Your friend has been diagnosed with cancer. Here are 6 things you can do to support them
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Across the world, one in five people are diagnosed with cancer during their lifetime. By age 85, almost one in two Australians will be diagnosed with cancer.
When it happens to someone you care about, it can be hard to know what to say or how to help them. But providing the right support to a friend can make all the difference as they face the emotional and physical challenges of a new diagnosis and treatment.
Here are six ways to offer meaningful support to a friend who has been diagnosed with cancer.
1. Recognise and respond to emotions
When facing a cancer diagnosis and treatment, it’s normal to experience a range of emotions including fear, anger, grief and sadness. Your friend’s moods may fluctuate. It is also common for feelings to change over time, for example your friend’s anxiety may decrease, but they may feel more depressed.
Some friends may want to share details while others will prefer privacy. Always ask permission to raise sensitive topics (such as changes in physical appearance or their thoughts regarding fears and anxiety) and don’t make assumptions. It’s OK to tell them you feel awkward, as this acknowledges the challenging situation they are facing.
When they feel comfortable to talk, follow their lead. Your support and willingness to listen without judgement can provide great comfort. You don’t have to have the answers. Simply acknowledging what has been said, providing your full attention and being present for them will be a great help.
2. Understand their diagnosis and treatment
Understanding your friend’s diagnosis and what they’ll go through when being treated may be helpful.
Being informed can reduce your own worry. It may also help you to listen better and reduce the amount of explaining your friend has to do, especially when they’re tired or overwhelmed.
Explore reputable sources such as the Cancer Council website for accurate information, so you can have meaningful conversations. But keep in mind your friend has a trusted medical team to offer personalised and accurate advice.
3. Check in regularly
Cancer treatment can be isolating, so regular check-ins, texts, calls or visits can help your friend feel less alone.
Having a normal conversation and sharing a joke can be very welcome. But everyone copes with cancer differently. Be patient and flexible in your support – some days will be harder for them than others.
Remembering key dates – such as the next round of chemotherapy – can help your friend feel supported. Celebrating milestones, including the end of treatment or anniversary dates, may boost morale and remind your friend of positive moments in their cancer journey.
Always ask if it’s a good time to visit, as your friend’s immune system may be compromised by their cancer or treatments such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy. If you’re feeling unwell, it’s best to postpone visits – but they may still appreciate a call or text.
4. Offer practical support
Sometimes the best way to show your care is through practical support. There may be different ways to offer help, and what your friend needs might change at the beginning, during and after treatment.
For example, you could offer to pick up prescriptions, drive them to appointments so they have transport and company to debrief, or wait with them at appointments.
Meals will always be welcome. However it’s important to remember cancer and its treatments may affect taste, smell and appetite, as well as your friend’s ability to eat enough or absorb nutrients. You may want to check first if there are particular foods they like. Good nutrition can help boost their strength while dealing with the side effects of treatment.
There may also be family responsibilities you can help with, for example, babysitting kids, grocery shopping or taking care of pets.
5. Explore supports together
Studies have shown mindfulness practices can be an effective way for people to manage anxiety associated with a cancer diagnosis and its treatment.
If this is something your friend is interested in, it may be enjoyable to explore classes (either online or in-person) together.
You may also be able to help your friend connect with organisations that provide emotional and practical help, such as the Cancer Council’s support line, which offers free, confidential information and support for anyone affected by cancer, including family, friends and carers.
Peer support groups can also reduce your friend’s feelings of isolation and foster shared understanding and empathy with people who’ve gone through a similar experience. GPs can help with referrals to support programs.
6. Stick with them
Be committed. Many people feel isolated after their treatment. This may be because regular appointments have reduced or stopped – which can feel like losing a safety net – or because their relationships with others have changed.
Your friend may also experience emotions such as worry, lack of confidence and uncertainty as they adjust to a new way of living after their treatment has ended. This will be an important time to support your friend.
