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  • From: "Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>
  • To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Insurance
  • Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:30:47 -0800

----- Original Message ----- From: <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com>

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.


It's a Y, not an I. From the Gr hytera - womb, NL ectomia: Gr ek - out.

That isn't ovarian cancer, it is endometrial or primary peritoneal cancer. "Ovarian" cancer is frequently the result of migration to the ovaries "from" endometrial tissues and peritoneum. Nor is endometrial or peritoneal cancer generally the result of cells traveling from the ovaries. They are generally primary cancers, not metastisis from ovarian cancer. Further, studies show that having a hysterectomy with BSO prevents both ovarian, endometrial and primary peritoneal cancers. It is called a prophalactic hysterectomy and is what is the standard for women who have a family history of agressive breast and ovarian cancers.

Regardless of smoking, eating or over-eating, age is the dominent factor in who is diagnosed with cancer. 35% of the diagnosis are in women 65 to 79 years of age.

And while we are playing with statistics, let's use them all. First degree relative with a history of ovarian cancer is a predictor of mutation status. HBOC syndrome is something you left out. Women with an altered BRCA1 gene are 50-70% more likely to get breast cancer and 20-40% more likely to get ovarian cancer. Women with an altered BRCA2 gene are 55-80% more likely to get breast cancer, and 10-20% more likely to get ovarian cancer.

As to your reference to breastfeeding, that would only indicate a possible 19% reduction in risk whicle one pregancy is 40% and by the fifth pregnancy the risk reduction is 67%. Oral contracptives give a 34% risk reduction, with an increase to 70% after 6 or more years of use.

Hmmm, I guess since, according to the World of Clan, all of these things are the result of choice, and since over 50% of all cancers in women occur after the age of 65, then we can cure all those cancers by putting an age limit on women. Shame on them for reaching such an age, I mean, after all, that is their fault and something they could control.

Lynda




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