"Action in the face of uncertainty" by Dave deBronkart

Buckwirth said:

Prevention vs Cure
I'll start with a link to a science based review of The China Study (not syndrome):

Science Based Medicine and the China Study

Now, onto your questions, each of which is valid:

why then do vegetarians have a higher colon cancer rate than non-vegetarians?

Not sure that it is a higher rate, but there is no question that even a vegan can get CRC. Depending on your source, the lifetime risk for getting CRC is between 5% and 7%, and the data seems to show that a diet high in fiber and low in red/processed meat can lower that risk by about 30%. What that actually means is that your lifetime risk would go from 7% to 5%. Nice reduction, but in real life terms I went from a 93% chance that I would not get CRC to a 95% chance I would not get it. If I lived my whole life this way, I would not get out of bed in the morning.

Exercise cut your cancer risk by a huge amount. Why then are so many people who post on these cancer sites runners and very active people when others like myself and my mother and many other relatives who are not very active not getting cancer?

Pete can be hard to understand, but what he means is that exercise as adjuvant therapy cuts the risk of CRC recurrence by 50%. Making up numbers here, but say a stage 2 CRC patient has a recurrence risk of 30%. If they just do a reasonable amount of physical exercise every week, they can cut that down to a 15% risk of recurrence, a number that is probably equal to the benefit gained by adjuvant chemotherapy.

Not all data is equal. Recently, in a discussion of chiropractic, someone posted that a Pubmed study showed chiropractic to be better than placebo for back pain. That may be true, but the real question is how it does against current standard of care (if I remember correctly, that would be about equal). So, if I can take a months worth of muscle relaxants, at a Wal-Mart cost of $4, or go to a chiropractor for six sessions, at a $40 a pop, expecting the same outcome, which would I choose?

Each of the individual stories is problematic as well. Pete believes that his supplements kept his blood counts up during chemo. That may be so, of course it could also be that he is an otherwise healthy 44 year old, and statistically healthy 44 year old's handle Folfox pretty well. I know I took none of the supplements Pete did, am about 10 years older, have had significantly more chemo treatments and my blood counts have always stayed in the normal range. I happen to love hot dogs, so maybe it was the nitrates... (that is a joke folks, I do not believe nitrates helped my blood count). Think of it this way. If you met a 100 year old smoker, who claimed that smoking is what allowed him to reach that advanced age, would you take up smoking?

Eating healthy, maintaining a good weight, getting just the right amount of sun exposure all seem to reduce the risk of CRC, but they do not eliminate it. Some of those things seem to reduce the risk of recurrence for those who have had curative surgery, and given that those risks are naturally higher, the benefit is also naturally greater. Concurrently, none of those things will make it go away, and none are a substitute for early detection and surgery. There is no panacea or magic bullet that will cure mCRC.

Buckwirth said:

Ahh, a conversation, how refreshing
Your link, now live

Big study, and carries some weight. It is interesting that both groups had lower incidence than the general population, and that the veggies had higher incidence. For the purpose of the study, vegetarian and vegan were differentiated, but vegan was counted in the vegetarian number. It also noted that as a group, the vegetarians ate more cheese and drank more milk, so those could be contributing factors.

This study, and others before it with conflicting data, will need to be reviewed before we can say with any certainty that a vegetarian diet raises risk of CRC. It certainly flies in the face of what many on this board believe.


"Some even went so far as to state that humans have an alkaline digestive system similar to herbivores. Now then tell me why billions are spent on antACIDS, for pete's sake!!" 

This is a great example of people trying to make a complicated subject simple to further their own agendas.

The human digestive system is alkaline.

The human digestive system is acidic.

Which statement is true? Both. John23 can personally attest to the acidic nature of his digestive system, as can most who have experienced an ileostomy. Our stomachs are highly acidic, in fact to a point that the comparison to battery acid is a fair one. The pancreas works at the entrance to the ileum to begin neutralizing that acid, and the colon, the most alkaline part of our body, takes care of what acid remains, as well as processing fluids to keep us hydrated (among other things).

It does make statements like this one a bit odd for us CRC survivors:

"Cancer also thrives in an acidic environment, and can’t live in an alkaline environment."*

*cancure.org

If the above statement were true, stomach cancer, and cancer of the ileum, should be the most common in humans. Along with that, CRC should be exceedingly rare.

On a side note, we take antacids to control the pain caused when the acid flows in the wrong direction, up into our esophagus.

"As far as exercise, there are lots of articles coming out that state that exercise can prevent colon cancer..." 

The articles talk about risk, and they talk about risk in a way to make it seem more important than it is. Exercising and keeping a healthy weight might reduce your overall risk by 30%, but they only reduce your real risk by 2 points. If you are an magazine or newspaper editor, which number are you going to use? The bigger one is more sensational, and therefore is the one that gets reported.

Here is another way of thinking about it: _{(all numbers here are for example purposes only, none of them are real)}

In the town of Washingtonshire the local paper reported that the murder rate increased by 100% in the last decade. This was followed by an editorial calling for an increase in funding to the local constabulary to stop this epidemic.

How many murders were there the previous decade? One. How many this last decade? Two. An increase of 100%. The story that there was one additional murder in the last ten years is not very exciting and won't sell papers. The story about the 100% increase will sell lots of papers.

The same is true in health reporting. Always look in an article for real numbers, not percentages, as the percentages are just there to scare you, to goad you into taking some personal action, or to vote for something against your own interest.

Btw, tobacco may be expensive, but there is usually a cheap way to get all of the benefits for a fraction of the cost: Almost every town has at least one bar that defies the anti-smoking laws. Just patronize that bar for one drink a night and you will experience all the healthful benefits of smoking a pack a day!