Cancer Mortality, Men vs. Women

[mdillon]

When it comes to surviving cancer, I've been informed that maintaining bodyweight/muscle mass is very important. I'm assuming it helps a person be able to tolerate treatments long enough to take care of the cancer. I was thinking that if this were the case then men should have lower cancer mortality rates than women, but according to the cancer statistics I found, the opposite is true. I know there are numerous other factors that are involved here, but do these stats suggest that higher body mass isn't a significant factor in cancer mortality?

Here is a line from the cancer.gov site: "Cancer mortality is higher among men than women (207.9 per 100,000 men and 145.4 per 100,000 women)."

[Mark Rippetoe]

This may be a misinterpretation of the statistic. Cancer mortality will be highest in the demographic with the highest rate of cancer. If men get more cancers than women, they will have a higher mortality rate from cancer since more of them got cancer -- i.e. if you don't get cancer, you don't die from cancer. What is the actual statistic?

[David Kirkham]

If the higher "mass" is blubber instead of muscle...

[Kiril]

When it comes to surviving cancer, I've been informed that maintaining bodyweight/muscle mass is very important. I'm assuming it helps a person be able to tolerate treatments long enough to take care of the cancer. I was thinking that if this were the case then men should have lower cancer mortality rates than women, but according to the cancer statistics I found, the opposite is true. I know there are numerous other factors that are involved here, but do these stats suggest that higher body mass isn't a significant factor in cancer mortality?

Here is a line from the cancer.gov site: "Cancer mortality is higher among men than women (207.9 per 100,000 men and 145.4 per 100,000 women)."

There are other risk factors for mortality(and morbidity) from cancer, other than physical strength and mass of muscle(unfortunately, or not). So, where's the surprise? Maybe we just prone to have more oncology and cardiopathology, and live less, eventually. At least we can try and live better, until one day we are ceased to exist here.

[Tiburon]

The OP is confusing two concepts.

The mortality rate is how many people in the population die from cancer during a window of time.

The case fatality rate is what % of people who have a certain cancer will die from that cancer.

If you wanted to investigate how maintaining muscle mass helps "when it comes to surviving cancer," you'd want to look at case fatality rate.

Also, there are over 100 types of cancers, and you probably don't want to lump them together when comparing men/women, especially when you think about uterine cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer, etc

[k_dean_curtis]

Stage 4 throat cancer survivor here. Was from HPV virus, been a health nut all my life. From my radiologist, who is a darned good doc and ex athlete who still works out, got some great advice. Throughout my 3 month chemo and radiation, and the past 6 months he was emphatic that I kept my weight up. They weighted me literally 5 days a week. As you can imagine, throat cancer is the most dangerous from this perspective, because you physically cannot eat, the pain is excruciating, and the chemo makes you extremely nauseous. For 4 months my diet was 100% liquid. Body weight went from 175 (10% fat) down to 150 at 8% fat, now I am back to 165, 6 months post treatment. Doc said bigger guys with throat cancer lose 80 to 100 lbs. and that is the most dangerous part.

So yes, surviving cancer is greatly affected by how much lean mass you have going in and how much you keep thru the treatment.

[Kiril]

Here's something I thought about: if bigger muscle mass increase your survival with cancer, would it be a good advice to a specific part of patients to prescribe drugs like testosterone, for gaining lean weight? I'm absolutely not for drugs in a private sport, for health, like most of us want, but in this particular case, may these pills and injections be vital?

[mdillon]

The OP is confusing two concepts.

I fully understand that the mortality rate that I referenced is general and that it would be more useful to compare men vs women data for individual types of cancer. I just thought that if body mass (specifically muscle mass) played such an important role then you would see a lower mortality in men even when comparing all types of cancer.

I would like to investigate this more carefully, so if anyone can point me to some data that compares case fatality % in men vs. women I'd appreciate it.

[Mark Rippetoe]

if bigger muscle mass increase your survival with cancer, would it be a good advice to a specific part of patients to prescribe drugs like testosterone, for gaining lean weight?

Obviously. Right now, doctors are afraid to prescribe anabolic steroids in situations where they are definitely indicated because they don't want the DEA in the office. One more problem with The Government.

[David Kirkham]

I had to FIGHT with the docs to get my brother on testosterone. It was maddening. His turnaround after he started on T amazed every nurse. I couldn't believe it.