How Alcohol, Smoking and a Bad Diet FUELS Cancer Growth

Cancer used to be known as a rare, untreatable and unpreventable disease that happens to just a few. There was even one point that only rich people get cancer. Conversely, this is far from the truth today. Cancer is now fast becoming another typical disease and anyone can easily get affected. What is Cancer? Cancer is generally known as a type of disease where the is an abnormal and fast cell growth in the body that multiply and spreads in other parts of the human body. Picture this: Cancer cells slowly devour good cells and replace them with these chaotic cells that can severely affect healthy DNA cells that may mean deterioration of a person’s health or the demise of a Cancer patient. And with more than 100 types of Cancer, this disease is not easy to treat. It is also definitely not inexpensive to undergo cancer treatments such as chemotherapy, surgery or treatment through radiation. Treating and curing cancer literally costs an arm and a leg. How do you prevent from Cancer happening in the first place? Smoking tobacco or cigarettes, drinking alcohol and following a really bad diet are the top three causes of Cancer – that are PREVENTABLE. Chemical compounds from cigarettes and tobacco have values of carcinogens that when exposed to on a daily basis can cause lung cancer in a matter of a few years. Individuals who don’t smoke but are exposed to cigarette or tobacco smoking can also get cancer from second hand smoke. Almost half of the population worldwide smokes on a daily basis, and this population of smokers are also getting younger. Smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer and is on top of the list as one of the types of cancer that is extremely hard to treat and cure. Getting cancer from smoking may be the hardest to treat, but it is definitely one of the easiest to PREVENT. By simply kicking the habit, you significantly reduce your chance of getting cancer. Consuming insane amounts of alcohol also increases a persons risk for cancer. There is no exact chemical compound that is directly linked to creating cancer cells. However, we all know that alcohol can really make a number in your body especially in your liver and pancreas – which can eventually lead to cancer of the liver and pancreas. And almost all alcohol drinkers also smoke, and the alcohol actually “helps” the chemical compounds in cigarettes and tobacco fast track the birth of cancer cells with the body. An unhealthy diet of fast food with little fruits and vegetables is also a major contributing factor in acquiring cancer. Those microwaveable meals, instant noodle soup and drive through hamburgers may be convenient to chow down – but is brimming with preservatives; that can directly cause the growth of cancer cells in the body. In hindsight, there is a good reason on why cancer was considered as a rich person’s disease years ago. Simply because they can afford to smoke tobacco, chug down alcohol and eat out most of the time. Remember that this is not true anymore. Almost EVERYONE has easy access to the cigarettes, alcohol and fast food joints. And every one of us makes us susceptible to get cancer one way or the other, unless we change our lifestyle to a healthier one. Simply by stopping the FUEL of cancer: alcohol drinking, smoking and an unhealthy diet.

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Cancer Prevention is Better than Cure

Cancer is perhaps the deadliest and most terrifying disease a person can have in our generation today. According to research, about 1500 people die of cancer each day, making it next to heart disease in rank. You can call it a silent killer, because it slowly eats away a person’s life. And although a huge development in the medical world has made treatment for cancer a lot easier, still, the best way to fight cancer is to stop it in its tracks. Preventing cancer is not as difficult as it may seem. In fact, the best methods you can try to deal with it are usually free.

Studying your family history of the disease is one of the first things you need to do to find out whether your risks for cancer are high or not. Cancer can be hereditary, so if a certain type of cancer runs in the family, there’s a big chance you can acquire the disease as well. If this is the case, talk to your doctor and set up an appointment where you can be screened and tested for cancer risk.

If you are not a smoker or alcohol drinker, it would be best if you never start at all. But if you are, you might want to gradually cut the habit if you want to keep cancer at bay. Tobacco smoking and exposure to it is the greatest risk factor for lung cancer. It’s also responsible for other types of health conditions such as hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and even degenerative brain disease. Even if you don’t put a cigarette between your lips, as long as you’re in range of someone who’s smoking incessantly, you can still be putting yourself at risk.

Excessive intake of alcohol can also have the same impact to your health as smoking. In fact, almost 4% of cancer cases are attributed to alcohol drinking. According to one study, a person’s risk for cancer of the mouth, throat, and esophagus can be increased by alcohol and tobacco. Not only that, it is said to increase a person’s risk for liver, rectal, colon, and breast cancer as well. To prevent cancer altogether, start doing away with these two deadly habits as soon as possible.

Another thing you can do to stay away from cancer is to practice sun-safety. We thank the sun for various reasons, but while it can be a source of life and energy, it can also be the cause of skin cancer. For your information, skin cancer is the most common type of cancer, and millions of people in the US alone are diagnosed with it each year. It takes time for the signs of sun damage to appear in the skin but most of the damage done is a result of cumulative exposures to harmful UV rays. It’s not only by going to the beach that you can acquire sun damage. Even by just getting a sun tan from a tanning salon can put your skin’s health at risk.