But don’t forget: looking after yourself is important too. Making sure you eat well, sleep, exercise and have emotional support will help steady you through what may be a challenging time for you, as well as the friend you love.
Our research team is developing new programs and resources to support carers of people who live with cancer. While it can be a challenging experience, it can also be immensely rewarding, and your small acts of kindness can make a big difference.
Stephanie Cowdery, Research Fellow, Carer Hub: A Centre of Excellence in Cancer Carer Research, Translation and Impact, Deakin University; Anna Ugalde, Associate Professor & Victorian Cancer Agency Fellow, Deakin University; Trish Livingston, Distinguished Professor & Director of Special Projects, Faculty of Health, Deakin University, and Victoria White, Professor of Pyscho-Oncology, School of Psychology, Deakin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Why is cancer called cancer? We need to go back to Greco-Roman times for the answer
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One of the earliest descriptions of someone with cancer comes from the fourth century BC. Satyrus, tyrant of the city of Heracleia on the Black Sea, developed a cancer between his groin and scrotum. As the cancer spread, Satyrus had ever greater pains. He was unable to sleep and had convulsions.
Advanced cancers in that part of the body were regarded as inoperable, and there were no drugs strong enough to alleviate the agony. So doctors could do nothing. Eventually, the cancer took Satyrus’ life at the age of 65.
Cancer was already well known in this period. A text written in the late fifth or early fourth century BC, called Diseases of Women, described how breast cancer develops:
hard growths form […] out of them hidden cancers develop […] pains shoot up from the patients’ breasts to their throats, and around their shoulder blades […] such patients become thin through their whole body […] breathing decreases, the sense of smell is lost […]
Other medical works of this period describe different sorts of cancers. A woman from the Greek city of Abdera died from a cancer of the chest; a man with throat cancer survived after his doctor burned away the tumour.
Where does the word ‘cancer’ come from?
Why does the word ‘cancer’ have its roots in the ancient Greek and Latin words for crab? The physician Galen offers one explanation. Pierre Roche Vigneron/Wikimedia The word cancer comes from the same era. In the late fifth and early fourth century BC, doctors were using the word karkinos – the ancient Greek word for crab – to describe malignant tumours. Later, when Latin-speaking doctors described the same disease, they used the Latin word for crab: cancer. So, the name stuck.
Even in ancient times, people wondered why doctors named the disease after an animal. One explanation was the crab is an aggressive animal, just as cancer can be an aggressive disease; another explanation was the crab can grip one part of a person’s body with its claws and be difficult to remove, just as cancer can be difficult to remove once it has developed. Others thought it was because of the appearance of the tumour.
The physician Galen (129-216 AD) described breast cancer in his work A Method of Medicine to Glaucon, and compared the form of the tumour to the form of a crab:
We have often seen in the breasts a tumour exactly like a crab. Just as that animal has feet on either side of its body, so too in this disease the veins of the unnatural swelling are stretched out on either side, creating a form similar to a crab.
Not everyone agreed what caused cancer
The physician Erasistratus didn’t think black bile was to blame. Didier Descouens/Musée Ingres-Bourdelle/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA In the Greco-Roman period, there were different opinions about the cause of cancer.
According to a widespread ancient medical theory, the body has four humours: blood, yellow bile, phlegm and black bile. These four humours need to be kept in a state of balance, otherwise a person becomes sick. If a person suffered from an excess of black bile, it was thought this would eventually lead to cancer.
The physician Erasistratus, who lived from around 315 to 240 BC, disagreed. However, so far as we know, he did not offer an alternative explanation.
How was cancer treated?
Cancer was treated in a range of different ways. It was thought that cancers in their early stages could be cured using medications.
These included drugs derived from plants (such as cucumber, narcissus bulb, castor bean, bitter vetch, cabbage); animals (such as the ash of a crab); and metals (such as arsenic).
