetting.
I know of 6 people under the age of 40 who have/had cancer and none of them smoke, rarely drink and are not obese. It can't just be down to lifestyle otherwise children wouldn't get cancer.

I agree - of all the people I know who have had cancer, none were overweight, or had poor diets. Two smoked, and one of them died from mouth cancer the other from throat cancer. I know two women who died from lung cancer and neither had ever smoked, were fit and normal weight.

Your colleague is wrong that cancer is only caused by lifestyle, cancer does not discriminate. They would be correct in thinking lifestyle could potentially contribute to a diagnosis

You've forgotten to tell us what she said when you pointed out that babies/children get cancer?

Or did the conversation not actually happen and you just wanted to discuss the topic?

Looking at rarer childhood cancers probably doesn't tell you much about what causes the most common adult cancers. Cancer is a really broad category of disease and there isn't one explanation for it.

Most adult cancers are multi-factorial, which means they have lots of causes, including genetic risk, genetic mutations over time, environment, pollution, lifestyle factors such as smoking, drinking and so on, preventive behaviours, screening, all kinds of things make up the risk or affect how people get treated or what are their outcomes.

Just because some people with lung cancer haven't smoked doesn't mean most people with lung cancer haven't smoked- it's predominantly a cancer caused by smoking and other factors (e.g. genetic susceptibility). Only about 10-20% with lung cancer haven't smoked. They might also have been exposed to passive smoking of course. I don't think the smoking/non-smoking should dictate how we should view them or how they should be treated anyway, given smoking is nearly always an addiction.

There are lots of associations between lifestyle factors and cancer risk, I don't want to go on about them here because people then misinterpret this to mean you are blaming them- it's very rarely the case that one lifestyle factor 'causes' one type of cancer, but that lifestyle becomes part of the overall risk picture which would vary from person to person. Alcohol contributes to cancer risk, at all levels (even a small amount of drinking). I'll leave it up to people if they want to google it, Cancer Research UK has some good informatics which explains it.

The other thing is, of course, you can do all the 'right' things and still get cancer. It's just too unpredictable and you can say for any individual, just describe the risk in overall terms.

Honestly this attitude breaks my heart. Yes lifestyle factors can contribute to a diagnosis but it's not the only thing to cause cancer. By focusing in on "lifestyle" effectively you are saying that the person with cancer has somehow brought this on themselves. Not really a helpful attitude to bring to someone battling cancer. I was diagnosed with cancer at a young age and yes with hindsight I could of drunk a little less, had a few less takeaways maybe not had so much red meat, exercised continuously etc etc however no one expects to be diagnosed in their 20s with cancer. I lived my life at uni like every other 20 something that I knew, does that mean they are all due their turn on the chemo train? Obviously not! Cancer doesn't give a shit who you are, what you do, how you live your life. It is an awful debilitating disease that even if you survive you never truly get over as it is always there lurking over your shoulder threatening to return at a moments notice. So does that mean if I have 2 glasses of wine this weekend and my cancer comes back it's my fault? I deserve it somehow? No it doesnt, no one deserves it, its fucking unfair and i wouldnt wish it on my worst enemy. Maybe people who have this opinion should keep it to themselves and worry about their own life rather than trying to kick people when they're at their lowest point just to feel somehow better about their own lifestyle choices. Let's hope these saintly beings have never over indulged ever in their life, have followed every contradictory rule that supposedly protects you from cancer and has a completly clear family history with no rouge cells in their body that may or may not decide to fuck up and start building a tumor just because.

It's a lottery, pure and simple.

Multiple likely factors including genetics and environment.

My cancer list:

DP - undiagnosed and virtually symptomless oesophageal cancer that metastised to his liver, lungs and brain - which caused catastrophic bleeds and took him out in three weeks. Only diagnosed post mortem.

DM - ovarian cancer (and / or peritoneal / omentum as it was only diagnosed at stage 4 because doctors dicked around putting her on the Fodmap diet for two years as they thought it was IBS. Picked up after a blood test when her GP thought HRT might help with her tiredness. She was 72 at this point)

DMs sister - ovarian cancer.

Step-father - liver cancer secondary to stomach cancer. Dismissed as constipation until he got referred shoulder pain.

Paternal GM - third bout of breast cancer finished her off about a week before her 90th birthday.

Paternal Aunt - breast cancer took her in her 60s.

Close family friend - bladder cancer - dismissed as anxiety until it was too late.

Another friend - survived lymphoma and in remission just shy of 30.

Friends partner - died of breast cancer about two months after my DP.

Very close friend diagnosed breast cancer a few months after DP died - fortunately in remission now.

DF has splenic lymphoma which is unlikely to finish him off as it's a slow one - he's going to be 84 in October. Hopefully. He is a nuclear test veteran, for what it's worth.

