To think the PoW’s diagnosis makes healthy living seem pointless?

[Notsuretoputit]

I try my best to live heathily (although definitely not fanatical). I try and stay away from ultra processed foods, try and avoid saturated fat, too much meat etc., try and exercise every week. I’ll have the odd takeaway and definitely overindulge on wine, but always try and be mindful of living heathily because so much information is constantly battering me through the radio, media etc. about getting ill from various foods and not exercising.

I’ve recently lost my mother far too young too, so I suppose it’s particularly on my mind at the moment. But then you hear Kate’s diagnosis, who obviously exercises regularly, has the best instructors, best food, best ingredients, best preparation, and she still falls ill, and it all seems a bit pointless.

AIBU to feel this way? I just wonder whether I really should make an effort to watch what I eat and run when I don’t feel like it if really, what will be will be regardless.

Really sorry to hear this.

Stress is debilitating. People think stress is just in your head. Its not. It leads to a cascade of physiological affects. There's a reason why people who suffer adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) wind up at elevated risk of a whole host of health conditions including cancer. Their stress response has been primed by trauma which imprints itself on the body.. the body keeps score. They know that depression actually changes the brain at a structural level. Everything is connected.

Wishing you well and a full recovery. 🙏

Chemo might well take years off your life, in the sense that the average age of death among people who have ever had chemo is probably quite a bit younger than that of people who have never had chemo.

But the reason someone has chemo is because they have cancer, not because they took it up instead of coffee or something. People who have had cancer, even if it went into remission after treatment with chemo, simply live less long on average than those who never had cancer.

If you take the people who are diagnosed with cancer (the kinds of cancer that get treated with chemo), and compared the average ages of death of those people who accepted chemo versus those who declined it, the people who had the chemo will be shown to have lived a lot longer. For those people, chemo added years on to their lives.

This is an example of something that in epidemiology is called "Confounding by indication", which is a very easy mistake to make, usually accidentally but sometimes because someone wants to spread scare stories.

(Another example: it's true that the majority of people who were put on ventilators for Covid didn't survive, but that's because there's only so much a ventilator can do. If those people hadn't been put on ventilators they certainly wouldn't have survived. But Covid deniers use "OMG over half the people on ventilators died!!!!!!1!" to try and claim that "ventilators were part of the death project", and other dangerous bollocks.)

Yes this is a good explanation. Many people would be dead without chemo so by the same measure it could also add years on to your life.

I was just told that it ages you by 10 years - whatever that means. It’s a brutal treatment. But I personally am just happy to be here. If I live to 80 instead of 90 then I’ll take that. Because at one point I thought I was gonna die at 35.

Sounds like Bayes theorem.

Given someone had a disease that needed chemo / a ventilator, what was the average of death in that group who had chemo versus those who needed it but who didn't have it.

POW does seem to have led an exemplary lifestyle, and to be a role model for healthy living. Kate’s diagnosis is a reminder that exercising, eating healthily, keeping lean and strong will reduce the risks but won’t eliminate them. It does make me feel less reassured that I’m protecting my health by exercising etc.
Cancer cases in under 50’s are up 80% in the last 30 years. That’s a terrible percentage that I don’t think many people are aware of. We have no idea how vulnerable we are.

Healthy living helps when undergoing treatment and helps if it is not curable or able to put in into remission.

Ohh! I thought you meant Prisoner of War.

Sounds like you're looking for an excuse.

Chemo might be 'bad' for you, hopefully it's less bad for you than it is for the cancer cells!
Even if it has negative side effects it's still the least worst option! Many medicines and treatments have unwanted effects, as with many things in life there are trade offs. All we can do it push forwards to develop more sophisticated forms of treatment.

Anyone can get ill or have an accident at any time. No one is immune. The one definite thing is that 3 factors we can control, could make it worse.

‘Smoking, excess alcohol consumption and obesity are among the leading (but modifiable) risk factors for CVDs and cancer.

Compared with peer countries, in the UK smoking prevalence is lower and alcohol consumption is about middling, but excess alcohol consumption is higher, and levels of overweight/obesity in adults are among the highest (64 per cent in 2021)’.