Galen claimed that by using this sort of medication, and repeatedly purging his patients with emetics or enemas, he was sometimes successful at making emerging cancers disappear. He said the same treatment sometimes prevented more advanced cancers from continuing to grow. However, he also said surgery is necessary if these medications do not work.
Surgery was usually avoided as patients tended to die from blood loss. The most successful operations were on cancers of the tip of the breast. Leonidas, a physician who lived in the second and third century AD, described his method, which involved cauterising (burning):
I usually operate in cases where the tumours do not extend into the chest […] When the patient has been placed on her back, I incise the healthy area of the breast above the tumour and then cauterize the incision until scabs form and the bleeding is stanched. Then I incise again, marking out the area as I cut deeply into the breast, and again I cauterize. I do this [incising and cauterizing] quite often […] This way the bleeding is not dangerous. After the excision is complete I again cauterize the entire area until it is dessicated.
Cancer was generally regarded as an incurable disease, and so it was feared. Some people with cancer, such as the poet Silius Italicus (26-102 AD), died by suicide to end the torment.
Patients would also pray to the gods for hope of a cure. An example of this is Innocentia, an aristocratic lady who lived in Carthage (in modern-day Tunisia) in the fifth century AD. She told her doctor divine intervention had cured her breast cancer, though her doctor did not believe her.
Innocentia from Carthage, in modern-day Tunisia, believed divine intervention cured her breast cancer. Valery Bareta/Shutterstock From the past into the future
We began with Satyrus, a tyrant in the fourth century BC. In the 2,400 years or so since then, much has changed in our knowledge of what causes cancer, how to prevent it and how to treat it. We also know there are more than 200 different types of cancer. Some people’s cancers are so successfully managed, they go on to live long lives.
But there is still no general “cure for cancer”, a disease that about one in five people develop in their lifetime. In 2022 alone, there were about 20 million new cancer cases and 9.7 million cancer deaths globally. We clearly have a long way to go.
Konstantine Panegyres, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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100 No-Equipment Workouts – by Neila Rey
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For those of us who for whatever reason prefer to exercise at home rather than at the gym, we must make do with what exercise equipment we can reasonably install in our homes. This book deals with that from the ground upwards—literally!
If you have a few square meters of floorspace (and a ceiling that’s not too low, for exercises that involve any kind of jumping), then all 100 of these zero-equipment exercises are at-home options.
As to what kinds of exercises they are, they each marked as being one or both of “cardio” and “strength”.
They’re also marked as being of “difficulty level” 1, 2, or 3, so that someone who hasn’t exercised in a while (or hasn’t exercised like this at all), can know where best to start, and how best to progress.
The exercises come with clear explanations in the text, and clear line-drawing illustrations of how to do each exercise. Really, they could not be clearer; this is top quality pragmatism, and reads like a military manual.
Bottom line: whatever your strength and fitness goals, this book can see you well on your way to them (if not outright get you there already in many cases). It’s also an excellent “all-rounder” for full-body workouts.
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Cold Medicines & Heart Health
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Cold Medicines & Heart Health
In the wake of many decongestants disappearing from a lot of shelves after a common active ingredient being declared useless*, you may find yourself considering alternative decongestants at this time of year.
*In case you missed it:
It doesn’t seem to be dangerous, by the way, just also not effective:
FDA Panel Says Common OTC Decongestant, Phenylephrine, Is Useless
Good for your nose, bad for your heart?
With products based on phenylephrine out of the running, products based on pseudoephedrine, a competing drug, are enjoying a surge in popularity.
Good news: pseudoephedrine works!
Bad news: pseudoephedrine works because it is a vasoconstrictor, and that vasoconstriction reduces nasal swelling. That same vasoconstriction also raises overall blood pressure, potentially dangerously, depending on an assortment of other conditions you might have.
Further reading: Can decongestants spike your blood pressure? What to know about hypertension and cold medicine
Who’s at risk?
