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Colon Cancer Is Rising in Young People: What to Know About Causes and Symptoms
- nickburns 3y agoplease indulge me in my making a completely unfounded statement (with which Occam's Razor comes to mind notwithstanding): it has to be related to plastic.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- yellow_lead 3y agoThe article actually doesn't mention plastic, but NSAIDs, proton pumps, antibiotics, and psychiatric medications.
- nickburns 3y agoyeah, something about all those doesn't feel as ubiquitous.
- justsocrateasin 3y agoThis is incorrect. The article explicitly mentions PFAS as a potential cause. > So-called forever chemicals like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS, have been linked to other cancers and could also be driving some of the increase in early-onset colorectal cancer.
- nickburns 3y agothat, on the other hand, does feel as ubiquitous as plastics.
- lr4444lr 3y agoYou ruined a witty reference to The Graduate.
- nickburns 3y agoi'm not familiar.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- maxerickson 3y agoIt's at least as well trod as it is witty. A brief scene from the 1967 movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMtLdE5Zq-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMtLdE5Zq-8
- ojbyrne 3y agohttps://youtu.be/PSxihhBzCjk?si=wnhUm2J2BVe_pzub https://youtu.be/PSxihhBzCjk?si=wnhUm2J2BVe_pzub
- marginalia_nu 3y agoWe've had plastics for 70 years though...?
- nickburns 3y agochecks out.
- apothegm 3y agoAnd we now use them a heck of a lot more and for more things than we did even 35 years ago.
- pie420 3y ago60 years ago plastic was a rarity, now micropastics are embedded in every piece of clothing, food, and drink you consume
- bjelkeman-again 3y ago> Plastic production has more than doubled in the last two decades https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution
- stouset 3y agoExponential growth is a bitch.
- jijijijij 3y agoWhile this is true, size matters and a lot of that plastic is only now entering our food chain due to degradation. Also plastic usage has massively increased compared to the 50s and 60s. Especially things like plastic fiber fast-fashion clothing shedding microplastic particles during wear and washing. Then there is synthetic polymers as cosmetic and personal care ingredients. Plastic bottle and pipe usage increased too, I think.
- honksillet 3y agoMore libertine sexual habits. They are already causing an increase in pharyngeal cancer.
- jijijijij 3y agoThe increase in pharyngeal cancers may come from oral HPV infections specifically, not "libertine sexual habits" per se. It's only gonna be a few more years to find out, if HPV is related to the increase in colon cancers in young people, since the broad vaccination of teenagers is going for some time by now. I think, it's also worth considering the fallout of the AIDS scare messing with statistics here. PrEP, education on and treatment options for HIV may have caused people (including heterosexual) to use less protection in recent years, unfortunately, since other STIs are less scary and stigmatized. I doubt rates of oral and anal sex have increased that much.
- M_bara 3y agoarchive.ph - https://archive.ph/ugUdY https://archive.ph/ugUdY
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sdo72 3y ago> red meat, ultraprocessed foods and sugary beverages I also think these are the culprits, and ultraprocessed food is the ultimate.
- nickburns 3y agocoinkydental that they mostly come in plastic packaging, too.
- sdo72 3y agoThat could be as well, but we haven't had lots of evidence yet(maybe due to the blocking of plastic industry). By the time we totally understand the plastic impact on our health, it may be too late.
- nickburns 3y agoi don't know if i agree that it possibly will be too late—but i sincerely doubt i'll be around long enough to find out one way or the other. i think that's another inherent part of the problem.
- _mlbt 3y agoHas there been an increase in red meat consumption? That seems to be an unlikely culprit.
- sdo72 3y agoI think there has not or not much. However, we seem to consume the meat differently like processing it heavily, cooking it at very high temperature. These actually produces lots of carcinogens that add up over time. Sugary food can cause lots of body inflammation which can fasten the process.
- A_D_E_P_T 3y agoIn part, it may have to do with the increasing prevalence of anal sex. There are tentative links between HPV exposure and colon cancer. https://healthmatch.io/colon-cancer/anal-sex https://healthmatch.io/colon-cancer/anal-sex This is an extremely unpopular subject to research, though, for obvious reasons.
- josefresco 3y ago> increasing prevalence of anal sex Is there a citation for this?
- A_D_E_P_T 3y agoThis is an older one, but sure: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21707331/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21707331/ This is more recent, and describes anal sex as "[apparently] an increasingly common sexual practice": https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jocn.15628 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jocn.15628 And of course in the press: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/aug/11/rise-in-popularity-of-anal-sex-has-led-to-health-problems-for-women https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/aug/11/rise-in-popu...
- dehrmann 3y agoWouldn't you expect this to be obvious when you look at gender or sexual orientation of patients? HPV vaccines have been widely available since ~2010, so we should expect to see this trend drop for anyone born after ~1995.
- dehrmann 3y ago> millennials born around 1990 now have twice the risk of colon cancer compared with people born around the 1950s If this is at their current age and not comparing with boomers 40 years ago, extra yikes.
- ijijijjij 3y agoPreservatives could probably be partly blamed, because there are basically poisons. Also, increased antibiotics use... they kill good gut bacterias. AKA: we don't know why you are sick.. take these antibiotics for 10 days for no reason. A dentist once prescribed me two antibiotics at once because his shitty root canal job was hurting me (and it didn't fix anything). $1000 down the drain and it created pain in my guts.
