8 ms·

Why are so many young people getting cancer?

• noIdeaTheSecond 5mo ago
  My wild guess before reading the article: unhealthy food. A big part of which is herbicides and pesticides. I will now read the article.
  • artyom 5mo ago
    Your guess is not wild at all, and the article implies that (at least until the payment popup shows up) My grandmother used to grow her own vegetables and fruits and had a minimal chicken farm for eggs until the early 2000s, all in her regular backyard, it's not ancient history or something that required a lot of real state. Now there's a 15-story building and no land whatsoever where her house used to be.
    • noIdeaTheSecond 5mo ago
      As a kid I used to do that with my family: Grow our own everything. I'm currently trying to get back to it, until then I try to eat ecological and as much as I can cooked by myself. It is hard though, not everybody can aford a plot of land (ideally next to some decent sized town)
  • noIdeaTheSecond 5mo ago
    Upon reading: A bit unclear but yes it seems like unhealthy food + new microbe mutations + obesity They talk about obesity as a separate cause than ultra processed food, I thought it was quite related, something I need to look into
    • JimBlackwood 5mo ago
      I’m not obese or overweight and while my main meals (breakfast and dinner) are generally very healthy - I can still eat a lot of trash (ultra processed)food as snacks. I’m sure that could have an effect.
  • gopalv 5mo ago
    My personal bugbear is the lack of sleep & entirely tied to the phone for that. I remember being in my 20s and not being able to sleep, but the most distracting thing I could reach for was a pile of books in my bedside table. Now, I can't sleep, there's an endless stream of things to keep me awake. The jokes about "5G gives you cancer" is probably not as funny, if you think about the sleep you miss while you doom scroll.
    • embedding-shape 5mo ago
      > I remember being in my 20s and not being able to sleep, but the most distracting thing I could reach for was a pile of books in my bedside table. Back when I was young in the 90s, this was exactly how I spent the last 5-6 hours of my days, reading books in my bed until the sun came up in the morning and I actually started getting tired. Now, I sleep much better, the bed and bedroom is limited to just two activities, sleeping and funtime with partner, otherwise I never just chill in the bed or have anything else interesting in there. And if I can't sleep, I go up again and do something else until I'm tired enough to actually lay down in the bed. Probably helps a ton, as even with the phone on the nightstand next to me, I do fall asleep relatively quick.
    • geremiiah 5mo ago
      Lack of sleep, not because of phones but because of more demanding lives due to modern education and workplace demands. Phones might contribute too, but consider how normal it is today to work till late hours compared to previous generations.
    • p_j_w 5mo ago
      >The jokes about "5G gives you cancer" is probably not as funny, if you think about the sleep you miss while you doom scroll. 802.11g was good enough for that, no need for 5G.
    • procaryote 5mo ago
      As you know this, why don't you fix it? What is forcing you to doom scroll rather than putting the phone in a different room before going do bed?
  • Projectiboga 5mo ago
    Plastics, the increase in background radiation, pesticides, and or a side effect of extra calories are all possibilities. Daily allergy medicines might also be a factor as those reduce immune response slightly.
    • jandrewrogers 5mo ago
      There is no increase in background radiation.
      • Projectiboga 5mo ago
        This suggests otherwise, https://radwatch.berkeley.edu/background-radiation/ https://radwatch.berkeley.edu/background-radiation/ Another exposure increase is from increased home insulation likely increases radon exposure.
        • jandrewrogers 5mo ago
          That link suggests nothing of the sort. That aside, I’ve been tracking background radiation for years with my own sensors (for other reasons). I can’t replicate this claim there either, as expected.
        • ianburrell 5mo ago
          That doesn't talk about an increase in radiation. If there was an issue, we would see it in flight crew. There is also a difference with altitude and soil composition, and that would show up in the data.
  • marcyb5st 5mo ago
    I believe that county specific studies seem to support your thesis. For instance, countries that eat less processed food (eg Italy) and have stricter rules about pesticides didn't see an increase in stuff like colorectal cancer [1]. Some cancers incidence did grow, but others decreased keeping incidence more or less the same. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03008916241297078 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03008916241297078
  • VirusNewbie 5mo ago
    Don't people eat more healthy than they did 50 years ago? Weren't microwave dinners a big thing in the 70s?
    • mixmastamyk 5mo ago
      “TV” dinners were, packaged in aluminum foil. Microwaves didn’t become prevalent until perhaps the mid 80s.
      • VirusNewbie 5mo ago
        ah, interesting. Ok, so TV dinners != microwave dinners, and maybe they're more healthy than microwaved dinners or food that comes in plastic.
        • masfuerte 5mo ago
          My impression (as someone who was alive back then) is that the early TV dinners often weren't that different from something you'd cook yourself, but the industry has spend half a century optimising them into cheap chemical slop engineered for palatability. Also, not all ready meals are crap. You can buy premium frozen meals from restaurant suppliers but they aren't cheap.
        • jandrewrogers 5mo ago
          I wouldn't exactly call TV dinners "healthy". In many ways it was much more heavily processed fatty carbs than what passes for microwave food today. It was loaded with salt and sugar. The main difference is that TV dinners were designed to be heated in an oven rather than a microwave, back when microwaves were less common.
          • mixmastamyk 5mo ago
            I remember Swanson Salsbury steak etc, maybe Turkey and cranberry? Then the “Hungry Man” line came out a bit later.
    • 5mo ago
  • SubiculumCode 5mo ago
    We are exposed to more more types of chemicals in our every day than ever before. Some offenders to me, besides herbicides and pesticides are: [1]: ubiquitous flame retardants, which in America they put in every couch, carpet, and mattress [2]: ubiquitous microplastics pollution, [3]: joint effect of Obesity and Ultra-Processed Foods [1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2022&q=flame+retardants+cancer+review&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2022&q=flame+retar... [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=2022&q=microplastics+cancer&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo... [3] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=2022&q=ultra+processed+cancer+review&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo...