The warning label, unread by many, reads:
❝Do not use this product if you have heart disease, high blood pressure, thyroid disease, diabetes, or difficulty in urination due to enlargement of the prostate gland, unless directed by a doctor❞
Source: Harvard Health | Don’t let decongestants squeeze your heart
What are the other options?
The same source as above recommends antihistamines as an option to be considered, citing:
❝Antihistamines such as […] cetirizine (Zyrtec) and loratadine (Claritin) can help with a stuffy nose and are safe for the heart.❞
But we’d be remiss not to mention drug-free options too, for example:
- Saline rinse with a neti pot or similar
- Use of a humidifier in your house/room
- Steam inhalation, with or without eucalyptus etc
See also: Inhaled Eucalyptus’s Immunomodulatory and Antimicrobial Effects
Take care!
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How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk
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Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk
Alzheimer’s is just one cause of dementia, but it’s a very notable one, not least of all because it’s
- a) the most common cause of dementia, and
- b) a measurably terminal disease.
For that reason we’re focusing on Alzheimer’s today, although most of the advice will go for avoiding dementia in general.
First, some things not everyone knows about Alzheimer’s:
- Alzheimer’s is a terminal disease.
- People who get a diagnosis at age 60 are typically given 4–8 years to live.
- Some soldier on for as many as 20, but those are rare outliers.
- Alzheimer’s begins 20 years or more before other symptoms start to develop.
- This makes this information very relevant for younger people approaching 40, for example.
- Alzheimer’s accounts for 60–80% of dementia, and affects around 6% of people over 60.
- By the age of 65, that figure is 10%. By the age of 70, however, the percentage is still about the same—this is because of the mortality rate preventing the accumulation of Alzheimer’s patients over time.
Want to know more? Read: 2023 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts And Figures Special Report ← this is a very comprehensive downloadablereference, by the way, including a lot of information about diagnosis, treatmentpathways, and earlyinterventions.
Speaking of diagnosis…
Know what the symptoms are… and aren’t!
Forgetting your car keys can be frustrating. Forgetting them frequently can be worrying.
But: there’s a difference between forgetting your car keys, and forgetting what car keys are used for. The latter is the kind of memory loss that’s more of a red flag for Alzheimer’s.
Similarly: forgetting someone’s name can be embarrassing. Forgetting someone’s name, asking them, forgetting asking them, asking them again, forgetting again (lather rinse repeat) is more of a red flag for Alzheimer’s.
There are other symptoms too, some of them less commonly known:
❝Difficulty remembering recent conversations, names or events; apathy; and depression are often early symptoms. Communication problems, confusion, poor judgment and behavioral changes may occur next. Difficulty walking, speaking, and swallowing are common in the late stages of the disease❞
If you or a loved one are experiencing worrying symptoms: when it comes to diagnosis and intervention, sooner is a lot better than later, so do talk to your doctor.
As for reducing your risk? First, the obvious stuff:
The usual 5 things that go for almost everything:
- Have a good diet—the Mediterranean Diet is once again recommended (we expect this will not be a surprise to regular readers!)
- Get regular exercise—in the case of avoiding Alzheimer’s and other dementias, typically the most important thing here is heart health, so getting regular cardiovascular exercise, such walking, running, or dancing is great. Cycling too. Swimming, not so much. Not that swimming’s bad or anything, it’s just that when your body is horizontal, the heart has less work to do, especially in the upper part of the body, because it’s not defying gravity. Similarly, yoga is great for the health but won’t particularly help with this, nor will weight training.
- Get good sleep—as we get older, we tend to need less sleep, and tend more towards the lower end of the standard “7–9 hours” prescription, but getting at least those 7 hours makes a huge difference.
- Cut down (or eliminate) alcohol consumption—and especially avoid binge-drinking. While “binge-drinking” is typically associated with young people, that Christmas party where that one uncle gets very drunk is also binge-drinking, for example. Plus, heavy drinking in early life has also been correlated with higher risk of Alzheimer’s later.
- Don’t smoke. It’s bad for everything, and Alzheimer’s risk is no exception.
