Obesity Tied to Higher Cancer Rates in Younger People

Although I didn’t watch the Super Bowl, like many others I like to watch the commercials the day after. Besides the clever ads for Pringles and Doritos, surely not things your great grandmother would have recognized as “food”, I was struck by the commercial (apparently considered controversial because of its winking references to porn addiction) involving a middle-aged man addicted to frozen food meals. I particularly noticed the scene where the husband pushes away his wife’s apparently home-cooked plate of food in favor of the pre-prepared frozen dish. Living in a country where food is, ideally, supposed to be tasted and savored, the fact that these meals are sold under the brand name “Devour” really made me wince. Although I can appreciate the creative genius and sense of humor behind such advertising, America’s continuing addiction to processed foods, high in fat, sugar and salt, and the resulting obesity epidemic, is no laughing matter.

As a physician, I would tell my obese patients to lose weight and hope that they wouldn’t ask me how, before I retired. If they asked, I would send them to a nutritionist who probably didn’t know either but would give them a reduced calorie diet, leading to weight loss, slower metabolism and hunger. Nature’s way of keeping you “healthy” at your previous weight. Now I am 35 pounds lighter for 3-4 years. The low carb diet is the only one studied that does not have to place a caloric restriction on the subjects. You do have to stay low carb but a 100 gram carb limit, not impossible, will keep your weight down. Processed food particularly meats are not good for the bacteria in your gut. The processed agents are there to keep the food stable, but they are not kind to your friends in the gut. Lean red meats cause no cardiac risk unless they are processed.

I spoke to a cab driver from Somalia the other day. He said “all of our health issues are due to not having enough to eat. All of your health issues are due to eating too much”

Just because you can find it in your grocery store doesn't mean it's not deadly. Eat real foods and for Pete's sake LEARN about nutrition! Parents who fail to do this are failing their children.

Good article, but what is the absolute increase in the cancer rates? Saying that cancer rates doubled gets the headline. But mentioning the absolute rate increase would give us readers proper understanding and perspective. For example: if the non-obese population has a 1 in 100 chance of getting a type of cancer, while an obese person has a 1 in 50 chance, that is a 100% relative increase. It's also an absolute increase of just 1%.

Too many of our frazzled, overworked, undereducated and generally unhappy fellow humans are substituting easy fast junk food for comfort and warmth. It's a terrible thing to watch happen.

I know two brothers who are in their early 70's. One has eaten a pretty healthy diet his entire life - both he and his wife love to cook and I can promise you that junk food never enters the door of his house. Both have had the occasional weight problem, usually due to loving all this good food a bit too much. This brother is now probably about 25 lbs overweight, mainly due to some limitations to his mobility these days. The other brother? He has been committing suicide by food now for at least 40 years. He is so enormous that he can no longer get in an automobile - if he goes somewhere it's in an ambulance in a wheelchair. He lives in a nursing home as he cannot properly care for himself anymore. But he can still order in order after order of junk/fast food, all of which he consumes. One brother has myasthenia gravis, prostate cancer and multiple myeloma. Guess which brother is is. NO, it's NOT the grossly obese brother, it's his brother who has eaten properly his entire life and is only a bit overweight, not really much considering his age and overall health. Life is often VERY, VERY unfair...

It's astonishing how much harsh judgement, in all directions, people have about obesity, cancer and who is at fault. It's a multiple-cause problem which can be traced to many things, some as mundane as the current size of dinner plates to the addition of high fructose corn syrup every food imaginable. Obesity is not the natural human condition and it causes system-wide inflammation - hence multiple possible outcomes. But judgements, name calling, holier-than-thou pronouncements - honestly have any of those thing ever helped anyone succeed at change?

I see one of the very top myeloma specialists and researchers in the world and he said that myeloma is absolutely not tied to obesity, nor is it a “lifestyle” cancer. Many myeloma patients gain weight after diagnosis because a primary treatment is intense steroids that make you gain weight. But that’s a consequence of the disease, not a cause. In fact, myeloma is still incurable because they don’t know the cause for sure, though it has been linked to toxic exposure to agent orange, glysophate (round-up), 9/11 and other environmental triggers. It is not food related as even the founder of organic farming and many other “wellness fanatics” in have actually died from myeloma.

Terribly written article. More young people are getting college degrees and more young people are getting cancer. Correlation or causation? The article offers no insights into specifically how obesity causes cancer, to what degree it causes increases in getting various cancers, if these are statistically significant increases, etc.... I’m sure the Lancet published this information. Why would you leave that core information out?

Convenience is killing us.

