Colon Cancer Is Rising in Young People: What to Know About Causes and Symptoms | Hacker News Reader

Colon Cancer Is Rising in Young People: What to Know About Causes and Symptoms

nytimes.com

50 pointssherilm71 comments

The 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.

Saw 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

'seeming generational shifts in certain sexual practices' to who? to you apparently, right?

To me, yes. I thought I was clear about the speculative and personal nature of my observation.

'to me' makes it much clearer.

to who? to you apparently, right?

no, the addition of 'to me' makes it objectively clearer. unless you're intentionally being obtuse, right?

Sorry I'm confused - clearer to you?

clearly.

Thanks for clarifying - I usually assume that when someone makes a subjective claim about how something "seems" that the "to me" part is implied, obvious even, but I forgot where I was. By the way, do you have a peer reviewed study to back up your claims?

It's as though incentives in our market economies prioritize the wrong things. But we must not change anything because communism.

Heard 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

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

What is a chemical in this context? How many chemicals are there in tea and coffee?

The “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.

using 'chemical' to make your points (which are well-taken, mind you) is, imo, virtue signaling. you don't find it bizarre that the phrase used was "chemicals and caffeine"?

Are you aware of the vast and diverse water-soluble cancer causing chemicals that are present in roasted coffee beans and tea? They have a lot of L- and R- and -anine and -quanine etc. Also you are aware that Arsenic is a naturally occurring chemical? As well as mercury, lead, asbestos, even fundamental stuff like argon and carbon monoxide?

Again, why should I be scared of “chemicals”?

The energy drinks I consume have "0 sugar", although I know they're still so bad (with 200mg caffeine per can). I imagine them to be as addictive as smoking, but I don't know for sure. Can a smoker confirm?

if you're rhetorically asking whether caffeine is as addictive as nicotine, then we all obviously know that that's impossible to quantify.

but the caffeine itself is a far cry from any of the contents that are of dubious safe consumption however. see non-nutritive sweeteners, marketed as being "0 sugar," as one such example.

Objectively quantify, sure, but even a subjective qualitative measurement has meaning to us as humans despite it being of no scientific value. It's subjective too - plenty of people have an alcohol addiction problem and plenty of people are actually able to drink responsibly, which suggests not all addictions are equal, for all people. Some people can even do heroin and be fine and not get addicted.

> red meat, ultraprocessed foods and sugary beverages

I also think these are the culprits, and ultraprocessed food is the ultimate.

coinkydental that they mostly come in plastic packaging, too.

That 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.

i 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.

Has there been an increase in red meat consumption? That seems to be an unlikely culprit.

I 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.

Works where archive.ph is blocked:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240327173011if_/https://www.ny...

Why did this post completely disappear from nearly the top of the front page? It's not even in the top 200.

another unfounded assumption: my unfounded assumption of it being related to plastics as the first substantive comment.

I'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.

I had to search for this post to find it after it suddenly disappeared.

controversial filter kicked in. hckrnews.com is the only actual interface to HN

more comments (and mutliple gray) than upvotes is a sure fire way to speed its drop.

In 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

This is an extremely unpopular subject to research, though, for obvious reasons.

> increasing prevalence of anal sex

Is there a citation for this?

This is an older one, but sure: 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

And of course in the press: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/aug/11/rise-in-popu...

Wouldn'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.

What 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.

this 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.

So the doctor I saw recently who told me exactly what I just said was lying to me?

  What 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.

This 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.

public discussion of increased prevalence of cancers is definitely en vogue at the moment.

> 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.

please 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.

The article actually doesn't mention plastic, but NSAIDs, proton pumps, antibiotics, and psychiatric medications.

yeah, something about all those doesn't feel as ubiquitous.

This 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.

that, on the other hand, does feel as ubiquitous as plastics.

You ruined a witty reference to The Graduate.

i'm not familiar.

It'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://youtu.be/PSxihhBzCjk?si=wnhUm2J2BVe_pzub

We've had plastics for 70 years though...?

checks out.

And we now use them a heck of a lot more and for more things than we did even 35 years ago.

60 years ago plastic was a rarity, now micropastics are embedded in every piece of clothing, food, and drink you consume

> Plastic production has more than doubled in the last two decades

https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution

Exponential growth is a bitch.

While 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.

More libertine sexual habits. They are already causing an increase in pharyngeal cancer.

The 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.

Preservatives 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.

Vitamin C is a poison?

I 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.

and the poster suggesting vitamin C food and cosmetics preservatives (i think?) hurls the word 'nonsense.'

who 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.

Pretty 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.

My comment was simply a reaction to the sweeping claim that "preservatives are basically poisons". So to be pedantic you sort of said vitamin C?

jijijijij's claim that it can be harmful in combination with other preservatives is interesting, but I think I'll trust Derek Lowe on the danger of sodium benzoate + ascorbic acid: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sodium-benzoate-no...

(These usernames confuse me, and is quite frankly a bit suspicious)

You mean this?

> I think that my favorite, in a way, is the assertion that when sodium benzoate is exposed to ascorbic acid, that it immediately converts to benzene, which cues up a look at benzene's (most definitely alarming) toxicity. The source for this would have to be this paper from 2008, which analyzed a long list of beverages for benzene contamination, and found that the only detectable levels were in carrot juice intended for infants.

That's the whole "take". Looks like your guy's snark is rather poorly informed...