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Comment by AnonCoward42 | Hacker News Reader

The obsession that you can live longer by doing this healthy trick is not really helpful. Ultimately you are going to die of cancer if you avoid any other cause of death (and even that is impossible).

What's annoying me is the survivor bias. How do you know that people wouldn't have died earlier if they didn't do what supposedly caused the death over decades? Let alone that you cannot actually pinpoint what caused the cancer (but guess of course).

I think you shouldn't smoke and you probably should avoid alcohol or only consume in considerate amounts and don't eat like it's your last meal over and over, but you can't just say don't drink, smoke and overeat (or even don't eat this, but that) and pretend that it is better.

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The obsession that you can live longer by doing this healthy trick is not really helpful.

It's not simply a matter of 'avoiding cancer' but more 'avoiding a slow, painful death due to cancer'. It's not even a matter of "you have to die of something!" Most forms of cancer are not a nice way to die. If you can avoid getting it so that you die of something else, especially something really nasty like lung cancer, you definitely want to give that a go.

I'm old enough to have seen friends and relatives die of cancer and I really don't want to go that way. Seeing the affect on those people, and even more on their families who had to watch them fade away, was $^&%ing horrible.

What I really want is more approachable Euthanasia. I’m not afraid of dying, it will happen to all of us, but I dont want for me or my relatives a months of pain when everyone knows it will only lead to death.

> you can't just say don't drink, smoke and overeat (or even don't eat this, but that) and pretend that it is better.

Okay then, nothing you can do I guess. You're hereby absolved from behaving responsibly towards your own body. Is that better?

> Okay then, nothing you can do I guess. You're hereby absolved from behaving responsibly towards your own body. Is that better?

>> I think you shouldn't smoke and you probably should avoid alcohol or only consume in considerate amounts and don't eat like it's your last meal over and over, but you can't just say don't drink, smoke and overeat (or even don't eat this, but that) and pretend that it is better.

I addressed it already, but let me add this: Just be sensible and do what is best for you (in terms of health). There is no single way for everyone to do it right.

The advice can be more nuanced.

We know that processed red meat definitely causes cancer. We also know that it doesn't cause very much cancer. Our message isn't "stop eating processed red meat", it's "if you have a family history of colon cancer; if you know you have a genetic predisposition to colon cancer; if colon cancer is something you're worried about, then you may wish to reduce the amount of processed red meat that you eat".

Well, you could use your reasoning to justify drinking and smoking. Why did you stop there? People live to old age despite doing those things. And how can you actually be sure that it's the drinking/smoking that killed you? People get lung cancer and cardiac events without doing either.

The truth of the matter is that all we can do is try to stack the deck in our favor. A major part of life is deciding which trade-offs matter to you.

> The truth of the matter is that all we can do is try to stack the deck in our favor. A major part of life is deciding which trade-offs matter to you.

Which is, what I said. And the trade-off can even be smoking or drinking alcohol, even if this does not seem right (to you or me). Paracelsus applies.

Large population based studies tell us what caused the cancer. If smokers are 20x more likely to get lung cancer we know that smoking causes cancer.

Avoid it long enough for more effective treatments of cancers to exist

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