Bacon Causes Cancer (But So Does Everything Else)

In case you've had your head in the sand all week (hello ostriches!), it has been determined by some researchers that bacon is VERY VERY BAD for you. If you eat it every day, your risk of colon cancer goes up. Now, it doesn't go up a huge amount and the reports don't say how much you can counter the effect with other healthy habits, such as eating plenty of roughage, that are known to decrease colon cancer risk (knowing what I know thanks to nursing school, I'm willing to bet future BLTs that the risk from eating bacon and other "processed" meats is at least offset in an equal amount by a diet that is overall plentiful in fresh fruits and veg and whole grains), but that, of course, didn't stop every news outlet out there from publishing alarmist articles and it didn't stop people from freaking the fuck out. I mean, of course they did. This BACON we're talking about. Bacon is delicious and, especially on the internet, we're obsessed with the stuff. Still, by the way some people have reacted, you'd have though you told them they could never, ever eat it ever again and that every bite of it they've ever had has doomed them to die a horrible death from their colons being eaten away by little monsters with nasty, gnarly, very sharp teeth. Some of that is just people being drama queens for the sake of being drama queens (because internet). A lot of it has to do with the fact that PEOPLE ARE FUCKING STUPID.

And people are especially fucking stupid when it comes to science, medicine, and cancer.

I get it. cancer's scary. I know. I have cancer and it scares the shit out of me that I have it. Everyone wants to not ever get cancer.

BUT

There isn't any way to 100% guarantee you won't get cancer. You can do everything "right" and still get cancer. That doesn't mean you shouldn't use common sense and take reasonable precautions. It means you shouldn't freak out and try to eliminate everything that has the potential to cause cancer. That's impossible to do, won't work, and will make you miserable. Besides doing reasonable things (like not smoking, using protection from the sun, eating a generally healthy diet, etc), the best thing you can do is to get regular health check-ups and screenings for the cancers that can be screened for and to get yourself seen and checked out if anything seems off. This is extremely important because catching cancer early is the best chance you have of beating it.

People seem to have this weird idea that cancer isn't curable, but it is. We've all seen and heard the joke line that scientists have discovered such-and-such, but "still no cure for cancer." Well, that's a fallacy. There IS a cure for cancer. I'm currently undergoing it. It generally involves some combination of surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiation. I have a few chemotherapy sessions to undergo, but everything is already pointing to me being in remission (they can't declare that until my post-treatment PET scan comes back clean and I've completed all of my rounds of chemo). Remission isn't considered cured, though. You have to stay in remission for five years first. More people who have some kind of cancer are cured than not (when you consider all forms of cancer together).

But, you're thinking, lots of people still die of cancer. If we'd truly cured it, no one would ever die of it.

And, congratulations, you're thinking stupidly.

There's lots of things that we can cure that people still die of. Hell, people still die from the fucking flu and we have a vaccine that can largely prevent people from even getting the flu.

The fact that we know how to treat cancer, rather successfully (even if the treatments themselves make you absofuckinglutely miserable, which seems to be one of the biggest reasons people find current treatment methods suspect, which, do I need to say it, is fucking stupid), is one of the reasons I get so pissed off at people who tell me to check out alternative treatments (like hemp oil). Doctors are in this to save lives. If a treatment is effective, they're going to use it, despite what conspiracy nuts say. By the very virtue that my highly-regarded, renowned oncologist isn't telling me to use whatever miracle cure it is you read about somewhere I know that it's a load of shit, a big wagon-load full of smelly, smelly shit.

Maybe it's because I'd made it most of the way through nursing school before my diagnosis, but I've never once not had complete faith in my oncologist or that the surgery he performed and the chemo he prescribed would get rid of my cancer. Of course, I was very, very, very lucky that my cancer was found when it was. What makes ovarian cancer have such horrible survivor rates is the fact that it is so rarely found in the early stages (this has a lot to do with the fact that there's no standard screening process like there is for breast and prostate cancers and that the symptoms themselves are so varied and so vague). For any cancer that has poor survivor rates, that is usually the reason. It has nothing to do with current treatments being ineffective and everything to do with what cancer is. 

Cancer is the body's normal growth process run amok. Cancer is cells in the body achieving what so many of us dream of--immortality--but, in a ironic twist, left unchecked causes death instead. Cancer cells start out as normal cells and then something causes them to stop doing whatever job it is that that cell is supposed to do and just grows and replicates and nothing else. And the thing that tells normal cells that they've gotten too old to function at optimum so it's time to die and be recycled is turned off, so they don't stop growing and replicating. Cancer cells can arise from any type of cell in your body. In fact, cancer cells DO arise in your body all the time. Our amazing immune systems are just normally able to kill these individual cells and get rid of them before they have a chance to cause problems. But, if you're really unlucky, one of these cells becomes two becomes three becomes a clump of cancer cells becomes a tumor with it's own blood supply and that's when you've got a problem. If cells from that tumor break off and go start tumors in other parts of the body, then you've a got a really big problem. 

Simply put, the more of these misbehaving cells you have in the body, the fewer cells you have that are doing what they are supposed to do, and the harder it is to get rid of the bad ones. And cancer cells are greedy little buggers. They can and will rob all of your normal cells of any and everything your cells need to do what they do (i.e. keep you alive).

So, other than cutting the tumors out, how do we get rid of these bad cells? That's where chemotherapy and radiation come in. Radiation specifically targets a tumor or clump of cancer cells and kills them. Chemotherapy works by killing cells that divide and replicate quickly. The reason chemo makes you so sick is that it doesn't just kill off the cancer cells. The cancer cells are the most rapidly dividing and replicating cells, but other body cells divide and replicate quickly as part of their normal cell function. Chiefly your bone marrow (which makes your blood), your blood, and your skin cells (this includes your nails, hair, and the lining of your entire digestive system from your lips right through to your anus) are short-lived and thus divide and replicate faster than the cells of your internal organs. If you think about what the side-effects of chemo are and how it affects the body, it makes complete sense that it leads to hair loss, skin issues, and digestive issues. 

Fortunately, there are wonderful medications that they give you now alongside the chemo that reduce the worst of these symptoms. If your white blood cell count goes down too much, there's medicine to help stimulate the body's production of those cells. If your red blood cell count goes down too much, they give you donated red blood cells. 

So, yeah. Cancer sucks. Cancer's scary. Everyone wants to never, ever get cancer. And, yes, cancer can be a death sentence. But it isn't always a death sentence. For an increasing number of people, it's a the next six to twelve months are really really going to suck big time but then you'll be able to go back to your regularly scheduled life sentence. So, maybe eat a little less bacon and a few more pieces of fresh fruit, but definitely, definitely, stop freaking the fuck out every time you see or hear the "C" word and educate yourself so you aren't one of the stupids.