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/reports/nhs-compare-health-care-systems-other-countries

moderation is important in times of diet, excercise, alcohol and no smoking. But the older I get, the more I think, taking this to extremes in the hope it will protect you from cancer, is pointless. There must be a siginificant genetic imperative as well as environmental. And the older you get, the more the chance of having some sort of cancer. Many just seem completely unfair and random
@Cleaningupthemess
I agree with you about moderation! I dont think there is much to be gained from taking things to excess, you can likely improve your chances quite a lot just by being sensible.
Unless you happen to get a real buzz out of exercise and austere food theres no need to make yourself unhappy.

Cancer can be completely random. Yes you can influence your probability of getting it, but either you’ll get it or you won’t, and then probabilities are out of the window. I am speaking as someone who had a 1 in 10,000 medical issue happen to me. I was just unlucky.

I know what you mean OP. Cancer is bloody bad luck. I hate discussions about what causes it (beyond directly proven links) because it feels like blame.

I got skin cancer. I think it's very likely I got it from sun exposure. I take measures now to reduce my exposure to sun.

Is there blame involved? Or was it me exposing myself to sun, which does increase DNA damage and can lead to skin cancer?

If someone has an unhealthy lifestyle and develops an illness associated with that lifestyle, is that bad luck? Just a role of the dice? Or did the lifestyle load the dice?

Thankyou @samarrange

That's not a good POV. Yes you can be extremely unlucky and get ill despite all the best care. But deliberately living an unhealthy lifestyle is adding more likely risk on top.

who obviously exercises regularly, has the best instructors, best food, best ingredients

you don't know all of this for sure

Also, stress. Being a royal is (apparently) highly stressful due to the intense and constant scrutiny. Stress is a huge factor in disease.

@crossingbridges - but we don’t actually know she’s eats healthily and exercises regularly, we know she’d thin, but nothing about the quality of food she’s eating, if she is eating a balance of foods and lots of veg, if she drinks heavily etc. she’s not particularly muscular, so exercise is a guess as well. We have no idea what drugs she’s taken over the years (legal or otherwise)

she may well do, but it’s guess work that thin equals healthy choices.

@ThePotholeHelpline true, although there is a lot of luxury, loving parents & second homes etc to mitigate. By that token many have to deal with debilitating stress.

That's a bit like saying you might as well smoke because we all die anyway. Healthy living will increase your chances of having a longer life. Doesn't guarantee anything tho.

My nanna did everything she could to live a long and healthy life. She did. Except when she got into her 90s and got dementia we had months of hell trying to access care for her and even then it wasn't at all good enough. She deserved much better. I was secretly (joking) fuming at her for doing all she could to live so long. In the end it wasn't worth it. Dementia is degrading and dehumanising.

So yeah, I kind of get the point OP

I think you need to balance having a healthy lifestyle and actually enjoying your life.

No point in doing all the "right" things 100% of the time but having a joyless existence.

So have a little crispy chicken skin now and then.
The pleasure may not add days to your life, but enjoyment of life can't be measured.

The sun is a directly proven link for skin cancer but even so, getting it is bad luck. I agree that a healthy lifestyle is the best hope of cancer prevention but at the
same time it is often unknown what causes it and people who get cancer are not necessarily unhealthy.

If you knew that eating certain foods would reduce the chances of getting dementia, would you follow it?

Can a healthy diet reduce your dementia risk? - Heart Matters - BHF

Your nanna developed dementia even though she followed a healthy lifestyle. But there are going to be other people who could have developed dementia but they did follow the same healthy lifestyle and did not develop dementia. A healthy lifestyle can reduce the chances of developing dementia on a population scale.

If she had not followed a healthy lifestyle, she would have been more likely to have had other debilitating diseases when younger that could have ended her life sooner or made her 60s, 70s and 80s more difficult as she could have had health issues.

Bad luck?
Not really - exposing yourself to the sun and developing skin cancer is not bad luck. It's more a case of shit happens, I knew the risks (maybe not when young) and I developed skin cancer.

Of course people who get cancer are not necessarily unhealthy. Genetics plays a part.

If you lead an unhealthy lifestyle and you develop a disease associated with that unhealthy lifestyle, then I wouldn't say that it's down to bad luck. I would say that you helped load the dice against yourself. It's unfair that some people can lead an unhealthy lifestyle but not get ill, and others can lead the same lifestyle but do get ill. It's unfair that people can lead a healthy lifestyle but get ill.

But a good way to load the dice in your favour is to lead a healthy lifestyle and the way to load the dice against yourself is to lead an unhealthy lifestyle.

At the same time, life is for living and there are pleasures to be had in life that sometimes you have to indulge in.