Having already read that having cancer is my fault because a) I have dogs and b) I drink alcohol I heard on the radio today that 40% of people who die of cancer are obese and if they had looked after themselves and lost weight they would not have had Cancer and so cost the national health service so much. I guess I should just have put myself out of my misery (only joking)
Val
This stuff is so outrageous Val. I haven’t heard the dogs one before (is that serious!!!) but its pretty much in line with other nonsense! It makes sense to try and mininmize risk but it makes no sense to draw the conclusion that people who get cancer are to blame. I think at the heart of this is that people like to believe themselves safe…It won’t happen to me…I’m thin, don’t drink as much, eat low fat things and so on. People are scared…Well, you know what? It is scary…And no one is immune.
Jo
xxx
Val, that is absolute rubbish. I am as thin as you can get (if I turn sideways I disappear!), and my mum has always had dogs, and she is OK. So has her friend, and she is, too. I don’t drink, either, so it couldn’t have been that! It’s bad enough having to deal with it, without people trying to make out that somehow we asked for it. I think they ought to engage their brain before putting their mouths in gear.
Big hugs to you, and take care
Those people out there may not get cancer but let’s face it, at the end of the day we have all got to go of “something”. Wished I could practice what I preach when I say, if you enjoy a cream cake once in a while, have one, if you enjoy a drink have one, if you smoke and enjoy (I don’t smoke) it then so be it. If you like a little salt on your dinner then why not. I do a lot of things that the so-called professionals say don’t but I also do a lot of the things they recommend. I have just seen my Onc and she said if you enjoy a drink have one or two. Don’t get drunk but it is a good stress-reliever, we need something to give us a crutch to help us beat this disease and I am not just talking about chemo, zoladex, surgery, tablets or whatever. People make me so angry when they judge us girls who have had cancer or are going through everything right now - do they think we do it deliberately for attention, do they think it is an easy road with all the medications and treatments, hope to goodness they don’t ever get it themselves but if they do, I hope they choke on their words whilst apologising.
Also what about the weight gain caused by the medication - do the statistics include those unfortunate people too? What does the bible say, those without sin cast the first stone!!
Hugs to all you lovely ladies
K
I sometimes think they just add another element to what can cause cancer, its the scatter gun effect. Shot out enough ideas and they may, just may hit on the right target.
If when I was young I was told, don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t over eat, don’t keep dogs, don’t eat dairy products, don’t get stressed, don’t use deodorants, don’t wear under-wire bra’s, try to be a vegetarian better still be a vegan I think I would not have bothered growing up.
I am not knocking anyone who wants to do all or any of the above because we all do some or all of those things surely or whats the point?
Rant over
Take care, just off to the pub for a fry-up.
Carol
Hi All
Just a rant really, I’m fed up with being made to feel that this is my fault. Drinking, smoking, eating the wrong food, parabens, aluminium, looking at someone funny! It’s outrageous we’re made to think we could have avoided this.
Grrr… that’s it from me really!
Cecelia. x
Makes you wonder how our parents and grandparents managed to survive doesn’t it cos they didn’t have all these do gooders to guide them along. When they were on rations and the only comfort for some was in their ciggies and their ale!. My grandparents did all that and managed it into their eighties as did my mum and dad.
Ignore the bl***dy lot and do your own thing!!
Norma x
I am overweight and have been for yrs along with working long hours in a very stressful job and having money worries. It is possible that being overweight contributed to my illness. These studies are based on statistics, and though I am over weight, stress may also have played a part in my illness. So my point is, statistics are general, not specific enough, a contributing factor only.
Irene
I refuse to let anyone make me feel it is my fault. It isn’t. S**t happens, and boy it has happened to me. Still, it was caught early, and my consultant says we will beat it. It will take something like six years altogether before it is all behind me, but it will be. I didn’t chose this, I didn’t cause it. It just happened.
It is just so frustrating that every little thing is being turned upside down. I’m even afraid to kiss my kids because they both have colds. 