- olejorgenb 3y agoVitamin C is a poison?
- jijijijij 3y agoI mean, OP's nonsense statement notwithstanding, vitamin C in combination with benzoates (another common preservative) produces benzene. The combination is frequently found in food and cosmetics. Vitamin C is a really reactive substance and tends to cut both ways health-wise. There are several known pathways for it becoming detrimental to health.
- nickburns 3y agoand the poster suggesting vitamin C food and cosmetics preservatives (i think?) hurls the word 'nonsense.'
- ijijijjij 3y agowho said vitamin C? NOT ME... don't put words into my mouth? it's actually not even the most common preservative that is added to our foods... sodium benzoate might be the most common one... which they say is considered safe in small doses because they want to save money by extending shelf life.
- jijijijij 3y agoPretty sure ascorbic acid is the most common antioxidant preservative (sometimes naturally occurring of course). But it is not an antimicrobial agent, hence the frequent problematic combination with benzoates. Tho, not sure about the US, I think benzoates are not the most common antimicrobial in food. It's probably citric, lactic and acetic acid, and sorbates.
- jbuhbjlnjbn 3y agoThe usual suspects are pesticides, emulsifiers, preservatives/additives, genetically engineered food, highly processed food and then overall plain worse eating, as in lack of: unprocessed, fiber, freshness. The problem is that there is so much money in food made by big companies nowadays, for every reputable study you will get 10 studies paid by those companies that proclaim the opposite.
- ryandvm 3y agoSaw a study the other day that linked certain colon cancers with the prevalence of a particular strain of bacteria that is usually exclusively found in the mouth. Correlation != causation and all that, but that does kind of correspond with what seem to be generational shifts in certain sexual practices. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07182-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07182-w
- nickburns 3y ago'seeming generational shifts in certain sexual practices' to who? to you apparently, right?
- Gerlo 3y agoWhy did this post completely disappear from nearly the top of the front page? It's not even in the top 200.
- nickburns 3y agoanother unfounded assumption: my unfounded assumption of it being related to plastics as the first substantive comment.
- ryandrake 3y agoI've noticed that health, fitness, and nutrition related articles on HN tend to get filled with low-quality quackery, like "this diet worked for me" and "this cleanse removes toxins" and "red meat is the obvious culprit" and so on. Not a lot of us have medical degrees, so these comment sections turn into opinion fights.
- strongly-typed 3y agoI had to search for this post to find it after it suddenly disappeared.
- bun_terminator 3y agocontroversial filter kicked in. hckrnews.com is the only actual interface to HN
- nickthegreek 3y agomore comments (and mutliple gray) than upvotes is a sure fire way to speed its drop.
- l5870uoo9y 3y agoHeard a podcast with one of Germany leading nutritionist advocating for banning energy drinks completely. Sugary beverages targeting teenagers filled with chemicals and caffeine and sold in large containers with zero health benefits – "why are they even allowed?" he asked rhetorically (paraphrasing). You could ask the same question for any of the nova class 4 products[0]. [0]: https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova Edit: This study suggest connection between colon cancer and sugary beverages: > Conclusion Higher SSB (Sugar-sweetened beverage) intake in adulthood and adolescence was associated with a higher risk of EO-CRC (early-onset colorectal cancer) among women. Reduction of SSB consumption among adolescents and young adults may serve as a potential strategy to alleviate the growing burden of EO-CRC. https://gut.bmj.com/content/70/12/2330 https://gut.bmj.com/content/70/12/2330
- callalex 3y agoWhat is a chemical in this context? How many chemicals are there in tea and coffee?
- JDEW 3y agoThe “everything is a chemical” ‘argument’ is an isolated demand for rigor imo. Everybody can reasonably squint their eyes, assuming good faith, and see that a compound created in a lab that has no nutritional value or is engineered to be overtly addictive (like high fructose corn sirup and what not) or any of the other million things we engineer every day to industrialize the food chain is what is meant by most people when they say “chemical”. And yes, many of these are bad for you, despite the (corporate funded) studies that say otherwise.
- strongly-typed 3y agoThis post coincides with a sudden major uptick in cancer related video recommendations on my YouTube feed. I wonder if other people are seeing the same thing.
- nickburns 3y agopublic discussion of increased prevalence of cancers is definitely en vogue at the moment.
- colpabar 3y agoWhat I find really annoying is that doctors still won't sign off on a colonoscopy until you're 45. They will, but they do it in a way that apparently makes it not covered by insurance, despite the fact that a family member was diagnosed with colon cancer ~8 years ago. The current guidance says I shouldn't get one for another 13 years. Everyone I have talked to about this has told me to just lie and say I have symptoms I don't have so I can get the "right" colonoscopy ordered that insurance will cover. It seems really stupid.
- nickburns 3y agothis is not true. both my parents had stage 3 colon diagnoses, and i had my first preventative (and covered) colonoscopy in my early 30's based upon family history alone.
- colpabar 3y agoSo the doctor I saw recently who told me exactly what I just said was lying to me?
- nickburns 3y agoWhat I find really annoying is that doctors still won't sign off on a colonoscopy until you're 45. guy, what is your issue today? clearly you're enjoying the shit all over you throughout this thread, and so i yield.
- albertfredrick 3y ago[dead]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoWorks where archive.ph is blocked: https://web.archive.org/web/20240327173011if_/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/well/colon-cancer-symptoms-treatment.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240327173011if_/https://www.ny...