To avoid sun damage, always wear sunscreen with SPF 15 protection or higher 30 minutes before you go outside each day. Try to wear clothes that will cover your arms and the back of our hands as well, because these are the spots where signs of sun damage usually appear. Bring an umbrella or wear a large hat to protect your face, and wear sunglasses for your eyes.

The kind of food that you eat also plays a major role when it comes to preventing or delaying the onset of diseases like cancer. Some of the food that you eat on a daily basis can actually increase your cancer risk. Such foods include processed meat, sweets, and foods rich in salt and preservatives. To fight cancer, include more foods that are rich in antioxidants in your daily menu. Antioxidants help reverse the damage done by free radicals in the body. They also help boost your immune system so that your body doesn’t easily succumb to cancer and other diseases.

Moreover, try to involve yourself in physical activities as much as you can. Even thirty minutes of brisk walking each day can cut down your risk for cancer by up to 80 percent! And get enough sleep and rest too. It is during sleep time that your body heals and repairs damaged cells and tissues.

Finally, don’t forget to visit your doctor once every three months and have a general checkup. Most cancers can be stopped when detected in their early stages.

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Categorizing Alleged "Innate" Flaws of Human Nature

For the sake of discussion, I have broken down these so-called "innate" flaws of human nature into four broad categories: impaired rational decision making, self-centeredness and greed, laziness and aversion to work, innate aggressiveness and violence.

1. Impaired Rational Decision Making: Impulsiveness and emotionality allegedly make human beings (especially those from the poor and disadvantaged classes) innately irrational. Limited capacity for rational decision making, due to emotional instability, ignorance, superstition and/or prejudice makes it impossible for the average person to participate in self-governance. This means wiser, more technologically sophisticated people are needed to make the fundamental decisions necessary to run the basic institutions that govern their lives. This viewpoint isn't limited to the ruling elite. As Wilhelm Reich observes in the Mass Psychology of Fascism, much of the working class, especially those raised in authoritarian families, share this belief. In fact many of them deliberately seek out external authority to set out firm rules for their personal lives.

2. Self centeredness and greed: Survival of the fittest dictates that individuals prioritize their own self-interest. Innate competitiveness and greed will always prevent human beings from voluntarily sharing resources unless they derive direct personal gain or some external authority imposes it on them.

3. Laziness and aversion to work: Human beings (especially those from poor and disadvantaged classes) are innately lazy. Socialist economic systems are doomed to collapse. Without strong financial incentives, people would have no motivation to work.

4. Innate aggressiveness and violence: Human beings, especially males from poor and disadvantaged classes, are fundamentally violent and aggressive. Without external restraint from law enforcement, stronger individuals will constantly victimize weaker ones.

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General Overview: The Greenhouse Effect

Introduction

The "greenhouse effect" is widely discussed in the media, and although its details are complicated, its principles are not difficult to understand. Without a greenhouse effect, radiation from the Sun (mostly in the form of visible light) would travel to Earth and be changed into heat, only to be lost to space. This scenario can be sketched as follows:

Sun’s radiation → absorbed by Earth → Re-radiated to space as heat

The greenhouse effect is a process where energy from the sun readily penetrates into the lower atmosphere and onto the surface of Earth and is converted to heat, but then cannot freely leave the planet. This can be sketched as follows:

Sun’s Radiation → absorbed by Earth → some re-radiated to space as heat → some trapped by the atmosphere

Due to the presence of certain “greenhouse gases” that trap heat, like carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and CFC’s, the atmosphere retains the sun’s radiation and warms up the planet. By increasing the abundance of these gases in the atmosphere, humankind is increasing the overall warming of the Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere, a process called "global warming." The figure below illustrates the radiation balance and the role of greenhouse effect.

The Radiation Balance

Illustration of the Earth’s radiative balance. (Adapted from: NOAA)

Another way to think about the greenhouse effect is to consider that according to physics the radiation we receive from the Sun must be equally balanced by the heat Earth radiates out to space. If we were to give back less energy than we receive, our planet would soon be too hot for life. Likewise, if we were to give back more energy that we receive, our planet would soon be too cold for life. This can be written as a balanced equation of radiation:

Solar radiation input to Earth = Earth’s output of re-radiated heat

If we were to measure the temperature of the Earth from space, the Earth's "surface" would show a temperature appropriate for this requirement of energy balance: a measurement of roughly -18 degrees Celsius (about 0 °F). At this temperature, our planet radiates a quantity of heat into space that is equivalent to the amount of energy received from the Sun.