I think that just being alive is the main factor. Nobody ever heard of a corpse developing cancer, or high blood pressure come to think of it!
these studies happily state that this is a cause or that causes cancer - in the same way that boiling water causes a scald. The human body is far more complex than that and we need to keep it all in perspective. I’d prefer they looked more closely at what things have changed since they noticed an increase in incidence. Lifestyles, environment and such. Unfortunately that could suggest that , as a society, we are all to ‘blame’; so much easier to point the finger at the individual and say it was their fault.
Just thought I would throw my comments in to make you laugh… I have been a vegetarian since I was 14 years old, never consumed much in the way of dairy products, haven’t drunk much, never smoked blah blah… Diagnosed with breast cancer aged 36 when I was lovely and slim/thin.
Three years on tamoxifen, two stone heavier, still a vegetarian, drink a little bit more (I’ve had cancer, what the hell!) but not to excess, still don’t smoke and have just been diagnosed with secondaries in my bones, awaiting results of scans, mri’s. Laying in bed watching telly last week saw that meat gives you cancer… if my hip/back pain was not imapirng my flexibility I would have thrown a book at the telly. I don’t have dogs but have cats so I am sure someone somewhere someday will decide that cat hair gives you cancer or something equally ridiculous.
I agree with quisie, it seems merely being alive is the main risk factor!
apparently pre menopause you are more likely to get breast cancer if you are thin (and tall). So you should eat as much as you can to be obese pre menopause and try and shrink yourself. Also ensure you don’t have dense breasts.
Mole
I think the problem is that people don’t really understand probability. These statistics refer simply to lower and decreasing risk and cannot be used to pinpoint why any particular individual gets cancer, just that the cancer rate would generally be lower if fewer people were obese, etc. What I didn’t like about the report is that it was very misleading about the inconvenient truth that thin young women tend to get breast cancer at higher rates than fat young women. It tried to say the correlation between thinness and breast cancer in young women could not be the case because they couldn’t think of a causal mechanism (reason why it would be so).
Unfortunately, I have always tried to be healthy and my mother sees my cancer as a reason for the futility of eating heathfully, even though her doctor has told her that she is heading for diabetes!
There was a report on the news a few weeks ago saying that there was such a thing as “lifestyle” cancers which included cancer of the uterus.
My aunt had cancer of the uterus and you couldn’t even imagine a more clean living, god fearing woman ever.
If her lifestyle caused this for her then I’m a monkeys uncle
Cecelia. x
Dogs… how ridiculous!! I seem to remember reading something about that ages ago and laughed at it then. I’ve worked with dogs for over 20 years (as well as having my own pet dog), but reckon it’s just the luck of the draw that I got bc… have a relatively healthy lifestyle and doubt I could have done anything different to avoid getting it.
So does the dog theory mean I have to chuck in my job and get rid of my beloved pet!! Don’t think so! Makes good reading 'though… ha
AliS
Hi Mole,
So that’s why I’ve got BC! I’ve always been a beanpole. So now it’s my fault for choosing the wrong parents. Better warn my daughters.
Well, I might as well give up now and lock myself in the house 24/7, disown my parents (hee, hee), eat nothing, drink nothing, see no one, sell my 32 dogs, stop moving and finally stop breathing - hey, then I’ll be perfect and nothing will be able to touch me!
After all the s**t I have been through over the last year with this b****y disease, I’m sorry but I prefer to know that I am going to enjoy the rest of my life, I will die at some stage, it’s a pre-determined fact - but before then I will go out, keep my parents! eat within reason what I like and enjoy what I am eating, drink if I feel the need occasionally, I’ll keep doing the same exercise and ride my horses, I’m defnitely gonna continue to breath and I shall remain perfectly well until something knocks me back again… No doubt something will have a good try, but it won’t beat me!
Lynn
It was on the radio this morning about obesity and cancer levels.
5% of all new cancers diagnosed are in obese women. THAT MEANS 95% ARE NOT.
Says it all - statistics can tell you anything you want if you look at it from the right perspective.
I’m going to stay overweight, a wine drinking carnivore (don’t smoke), ignore the statistics, sod the b…y disease and be happy (that’s my hope).
Marilyn
Good for you, Marilyn.