Why Us?

Apparently, alcohol consumption in your youth is a factor:

A prominent study published in Cancer Prevention Research tracked the lifetime drinking habits of men and found a striking correlation:

The Adolescent Risk: Men who consumed 7 or more drinks per week between the ages of 15 and 19 had more than triple the odds (3.2 times the risk) of being diagnosed with aggressive, high-grade prostate cancer compared to those who didn't drink.

The Young Adult Risk: This exact same triple-risk pattern held true for men who drank heavily during their 20s and 30s.

The Modern Consensus: A comprehensive global analysis published in Nature Health reviewed hundreds of health studies and confirmed that alcohol consistently raises the risk of prostate cancer, with the danger rising steadily alongside lifetime consumption.

This would certainly apply to me and most of my boomer buddies of the same age.

It's a fallacy to think that humans will never know disease if we live in some perfect state, drink water from mountain streams, eat vegetables grown by virgin nuns, etc. Disease is part of being alive, it happens and is mostly out of our control. Sure, don't smoke, don't drink too much, don't live on lard, Doritos and hot dogs, get exercise, go to the doctor periodically. But even when everything was done perfectly, we will all die and very few die from old age. Death happens, disease happens, cancer happens, prostate cancer happens. It's part of being human.

@jeff1963 - I’m reminded of my mom, who loved being alive, even the miserable bits.

She was an amateur medico (meaning she read all kinds of bonkers cure-alls and continually challenged and frustrated her doctors over anything and everything).

I called her on the phone one day, and she was filling me in on her latest run-in with a doctor, and she made the comment, “They don't want me to, but I’m gonna live as long as I can. I wanna live forever!”

I could tell she was eating something, so I asked her what she was having, and she said, “We just finished breakfast, fried eggs, fried potatoes, and some good ol’ homemade sausage. I’m sopping up the sausage grease with a biscuit right now.”

She did not, I don’t have to tell you, “live forever!” 😉

@smoore4 thank you for sharing.

@smoore4 "A comprehensive global analysis published in Nature Health reviewed hundreds of health studies and confirmed that alcohol consistently raises the risk of prostate cancer, with the danger rising steadily alongside lifetime consumption."

Or that excessive alcohol consumption and cancer risk share some common cause or origin (like ice cream consumption and shark attacks, which both peak during warm weather). We need to take correlations seriously — and there are lots of other good reasons to avoid heavy drinking anyway (liver damage, brain damage, and type 2 diabetes being high on the list) — but again, these are not simple control levers we can use to prevent cancer.

@smoore4 Those are interesting studies and statistics. I drank heavily as a teenager, and all through my 20s. However I quit drinking on Oct 16, 1984, clean and sober for 41 years. BUT, my father passed from esophageal cancer when he was 56, and between me and my 5 siblings, 4 of us have had cancer, 2 prostate, 1 colorectal and 1 breast cancer. So, perhaps my youthful alcohol consumption played a role in my prostate cancer, however I would wager my cancer is more likely from my genetics. Surprisingly, my mother passed only 3 years ago at the age of 94 from natural causes, never had any form of cancer. She was as sharp as a tack right up to her passing.

@carlsbadguy

I am so sorry to hear that : (.
Did you ever seek genetic testing ? It might be wise thing to do since it is important to know if your cancer was caused by inherited genes. There are nowadays therapies that are targeted toward certain gene mutations like BRCA etc. It will also help with risk stratification for recurrence etc.

@carlsbadguy Quite likely genetics. Unfortunately, current genetic testing barely scratches the surface for cancer. They can spot obvious stuff like BRCA1/2 — which is huge progress from a couple of decades ago — but don't really understand most of the complex, shifting combinations that create a genetic predisposition to cancer.

Then there's also just random chance. Cells divide all the time, and with more than 30 trillion cells (30,000,000,000,000) in the human body, and ~3 billion letters in the human genome to copy with each cell's division, mutations happen fairly regularly. Almost always, the mutations are harmless, or the immune system catches the mutated cells and kills them off, or they just die off on their own, but every once in a while one of them manages to hang on and start reproducing out of control. Then you have what we call "cancer".

Interesting about the alcohol. Can't remember where is was but I actually read alcohol in moderation helped to prevent prostate cancer. Also read if you ejaculate 20+ times per month you would never get prostate cancer. When I read 20 times per month my first thought was my body would be to tired to get cancer, ha-ha.

@jeff1963 "It's a fallacy to think that humans will never know disease if we live i..., etc. Disease is part of being alive, ... we will all die and very few die from old age. "

Agreed! CNN is running this series "Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever". I hope it does not lure people into being obsessed with the idea.

In Jonathan Swift's satire titled "Gulliver's Travels", in Gulliver's third journey he finds "Struldbruggs", individuals who live forever. His humorous story should give people pause: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struldbrugg

A more realistic view can be found here, in the discussions of "Aging Well": https://connect.mayoclinic.org/group/aging-well/