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.

Kate smokes. That is not good for your health.

Nice and rude. Cheese is listed as one of the foods to avoid to prevent heart disease on the NHS’s website, along with other foods with high levels of saturated fat. I’d suggest it isn’t me who’s confused.

I dont go mad with things but I eat healthy home cooked meals and exercise every other day, do mindfulness and yoga, but also enjoy my wine and the odd takeaway.
My grandmother died young from breast cancer and lived a healthy life while my DH's grandmother smoked since she was 14 and made it to 82.
The way I see it is if I live a good enough life, if I was to get ill then I'll be strong enough to fight it, but life is also for living so I don't get so caught up with fear about things that I can't enjoy it.

And more victim blaming. What is wrong with you people? This is so distasteful.

My breast cancer was hormone led. I am certain it was caused by medication I was given for peri bleeding that has now been directly linked to my type of breast cancer via peer reviewed research. Excess hormones can be very damaging.

OP - you’ve had some good advice on here, but like others, I’d point out you are making a lot of assumptions on POW’s lifestyle based off her being a) thin and b) well groomed.

We have no idea if she has been a healthy eater, just that she clearly doesn’t regularly eat more calories than her body needs to function, you know nothings about the quality of food choices she’s made in relation to you. you have no idea if she’s abused her body with drugs (prescribed or otherwise), or alcohol.

this isn’t to say any of this is her fault - but your premise is you know she’s taken care of herself and for cancer anyway could be completely wrong.

and you could develop cancer next year, or maybe you won’t and will live a long life, it’s often down to luck if we make it old bones. Take care of your body anyway. (Although I’ve just scoffed a double decker so you know, all things in moderation.)

I’m the same age as Catherine, but far less ‘in shape’.

I fear that if/when I develop a serious illness, I will be kicking myself that it might have been my own fault. That won’t be pleasant, especially if fate doesn’t give me a second chance at life.

and @Octomingo ... Same situation in my family.

I don't know if you've come across the Sherzai's? Apparently diet can help stave off dementia too ... Just a thought ... It runs in my family too and my very cynical mum, who is terrified of dementia, reluctantly read their book, yet described it as "magic". Also other tips and tricks to keep us functioning cognitively well for as long as possible. It might not stop her getting demential but she feels more in control now, which is worth it's weight in gold... Probably good for us all to be aware of anyway xx

The Brain Docs | Brain Health Resources & Courses

You can start now @Cattenberg and don't forget people can look really shapely but be really ill inside if they are eating a poor diet that keeps that slim. Can you believe Dr's used to recommend smoking to keep slim?!

We can only start where we are at. :) xx

Rates of obesity, cancer (except lung cancer), diabetes, NAFLD, IBS, dementia, auto-immune disease etc have all increased over the last 50 years.

During this time we (as a population) have been following government healthy eating guidelines.

In particular saturated fat consumption is down. Yet, disease is up.

There is a case for thinking the guidelines and the current food environment are the culprits here.

I can't believe how many threads there are on here that just understand the concept of risk or proximity

Living a healthy lifestyle reduces your risk of developing cancer/heart disease/lungs disease etc but it does not eliminate it. By nature even a very low risk of 1 in a million still happens to 1 in a million people.

Secondly you have no idea how healthy Kate is or not, she might go home down a bottle of vodka and chainsmoke 40 a day all whilst sitting in a radiation chamber.

Ans thirdly, you don't know what cancer Kate has. Many cancers are not lifestyle related.

Both my parents were slim, ate healthy, didn’t smoke, barely drank, walked a lot (daily long dog walks). Both got cancer and died in middle age. I do think a lot of it is down to genetics or chance. But being as healthy as you can be will reduce your chances of a lifestyle type cancer.

In all seriousness, there is evidence starting to emerge that if you wish to protect your health long term, one of the best things you can do is avoid covid infection. That means taking what steps you reasonably can as an individual, and advocating for improved mitigations at a societal level (things like clean air via ventilation/filtration, encouraging FFP2 masks, making vaccines widely available etc)
https://www.ajmc.com/view/kashyap-patel-md-sees-link-between-covid-19-and-cancer-progression-calls-for-more-biomarker-testing

Sorry, don't mean to keep posting links.

In answer to your question re heart disease. If you've got a chance, watching this film might give you some answers. I think it's incredible what food choices can do. It's 11 years old but well worth a watch :)

This was the main reason I decided against having more than one. The downplaying of work and mental energy involved in taking care of children is absolutely insane. From the outside, I look perfectly fine. Definitely one of those mums who you assume has everything together and should be fit and healthy. I've always been slim, don't drink or smoke, reasonably successful career and we have help around the house. I've never been on anti-depressants and have reasonably robust MH.

However I absolutely do not feel healthy compared to my life before having a child. Even with a school age child, I can only get 5-6 hours a night which is far from the 8-10 before having a baby. I used to feel "in balance" for lack of a better word as I would allow myself extra sleep-ins to recharge, spa breaks or MH days. Dealing with a child is a double whammy of depriving yourself of much needed rest combined with constant situations where your body is flooded with cortisol. When she's screaming in pain from fever/sickness or injured with blood everywhere, I can functionally stay calm but I can feel the stress in my entire system. This happens at least once every 3-4 weeks and goes on for several days. I cannot even imagine how mums with multiple children deal with this because the stress situations overlap each other.