I have had my ovaries and tubes removed by the NHS despite no obvious genetic fault due to DM and Aunt both having ovarian cancer. I'm still high risk for peritoneal and omentum apparently.

DPs dad survived his oesophageal cancer - it was picked up accidentally during investigations for something else. He's just turned 80.

His sister, in her 70s, lives with an inoperable brain tumour.

This evening a young friend of mine told me about two people close to her both with recurrent cancers.

Cancer is an utterly indiscriminate scourge.

I don’t think anyone is saying that people who get cancer deserve it or are to blame. The best explanation I’ve heard of the link between genetics and environment/lifestyle factors went something like this

• our dna is covered is switches a bit like light switches. If you don’t have the switch for lung cancer then it doesn’t matter how much you smoke. But if you do have the switch, then working in smoky pubs or smoking will flip it, and if enough of them get flipped, you’ll get lung cancer.

i assume there are cancers which don’t have an environmental or lifestyle factor, but where they do, it serves nobody to pretend there’s nothing we can do.

This !

The problem with your colleague is she uses the term ALWAYS. It’s not the case . Some people smoke, drink, eat way too much and may never get it . Some people never smoke, drink , etc and still get it . It’s also in your DNA. It really is a game of pot luck , although it’s obviously in everyone’s best interests to try to do the “right” thing. Her way of thinking is offensive. I’d tell her to shut it .

I think I read that one third of cancers are related to lifestyle so it's not true to say cancers aren't related to lifestyle - some are.
But if course the majority of cancers aren't. Could be a genetic component. I've had cancer and was told it was just bad luck. They could find no reason for it.

I think for a lot of people that spout the BS that your colleague does, it is a form of health anxiety. They have a fear of it and want to believe that they have protected themselves.

It is incredibly tone deaf though. Most of us will probably know someone that has cancer at the moment, someone that has died from cancer and someone that has has had cancer in the past. As you get older (I'm early 40s) that list keeps growing. My SIL first got cancer in her 30s and died a few years ago. Not lifestyle related.

I have a friend who thinks that everything is down to lifestyle/diet.
When I was diagnosed with an under-active thyroid she was convinced it was because I was eating the wrong things and if I ate the right things I wouldn't need any medication.

Is your friend my friend? They had a thyroid issue, were adamant it was fixable with diet and supplements and ended up in hospital due to a thyroid storm.

Some people are idiots.

@Alwaysdoingsomethingwrong Yes, and sone people are weird about taking medication, even though it would help immensely! I’ve got an under active thyroid and one pill a day makes a dramatic difference-so why not take it?
But I know people who won’t take one paracetamol for a splitting headache.😂

My SIL has been diagnosed with breast cancer. She is mid 50s, slim, fit, sporty, hardly drinks, eats healthily, doesn't smoke, generally looks after herself. She did have her first child late though so obviously it's all her fault! (Not).

There’s a lot of turbo cancers around in younger people.

2,540 excess deaths (14,024 total deaths) in the week ending 21 April 2023.

22.1% above the 5 year average for the equivalent week in previous years.

Quite worrying.

I have no medical training, but from what I’ve observed among people I know, breast cancer can hit anyone. Family history obviously increases risk, but it can be so random too-one of my Mum’s friends died at 49, the only person in her family who suffered from it. ☹️

I think generally the younger you are when it strikes the more aggressive it is. Old people can go on for years with it. More men die with prostate cancer than die of it.

Yes, as shown by Olivia Newton John, a healthy, sporty, fit, 44 year old who did nothing to cause her breast cancer.

I really don't understand why people are giving so many anecdotes....it's not really a conundrum or anything.

Some cancers are caused by or influenced by lifestyle choices and/or environmental factors.
Some are not.

It's not that hard.

Cancers are generally caused by life style factors and genetics

I know a nurse who thinks this way. Years ago my neighbour was diagnosed with lung cancer and when I told her she done a head tilt and said "aww she was a smoker then" when I said she wasn't she suggested others in the house must have been smokers, they weren't. So she mused that she must have worked or socialised with smokers and her cancer was down to second hand smoke.

Her cousin had a mini stroke and she suggested it would have been "because he drinks". More recently her DH had a mini stoke too and she could not believe it, kept telling me she didn't understand how that could have happened to him because they don't drink or smoke, she was really struggling to get her head around it.

I haven't voted, as your title question is different from what you put in your OP.

I'd say walking around thinking there is no correlation between any sorts of cancer and different lifestyles is ignorant if anything.
Though, clearly, there are a lot of people that do contract cancer where there is no known contributing factors.
The use of the word "always" in your opening post - if that is what anyone has actually said - would make anyone who thought that, wrong, but equally as wrong is anyone saying no cancers have anything to do with lifestyle.

But did the colleague say “All cancers are caused by lifestyle choices” or something closer to “Some lifestyle choices lead to a higher incidence of cancer at population level” or even “I don’t smoke, in an effort to minimize by own risk of cancer”