    • socalgal2 5mo ago
      Wasn't microplastics just debunked as not a thing? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/13/microplastics-human-body-doubt https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/13/micropla...
      • SubiculumCode 5mo ago
        First, I would not say "debunked" is the most appropriate term. The studies were not shown to be false, but the article highlighted that come doubts have been cast due to potential contamination confounds. The letter (Challenges in studying microplastics in human brain https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-025-04045-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-025-04045-3) will get integrated into methods research. See here for current citations: (https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=0&hl=en&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&cites=7940528818001156731&scipsc= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=0&hl=en&as_sdt=2005...). Sciencing is actually harder than it looks from the outside, and therefore research fields goes through iterations of refinement. As the article you linked to included this quote: (Prof Lamoree “It’s still a super-immature field and there’s not many labs that can do [these analyses well]. When it comes to solid tissue samples tissues, then the difficulty is they are usually taken in an operating theatre that’s full of plastic.”). Second, I do not think anyone is claiming that microplastic pollution is not ubiquitous, because that is obvious. That microplastics get consumed is also probably not that controversial. The extent to which microplastics get consumed but do not exit the other end of the pipe is an empirical question that has methodological challenges. Third: I think there are some subtleties here involving the size of plastic particles. Microplastics is a catch-all term these days, but a more formal definition puts microplastics at plastic particles that range from 5 mm to 1 μm (micrometer), while nanoplasticsare 1 μm down to 1 nm (nanometer). micro- and nano- plastics can require different techniques to detect.
  • loeg 5mo ago
    It's mostly obesity, which the article sort of mentions ("known links to obesity") but kind of obscures by saying "obesity does not fully account for the rise" and "a clear answer remained elusive." The medical establishment and journalism have found it extremely uncomfortable over the past decade to notice that obesity has negative health consequences because it might embarrass some fat people, and this is more of that. We know obesity is really bad for you, including causing higher rates of cancer. We know over what time periods young people became more obese. Have diets really gotten noticeably unhealthier over recent decades? I'm not sure that's the case. We used herbicides and pesticides 20 years ago too, of course. It's becoming increasingly clear that fiber intake is linked to cancer rates, but again I'm not sure diets 20 years ago had higher fiber on average.
    • logicchains 5mo ago
      I don't think the medical establishment is covering it up; if they could sell Ozempic as preventing cancer they'd jump at the idea.
      • loeg 5mo ago
        The medical establishment isn't covering it up; they're just embarrassed to say it out loud, directly. Instead they talk around it. GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic may well get to a point where they can be marketed as cancer preventing.
    • gchamonlive 5mo ago
      > The medical establishment and journalism have found it extremely uncomfortable over the past decade to notice that obesity has negative health consequences because it might embarrass some fat people Maybe, or maybe it's the bottomless pockets of the sugar industry lobby. > Have diets really gotten noticeably unhealthier over recent decades? Diet is only one of the factors on obesity and it's health consequences, you also have stress, sleep deprivation, lack of exercises, loneliness and isolation.
      • jampekka 5mo ago
  • forgotmypw17 5mo ago
    Besides all the other factors mentioned, which I think are all valid, there's also indoor air pollution from things like aerosol sprays, cleaning products, fragrance, creams, soaps, other products.
  • crazygringo 5mo ago
    Why would you leave that comment? An uninformed comment before you read the article isn't helping anyone.
    • shermantanktop 5mo ago
      I appreciate that comment ironically, as a concrete example of exactly how this type of conversation goes. Opinions come first, facts come later if at all, and never change the opinion. Most people will have a pre-conceived opinion about this, just like they would have an opinion about politics. Put "Trump" or "DEI" or some other word in the title, and the exact same thing happens.
  • ck2 5mo ago
    It's an easy guess because either human genetics either radical changed or the environment did "Silent Spring" came out over sixty years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring got massive coverage including a worldwide CBS News broadcast back then Government and industry were never held to account and instead deregulated everything We still allow leaded gas to be sprayed all around airports where everyone is exposed during travel and neighborhoods nearby Golf Course neighborhoods are some of the highest cancer rates in the country We've learned nothing and now the environment is so saturated with toxins that the immune system is under attack from birth
  • randusername 5mo ago
    What a shame that "no definitive culprit yet" somehow becomes "nothing specific to worry about yet, carry on" instead of "we can't answer because there are too many horrifying trends all at once".
  • socalgal2 5mo ago
    Well since we're speculating randomly I vote for * too much rage bait videos raising rage hormones * too much performing for social media * suppressing expression for fear of cancellation * exposure to too many varieties of food/cuisine * video games * anime Yes, these are all tongue-in-cheek but come on, the random speculation here is all ridiculous
    • pfdietz 5mo ago
      * Inadequate exposure to UV leading to depressed vitamin D levels.
  • dh2022 5mo ago
    If anything, food supply in the past 20 years uses a lot less pesticides and herbicides: look at the rise of organic sections in any supermarket. Since 2000 organic food went from niche to mainstream.
    • pfdietz 5mo ago
      Almost all the pesticides you eat are naturally produced by plants, so I dispute your assertion. Plant extracts light up the Ames test for mutagens.
    • hackernudes 5mo ago
      Organic farming still uses pesticides. See https://www.epa.gov/agriculture/organic-farming https://www.epa.gov/agriculture/organic-farming - "Pesticides derived from natural sources (such as biological pesticides) may be used in producing organically grown food"
  • HoldOnAMinute 5mo ago
    My guess is unchecked capitalism. I won't bother to read the article.
