Colorectal cancer is rising among younger adults
cnn.com
cnn.com
Infection by the human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most important risk factor for anal cancer. Most squamous cell anal cancers are linked to infection with HPV. HPV is a group of more than 150 related viruses, the same group of viruses that causes cervical cancer, as well as other kinds of cancer. In fact, women with a history of cervical cancer (or pre-cancer) have an increased risk of anal cancer.
HPV is also the big driver of throat cancer. I’ll leave it for readers to connect the dots as to what risky behavior looks like for HPV-driven anal cancer and why it might be rising in younger adults
Some 80% of adults carry one strain of HPV or another, so vaccinating after you have become sexually active is mostly ineffective.
For the even younger generation that is getting the vaccine early, it might have an effect
I wonder if that is a wise policy on part of health authorities. I bet is likely the vaccine would reduce the severity of infection in people that are carriers already, just like the COVID vaccine helps you avoiding a severe case when infected.
Tangentially, there is substantial evidence viruses lead to various cancers, and with vaccines being such high leverage wrt cost:value, we should be leaning hard into prevention (although mRNA and CRISPR will still be necessary paths for cancer treatment).
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6482788/
[2] http://hpvroundtable.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/05_Schoo...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/02/austr...
It's painfully confounded with other variables, but that could provide a (noisy) quick check on how likely it is that HPV causes the cancer increase, right? If there's an effective vaccine with varied uptake, then we should be able to compare countries by rate of vaccination and cancer, and see if there's a substantial negative correlation.
Uptake is limited simply because it hasn't been required in the USA as part of school enrollment. This is the primary driver of vaccination in the country.
I'm fairly certain you're conflating hormonal birth control with HPV vaccination.
No, I'm talking about HPV vaccination. It comes up every so often in parent forums and there are always people taking this position.
Not that it doesn't happen with respect to birth control as well.
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/imz-managers/coverage/teenvaxvi...
[1] https://infectagentscancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.118...
The other most likely culprit is alcohol, but young people are drinking less of that.
I’m not saying the pesticides and preservatives don’t matter, I just doubt anything new has popped up to make things worse. It’s already been pretty bad for many decades.
In the case of Lawson, it could have been a case of genetics rather than diet; she appears relatively healthy and is very young. But these outliers aren’t unheard of, and make for a kind of shocking story when presented with statistics about cancer rates in younger adults increasing. The average age is much higher though, and the health of the average person getting these cancers is likely worse. This isn’t anything all that new, and more so a continuation of trends.
I suspect the rates of cancer we see wouldn’t have had a chance to decrease as a result. Cancer from poor nutrition is a cumulative thing, so we wouldn’t see meaningful changes from a few % decrease in alcohol consumption for many years (if at all).
This may be different in other countries too, so apologies if you aren’t thinking strictly within the North America bubble.
Mine would be colon proximity to pockets where we carry our omnipresent smartphones all day around. I think a simple test to this hypothesis is to see if there is correlation between tumor position and if the person is left or right handed, as the phone probably will be stored in a preferred side pocket, according to handedness.
All are seen as harmless and normalized. You can thank Big Sugar for that. The type and level of sugars is historically abnormal (as is the consumption of animal proteins).
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
I've been on a health kick lately and on paper tinned sardines seem excellent. Tons of protein, calcium, omega 3, etc... You can get them packed in water or mustard or tomato sauce or olive oil if you are worried about seed oils (which I am, and lots are packed in sunflower oil). Low mercury.
Too bad that 100 grams of sardines can contain up to 30 milligrams of microplastics! Turns out that the ocean is full of plastic, which plankton eat since microplastics are just the right size for them, then the sardines eat the plankton. And then if you eat sardines... Of course most people aren't getting cancer from eating sardines, but microplastics are absolutely ubiquitous. Sardines are just a great example of a huge concentration of microplastics where you might not expect it. (Oh and don't forget the BPA in the tin's plastic lining! Oh it's BPA free? I guess they used BPC as a plasticizer... there are very few studies about BPC so I guess it must be safe!)
There was a study recently that showed fast foods contained huge amounts of phthalates - the researchers linked it to the plastic gloves that the food workers wear. Which is disgusting - why are we afraid of human skin touching our food? Do you honestly think people replace gloves more readily than they wash their hands?
1. https://aacrjournals.org/cebp/article/29/11/2309/72050/Dairy...
> “We know that smoking, alcohol, lack of physical activity, being overweight or obese, increased consumption of red meat – so basically, dietary factors and environmental and lifestyle factors – are likely playing a big role,”
> There could be correlations between obesity in younger adults, the foods they eat and the increase in colorectal cancers for the young adult population
> “I think younger people are on average consuming less healthy food – fast food, processed snacks, processed sugars – and I think that those foods also contain higher concentrations of carcinogens and mutagens, in addition to the fact that they are very fattening,”
> “it’s likely some kind of exposure, whether it be diet, medication, changing microbiome,” that is driving the rise in colorectal cancers in younger adults.
But at least alien abductions isn’t trending like it was in the 90’s.
They also have higher levels of obesity and diabetes.
As an aside — didn’t they used to have studies that said sitting was as bad as smoking for health? What happened to those? The standing desk craze seems to have faded
It's movement that you need. We are born to move, but payed to sit.
To understand more, you can watch this youtube video in which Nina Teicholz breaks down the science around red meat and health: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rz-8H_i1wA (skip to 9:30 for the discussion of colon cancer).
I’m not particularly shocked. This is our century’s lead paint moment. If anyone survives the fertility crisis and the burning and the famine and they can still read and write then they’re going to be wondering what we were thinking. We basically just roll things out as they’re discovered and never stop to think about the consequences. Well here are the consequences.
edit: to stay on topic, I find these comments are useless, and do not contribute to the discussion in any way.
It's not backed up with evidence or any kind of data, it's just an opinion, and a hand-wavey one at that.
It is clear to me that the American diet is poison. We add sugar to everything. It’s hard to buy bacon without sugar added. Our bread is more like pastry. When I lived in Germany the diet felt much better. It would not surprise me to find out that part of the rise of cancer is our over engineered food products.
But I don't think trying to trick people proves much. Obviously things like diisononyl phthalate [2] is not just a scary name for an otherwise innocuous substance. It's a scary name for a scary compound that has indeed been proven to be harmful. Nonetheless people are consuming it in large quantities, and governments are remiss to do anything. And it's just one compound among many.
Companies making billions of dollars off these products (or other products that contain them) have far more time, motivation, and ability to influence or "influence" government officials than literally anybody else. Science can help somewhat, but it's also regularly coopted as a part of the same influence game. Grants, donations, first party science, and more gray-zone areas of influence are all perfectly standard. In any case, things like diisononyl phthalate have been proven harmful in countless studies. It doesn't matter.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_parody
We have more homework to do.
That's not "ringing true" for me. Is there evidence of this?
We've been doing this since the 50's. It should have surfaced much earlier.
At-home food storage was switching to plastic in the 50s.
The concern is the dramatic increase in the younger generation. Using protection in either orifice should be encouraged. HPV is over 150 different cancers and the greatest cause of anal cancer. Better health education and increased HPV vaccination before sex is going to be key.