At this point you may be asking how we can speak of “global warming” when we have just stated that the Earth (as seen from space) MUST stay at the same temperature? And how is it that the temperature of the Earth’s surface is only a chilly 0°F? The key to understanding this apparent contradiction is to remember that we live at the bottom of the atmosphere. As far as the radiation balance is concerned, the lower atmosphere and the surface of Earth form part of a “warm interior” of the planet.

Figure demonstrating the importance of greenhouse gases in regulating the temperature of the lower atmosphere. The top diagram shows a greenhouse Earth where the apparent temperature “surface” lies 5000m up in the atmosphere from the land surface. In the past 100 years this apparent temperature “surface” has been rising. By contrast, without a greenhouse effect, the Earth would look like the lower diagram.

The apparent temperature "surface" that we would see from space is located well above the real surface of the Earth where we live. This apparent temperature "surface" is about 5000 meters up (17,000 feet) within the atmosphere. To get a better handle on this concept consider the following: the difference in elevation between 0 meters and 5,000 meters corresponds to a difference in temperature of about 60°F. In other words, at sea level it is 60°F warmer than it would be without the atmosphere. For the last 100 years or so this apparent temperature “surface” has been moving upward in the atmosphere as a result of global warming. As the apparent "surface" rises, the bottom of the atmosphere gets warmer, a fact that can be seen in the positions of the snow line (the elevation where snow begins to form) and tree line (the elevation where it becomes to cold for trees to grow). However, despite all these changes happening in the lower atmosphere, the overall temperature of the planet as seen from space stays the same.

How is it possible that the Earth exactly balances the incoming sunlight with the outgoing heat radiation? The answer is simple: the amount of heat radiation from Earth is precisely tied to the temperature of the atmosphere. If the temperature of the apparent “surface” is too low and Earth radiates too little heat to keep the balance, Earth will warm up and radiate more heat into space. If the temperature of the apparent “surface” is too high and Earth radiates more heat than it receives, the planet will become colder and radiate less energy back to space. Overall, this “negative feedback” stabilizes the radiation balance despite all the variations of temperature from one place to another and within the vertical column of the atmosphere. It sets the temperature so that the incoming and outgoing energy is balanced.

Average Temperatures on the Moon

We can get another idea about what the temperature on Earth would be like without a greenhouse atmosphere by contemplating the Moon. The Earth’s satellite has no atmosphere because its gravitational force is not strong enough to retain gas for long. It has the same distance from the Sun as the Earth, but its temperature varies enormously: where the Sun is shining, the Moon’s temperature rises to 230°F and where it is dark falls to negative 290°F. The average surface temperature of the moon, about the same distance as the Earth from the Sun, is also near 0°F, but of course, the moon has no atmosphere. By contrast, the average surface temperature of the Earth is 60°F at sea level. On Earth, the contrast between maximum and minimum temperatures would not be as great as on the Moon, even without an atmosphere, because the Earth rotates once in a day, while the Moon only rotates once in a month. However, without an atmosphere the Earth’s contrast between day and night and the contrast between summer and winter would be very large indeed.

Not all the gases in the atmosphere are equally active in keeping Earth warm. In fact, the atmosphere’s most abundant gas, molecular nitrogen, does very little in this regard, and the same is true for the second most abundant gas, molecular oxygen. The most important ingredient of the air for producing the greenhouse effect is water vapor. However, its abundance depends on the air's temperature. The warmer the air, the more water vapor it can hold. (As air cools, the vapor condenses into rain or snow.) It is carbon dioxide that moves the air toward higher temperature, so that water vapor can take over and warm it some more. Carbon dioxide molecules intercept infrared radiation, warming the air and increasing water vapor through evaporation from the sea surface and from plants and soil moisture. Water vapor then increases the temperature even more. The process is checked by a rise in infrared radiation to space and by formation of clouds. Unfortunately, the role of clouds in the radiation balance is as yet poorly understood. Different types of clouds have different effects, and this makes the calculations complicated and the results uncertain.

Solar Variations

One last point to consider when discussing the greenhouse effect is the amount of sunlight coming in to Earth. The quantity of sunlight we receive depends on the size and the brightness of the Sun and the distance between it and the Earth. As far as we know, the size of the Sun does not change much over the time spans we are considering; we can assume it is constant. The sun’s brightness varies only a little, about one-thousandth over an eleven-year sunspot cycle, but perhaps more over longer time spans. We can take that as constant too, calling the incoming energy flux "the solar constant." One of the contentious issues in the discussions about the global warming of the last 100 years that has not been fully resolved is the question of whether a brighter Sun may have contributed to the recently observed temperature rise.

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