• mspgrunt 5mo ago
  https://archive.ph/VlBAm https://archive.ph/VlBAm tl;dr ultra processed foods and pesticides
  • jeffnv 5mo ago
    tl; dr the first 4 sentences: Ultra-processed foods, obesity, microbial toxins and agricultural chemicals were all considered. But a clear answer remained elusive.
• ManuelKiessling 5mo ago
  If I had one unqualified guess free — and boy am I unqualified here — I’d wager it’s those „zero sugar“ stuffs. No way you can just replace (also very very not good for you) sugar with something else and end up with all the upsides and no downsides.
  • ahoka 5mo ago
    I’m pretty sure it’s the avocado toasts.
  • hombre_fatal 5mo ago
    Nah, technology advancement is full of free lunches. It breaks our ape brain intuition that anything good must also be bad. But consider all the food tech you take for granted while singling out zero-cal sweeteners.
  • aeturnum 5mo ago
    Without counting anything out it's worth saying that artificial sweeteners are some of the most-tested food ingredients because of concern about their health impacts. It's possible that we missed something, but you have to weigh that against the chance we missed something about every other possible food ingredient (all of which have been tested less).
    • ragequittah 5mo ago
      I used to be in this same boat whenever someone questioned my sugar-free drinks. Trust the science! Then more science saying new things about artificial sweeteners kept coming out. And then I personally (with the mindset of "they can't possibly do harm") started getting stomach issues that I can pretty much definitively link to any time I drink sucralose. Which is a shame because I loved me a coke zero. If I drink/eat it by accident I'll always know within 2 hours from an intense stabbing pain in my side. This didn't happen until I had already been drinking it for many years. Aspartame is listed as possibly carcinogenic now after having "0 problems" for decades and having that same claim of being some of the most tested food additives on the planet. Most artificial sweeteners are also still linked to problems with insulin response, weight gain, and diabetes which are the things we were trying to prevent by drinking them in the first place. Do some more research and you'll find things like links to cognitive decline, clotting with things like xylitol, depression, gut microbiome problems / even possibly intestinal wall integrity issues (sucralose-6-acetate). The science was settled (and probably mostly funded by the companies that sold the products) right up until it wasn't. Now there seems to be huge concerns. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these substances are banned within our lifetime.
• kernal 5mo ago
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• goldylochness 5mo ago
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  • black6 5mo ago
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    • trial3 5mo ago
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      • DaSHacka 5mo ago
        Woah don't tell me you're one of those globies that think the earth is round now Its clearly a dodecahedron ;)
      • black6 5mo ago
        Nothing made me doubt the moon landings more than working for NASA.
• economistbob 5mo ago
  No till farming is probably helping. I learned this year what that really means by seeing farms where they spray herbicide to kill the plants,then they plant new seed while the old dead is still standing around. They then use herbicide as a desiccant to kill the plant at harvest. They probably use pesticides too. The cycle then repeats. I was so disgusted as seeing new crops sprouting amongst the dead vegetation. It must be engineered for that. I came to the inescapable conclusion that the farmers are poisoning everyone rather than have to offer real jobs to native born laborers. Buckets of *cide, herb and insect, through the cycle. Those no till fields full of crops are some of the most disgusting things I have ever seen. That soil will have applications and applications of *cide soaked in it top to bottom. Like eating plants from a toxic waste dump. Disgusting. That's the critical national need for glycosphate. Feeding us all engineered stuff from toxic waste dumps so farmers can not need workers or mowing and tilling equipment.
  • ornornor 5mo ago
    That’s how they do lentils in Canada. They use planes to spray roundup to kill the plant (because it doesn’t die naturally like it does in Europe, because of the climate), then harvest it, then sell it in Europe (without even rinsing them). For European lentil growers it’s illegal to use roundup. But if the roundup has been applied outside of the EU it’s not toxic nor forbidden anymore and it can be eaten by humans. That’s one of many many many examples. We live in an insane society.
  • kaikai 5mo ago
    I don’t doubt what you’ve seen, and how some farmers are doing no-till. However, there are better ways to do no-till that don’t require large herbicide input. No-till is really good for reducing the amount of water needed to farm and preserving soil structure, which is beneficial for all kinds of reasons. It’s not inherently a bad thing.
  • chickensong 5mo ago
    You're conflating no-till with spraying chemicals. They're not inherently tied. No-till is a soil management technique, not crop management. It doesn't require any chemicals, and the goal is to increase soil life, not kill everything.
• ifjfkfkfkfj 5mo ago
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  • owenpalmer 5mo ago
    Why did you write it as "1969ties"?
    • bobmcnamara 5mo ago
      Not the commenter, but the same tobacco companies came up with many of the highly processed foods
      • autoexec 5mo ago
        The scientists they paid off are the ones deciding if food additives are safe too https://www.yahoo.com/news/food-safety-scientists-ties-big-090000915.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/food-safety-scientists-ties-big-0...
    • ifjfkfkfkfj 5mo ago
      Just because system is trying to kill u, does not mean to stop all fun.
    • Insanity 5mo ago
      9 is next to 0, so my guess was typo.
  • stronglikedan 5mo ago
    > Current "safe" dosage on coffeine is like 8 shots a day. No side effects! Still is, since none of the side effects of caffeine could be considered "dangerous". (Unless you're taking absurdly large amounts, of course, just like anything else.)
• SubiculumCode 5mo ago
  Of my close friends of my youth, two have died of cancer before the age of 40. Fuck cancer.
