As I sat there drinking my Topo Chico, I began reading a recent article in the NY Times. It was discussing the recent phenomena of an increased rate of cancer in our youth. Traditionally, cancers, and particularly those like colorectal cancer, plagued individuals over the age of 50. Now, now we are seeing more and more in individuals that are younger and younger. Most of us notice it in our practice too—during my training a women in her 30s with breast cancer was a rarity, and a women in her 20’s with the disease was so rare it was shocking when it occurred. That has all changed as 30 year olds are often on my schedule, and during my time in the south, cancer in the 20s was not even that uncommon.
The article then turns to ask why this is happening, and how scientists and medical researchers are dumbfounded and unable to answer that question. This is the part of the article that lost me. Less than a year before the article came out, millions of people from Ohio and Pennsylvania watched as a Norfolk Southern train carrying almost 400,000 pounds of toxic chemicals, including acrylates utilized for sealants and paint, derailed dumping these carcinogenic chemicals along the tracks in East Palestine. Things only got worse as the company incinerated them, causing countless chemicals to form a massive cloud over the area and pollute the local drinking water (including ours, as we are about 30 miles away). While the EPA quotes water supplies now testing negative, they even admit that when it rains, these chemicals are stirred up causing spikes in testing.
While the burning of the cars containing vinyl chloride—a group 1 carcinogen—was totally unnecessary, the fallout remains. We still do not know what other chemicals were dumped into the soil or burned, but we know that large amounts of vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, isobutylene and other chemicals to make plastics (yet another reason we should all be avoiding plastic) were dumped in the area.
Countering the bombardment of toxic carcinogens that we all face on a daily basis, we must next question our defense system. A bunch of famous people have said varying iterations of the saying “The best offense is a good defense,” from Machiavelli to George Washington to my days of coaching ten-year-olds at Born to Run basketball camp. While those kids never listened to me and we got crushed, a good self-assessment as to whether we are building up our defense is always a good idea:
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Muscle mass produces beneficial and anti-inflammatory chemicals to help fight off free radicals and inflammation, are we working hard to build/maintain it?
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Muscle mass releases these chemicals during adequate workouts. Are we doing them?
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Fat mass produces an overabundance of hormones and inflammatory chemicals that work against our immune system and metabolism. Are we minimizing it?
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Beneficial chemicals in colorful veggies, berries, and bitter vegetables like polyphenols and sulfurophane stimulate our immune system and detoxification pathways. Are we including these in our diet?
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Adequate sleep is an absolute requirement to support our physical and mental health, are we getting enough high quality sleep?
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An abundance of movement is absolutely required all day long to stimulate our muscles, bones, and metabolism. How much are you sitting around or spending time on the idiot box?
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Stress and anxiety can wear down your immune system. How much time do you spend on devices perusing the news and social media, which, even their creators admit are designed to make you anxious and stressed and wasting your precious time?
From reading the above, perhaps the real question we should ask is not why cancer rates are rising, but why isn’t there more cancer? Many of us do not even remotely support our defense mechanisms, and additionally, ignoring the above may be actively working against us.
Even when we try, the task can be insurmountable. The irony is, the Topo Chico I was drinking contained high—in the fact, some of the highest—amounts of polyfluoroalkyl substances. PFAS chemicals, known as “forever” chemicals are carcinogens, or in other words can cause cancer, and worst yet, they forever remain in your body. The EPA has a good basic page on them, and they are used in cosmetics and food contact products (pan coatings and plastics like sandwich bags for waterproofing), They are heavily present in many drinking water sources, and as a a result, are present in vegetables grown in places where this water is used. We never considered they would be in our favorite Topo Chico. We have a reverse osmosis system, but it was out of commission due to our kitchen work. We should have not been surprised, as Coca Cola, one of the major producers of toxic and poisonous liquids in the world, owns Topo Chico. We have learned the dirty lesson again and again that we need to research basically every food or substance we put into our body. Even with our eyes open and our ears up, we are often caught off guard by many of our discoveries. If we keep our heads in the sand and play ignorant, we’re only doing ourselves a greater disservice.
Regardless, the reality that rings true again and again is that we are bombarded with cancerous chemicals no matter how hard we try to avoid them. They are all around us and never stop. Even worse, they are in our food and water. Our best offense against them is a good defense.
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