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140 points bookofjoe | 6 comments | | HN request time: 0.586s | source | bottom
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hinkley ◴[] No.43797130[source]
Tumors excreting chemicals to prevent destruction doesn’t sound like DNA damage, that sounds like evolution.

We know some cancers can be caused by viruses. And we know a few cancers that act like viruses in dogs and Tasmanian devils, and some rare cases in humans.

We only figured out that ulcers are bacterial in origin within the lifetimes of many HN readers, and there are signs that other GI issues may be bacterial or viral (or bacteria-targeting viral) as well.

Maybe we need to start culturing and DNA testing cancers.

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1. atombender ◴[] No.43797566[source]
> ulcers are bacter

To be clear, some peptic ulcers are caused by H. pylori, but not all ulcers.

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2. dekhn ◴[] No.43798066[source]
Yeah the real outcome of all this was "stress is not a cause of ulcers and other GI issues, but it can increase the negative impact" and "some uclers and other GI issues can be treated by antibiotics".
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3. hinkley ◴[] No.43798464[source]
The guy who won the Nobel prize for giving himself an ulcer estimated it as 90%, which is very comfortably “most”. If that has been drastically estimated down I hadn’t heard.

Also don’t abuse advil, kids. OTC painkillers can burn a hole in your digestive tract. I in fact know someone missing a few feet of intestine because of chronic back pain and overuse of non narcotic painkillers.

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4. jjtheblunt ◴[] No.43798658[source]
I did the oops too much Advil on myself naively over years. Gastritis and resolves once the cause is figured out but scared me to respect otc meds more.
5. hinkley ◴[] No.43799722[source]
Stress of course makes pretty much all multicellular organisms more susceptible to pathogens and environmental toxins. But it’s the trigger not the bullet.
6. Calavar ◴[] No.43799937[source]
> The guy who won the Nobel prize for giving himself an ulcer estimated it as 90%

That's worldwide. In developed countries the proportion is closer to 10 to 15% [1, 2]

[1] https://www.jwatch.org/na50875/2020/02/24/prevalence-h-pylor...

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31972622/