  • wavesounds 5mo ago
    I'm sorry for your loss. Very similar story amongst my friend group as well. It's tragic
  • lizardking 5mo ago
    My college roommate died of cancer before 30. Fuck cancer
• witx 5mo ago
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• bolangi 5mo ago
  Some experts weigh in: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/hearings/plausible-mechanisms-of-covid-19-injections-causing-cancer-and-attacks-on-scientific-publications/ https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/he...
  • SirFatty 5mo ago
    Don't forget about 5G.
  • dwroberts 5mo ago
    The need to tap a bunch of discredited UK "scientists" to get the anti-mRNA perspective on the testimonies, should perhaps be an indicator that this viewpoint is not really credible (they couldn't find enough reputable doctors inside of the US willing to testify the same thing). Incidentally here's a really nicely written counter to many of the claims Malhotra has made: > Equally, evidence that mRNA vaccines cause cancer is simply untrue. This sentence, for example “The millions of molecules of mRNA entering the cell is creating biochemical havoc, is disrupting protein metabolism, is interfering with tumour suppressor genes” is meaningless pseudoscience. There is no credible evidence that these vaccines disrupt tumour suppressors or drive any kind of process (biochemical or otherwise) that results in cancer. It is particularly crass to try to link this pseudoscience to the unfortunate incidents of cancer in the royal family and is reminiscent of the ‘died suddenly’ trope which attempted (and ultimately failed) to link the death of any young person to their vaccination status. This kind of outlandish conspiracy theory only serves to undermine the credibility of those spreading it. https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-claims-in-speech-made-by-dr-aseem-malhotra-at-the-reform-party-conference/ https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-claims... (the sentences being cited are from a different source but it's the same kind of story he tells in this testimony)
    • um1 5mo ago
      I think you meant mRNA gene therapy. And despite the many issues with mRNA technology, the linked page specifically mentions covid-19 mRNA injections, which contains instructions for spike protein which causes inflammation which causes or is implicated in many diseases including cancers. Yeah won’t find many doctors stocking their necks out and funding for those type of studies don’t get well funded by the pharmaceutical companies/industry that make those products.
• wavesounds 5mo ago
  This would be a great thing for all of the AI companies to devote some energy towards. Especially with their reputations in decline. Surely there must be some patterns the AIs could find if we had enough data about the people who died from cancer.
  • witx 5mo ago
    Yes, one good data point is pollution, which all these companies are prollific at.
    • witx 5mo ago
      Peak hackernews behaviour denying pollution from AI datacenters
      • dekhn 5mo ago
        It's more like... the comment doesn't contribute anything of value to the conversation.
        • witx 5mo ago
          Or I'm a young person with lots of cancer cases "near me" and I'm worried that we're moving in very undesirable directions and everyone clapping their hands
          • dekhn 5mo ago
            In my experience, many claims of cancer clusters aren't actually caused by the things people say they're caused by. For example, for a long time people thought living near power lines caused cancer, but careful work suggests that instead, it works through an intermediate variable (people living near power lines often have lower socioeconomic status, which is closely coupled to worse health outcomes). AI datacenters (or datacenters) are really not the most likely cause- their emissions and impact are far smaller than living near a highway or a coal fired power plant.
• nullbio 5mo ago
  The normalization of anabolic steroid usage is likely a large contributor to certain cancers in men.
  • rsynnott 5mo ago
    Probably not common enough to move the needle much; they’re not _that_ normalised.
    • nullbio 5mo ago
      They are in Australia and the UK. Go to a gym in Aus, at least a third of the men there are on the juice, and sometimes more depending on the gym you go to.
  • bigbuppo 5mo ago
    And tattoos, too.
• Covzire 5mo ago
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  • dang 5mo ago
    Maybe not, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
    • Covzire 5mo ago
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      • dang 5mo ago
        I'm sorry, but I don't understand your question. My mod reply was superficial because there was so little information in the GP comment. It sounds like you're alluding to some of the background to your actual view, but we readers don't have any access to that from a comment like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48448450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48448450. You have that state in your head; we don't have access to it! If you would want instead to post a thoughtful, substantive expression of your actual view, that would of course be welcome.
        • Covzire 5mo ago
          My actual view is that A) I don't know what's causing it, but B) neither does anyone else, yet certain hypothesis are going to be [flagged] no matter what, because they trip over certain biases inherit in our political climate. This just isn't going to be a scientifically important forum anymore where competing ideas can be thoughtfully debated if this keeps happening, that's all my original view was expressing. I'm not even defending any particular post here, this is a more general trend, if the site were to stop brigading and instantly [flagging] wrong-think I strongly believe we'd see a resurgence of thoughtful debate even among hot-button issues, like it used to be back during the Snowden-era for instance. PS I don't envy your task of moderating a site like this, but those are my 2c...
• deleted 5mo ago
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• bobbby77 5mo ago
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• sodafountan 5mo ago
  I know of two women under the age of 30 who got cancer, they were spouses/girlfriends of friends of mine. I didn't know them well personally, and only met them a handful of times at outings. Because they weren't married yet I'm sure it's just compounding their financial struggles. I was shocked when I heard they had cancer, I almost didn't believe it. Under 30 is such a young age to be diagnosed.
  • deleted 5mo ago
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  • raised_hand 5mo ago
    what type?
    • sodafountan 5mo ago
      didn't ask
• flerchin 5mo ago
  Are more young people getting cancer? How much? What kinds?
  • adrian_b 5mo ago
    From TFA: "in the United States, the incidence of advanced colorectal cancer has increased by about 3% each year since around 2010 in people between the ages of 20 and 49. In 2023, colorectal cancer became the leading cause of cancer death in this age group." Also in TFA: "Uterine cancer and liver cancer diagnoses and deaths are rising in young women" The increases in colorectal and liver cancers seem to point to unhealthy food, probably combined with other factors that reduce the resistance of the body to unhealthy food, like pollution, lack of physical exercise and of good sleep.
