[quote=Charm2017]Mike and Suzanne

I got that we are all unique, but the majority of smokers do get cancer. However, the majority of caregivers do not get cancer even though they eat the same food. Still sounds like nutrition is more of wish factor than causative factor. [/quote]

Your assertion that nutritional health claims are a "wish factor" may very well be true. I don't have a stand either way. I do believe that we're better off eating "healthy" foods than "unhealthy" foods (whatever that may be).

Do you have any source for your assertion that the majority of smokers get cancer?

I should have qualified my concerns and theories as being limited just to head and neck cancers. I am questioning the common advice about diet in relationship to the subset of cancer this forum focuses on. Does Smoking causing cancer for most people, that's the impression I got from this NCI web site
NCI & smoking/cancer and the printed warnings on the cigarette packages.
I don't think there is any serious doubt that HPV and smoking cause the majority of head & neck cancers, which of course is my focus. There may be valid studies out there that have been validated and show some efficacy of diet and nutrition in not getting head and neck cancer, but I am unaware of them. I have read lots of valid studies showing that diet and nutrition can indeed prevent heart condition and diabetes, plus of course obesity.

worldwide numbers http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090825151011.htm

US population that uses a tobacco product = about 19.7% of total population (310 million) or about 62 million. Given the timeline bias, you would have to look at that number of people over decades to determine a cancer number.

Remember that many killer diseases trace their route back to tobacco, and it is not just as simple as counting cancers. Heart disease by itself is huge (combination of diet issues and tobacco). Even if you look at SEER numbers for cancers, it isn't just the obvious, lung, oral etc. Tobacco has been linked to cancers in areas remote from areas of obvious contact such as in ovarian and many more.

Charm,

I don't think the studies point to poor diet being the sole source of cancer, at least no person of science has ever said that to me. I think when taken with equal risk factors, the body fights off those abnormal cells when fed a balanced, wholesome diet.

In my family, my mother was a smoker (she quit years ago), we all ate the same food, three of the four children used tobacco at one time, I never did, and I'm the one that developed my first cancer at age 28, my second at 42 and my third at 45.

I will continue to predict increasing evidence of environmental factors being causative, as well as more and more cancers linked to viruses. And then there's the whole bad DNA thought.

Margaret

Thanks, I agree with you on environmental causes. It's hard to remain "agnostic" on diet and nutrition when you actually have cancer or are a caregiver. And you are certainly right that no person of science would focus solely on nutrition.
As one of my quack busting sites said in showing that the survival rate of the most famous "alternative clinics" was actually less than those for "conventional treatment":
[quote]These studies cover most of the popular themes in current alternative cancer practice: diets, vitamins and other supplements, herbs, detoxification, enzymes, building up the immune system, Laetrile and psychological support... How could such dramatic claims arise? I suggest from a combination of misplaced enthusiasms and factors that I have described elsewhere: lack of understanding of the normal progress of cancer and its response to conventional measures, unreliable assumptions as to diagnosis and staging, and the misinterpretation and misattribution of clinical events. [/quote]

This is a great question but I don't see any definitive answer. My husband before cancer ate better than most people I know. He had a salad every single night for dinner, took lots of vitamins, ate lots of fish, no fast food and never smoked a day in his life. My mom never had a fast food meal in her life, cooked all whole foods and ate better than most people I know, never smoked and died from Pancreatic Cancer. My ex-husband's grandmother smoked a pack of non-filtered camels, drank Wild Turkey daily and lived to be 90.

I think a lot of the overwhelming number of cancers are directly related to the environment. My mom and dad moved to Delaware 10 years before my mom developed pancreatic cancer. Delaware is the smallest state but is the #1 cancer state. Dupont related? Who knows.

As I have always said, I was a exercise and health nut from high school forward and it still ticks me off that my immune system couldn't clear the HPV all the time. Just one of the lucky ones!!

Brian

thanks as usual for coming up with meaningful and valid statistics. I just grabbed the first link I had in my files on smoking and cancer but I like yours better. I explored the whole page and found this study's results amazing:
[quote]The epidemiological analysis linked smoking to more than 70 percent of the cancer death burden among Massachusetts men in 2003. This percentage is much higher than the previous estimate of 34 percent in 2001.[/quote]
Somehow I felt at this point that these facts were such common knowledge that I am always amazed at the great job tobacco companies have done in generating doubt about the deadliness of their product but as you can see from this thread, it apparently works.

Wanda

Thanks for sharing that info, which is consistent with my own personal experience. I suppose I am over reacting to exaggerated claims for nutrition and diet as preventing cancer that appear every year around these Holiday times with their traditions of rich foods and lavish spreads. It just seems from what I have read here on the OCF forums from people who actually have head and neck cancer or are caregivers to us does not comport with the purported benefits. Plus as I have posted in other threads, I worry about living on corn syrup solids as I have been for the past eight months and perhaps the rest of my life with Jevity as all that fits in my crappy 14FR Peg. Thanks again

It's kind of like this story. My mom brushes her teeth for about 5-10 minutes, flosses every night and goes to the dentist every 6 months. She had to have a root canal and crown. My husband smokes and brushes every morning and night for about 1 minute and did not go to the dentist for a while. He went to the dentist and they said "mr. Gallo, everything looks great" Go figure....