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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> You are making the statement, you prove it.
> 
Bev, it's easily proved.  But first we'd have to address the thick fog 
surrounding this discussion such as:

(Marie)
>You can still get run down on that weekly run. This argument is....
just.....silly.

How do you discuss this issue amid the inability to grasp the idea that a 
person who makes an auto trip 90 times a month is a greater risk, exposure, 
to 
having and accident (and therefore a fatal accident) than someone who makes a 
trip once a month?  The question isn't absolutist, a matter of eliminating 
all 
risks for all diseases world without end, amen.  

If I followed yours and Marie's line of thinking, there's no point in locking 
up the hens in the henhouse at night because a hawk might get them during the 
day, or they might accidently find something poisonous or a meteorite might 
fall on one of them.  Which will keep a flock of chickens providing enough 
eggs 
for your homestead, preventing all the losses you can or adopting the 
attitude that if you end up with enough chickens laying eggs it's all luck, 
fate, 
good chicken genetics?  You management of your chickens is 99.9% of how well 
the 
flock turns out. Look at all the posts you've had about chicken coops and 
what 
to do to protect your chickens.

Yet, keeping consistent with your defense of the role of human genetics and 
human luck, the prevention and precautions in raising chickens would be 
trivial 
and insignificant.  You seem to see how that in chicken raising, almost all 
the factors affecting the outcome of the flock are in your hands but when it 
comes to your own health and prosperity, you don't see it and ascribe a far 
too 
greater role in luck and a roll of the dice.

A case in point would be your story of the ovarian cysts.  You opine that 
genetics puts you at greater risk for ovarian cancer.  And yet, whatever risk 
there is, lifestyle choices multiply that risk and become the dominant factor:

>From a 10 year study in Sweden:

*312 women had either invasive or borderline ovarian cancer
Current smokers had a 60 percent greater risk of ovarian cancer than those 
who had never smoked when they enrolled in the study

*Former smokers were at a 50 percent increased risk of ovarian cancer than 
those who never smoked

*Women who smoked for 25 years or more and were still smoking had twice the 
risk of developing ovarian cancer as those who never smoked

One single lifestyle choice DOUBLEs the risk.  How much more is this true if 
the person is already genetically predisposed to ovarian cancer.

Then this from an Australian study (the URLs are hugely long, googling would 
be more likely to bring up these sites ....hey, *more likely*, I forget 
that's 
a concept not on the table here).

"The doctors found that as women became more obese, their risk of ovarian 
cancer increased substantially. Women who were at the top of the scale (the 
15% 
of the women with the highest BMI among the entire group) had almost double 
the 
chance of developing ovarian cancer."
    
Double the chance for smoking, double the chance for obesity (and their term 
for obesity was quite inclusive!) and you have two lifestyle choices that 
quadruples your risk for ovarian cancer.

On the flip side there are lifestyle choices that reduce the risk of ovarian 
cancer:
This from an American Cancer Society study:

"Women who said they ate two or more one-half cup servings per week had a 40% 
decrease in risk for ovarian cancer, compared to women who reported eating 
tomato sauce less than once a month.

And women who ate five or more servings (four cut sticks) of raw carrots per 
week had a 54% decrease in their risk for ovarian cancer, compared to women 
who reported eating raw carrots less than once a month,".  
    
These are inedpendent statistics so they concant.  

Before I go on, I want to point out some arithmatic based on where we draw 
the line at normalcy.  Notice that the odds stated for smoking and overweight 
are espressed as increased odds while the odds for eating the vegies is 
expressed as reduced odds.  That's because we draw the ine of normalcy at the 
woman 
who is not overweight nor smokes but at the same time doesn't regularly eat 
vegies.  If we instead draw the line at vegie eating being the norm, what was 
a 
50% decrease in ovarian cancer from regularly eating tomatoes now becomes a 
100% 
increase if you don't!  And more than 65% additional increase if you also 
leave out the (now normal) carrots.

To continue, then:

"
Researchers studied more than 2,100 women and found that those who exercised 
more than 6 hours per week were 27% less likely to develop ovarian cancer 
than 
women who exercised less than 1 hour each week. "
http://www.mercola.com/2000/oct/22/exercise_ovarian_cancer.htm (the only URL 
so far that isn't five lines long)

Again, set the bar of normalcy at a vigorous lifestyle and it isn't a 27% 
reduction, but a 37% increase in risk if you don't.

I could go through the numbers for consuption of whole grains and the direct 
affect on the odds of ovarian cancer, stress, breastfeeding, and a number of 
other things that have shown to reduce the odds of ovarian cancer some 
significant percentage.

Starting with the overweight woman who smokes, did not breastfeed her 
children, does not exercise, does not eat vegetables or whole grains on a 
regular 
basis etc. etc. and we conant all the odds, we end up with and incidence of 
ovarian cancer of far less than one case in 500 for that population, and 
possibly 
lower than one in 1000 depending on how the individual factors combine (for 
instance, is lower weight a result of more exercise, etc.)

My premise was that your odds are better spending your attention and energy 
on preventing a disease rather than cure it.  Suppose you DO get ovarian 
cancer?  The present five year survival rate is 50%.

Very clearly I've proven my point and I could do it for almost any condition 
or disease.   

Nothing I can do for those who don't understand the notion of 'odds' and 
increasing them in their favor.

But what I find unfathomable is the hot and quick defense of the role of 
genetics in something like ovarian cancer and yet an activity that increases 
the 
odds of contracting and dying from the disease by 50% is dismissed lightly 
rather than an abstenance from it being championed.

The staticstics show that even if you were riddled hoplessly with the worst 
genes possible for ovarian cancer, surgery and even histerecomy will not 
improve your odds as much as quiting smoking and losing weight (that is, even 
after 
a histerectomy you can still get ovarian cancer at the pelvic lining where 
the 
ovaries were).   Add all the other risk factors and it becomes no contest.