    • skrtskrt 5mo ago
      The article is paywalled, so I cannot tell if they mention the link to PFAS/PFOS: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653524012256?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004565352...
    • nonethewiser 5mo ago
      Equally in straight/gay men/women?
• sdellis 5mo ago
  PFAS
• kypro 5mo ago
  Chronic inflammation is almost certainly part of this and lots of things about our modern ways of living cause higher levels of inflammation. - Obesity and sugary drinks/food - Various chemicals we use in agriculture, food products, cleaning, etc - Lack of sleep - Lack of exercise - Stress - Pharmaceuticals. And to be clear because I know this will be more controversial, I'm not anti-pharma, but lots of people today are being prescribed daily medication at ever young ages. We know many of these pharmaceuticals can marginally increase certain cancer risks. - Low Vit D levels – seriously everyone should be supplementing - Vaccines? Probably not, but I dunno... Call me a conspiracy theorist if you want, but if you're on your 5th Covid shot I feel like you might be putting your body at some marginally increased inflammatory risk there. Vaccines are quite literally deigned to induce inflammation to boost immune response after all. - More radiation emitting devices – not sure about this one because I haven't done any research, but when I was younger people used to talk about this quite seriously and now it feels like something only conspiracy theorists say. I suspect there is some amount of truth to it even if 5G isn't going to literally give you cancer. I think it would be more surprising if we didn't see an increase in cancer rates to be honest.
  • krs_ 5mo ago
    > - Low Vit D levels – seriously everyone should be supplementing > - More radiation emitting devices Yeah you should absolutely not be going out in the sun for your vitamin D if you believe the latter to be a cause because the sun emits many orders of magnitude more radiation than human made devices in daily use.
    • kypro 5mo ago
      I admitted my ignorance. But what are you saying here? That base radiation exposure isn't likely to be higher today than it was in the past or that it's likely an insignificant increase for most people?
• talkingtab 5mo ago
  What I find interesting is the concept of dead food versus live food. This is just something I wonder about. For example a dead apple is one that was picked a year ago, sold today, kept in storage until now. Long shelf life - is the crucial change in our eating that I can see. When was the last time you had a fresh apple? Does the food industry want us to consider the health benefits of a dead apple versus a living apple? Let think twinkies! You can open a package of twinkies and let it sit out for a long time. A long time. A long, long time. They you can eat it. Long shelf life means it does not succumb to digestion by random microbes etc in the environment. Does the twinkie then succumb to the random microbes in your gut? I think not, but what do I know. Then there is living food. You can take milk, put a culture in it and let it grow for 10 hours. Instant pot, heating pad, whatever. Then you eat it. It is now filled with living cultures. It tastes better to me than any store bought yogurt, costs exactly the same as the same quantity of milk. With a chopped apple, cinnamon and a tiny bit of sugar it tastes better to me that most of the faux ice cream you get these days. What is funny to me is the conversations we have about "ultra processed food" do no address this aspect of the issue. I keep wondering why.
  • sillyfluke 5mo ago
    As every educated American knows, nothing good ever comes from asking, "What about the twinkie?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuwC3ESdwZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuwC3ESdwZA
  • tonyedgecombe 5mo ago
    Sounds like nonsense to me. The reason we can eat year old apples is because they keep really well at the right temperature. A lot of root vegetables also keep well.
  • margalabargala 5mo ago
    > I keep wondering why. Mainly because the distinction you are making doesn't actually exist. An apple doesn't "lose" anything by being stored. There are no preservatives, just refrigeration. The apple will proceed to go bad just as quickly once taken out of storage, and it will be just as nutritious as if you had eaten that same apple fresh off the tree. You can also take that same apple that's been in storage for a year, press the juice out of it, put a culture in it, and it too will grow and be filled with living cultures. The year-stored apple is no less "living" than the milk that you also had to inoculate to turn to yogurt. In fact, the list of edible things that will not be filled with living cultures, hours after you add a culture to them and then keep them warm for 10 hours, is very short.