I try to eat healthy but often fall back on too much junk out of convenience and comfort. It's never so bad that it has an effect on my weight but I know it's not ideal for health. I'm sick all the time myself from the various viruses she brings home. I really feel my age and the cumulative effect of 5+ years of sleep deprivation on the body. I was genuinely worried that going through another 5 years of this for a second child would give me a serious illness or worsen a health condition I already have.

@Notsuretoputit - sourdough bread just isn’t for everyone, we compromised by buying a bread maker and making our own white bread with decent ingredients.

@Cattenberg - grab this feeling and use it to inspire you to change your diet. Don’t go on a diet or aim to lose weight, just be more aware of your body’s health. Much more important than a dress size.

I wouldn't panic about small amounts of UPFs if you have a varied diet, not in comparison to smoking and alcohol. The processes and chemicals in UPFs are all different and it's going to take a long time to unpick cause and effect of individual ingredients and preservatives.

Until we know more, and alongside reducing the amount I eat generally, I would avoid consistently eating the same UPFs day in day out. Enjoy that week of lunchtime sandwiches on Warburton's bread, then make yourself some thick lentil soup the next week with no processed ingredients. Otherwise you are going to stress yourself out.

And god help you when you start thinking about the particles you breathe in every day and their correlation with heart disease, cancer and dementia. You can't control that as much as food intake but it would greatly improve all our health outcomes if we focused on air pollution. My point is that health anxiety isn't logical so be kind to yourself and just do your best.

Absolutely this!

Like Kate, I am under 50 and lived a seemingly healthy lifestyle yet still got cancer. What I do know is that having been in good health, of good weight, eating well, and been a smoker or drinker meant I was in a good place to deal with chemotherapy.

Yes, it's fair to say that I did have moments when I berated myself for not having drunk more, for giving up smoking (something I loved) nearly twenty years ago, and not eaten more sugar and french fries. But I didn't, and if I had, I probably would have found cancer treatment far tougher, and believe me, I found chemo incredibly hard to the degree that I almost quit halfway through.

Cancer is indiscriminate. Cancer can be inherited (which it was in my case), it can be caused by life style, or it can just happen - cancer starts when a single cell mutates. Despite all the money and research into cancer, they still are not sure why a single cell mutates and becomes cancerous. Even though my own genetics were the cause, it could have been so much worse had I lead a different kind of lifestyle. At the very least, my MDT have all told me the best thing I can do is continue to look after myself, to eat well and to exercise which I intend to do. It's much harder to implement these changes if one isn't used to them. Am thankful I don't have to change my diet or lifestyle.

You sound really strong.
I just didn't want to do it. (Since 13 yo).
💝

so much information is constantly battering me through the radio, media etc. about getting ill from various foods

This is most of the problem. Ever since we worked out that smoking causes cancer (which we think is obvious today, but took some of the finest scientific minds of the time, even if we ignore the fact that the tobacco companies were paying some people off), the media has been trying to find "the next tobacco". They aren't going to, because nobody has the statistical tools to do it. But they make their living by churning out tenuous interpretations of tiny scientific studies - often conducted on mice, if you scroll down to the last paragraph - for you to click on. And sadly, some scientists are prepared to say whatever it takes to get publicity for their studies and their next grant.

It's a highly politicised (with both a small p and a big left-right P) area, and of course we all love to read about things that appear to affect us. But it's mostly bollocks, which is why if you read the Daily Mail for long enough you can find an article about literally any food saying it causes cancer and another saying it prevents it (https://medicalevidence.wordpress.com/2010/07/26/the-daily-mail-list-of-things-that-cause-and-prevent-cancer/). Understanding how this "news" is produced, and realising that these people literally do not care whether what they write is true in any meaningful sense, is the first step to freeing yourself from these anxieties.

We also need to understand that in evolutionary terms we are all lucky to be living beyond about 40. We are only able to do that because we have built the modern world, with modern medicine and (in the West, but as of the last 30 to 40 years increasingly worldwide) an astonishingly reliable food supply. There is nothing "natural" about this state of affairs. Don't get me wrong, I like the modern world, I like it that women are not generally having 10 babies starting at age 14 with the kids having a 30% under-5 mortality rate and one in 10 women dying in childbirth, but that's only possible because we have all of the trappings of modern life, which include supermarket lasagne and the Daily Mail as well as organic quinoa'n'kale smoothies or whatever it is that some lifestyle celeb is selling this week.

Has your child always gotten ill so frequently? I’d say that’s really unusual.

Yet it comes under mental health

also the nhs don’t fund it when care home fees apply

I had a friend in her early 40s die recently. She was overweight and a smoker who rarely exercised. She died of heart failure. Now, I can’t be sure that her life style choices lead to her heart failure, but I’m sure it didn’t help when she became ill. Some illness I think are down to bad luck and some are preventable.

I agree with what most have said, you can't avoid cancer but u can take steps to decrease the chances, such as going for your cervical smears, mammograms, not smoking due to the higher risk of lung cancer and so on. However, Deborah (bowel babe) was a slim, vegan eating non-smoking picture of health and she got bowel cancer at 35 and died at 40. Cancer is a c* and I truly believe it does come down to genetics 99% of the time x