How much do lifestyle changes alone make a difference?
They make a big difference. This 2022 population-based cohort study (so: huge sample size) looked at people who had 4–5 of the healthy lifestyle factors being studied, vs people who had 0–1 of them. They found:
❝A healthy lifestyle was associated with a longer life expectancy among men and women, and they lived a larger proportion of their remaining years without Alzheimer’s dementia.❞
The numbers of years involved by the way ranged between 3 and 20 years, in terms of life expectancy and years without or with Alzheimer’s, with the average increase of healthy life years being approximately the same as the average increase in years. This is important, because:
A lot of people think “well if I’m going to go senile, I might as well [unhealthy choice that shortens lifespan]”, but they misunderstand a critical factor:
The unhealthy choices will reduce their healthy life years, and simply bring the unhealthy ones (and subsequent death) sooner. If you’re going to spend your last few years in ill-health, it’s better to do so at 90 than 50.
The other thing you may already know… And a thing about it that not everyone considers:
Keeping cognitively active is important. This much is broadly known by the general public, and to clinicians, this was the fourth “healthy factor” in the list of five (instead of the sleep that we put there, because we were listing the 5 things that go for most preventable health issues).
Everyone leaps to mention sudoku at this point, so if that’s your thing, great, enjoy it! (This writer personally enjoys chess, which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea; if it yours though, you can come join her on Chess.com and we’ll keep sharp together)
But the more parts of your mental faculties you keep active, the better. Remember, brainpower (as with many things in health and life) is a matter of “use it or lose it” and this is on a “per skill” basis!
What this means: doing sudoku (a number-based puzzle game) or chess (great as it may be) won’t help as much for keeping your language skills intact, for example. Given that language skills are one of the most impactful and key faculties to get lost to Alzheimer’s disease, neglecting such would be quite an oversight!
Some good ways to keep your language skills tip-top:
- Read—but read something challenging, if possible. It doesn’t have to be Thomas Scanlon’s What We Owe To Each Other, but it should be more challenging than a tabloid, for example. In fact, on the topic of examples:
- This newsletter is written to be easy to read, while not shying away from complex ideas or hard science. Our mission is literally to “make [well-sourced, science-based] health and productivity crazy simple”.
- But the academic papers that we link? Those aren’t written to be easy to read. Go read them, or at least the abstracts (in academia, an abstract is essentially an up-front summary, and is usually the first thing you’ll see when you click a link to a study or such). Challenge yourself!
- Write—compared to reading/listening, producing language is a (related, but) somewhat separate skill. Just ask any foreign language learner which is more challenging: reading or writing!
- Journaling is great, but writing for others is better (as then you’ll be forced to think more about it)
- Learn a foreign language—in this case, what matters it that you’re practicing and learning, so in the scale of easy to hard, or doesn’t matter if it’s Esperanto or Arabic. Duolingo is a great free resource that we recommend for this, and they have a wide range of extensive courses these days.
Now for the least obvious things…
Social contact is important.
Especially in older age, it’s easy to find oneself with fewer remaining friends and family, and getting out and about can be harder for everyone. Whatever our personal inclinations (some people being more introverted or less social than others), we are fundamentally a social species, and hundreds of thousands of years of evolution have built us around the idea that we will live our lives alongside others of our kind. And when we don’t, we don’t do as well.
See for example: Associations of Social Isolation and Loneliness With Later Dementia
If you can’t get out and about easily:
- Online socialising is still socializing.
- Online community is still community.
- Online conversations between friends are still conversations between friends.
If you don’t have much (or anyone) in the category of friends and family, join Facebook groups related to your interests, for example.
Berries are surprisingly good
^This may read like a headline from 200,000 BCE, but it’s relevant here!
Particularly recommended are:
- blueberries
- blackberries
- raspberries
- strawberries
- cranberries
We know that many of these berries seem to have a shelf-life of something like 30 minutes from time of purchase, but… Frozen and dried are perfectly good nutritionally, and in many cases, even better nutritionally than fresh.