• arthopacini 5mo ago
  for millions of years we were constantly fasting, then we hunted and killed animals, eating their protein and fat, no carbs, we were constantly in ketosis We recently begun eating carbs, And very very recently started eating tons of processed carbs (because now we got the tech) We are rarely in ketosis, and because of high carbs/sugar consumption, we start developing insulin resistance. (the idea is simple, we create resistance for most drugs/substances we take, be it anti depressants, caffeine, nicotine and so on.. the same happens with insulin. each time you eat too much sugar, your pancreas needs to issue insulin, so your cells can absorb more sugar. they start being resistant to it, so your pancreas need to work stronger and issue more and more insulin) insulin is oxidative and inflammatory. we simply weren't built to regulate our blood sugar levels down (we are only equipped with insulin to do so), we are more well equipped to spike glucose levels up (gluconeogenesis, glucagon, cortisol and so on...) because we are rarely in ketosis, we rarely get into the autophagy state (which is the auto-recycling cell system). so our cells multiply and the most error prone structure is the mitochondria. mitochondria can make energy either from glucose or fat(keto bodies). it will always prefer glucose, only fallback to keto bodies (fat) when there is no glucose available. the synthesis of ATP (energy) from keto bodies will need oxygen as input, and will yield water as output. if we have inflammation, there is no oxygen (that's why severe chronic inflammation can lead to cancer), also that's why we usually use ice when we hurt ourselves, that place is inflamed, and by putting ice on it, it will change temperature (which changes pressure) and boosts blood circulation, blood carries oxygen, oxygen helps with inflammation. a cancer cell, with a problematic mitochondria, will not be able to metabolize fat(keto bodies), because it has a problematic carburetor. fact is that the PET scans look for high glucose metabolism places in your body, because the cancer cells are starving for glucose. the cell DNA is like ECC memory, it has self correction, but the mitochondria lacks the self correction, so it's way simpler to have it gone bad. every single day we are having tons of cancer cells in our bodies, which self destruct or are detected and destroyed by our immune system. the Middle East is the region in the world with the least cancer rate in the globe, yet they are one of the top consumers of sugar. but in islam they do the ramadan, in which for one month they make intermittent fasting basically, which boosts autophagy. anyway... do healthy keto, boost autophagy, avoid ultra processed foods. actually, I will extend this a little bit more... if you want to enter in keto... go to the grocery store and buy this: - meat (ground meat is fine and easy to prepare) - eggs (the most fresh ones if possible) - broccoli - butter or extra virgin olive oil the portions will depend on your body type and so on.. but you would make meat and eggs on either butter and extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, and steamed broccoli. in my case it was 250g of ground meat, 4-5 eggs and one whole broccoli. you must eat the broccoli first (it's fiber, you can't actually use it, the bacteria in your stomach does, it will make them very happy). if you eat meat+eggs first, you will feel full and will not be able to eat the broccoli, if you eat broccoli first, you will not feel full at all. use salt and pepper and olive oil. eat the whole broccoli, that's like an ETF of micronutrients, it's very diversified! then eat eggs+meat no problem... you gonna feel very very full... do not eat any sugar/carbs.. it can take up to 3 days for entering in ketosis.. you can eat 2 to 3 times a day, eat only when you are genuinely hungry (your hunger will change drastically on how it's built over time) then slowly entering in ketosis.. the rationale is that you need to cut off the garbage.. meat has high quality protein and fat, so does eggs (an egg has everything needed to begin a freaking life, fun fact: no carbs/sugar in it...) and the broccoli has micronutrients and make your gut bacteria happy. the quality of those 3 foods will depend on some things.. for the broccoli, it's the soil... is it contaminated or not? where did it grow? for the eggs, is the chicken healthy? did she get sun? did she eat insects, worms, or just genetic modified ration? same for the cattle... but you are limiting a lot the potential contaminations sources..
• zackmorris 5mo ago
  I think it's endocrine disruption from microplastics. Hormones act like relays in the body, so when one system goes, a cascade of failures often follows (the most famous being diabetes). The body goes into maladaptive modes of operation to survive, which aren't sustainable, so epidemic changes kick in, eventually creating a breeding ground for tumors. Forever chemicals like PFAS are a runner-up. The fluorocarbon tail mimics lipids, so the body tries to use them, which damages/kills cells. They circulate around the body endlessly like allergens. Cancer happens after cells have split too many hundreds of times trying to heal damage. So accelerating damage accelerates cancer. Since cancer is a multifactorial disease, we can only assign weights for each cause. And since healthcare (at least in the US) has been hijacked by regulatory capture to prop up big agribusiness and pharma, we can't do anything in the short term to limit our exposure to dangerous substances. Meaning that we're left with diet and exercise as the main preventatives. I don't buy that drinking/smoking/drugs or other lifestyle choices are the main causes of cancer (although they certainly contribute) since they've been around for hundreds of years and we have solid data on those risk factors. I look at it more as, a body functioning healthily can recover from abuse better than a body on the brink of failure. Yet we have created a way of life around chronically elevated cortisol and mental health drugs to combat systemic burnout, then wonder why we're all dying. It's so weird. Like with most problems today, I blame the rich and powerful for abdicating their spiritual duty to help others since they have the means to do it. Instead, they pull up the ladder behind them, or even participate in malfeasance since it profits them and their cronies. Imagine what a few billion dollars put towards mRNA vaccines, CRISPR and pure research would do for cancer. Yet our titans of industry have their sights set on space or bunkers or whatever, actively working to cut government spending on research. It's so weird.. A way forward is maintaining the body so we're ready for anything on a personal level, while working towards systems change on the public level. Otherwise, what are we good for?
  • sdellis 5mo ago
    I got downvoted for mentioning PFAS, but I think that is a huge part of it. There are so many kids with cancer or debilitating ulcerative colitis in my town, including my teenager. My neighborhood has a slurry of PFAS and GenX chemicals in the well water that we just discovered a couple of years ago. My neighbor's PFOS reading was 144 ppt!!! The high school had a mix of forever chemicals too, over 50 ppt for PFNA. This warning on freshwater fish is perhaps the saddest thing I have read in an endless stream of stories on the profit-driven destruction of our environment: https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2023/01/ewg-study-eating-one-freshwater-fish-equals-month-drinking https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2023/01/ewg-s...
• zeroonetwothree 5mo ago
  The comments in this thread are amusing because everyone is confident they know the cause of this (complex and multifaceted) issue and of course each of their explanations is different.
  • jansan 5mo ago
    Let's see what we got so far: - Infectious Diseases - Sexual Habits - Obesity - Agricultural Chemicals - Dietary Shifts - Food Processing & Storage - Microplastics and Forever Chemicals - Environmental & Indoor Pollution - Sleep Deprivation - Covid Vaccines That is quite insane. When things become hard or impossible to understand, even hardcore atheists turn towards secular religion.
    • anothereng 5mo ago
      all of the above are bad idk if cancer inducing but yeah
    • kansface 5mo ago
      I don’t understand why this is insane? Why do you expect a single cause?
      • jansan 5mo ago
        The number of different reasons that people come up with (and with conviction in many cases) is insane IMO, not any single reply or commenter (I hope).
