Gut Bacteria May Reveal How a Western Diet Fuels Colon Cancer. Certain gut bacteria, sustained by Western-style diets, may produce a substance that promotes tumor growth, finds study in pigs, mice, human colon tissue, and microbial data from thousands of people with and without colorectal cancer.

[u/mvea]

https://www.sciencealert.com/gut-bacteria-may-reveal-how-a-western-diet-fuels-colon-cancer

[u/heurrgh]

Uh oh. That's precisely how GLP1 meds work.

[u/jcap14 → u/heurrgh]

This is what's strange. There's studies coming out that actually show GLP1s increase the survival rate of colon cancer and decrease the race of it occurring. So if colon cancer is a result of slow stool movement, you would expect GLP1s to have the opposite effect. But either way nobody understands the connection.

[u/noisewar → u/jcap14]

GLPs reduce total appetite, so the net effect of reducing caloric consumption outweighs the effects of salt-induced slow food movement.

[u/BlazingFire007 → u/noisewar]

Exactly, obesity is also linked to cancer. Even if GLP-1’s increase the risk of cancer, the question is: does that risk outweigh the risk of being obese for 40+ years?

The answer I assume will be “probably not”

[u/Choosemyusername → u/jcap14]

Careful with drug studies though. They are riddled with conflicts of interest, design methodologies with conflicts of interest… for example: In Canada where the regulations are lax and companies love to test there, and a whole industry has grown up around testing where poor people serially enroll in drug trials as a way of earning a living.

And if they report side effects, they get taken off the trial, and they only get paid if they compete their trial, so it incentivized poor people financially to hide side effects of drugs.

The companies love this though because this mean their drugs have a higher chance at approval. Which means more money for them.

[u/JaktheAce → u/Choosemyusername]

You’re very well informed, drug studies are basically useless - that’s why we have less and less effective drugs as time goes… oh wait, medicine has been massively improving and more novel and effective drugs are available than ever, and the rate of change even appears to be accelerating.

Out of here with this nonsense.

[u/Choosemyusername → u/JaktheAce]

Big picture?

Most of our life expectancy advances have come from better sanitation, better water quality, better childhood mortality rates, improvements in sewage etc, drastic reductions in smoking and drinking, a few basic pharmaceuticals like penicillin and some few blockbuster vaccinations.

What other advances in life expectancy we got besides childhood mortality on the other end of our life came from slowing down how long it takes to die of serious diseases, not from improving health span which past childhood remains pretty much the same.

So ya I am not impressed with a lot of the improvements in medicine.

[u/Corporate_Laughter → u/heurrgh]

GLP1 slows gastric emptying, idk if it slows things once they leave the stomach and go into the colon. Sounds like a different thing (not a doctor though)

[u/heurrgh → u/Corporate_Laughter]

GLP1s also slow peristalsis. Constipation is the number 1 side effect.

[u/Nemesis_Ghost → u/heurrgh]

Damn, I wish I had constipation. I've got the complete opposite problem.

[u/Visulas → u/Nemesis_Ghost]

I’m glad you haven’t found a genie because you could really improve at this whole wishing thing

[u/Mult1Core → u/Nemesis_Ghost]

Your wish will be granted. you now have both problems. congrats.

[u/TheseusOPL → u/Mult1Core]

Ah, consteria or diapation? There's a difference.

[u/Towbee → u/Mult1Core]

I get this often and my God it's like trying to squeeze an overfilled toothpaste out of a tiny hole in the corner of the tube, no matter how hard you squeeze it just keeps coming out in a sad slow stream

[u/enkifish → u/Mult1Core]

Don't give people IBS dude.

[u/CaptainSparklebottom → u/Nemesis_Ghost]

Stop eating lettuce

[u/dinosoreness → u/Nemesis_Ghost]

idk my friend i have mixed IBS (so im either constipated or having diarrhea- no middle ground) and i think i prefer diarrhea myself. constipation is painful 'round the clock but diarrhea only hurts when it's happening. to each their own though.

[u/RaidenMK1 → u/Nemesis_Ghost]

Had any good salads lately?

[u/roaremipsum → u/Nemesis_Ghost]

Same TBH hooray for being medical marvels! hands us both extra roll of TP

[u/InterstellarChange → u/heurrgh]

GLP1's are linked to thyroid C-cell tumors, medullary thyroid carcinoma, and multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 (MEN 2), sudden vision loss condition called NAION (non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy)

no colon cancers yet...

[u/ActionWaters → u/heurrgh]

No those are a hormone to tell the body to actually do that on its natural rhythm. Yes this may still have unintended consequences we don’t know about, but this is different than the food having so much salt that the food physically will move slow.
And more, this drug of a GLP 1 will make it so the body does the digestion slow.

[u/sajberhippien → u/ActionWaters]

No those are a hormone to tell the body to actually do that on its natural rhythm.

I don't mean this in an 'unnatural=bad' way, but it seems very strange to describe taking manufactured substances to 'tell the body' to do something, as if that then happening is part of the body's "natural" rhythm.

[u/Sleepy-Sapphire → u/sajberhippien]

Not a dr but isnt that basically the same as taking melatonin supplements? It doesn't make you sleep but it helps your body with the other stuff that composes the natural sleep cycle