Read: Effect of berry-based supplements and foods on cognitive function: a systematic review
Turmeric’s health benefits appear to include protecting against Alzheimer’s
Again, this is about risk reduction, and turmeric (also called curcumin, which is not the same as cumin) significantly reduces the build-up of amyloid plaques in the brain. Amyloid plaques are part of the progression of Alzheimer’s.
See for yourself: Protective Effects of Indian Spice Curcumin Against Amyloid Beta in Alzheimer’s Disease
If you don’t like it as a spice (and even if you do, you probably don’t want to put it in your food every day), you can easily get it as a supplement in capsule form.
Lower your homocysteine levels
Lower our what now? Homocysteine is an amino acid used for making certain proteins, and it’s a risk factor for Alzheimer’s.
Foods high in folate (and possible other B-vitamins) seem to lower homocysteine levels. Top choices include:
- Leafy greens
- Cruciferous vegetables
- Tomatoes
Get plenty of lutein
We did a main feature about specifically this a little while ago, so we’ll not repeat our work here, but lutein is found in, well, the same things we just listed above, and lower levels of lutein are associated with Alzheimer’s disease. It’s not a proven causative factor—we don’t know entirely what causes Alzheimer’s, just a lot of factors that have a high enough correlation that it’d be remiss to ignore them.
Catch up on our previous article: Brain Food? The Eyes Have It
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Protein: How Much Do We Need, Really?
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Mythbusting Protein!
Yesterday, we asked you for your policy on protein consumption. The distribution of responses was as follows:
- A marginal majority (about 55%) voted for “Protein is very important, but we can eat too much of it”
- A large minority (about 35%) voted for “We need lots of protein; the more, the better!”
- A handful (about 4%) voted for “We should go as light on protein as possible”
- A handful (6%) voted for “If we don’t eat protein, our body will create it from other foods”
So, what does the science say?
If we don’t eat protein, our body will create it from other foods: True or False?
Contingently True on an absurd technicality, but for all practical purposes False.
Our body requires 20 amino acids (the building blocks of protein), 9 of which it can’t synthesize and absolutely must get from food. Normally, we get those amino acids from protein in our diet, and we can also supplement them by buying amino acid supplements.
Specifically, we require (per kg of bodyweight) a daily average of:
- Histidine: 10 mg
- Isoleucine: 20 mg
- Leucine: 39 mg
- Lysine: 30 mg
- Methionine: 10.4 mg
- Phenylalanine*: 25 mg
- Threonine: 15 mg
- Tryptophan: 4 mg
- Valine: 26 mg
*combined with the non-essential amino acid tyrosine
Source: Protein and Amino Acid Requirements In Human Nutrition: WHO Technical Report
However, to get the requisite amino acid amounts, without consuming actual protein, would require gargantuan amounts of supplementation (bearing in mind bioavailability will never be 100%, so you’ll always need to take more than it seems), using supplements that will have been made by breaking down proteins anyway.
So unless you live in a laboratory and have access to endless amounts of all of the required amino acids (you can’t miss even one; you will die), and are willing to do that for the sake of proving a point, then you do really need to eat protein.
Your body cannot, for example, simply break down sugar and use it to make the protein you need.
On another technical note… Do bear in mind that many foods that we don’t necessarily think of as being sources of protein, are sources of protein.
Grains and grain products, for example, all contain protein; we just don’t think of them as that because their macronutritional profile is heavily weighted towards carbohydrates.
For that matter, even celery contains protein. How much, you may ask? Almost none! But if something has DNA, it has protein. Which means all plants and animals (at least in their unrefined forms).
So again, to even try to live without protein would very much require living in a laboratory.
We can eat too much protein: True or False?
