Everything Causes Cancer Now. What Actually Matters?

Search online for almost any everyday product and you can probably find someone claiming it causes cancer.

Plastic containers. Seed oils. Dryer sheets. Sunscreen. Sugar. Microplastics. Household chemicals.

For Dr. Amar Rewari, a radiation oncologist who spends his career treating people with cancer, this flood of information has created a new problem.

“It used to be Dr. Google, but now it’s like Dr. Chat GPT,” he says.

Patients increasingly arrive frightened by things they have read online. Some worry radiation will burn them. Others believe sugar feeds cancer or that chemotherapy may be more dangerous than the disease itself.

As Rewari puts it, if you spend enough time online, it can feel as though “everything causes cancer and everything cures cancer.”

In this episode of Nothing Left Unsaid, Rewari joins Tim Green and Troy Green to discuss what actually increases cancer risk, which fears are unsupported, how modern cancer treatment has changed, and what years spent around serious illness have taught him about mortality, control, hope, and how to live.

Are Cancer Rates Really Getting Worse?

The picture is more complicated than the headlines suggest.

Rewari explains that outcomes for many cancers have improved substantially. He says roughly seven in ten people diagnosed with cancer are living and being cured, although the situation varies significantly by cancer type.

One area that concerns oncologists is the apparent increase in some cancers among younger people, particularly colorectal cancer.

Researchers do not yet have a single explanation.

Possible factors include diet, reduced physical activity, environmental exposures, hormonal influences, and improved detection. Rewari stresses that the causes remain uncertain and are likely multifactorial.

That uncertainty is important.

Medicine often deals in probabilities rather than absolute answers. Online discussions, however, frequently turn incomplete evidence into confident conclusions.

What Actually Causes Cancer?

When asked what someone who wants to reduce their cancer risk should focus on, Rewari returns to surprisingly conventional advice.

His first recommendation is simple:

Do not smoke.

He also emphasizes maintaining a healthy weight, exercising, keeping up with recommended cancer screenings, receiving vaccines that prevent certain cancers, and protecting yourself from excessive sun exposure.

These measures are less novel than the latest viral health warning, but they have much stronger evidence behind them.

Rewari specifically contrasts established risk factors with concerns surrounding subjects such as dryer sheets, microplastics, seed oils, and other everyday products.

His advice is not that every emerging concern is necessarily false.

It is that evidence matters.

“We just don’t know,” he says of many of these proposed risks. “So focus on the stuff we do know.”

Does Sunscreen Cause Cancer?

Sunscreen has become one of the more visible examples of health misinformation online.

Some influencers argue that sunscreen chemicals are dangerous or that humans should simply rely on natural sun exposure.

Rewari rejects that conclusion.

He explains that skin cancer is the most common form of cancer and says there is no established evidence showing that chemical sunscreen causes cancer. By contrast, sunscreen has been shown to reduce skin cancer risk.

This illustrates a broader problem in health communication.

A substance can contain a chemical. A chemical can produce an effect under certain laboratory conditions. Neither fact alone proves that ordinary human exposure causes cancer.

Risk depends on dose, exposure, biology, and evidence from human populations.

Does Sugar Feed Cancer?

Another common claim Rewari hears from patients is that sugar feeds cancer.

The idea often leads frightened patients to attempt extreme dietary changes after diagnosis.

Rewari places this alongside a larger collection of fears generated by online health information. His role, he says, is often less about correcting ignorance than correcting fear.

That distinction matters.

A cancer diagnosis creates an intense desire for control. Patients and families naturally want to identify something they can remove, eat, avoid, or change.

But the strongest sounding explanation is not necessarily the best supported one.

Is Radiation Treatment Dangerous?

The word radiation itself can sound alarming.

Rewari explains that modern radiation therapy is essentially the controlled use of high energy X rays directed at cancer cells.

He describes it as something close to “virtual surgery.”

Modern radiation treatment can target tumors with considerable precision, and the treatment itself is painless. He also jokes with patients that they are not going to glow in the dark.

The technology is important, but Rewari argues that the physician’s role extends well beyond operating sophisticated machines.

“I don’t consider myself as somebody who treats tumors,” he says. “The machine treats the tumors. I think of myself as somebody who treats the people that happen to have tumors.”

Patients may eventually forget the equipment that treated them, he says, but they often remember how the people around them made them feel.

