Fracking and your glands!

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Bod writes

Is it though? Or does living longer increase the risk?

[Bod]

Good point.

[Huge]

Tosh. Cancer is (generally) a disease of old age. More of us are living long enough to get it than ever before.

[tony sayer]

More Develop it perhaps....

>

[Tim Lamb]

In message , tony sayer writes

Prostate cancer is of particular concern to me. My understanding is that roughly 1 in 4 prostate issues are cancerous. Of those in men over 70 most, hitherto, would have died from other causes before the cancer became a serious problem.

[dennis]

You have to die of something. If one major cause of death is eliminated something else will kill you and that will appear to be getting worse. Who knows what we will be dying from in 50 years when cancer has been (maybe) eliminated.

[js.b1]

The immune system is extremely weak at detecting cancer.

- Detection is poor, it is more aimed at bacteria invasion

- Response is poor, inflammation is the typical response more as a result o f the damage caused to nearby cells (cancer cells invade & destroy neighbou ring tissue, very effectively in the final stages).

Instead cells manage themselves, self destructing - just as we shed damaged skin. The problem is when a "reproduction turned off cell" gets turned on by a virus (such as one of the many types of HPV). The virus just wants to replicate and if it triggers uncontrolled replication of the cell it is cal led cancer.

Making the immune system recognise cancer is VERY effective and VERY promis ing for some, perhaps many, cancers. It is thought that the EXTREMELY few i nstances of often verylarge cancers or even terminal cancers is due to the immune system somehow recognising the cells as foreign. Interestingly this may actually occur with more cancers than thought - the primary cancer vani shes, but the secondary etc remain. Sometimes only secondaries are found (t hey are of a type related to the original cancer type re location), and the primary is never found.

Tailoring immunological response is perhaps the gold plated solution, but i t is at a very early stage. Cancer cells are very very similar to the host, hence we have to use quite ridiculous blunt tools like surgery, chemo & ra dio and have near neglidgible cure risk for most Type-IV cancers.

Now, if you are worried about certain types of cancer, you can... a) go to your GP b) buy a good online test from a place such as Oxford Screening, eg, Bowel (MPK2 if I recall) or Prostate (PSA) which can be done at home and sent to them c) buy a private MRI/CT scan from a private hospital such as Spire and othe rs; about £350-780 depending on "per organ or whole body". You may need a private referral, although I think you can go direct and bypass your GP if you doubt they will be co-operative (some are, a handful are not).

I have no relation to any of the above, but one relative would have been sa ved by even the simple FOB bowel test (in the words of the BUPA Oncologist "how many more are going to come from that practice here to die!" raging at the surgeon at yet another DNR despite £28,000 of private insurance prem iums and another who would have avoided a right screw up from even an X-ray never mind a scan.

Do NOT presume from the slightly cranky media advertising that cancer is le ss of a problem than it was - it is certainly NOT. It can devastate a famil y, and medicine has a habit of burying its mistakes so late diagnoses can b e left very very late indeed as the witness is not around and medical recor ds are easily rewritten. You need to be pro-active on cancer, bluntly I thi nk too much money is spent on medical insurance rather than routine basic t esting. Case in point, £28,000 in premiums and the symptoms were liver-si de a visually marble lumpy mess, visible veins, sank in a pool like a brick , no energy, weight loss, dancing feet (local seizures), lumps under arms, pain under ribs, pain in back, pain called sciatica by physio, pain in uppe r back, tremor, collapse in decision making. The GP for 2yrs stating he was imagining it, the Oncologist absolutely ballistic in the corridor of the h ospital at the surgeon covering it up. The GP pushed into early retirement taking revenge on another relative for "loss of my rightful earnings". Not an unusual case as Stafford et al have demonstrated.

Remember a surgeon knows what cancer you have when you walk through the doo r from some general practices, the legacy we have is a substantial number o f hereditary medics courtesy of the imbeciles at Cambridge and their "natur al order". That was the blunt admission of Liverpool universities Dean of t he School of Medicine in 1989, quite a few Coroners will atest likewise. No ttingham is no better and there are plenty of skeletons in London. Medicine is an imperfect science even before you consider the human factor.

If you THINK you have a problem - it can be as little as £10-100 for a pr ivate test. An old medical school joke - if you want a proper diagnosis ask for a medical for a £200,000 life insurance policy and watch the differe nt response. Cancer is NOT a static cellular system, it evolves over time a nd for many that bit earlier diagnosis means the 5yr diagnosis is not 87-2% , but 92%+.

Do NOT trust a doctor just because they seem affable, they STILL get paid w hatever happens to you and their golden handshake is over £100,000 tax fr ee.

Prostrate can bite at age 43, 2 neighbours up is dead from it, they are in a Static Caravan, they had private medical insurance, it got them different wallpaper when a £100 test annually would have got them their father bac k (3 kids, all pretty young, 400 yard stare).