True. First on an easy technicality; anything in excess is toxic. Even water, or oxygen. But also, in practical terms, there is such a thing as too much protein. The bar is quite high, though:
❝Based on short-term nitrogen balance studies, the Recommended Dietary Allowance of protein for a healthy adult with minimal physical activity is currently 0.8 g protein per kg bodyweight per day❞
❝To meet the functional needs such as promoting skeletal-muscle protein accretion and physical strength, dietary intake of 1.0, 1.3, and 1.6 g protein per kg bodyweight per day is recommended for individuals with minimal, moderate, and intense physical activity, respectively❞
❝Long-term consumption of protein at 2 g per kg bodyweight per day is safe for healthy adults, and the tolerable upper limit is 3.5 g per kg bodyweight per day for well-adapted subjects❞
❝Chronic high protein intake (>2 g per kg bodyweight per day for adults) may result in digestive, renal, and vascular abnormalities and should be avoided❞
Source: Dietary protein intake and human health
To put this into perspective, if you weigh about 160lbs (about 72kg), this would mean eating more than 144g protein per day, which grabbing a calculator means about 560g of lean beef, or 20oz, or 1¼lb.
If you’re eating quarter-pounder burgers though, that’s not usually so lean, so you’d need to eat more than nine quarter-pounder burgers per day to get too much protein.
High protein intake damages the kidneys: True or False?
True if you have kidney damage already; False if you are healthy. See for example:
- Effects of dietary protein restriction on the progression of advanced renal disease in the modification of diet in renal disease study
- A high protein diet has no harmful effects: a one-year crossover study in healthy male athletes
High protein intake increases cancer risk: True or False?
True or False depending on the source of the protein, so functionally false:
- Eating protein from red meat sources has been associated with higher risk for many cancers
- Eating protein from other sources has been associated with lower risk for many cancers
Source: Red Meat Consumption and Mortality Results From 2 Prospective Cohort Studies
High protein intake increase risk of heart disease: True or False?
True or False depending on the source of the protein, so, functionally false:
- Eating protein from red meat sources has been associated with higher risk of heart disease
- Eating protein from other sources has been associated with lower risk of heart disease
Source: Major Dietary Protein Sources and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease in Women
In summary…
Getting a good amount of good quality protein is important to health.
One can get too much, but one would have to go to extremes to do so.
The source of protein matters:
- Red meat is associated with many health risks, but that’s not necessarily the protein’s fault.
- Getting plenty of protein from (ideally: unprocessed) sources such as poultry, fish, and/or plants, is critical to good health.
- Consuming “whole proteins” (that contain all 9 amino acids that we can’t synthesize) are best.
Learn more: Complete proteins vs. incomplete proteins (explanation and examples)
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Chicken or Fish – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing chicken to fish, we picked the fish.
Why?
To understand the choice, we have to start a bit earlier on the decision tree. For most people most of the time, when it comes to a diet high in plants or high in animals, the plant-centric diet will generally be best:
Do We Need Animal Products To Be Healthy?
When it comes to animal meats, red meat is a fairly uncontroversial first thing to strike off the list:
…with pork and some other meats not being much better.
But chicken? Poultry in general appears to be quite health-neutral. The jury is out and the science has mixed results, but the data is leaning towards “it’s probably fine”.
See for example this huge (n=29,682) study:
this same paper shows that…
❝higher intake of processed meat, unprocessed red meat, or poultry, but not fish, was significantly associated with a small increased risk of incident CVD, whereas higher intake of processed meat or unprocessed red meat, but not poultry or fish, was significantly associated with a small increased risk of all-cause mortality❞
So, since poultry isn’t significantly increasing all-cause mortality, and fish isn’t significantly increasing all-cause mortality or cardiovascular disease, fish comes out as the hands-down (fins-down?) winner.
One more (this time, easy) choice to make, though!
While fish in general (please, not fried, though!) is generally considered quite healthy, there is a big difference (more than you might think, and for reasons that are quite alarming), between…
Health Risks & Nutrition: Farmed Fish vs Wild-Caught
Enjoy, and take care!
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