What Happens When Someone Hears the Word Cancer?

When someone first receives a cancer diagnosis, Rewari says the first thing they often need is not information.

They need presence.

Many patients are barely processing what the doctor is saying. Their minds have already moved elsewhere.

They are thinking about their spouse.

Their children.

Christmas.

Weddings.

Graduations.

Whether they will still be there for the moments they expected to experience.

Different patients react differently.

Some want statistics immediately.

Some want a plan.

Some need hope.

Others need permission to cry, pray, become angry, or simply absorb what has happened.

The physician’s job, Rewari says, is not to deliver exactly the same response to everyone. It is to understand what the individual patient needs at that moment.

The Patient Who Changed How He Saw Cancer

One patient changed Rewari’s relationship with the disease.

The man was around Rewari’s own age.

He was healthy, highly educated, fully functional, and had a young child.

Then he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer with poor survival rates.

Rewari remembers looking at him and thinking:

“This easily could be me.”

The patient later died.

For Rewari, the experience exposed something that medical training cannot fully protect a doctor from.

Cancer does not care about your plans.

It does not care whether you are healthy, ambitious, educated, or young.

“That really teaches you how fragile life is,” he says.

Cancer and the Illusion of Control

Years of treating cancer patients have changed how Rewari thinks about control.

“Cancer has definitely taught me that control is largely an illusion,” he says.

Everyone lives with uncertainty.

Cancer simply forces some people to confront that reality earlier.

The patients who cope best, in his experience, often stop concentrating exclusively on what they cannot control and turn toward what remains available to them.

Relationships.

Faith.

Purpose.

Time.

That lesson extends far beyond oncology.

Modern life encourages the idea that enough information can eliminate uncertainty.

Track everything.

Optimize everything.

Avoid every possible risk.

Research every ingredient.

But complete control remains impossible.

Trying to remove every theoretical health risk can itself become a source of anxiety.

What Does Hope Mean When Everything Might Not Be Okay?

Perhaps the most important distinction Rewari makes in the conversation concerns hope.

Hope is not certainty.

It is not pretending that every patient will recover.

“Hope is not believing everything will be okay,” he says. “Hope is just finding meaning, regardless of what happens next.”

That definition allows hope to exist even when medicine reaches its limits.

It also changes what becomes important.

When Rewari talks with people approaching the end of life, they rarely focus on career achievements or money.

They think about seeing a daughter graduate.

Attending a wedding.

Meeting grandchildren.

What Cancer Patients Teach Us About Life

One of the central themes of this conversation is that cancer reveals priorities unusually clearly.

Rewari has worked in medicine, investment banking, health policy, leadership, and media.

Yet when asked which room taught him the most about how life actually works, his answer is immediate.

The examination room.

Watching people confront mortality has repeatedly shown him what remains important when status, ambition, and professional success lose their urgency.

That perspective has also affected how he thinks about ambition in his own life.

He describes ambition as something that creates opportunity but also restlessness. Every achievement invites another target. Every yes contains a hidden no, and frequently what is sacrificed is time.

Cancer Prevention Without the Panic

The internet gives people access to more health information than any previous generation.

That does not automatically make us better informed.

More information can produce more confusion, particularly when preliminary research, anecdotes, influencer claims, animal studies, and established medical evidence all appear beside one another.

Rewari’s approach is much simpler.

Pay attention to established risks.

Do not smoke.

Exercise.

Maintain a healthy weight.

Attend recommended cancer screenings.

Use appropriate sun protection.

Consider cancer preventing vaccines where recommended.

Sleep.

Reduce unnecessary stress.

And be cautious about allowing every alarming headline to restructure your life.

Cancer prevention matters.

But living in constant fear of cancer is not the same thing as preventing it.

Listen to the Full Conversation

In this episode of Nothing Left Unsaid, Dr. Amar Rewari discusses cancer prevention, radiation oncology, health misinformation, cancer treatment, clinical trials, insurance barriers, artificial intelligence in healthcare, faith, mortality, ambition, and what his patients have taught him about living with uncertainty.

The larger question underneath all of it is difficult but universal:

If we cannot eliminate every risk or control everything that happens to us, what actually deserves our attention?

For Rewari, the answer begins with evidence, relationships, purpose, and learning how to live meaningfully even when certainty is unavailable.