      • UncleMeat 5mo ago
        These are all examples where commenters have confidently said that this specific thing is the cause (independent of any data). It is a little odd on a story about how the actual experts are working hard to understand the (likely multifaceted) causes of this trend that there are oodles of people just declaring "oh it is obviously this."
• justincredible 5mo ago
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• strictnein 5mo ago
  If I had to bet, it would be on HPV causing a majority of the rise in colorectal cancer. It is a major cause of throat cancer in men[0] and causes almost 100% of cervical cancer in women[1]. We have had a significant increase in anal sex over the past 10+ years[2] and are now seeing an increase in colorectal cancer. "Britain has found that the proportion of 16- to 24-year-olds engaging in heterosexual anal intercourse has risen from 12.5% to 28.5% over recent decades. Similarly, in the US 30% to 45% of both sexes have experienced it." Still needs to be studied more as there don't seem to be any large studies yet. "We found that colorectal tissues from 28 (51%) of 55 patients with colorectal cancer were positive for HPV DNA." [3] [0] https://www.ucihealth.org/blog/2025/04/hpv-related-oropharyngeal-cancer https://www.ucihealth.org/blog/2025/04/hpv-related-oropharyn... [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7062568/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7062568/ [2] 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... [3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1479314/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1479314/
  • nonethewiser 5mo ago
    [flagged]
  • lenerdenator 5mo ago
    Kinda surprised at the idea that HPV is the cause; at least in the US, there was a fairly large push about 15 years ago to get more people (particularly teenage girls and young women) vaccinated against HPV. Would we not see a corresponding dip in deaths related to HPV-associated cancers by now?
    • strictnein 5mo ago
      Two things, I think. 1. The original guidance did not call for boys to get the vaccine. It does now. 2. We're talking about two different age groups. The article talks about those under 50. The group who got the HPV vaccine as part of their normal schedule are now just hitting their early 20s. There's also still a huge number of people in the US who have HPV. It's really, really common. "Approximately 42.5 million Americans are infected with HPV and there are at least 13 million new infections annually" [0] Interestingly, the article calls out HPV directly as a cause of an increase in anal cancers. "While HPV-related cervical and vaginal cancer rates have decreased since 1999, rates for oropharyngeal and anal HPV-related cancers have increased." [0] https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/the-hpv-vaccine-access-and-use-in-the-u-s/ https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/the-hpv-vaccine-acc...
• tonyedgecombe 5mo ago
  Poor diet seems most likely. In particular too much focus on protein and not enough fibre. Most people get enough protein but only 5% of Americans get enough fibre in their diet.
  • picofarad 5mo ago
    I wonder how much of that is because if you hear fiber is good for you and then you start doing fiber supplements or eating foods with more fiber, you immediately get gassy for like four days and it hurts. So one just goes, I'll just keep eating hamburgers then...
    • nazgul17 5mo ago
      Apparently (heard from several sources, haven't tried myself), sticking with it for a few weeks causes your gut biome to adapt, then you gas anymore.
      • OutOfHere 5mo ago
        That's correct. Also, avoid refined gassy fibers like inulin. Psyllium and acacia are among the best, especially when increased gradually and with enough water. Remember to take them 2+ hours away from medicines.
        • genewitch 5mo ago
          i concur, a few weeks is all it takes to get completely accustomed to massive fiber intake. I bio-hacked myself to "pass" a cholesterol screen to avoid getting statins. so for 3 months i basically switched to extremely high fiber (steel-cut oats, fruits, vegetables, beans, mushrooms, whole-grain everything). the first couple of weeks did suck, but now it's just normal and i don't see what the big deal about eating healthy is. Like, chicken nuggets make me slightly nauseous now. they probably always did, but i always feel/felt poor after eating, for decades. Now i know it's because it's not healthy. (obviously). I have never heard anything negative about high fiber consumption other than "gas". thanks for the 2+ hours away from medicine for supplemental fiber. curious if i have a medicine i am supposed to take "with food" - 350 kcal to be exact - should i avoid high fiber for that "meal"? 350kcal is a lot or a little, depending on what you're eating. It's like 5 eggs, or a small-ish candy bar.
• boombapoom 5mo ago
  industrial farming
• himata4113 5mo ago
  https://archive.is/VlBAm https://archive.is/VlBAm The air we breathe is one of the most overlooked things IMO. There's so many toxins especially in cities. If your apartment is unventilated or the ventilation has no filters get a high airflow air purifier now.
• bneumann 5mo ago
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• phoneafriend 5mo ago
  Stick to the science folks. Let the MDs do what they do. Stats and population level studies are hard work. You need to vote somebody in who will support this, or live with the consequences.
  • lithocarpus 5mo ago
    And... sometimes stats and population level studies take a very long time or (more often) are never done at all and so if we only rely on this to tell us what to do, we'll miss a lot. There are common sense ways to reduce cancer risk that have been obvious to and practiced by many people for a long time, before the studies showed that they were right. For example, all of the many new synthetic materials and chemicals that have been found to be carcinogens. I just assume any novel chemistry exposure is a risk, to eat it, drink it, touch it, breathe it. I can't and don't avoid all of it, but I can avoid a lot of it in terms of dose, compared to people who don't think about this at all.
  • mathgladiator 5mo ago
    I go with n=1 science and yolo hard with only eating meat! YOLO!
  • mancerayder 5mo ago
    Science evolves and sometimes it's good to use your brain. You're probably too young to remember science pushing fat and cholesterol being bad, which not-so-helpfully contributed to a massive sugar push in the US in the 80s. And I'm sure you remember the push for mask usage and social distancing during COVID, while science told us that 'racism is a health emergency' to help justify street protests. It's a good balance to care about science while still maintaining a human brain with independent thoughts.