[The Natural Philosopher]

sheer boredom probably.

[harryagain]

Well you have to die of something. As one disease becomes curable you are left with the ones that aren't.

[harryagain]

TB was eradicated in the UK until immigrants brought it back.

[tony sayer]

I had some rectal bleeding a while ago just put it down to the English disease" piles" hereditary 'y know;?.

But did a bit of Googling as I didn't want to pester my doc with such a seemingly trivial issue but did all the same, one doc dismissed it who was a locum my usual doc some weeks later just asked if it were bright or Dull red when I told her it was dull I was in for a colonscopy a week later.

Not a bad treatment it did show up a large pre cancerous polyp which left a while longer would have been Bowel Cancer;(..

Some excellent vids and pix here well worth a look..

Might I urge anyone here with ANY rectal bleeding or blood on your poo to have it checked out and soon...

Yes happens .. so I hear:(!!..

Dunno now .. Cambridge and the local hospital here Addenbrookes are excellent at most things and its growing all the time like a small town now almost. Did very well for me in there after a severe fall and fractured skull a while back. A lot of open minded discussion and thought and now research which I was asked to partake in using 3D scanning systems fascinating stuff. Most of the senior staff don't seem to be that old nowadays;!..

A lot of the time its getting the patient to seek help, thats what a couple of doctor friends tell me;!..

Course the preventive system might be organised a bit better..

[polygonum]

And the BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guerin) vaccination is being investigated as a way of treating several other diseases such as MS, Parkinson's, leprosy, some cancers.

[js.b1]

That is a fundamental problem with men, many almost wait until a bollock dr ops off. Women tend to be a little quicker - in their favour re time.

NHS is poorly preventative, but that is leading to the once "insurance beca use NHS is slow" becoming "insurance / tests / scans because (correctly) th e NHS does nothing without symptoms".

Re PSA surgery, it is possible to do biopsy (minor surgery) to assess wheth er enlargement is benign or whether it is more serious. The same is develop ing for Breast Cancer which splits the fence on "yes, pre-neoplasm cells, b ut they will never become malignant and enlargement will be immaterial even by the time the patient dies hopefully decades later of some other cause".

Bowel cancer is easy to catch via the FOC test - but it can false +ve on bl ood from anywhere in the digestive system (stomach, duodenal ulcers). The M

2PK (think that is correct) is much more accurate re negligible false posit ive.

Lung cancer is much more difficult to catch because it sheds so badly, anyt hing much larger than a couple of pea lengths is pretty much going to be (e ventual) cause of death. Skin cancer (SCC) on the head/face/ears is a growi ng problem and does have a frustrating habit of easily spreading to the mul titude of nodes as well as delayed metastatis.

Hypochondriacs, you need 3 symptoms present and 5 NOT present, which online and self diagnosis will not tell you. A routine FOC/M2PK and PSA test is w orth having. As to young not dying, 2 colleagues died of cancer before 30 o ut of 21 in that particular group. Cancer happens to someone else, until it happens to you. Viruses DO play a much larger part in cancer than previous ly thought, another 3 types of HPV will soon be earmarked as causing cancer . In addition only recently are path labs testing cancers for Human Papillo ma Virus - it was not screened for before, but it is a significant factor ( may not be trigger, but affects the progression of the disease re less/more aggressive).

Tuning the immune system to attack cancer is a reality - it has been tried once before and unfortunately it attacked normal cells also, but recent att empts have been noticeably VERY successful. Likewise drugs to sensitise can cer cells to Chemo/Radio allowing much lower doses is improving greatly - e ven modified Curcumin.

The idea that life expectancy will continue to rise is simply drivel on the basis of actuarial tables being rewritten to consider the impact of massiv e obesity: diabetes, stroke/MI, cancer, liver disease, vascular dementia. Y ES a segment of the population may show increasing years, but a growing and eventual majority will have declining life expectancy.

[tony sayer]

They have AFAIK been sending them out round this area recently..

Supposed to be good for Arthritis which is one misery I can do without OK not likely to see you off but whilst here can be a pox of a nuisance;!..

A CCI blood pressure treatment is looking promising for that so it seems Often the case that one drug for one application sometimes shows up as good for something else:)..

[Vir Campestris]

Which of the diseases does it help with?

Andy

[tony sayer]

Amlodpine .. a Calcium Channel Inhibitor used for blood pressure control applications. Undergoing investigation for Alzheimer's disease and related vascular events in the brain...

[Vir Campestris]

Interesting, thanks.

BTW not Alzheimer's, vascular dementia. Which ties in better with its use for blood pressure :). And you've lost an I.

Andy

[Huge]

And it causes monster constipation.

[Vir Campestris]

OK, so you lose your mind, or you need to eat loads of fibre.

Ah, those difficult choices...

Andy

[The Natural Philosopher]

depression, fatigue, muscle pains and stiffness...