As a formerly obese person (300+ in 2015, 152 now), could it be that obese people are not going to the doctor? I know I limited my contact with my primary when she only told me over and over to lose weight and I wasn't trying hard enough or following the diets she gave me well enough. Fast forward - she had me on diets that were about 1800 calories a day. I would follow her diets to the letter - lose a few pounds then gain it back. I got tired of being called a liar and lazy, when I knew I wasn't. A while back I had my resting metabolic rate tested - it is 967 without any activity - about 1100 with sedentary activity - which means her 1800 was still 700 calories too many for my body to lose weight on. Physicians do not look beyond the two page handout on the Mediterranean diet. For me, what worked was very low carb and high protein - sort of Atkins - and an acknowledgement that there was a magic number for me which was not that of the "average" adult. Metabolic assessments need to be part of this along with determining whether people are carb resistant. For me, carbs are like heroin- now I just don't eat them if they are processed.

Yet again, a newspaper producing TERRIBLE science writing about the obesity issue. The "ties" you are referring to are CORRELATIONS and do not prove CAUSATION. There have been a huge number of changes in the way people live their lives in the past 50 years, which may CORRELATE with obesity. Telling the public that being fat causes cancer perpetuates stigma, and promotes the flawed idea that dieting can help promote health. Diets do not work, with studies showing over and over again that 95% of people gain all the weight back, plus more, after a short period of being a "healthy weight" after dieting. Get it together, Nicholas Bakalar.

As a species we were likely meant to breastfeed for several years. This is practice rare in today's America. But breastfeeding on demand is one of the best ways to teach a human being self regulation regarding food. Breastfed kids are leaner adults. Cheap addictive, sugary and transfatty foods are another kind of heroin... that kills you more slowly. Lack of self regulation and lack of attachment-- both very influenced by babyhood parenting practices-- underlie obesity, drug addiction, depression, and a lot of our modern social ills.

Europe bans folic acid and folate enrichment of grains and bread due to the association of too much folic acid with colon-rectal cancer. Yet, the US requires all flour and bread be enriched with folic acid to prevent spina bifida. Wouldn't it be wiser to recommend to women who wish to get pregnant to increase their intake of folic acid instead of making everyone in the US swallow an excess folic acid, which increase the risk for colon and rectal cancer?

This article seems to be saying that if obesity causes a cancer, obesity causes that cancer. Isn't that tautological?

Why do we need a doctor to tell you are fat? Just look in the mirror. Buy a Fitbit and get no less than 10,000 steps of exercise a day. Couch potatoes get fat no matter what they eat.

These results suggest to me that the same factors that cause obesity are causing cancer in these patients. Two factors which have increased over the years are the amount of junk food and the amount of sugar in the diet. I suggest that researchers focus on those factors.

As a traveller and a cook, I love to take notice of the availability of different kinds of food. The cliche about the French being generally well fed and generally fit can perhaps be explained in their markets. The average grocery store in France has only a tiny selection of what we would call junk food, a small shelf or two of potato chips and snacks. Processed heavily salted and sweetened fatty foods are almost non-existent. Enter a Walgreen's so-called pharmacy and you are immediately greeted by shelves loaded with giant plastic barrels of every kind of factory-generated junk concoction imaginable whose only value is to the stockholder of that particular manufacturer. Cafes in France and Italy serve coffee. Starbucks is akin to a caffeinated version of the Dairy Queen. I feel sick to my stomach just watching someone eat/drink the latest dome-topped fat and sugar conveyance marketed under the guise of coffee. Of course there are treats to be had, but they come after a healthy relatively small meal. In Canada we actually refer to American portions in restaurants when we travel in the US. It is shocking. Bottom line: this kind of food production and marketing is new and should be treated as a public health crisis.

I'm all for people loving themselves as they go through the weight loss process, but the handling of obese people with kid gloves has to stop. Being obese increase the likelihood of a variety of diseases and I am not surprised that cancer is one of them. Losing weight can alleviate a multitude of risk factors. I, for one, was obese less than 2 years ago and started experiencing higher blood pressure, blood sugar, and triglycerides. Furthermore, my thyroid was not functioning properly. Fast forward to today and I am 40 lbs lighter, have perfect blood pressure, sugar, triglycerides, and a normal thyroid. While losing weight may not be the smoking gun to solve all health problems, it a strong start.

Obesity is a disease usually followed by diabetes , high blood pressure and a laundry list of other non communicable diseases. It's going to take more than a change of diet to fix a problem in this country where 2/3 of Americans are overweight. We are being poisoned by unhealthy processed foods. Thanks to fast foods, we now have an unhealthy generation giving birth to unhealthy babies. Why can't anyone see where this is going?