    • jjav 5mo ago
      > It's a good balance to care about science while still maintaining a human brain with independent thoughts. What do you think science is? The whole point of science is questioning assumptions and applying data gathering and independent thought to analyzing that data.
• etempleton 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  • tptacek 5mo ago
    Risk in the cohorts we're talking about have tripled or even quadrupled. Obesity has not; prevalence is up 10-20%.
  • UncleOxidant 5mo ago
    > Obesity. Being overweight is directly correlated with an increased risk for over a dozen cancers. And people are fatter than ever. Doesn't that just move the question to: why are so many people obese now? Including more obese younger people.
    • ganoushoreilly 5mo ago
      I suspect sugar intake has a drastic impact here. We genuinely have too much of it in everything.
      • UncleOxidant 5mo ago
        But I kind of doubt there's more sugar in food than there was in the 70s.
        • profdevloper 5mo ago
          Late 80's / early 90's was the war on fat, so companies introduced "low fat" versions of their products that replaced fat with sugar
          • UncleOxidant 5mo ago
            I'm old enough to remember a war on sugar in the 70s. My mom took us off of Lucky Charms/Fruit Loops for breakfast and starting making her own granola circa 1974. She was reading/hearing lots of stuff about the dangers of sugar in the diet.
• 38484858 5mo ago
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• deleted 5mo ago
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• moi2388 5mo ago
  Well, what if it’s not a single cause, but a combination of - older parents - higher bmi - processed food - pesticides - less exercise - more stress - hpv - air quality - pfas - lack of sleep
• andrewstuart 5mo ago
  Could it be the plastics, or maybe the pollution in the air, or maybe the pfas in the water, or maybe the pesticides in the food, or maybe the vaping, or maybe the sedentary lifestyle, or maybe the hundreds of nuclear weapons exploded all over the earth, or maybe it’s the degradation of the ozone layer due to chemicals used in manufacturing. Such a mystery.
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• QuantumNoodle 5mo ago
  Ironic that the other trending HN post is "EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447062
• tsoukase 5mo ago
  I believe the single common caiae of increase for all types of cancer is immunosuppression. Immune system might clear a cancer cell that would otherwise evolve to fulminant disease, every few days. A slight immunosuppression might explain a astonishing increase. All the environmental factors referred are candidates for that but the most important is chronic psychological stress, which is rampant in modern adults and not measured, so not studied, in research.
  • wasabi991011 5mo ago
    This doesn't sound right to me. I've heard people speculate about the opposite actually: psychological stress causing the an overactive immune system, resulting in chronic inflammation and a prevalence of auto-immune disease. I'm a layman though, would like for someone to clarify.
    • tsoukase 5mo ago
      You probably refer to the psycho-immunology, a different aspect. I refer to onco-immunology which is even less explored. In the past many proposed a connection between stress and cancer but without evidence and ground. I think it's time to approach it with enough scientific rigor.
  • Daishiman 5mo ago
    Immunosuppresion is not a global epidemic. If anything it is the complete opposite; an excess of inflammation, which is directly correlated with all-cause mortality, organ failure and heart disease.
• Bombthecat 5mo ago
  Surprised no none wrote it, my bet is on micro plastic I think it's worse then we all think right now.
• criticalfault 5mo ago
  didn't the scientists connect colorectal cancer with antibiotics and digestion tract biome?
  • OutOfHere 5mo ago
    Antibiotics are necessary for keeping people alive. It's true that people who die of an infection certainly avoided getting colon cancer. We can do things to help the microbiome recover, like safe fermented foods, probiotic blends, and fiber.
• dekhn 5mo ago
  I blame eukaryotism.
• mathgladiator 5mo ago
  There are a litany of uncontrolled experiments happening all at once. Its sad.
• nxy 5mo ago
  Environment, diet, unhealthy lifestyles, etc. Things are becoming more digitized. We're moving less for more comfort/efficiency/convenience. Not to mention the better diets/foods are more expensive nowadays.
• mancerayder 5mo ago
  Could it be urbanization? Young people are more food conscious with before (organic food popularity, vegetarianism, which is good for reducing red meat consumption risks , awareness around ultra processed foods, banned chemicals in the EU, podcasts with bro science, etc). Urbanization means exposure to chemicals and pollution and stress, and even if there are higher life expectancy, it's probably correlated with wealth since cities are increasingly for affluent people.
• jasonvorhe 5mo ago
  Unsurprisingly little mention of some experimental gene therapy rolled out 5 years ago. I guess we still don't talk about it or think it's all s&e.
  • mpern 5mo ago
    Which therapies do you have in mind and where can I find more information? I have cancer, I'll take anything that has at least preliminary trails...
  • Daishiman 5mo ago
    You mean the experiment that has been literally studied to death showing no substantial difference than most other vaccination methods that gets conveniently trotted out as an excuse of all the world's evils by pseudoscience grifters?
    • jasonvorhe 5mo ago
      Keep telling yourself that. Good luck.
    • pkphilip 5mo ago
      You mean the experiments where they said there wasn't enough data to show that what-cannot-be-named may have adverse effects? Now those adverse events are showing up but you will still insist that it cannot possibly have anything to do with what-cannot-be-named without even checking
      • Daishiman 5mo ago
        "Adverse events" is a BS term invented by people that are insufficiently knwoledgeable in the field to properly interpret the VAERS database.
  • pkphilip 5mo ago
    Yes, that which-cannot-be-named! It is amazing how everyone is tip toeing around it
• th0masfrancis 5mo ago
  Why nobody is looking into effect of atomic energy? Radiation leaks from Chernobyl to Fukushima must have had some effect. Another factor that’s often overlooked is tailpipe emissions.