At 55, I found myself flirting with the obese label on the height weight table. Frustrated that my doctor would never mention my weight, and thinking that it would provide the extra motivation I needed, I asked my doctor to just tell me to drop some pounds. She did. Funny thing happened. When my next annual exam came around, having gained another 5 pounds, I didn’t want to return to the doctor to face my failure – even though I had been the one to instigate the “lose weight” order! Then I discovered what worked for me. It was a ketogenic diet. I set a modest weight loss goal of 2 lbs per week. With the essential (for me) help of a carb tracking ap on my phone, I dove in and began losing weight – without feeling deprived or hungry. I could do this! I was able to maintain my diet while preparing full carb meals for other family members. Even with a few falls of the wagon, after 4 months I had lost 20 lbs. I see some comments dismissing a ketogenic diet as unhealthy and unsustainable. I’ve not yet been back to my doctor. I do wonder what the effect has been on my cholesterol and triglycerides, which were low when I started. I would hope that doctors would support patients who try a ketogenic diet with more frequent monitoring if needed. Obesity is also unhealthy and unsustainable. We all have different starting points, various reasons for our extra weight, and different stressors in our lives. We have to find works for us.

Correlation is not causation. Obesity might be a byproduct of other health conditions, along with cancer. Obesity in and of itself isn't necessarily a problem, since people of all body sizes can have metabolic syndrome. We need to stop focusing on obesity per se and shift to actual health markers.

Recommending that doctors assess the weight status of patients seems like a feeble response to the obesity epidemic: some doctors already do that and the ones who don't have their reasons. This kind of article fits into the medical model most often used in this Health Section: Doctors should do more, and more medical research is needed. This model addresses one aspect of containing physical problems but ignores many other contributing factors.

I feel that physicians and physician assistants are not mentioning weight or obesity as much these days because of "fat shaming" and fear the patient will not return. So many patients walking into a doctor's office over 35 are overweight that it is epidemic. I could be wrong and I am not a medical practitioner but I do know one woman that never went back after being told she was obese. She died at 52 of a massive heart attack.

This shouldn't be a big surprise, read what researchers like Dr. Valter Longo has found with the role of diet and longevity, and it isn't a big surprise. Cancer cells feed off of high protein, high fat diets, not to mention the sugar that goes along with this (not just intake, but obesity causes insulin resistance, leading to hig h blood sugar levels). And once someone has cancer, being obese makes treatments less effective, when cells are overfed normal ones are weakened, and cancer cells gorge themselves, and chemo for example if I read the studies correctly, end up killing healthy cells while not being able to kill the cancer cells as well. Not going to matter much, the obesity epidemic is very much tied to the corporate food industry, the corn industry, meat industry, packaged food industry, and even though we talk about the high cost of medical care, we continue to subsidize the very thing causing most of it. Trillions of dollars are going to keep people alive suffering from heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other lifestyle illnesses, if people were eating healthy that number would plummet. Older people wouldn't be on 15 drugs, either.....

My dad was always a heavy set dude, he was really tall so it kind of "evens out" but he would generally be considered overweight. We tried for years to get him to lose weight and my mother drastically changed his diet. Nevertheless, he's been diagnosed with two (pancreatic, multiple myeloma) of the cancers mentioned in this study. By the grace of God he has survived both, but I can't help but wonder what earlier intervention might have done for him. He finally did lose a decent amount of weight.. all it took was continuous blasts of radioactive energy.

Unless somebody has specific information about an impending bout of famine or generalized starvation, then there's absolutely nothing good that comes out of obesity. Full Stop. I appreciate these articles, but at this point I feel like all of this information is falling on deaf ears. Those who are obese today aren't that dissimilar - in my opinion - than those who continue to smoke despite knowing the potential for complications.

Being in my late sixties, I have noticed so much more of our life centers around processed foods. I have come to distrust our food industry, a profit center which is not about our health. I personally feel the fast foods, the processed foods and lack of activity have created an unhealthy America. I have returned to growing fresh vegetables in my own garden, without pesticides and additives, doing as much as I can to not eat from our "corporate" food industry. I wish we could return to fresh gardens and educate our young about what used to be. Sitting in front of tech devices have not helped our nor my own obesity levels. Michelle Obama had the right idea, involving the young to learn about good health.

It is important to consider processed and artificial foods. As many of these foods and refined sugars have contributed greatly to the obesity crisis, going on a diet that uses more processed foods and artificial sugars may also have an increased risk for disease. Maintaining a healthy weight due to a healthy diet made up of whole foods and exercise is what will give the health benefit rather than simply decreasing the number on the scale.

Ketogenic diet, folks. Watch The Magic Pill on Netflix.

We consume so much of everything, and especially of junk food, that it's starting to kill us. I hope we start doing something worldwide about obesity. It's a serious health problem. I feel like one day, we'll compare the obesity/junk food problem to cigarette, when we discovered in the 1950-60s that it caused serious health issues. This article is already pointing this out, but just like with the first studies around cigarettes, will probably not be taken seriously.