Cancer rates are rising in young people
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
I'm open to other ideas, but I have to imagine some of this is due to changes in our environment and food supply. plastics everywhere, pesticides in our food, pollution in the air.
I think the ultimate lesson will be "we're one with the environment, not, in fact, a separate entity from it".
Nature could, before, take time to heal and "absorb" everything we threw it's way. Time was the ultimate healer.
We no longer have that option and we simply must stop the third world from progressing. If you all thought it was bad with the small 1st world population damaging the env, you can't even fathom the scale and sheer trash the third world billions will generate in the coming decades whilst they "come out of poverty and industrialization".
How much of the quality of life in first world countries depend on third world countries?
What makes us sure that modernity as it is now is that much better? I'm not entirely convinced that is the case, and there are many problems that result from problems inherent to modernity.
For example, this happens, a lot: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-call...
Given the mental health crises in the first world from our youth, I think the first world is far, far from figuring everything out, including problems with suffering.
As far as debt, isn't that a first world problem saddled onto the third world?
Finally, as a thought experiment, if an alien species from outer space came down here and wanted to uplift America, would Americans want it? I bet you, people would not take it well. There's a presumption of cultural and technological superiority that will chafe everyone. I've seen memes comparing Star Trek as an ideal of where we can go as a civilization, and yet, Star Trek also talks about the Prime Directive, not uplifting ... unless violating it generate enough drama to have an interesting plot.
Nearly the entire condiments aisle is now filled with soybean oil where it nearly didn't exist before. And it was a really big deal when McDonald's went away from using animal fat to cook fries in. Now pretty much nothing is cooked in oil from animal fat. This is certainly a change from pretty much the entire history of human food.
Various researchers are pointing out that glyphosate covers nearly the entire surface of the Earth and is found in nearly everything, including clothing and linens. It was not nearly as widespread in the '70s and '80s.
Exposure to various radio and now microwave (5G) frequencies was practically zero compared to what we began being exposed to in the '90s and is now pretty much everywhere.
Personally, I draw the major distinctions in video game technologies with the PlayStation and another later with Xbox Live! (the latter was really most popular with the Xbox 360). Previous technologies we would fairly quickly hit a point where it just got boring so we would go outside and play, most especially pre-NES. While more of a behavior factor, it is very important on pretty much every level except diet that we engaged in physical activity, social interaction, and sunlight.
As a side note, when I've tried to research it I've found that Gen X is experiencing a higher mortality rate than previous generations in pretty much every category. This correlates with my lived experience.
Glyphosate is perfectly safe, we just don’t have a scientifically literate population. The nasty stuff in Roundup are the surfactants.
Yet, here we are, with each generation following the Baby Boomers seeing higher mortality (and many other negative medical condition) rates than the previous generations. I guess it's just something else that we can't detect.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What? We’re fat, stressed, eating terribly and not able to afford our doctors enough.
FTFA: “Nearly half of newly diagnosed cancers in the U.S.—42 percent, according to ACS researchers—are avoidable with a combination of prevention measures, such as eating a healthy diet and maintaining a healthy body weight.”
It’s unfortunately more acceptable to let a family member ramble in the corner about glyphosphate than to tell them to get on a treadmill and/or take Ozempic. (Which may be the right answer. Perhaps the damage, physically and educationally, is already done. I don’t know.)
> with each generation following the Baby Boomers seeing higher mortality
Not true among the educated [1]. (An effect that persists even after adjusting for income.)
The entire decline you cite is among people who don’t have a college degree.
[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/03/17/educated...
My personal opinion is mandated flame retardants in foams, mattresses and cushions and other plastics. Smokers die less from fire but everybody else breath poison.
That said, the pop media (of which Scientific American is part) routinely conflates rates of diagnosis with rates of late-stage cancer, even though they're very different, and there's a discrepancy between them. I don't know about colon cancer in particular, but I know that it's been a long-term trend in many different cancers -- for example (iirc) skin cancer -- that people are getting diagnosed far more often, but death rates due to the illness are essentially constant.
This tells you either that we're getting worse at treating what we diagnose, or more plausibly, that we're not detecting things that would lead to death.
Why not microplastics, fine particle pollution, noise (urban living around lots of cars and/or heavy industry), mental stress, lack of sleep, lack of healthy connections, lack of time outdoors and healthy exercise, and similar things?
Seems weird to me to pick one arbitrary class of chemicals when all of the things I listed have been worsening.
[..] pesticides, GMOs, the flood of chemicals approved for everyday use, ranging from "soaps" to perfumes, to indoor "purifiers" etc, ultra-processed foods, and the list goes on.
I have a very rare type of cancer and this particular type of cancer has increased in numbers for young men.
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/colon-rectal-cancer/dete...
At least in the US, I've found that if you're paying cash up-front, you can shop around for what you want, without referrals, and without this kind of hesitation.
Note there aren't any studies specifically about triathletes, only that with proper training, diet, and prevention as most higher level athletes get (uni, olympian, etc), there's no serious risk of DNA damage. Also short course triathletes face more risks generally speaking, at least for cardiac and gastrointestinal issues (not all being chronic, so there's no direct link to cancer here either).
Sleep issues are another area usually ignored since people believe they can't do anything about their sleep issues. I doubt most people are even getting good sleep, in the current ecosystem of always being available.
Additionally, due to the general availability of office work, more people are suffering from gastrointestinal issues than before. This causes us to be sedentary for long periods of time, but we believe ourselves to be "active" because we go for a run on the treadmill. I wouldn't say this really applies to you as a lifelong athlete, only that these extremes (sitting for hours, then rapid exercise, then back to sitting for hours) likely has unintended consequences.
Just some ideas.
[1] https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/morrissey/departments/biol...
The article touched on it a bit, but apparently obesity is a huge contributing factor and is one major area where today's children are far worse off than their historical peers.
HN is social media, so reading "HN causes cancer" wouldn't be bad either.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2647377
"4) Social media services facilitate the development of social networks online by connecting a profile with those of other individuals and/or groups."
Where are the HN "groups". How does an HN user "connect a profile with those of other invidiuals and/or groups."
"Social media" generally requires users to "log in" and create profiles in order to view the website contents.
By contrast, any web user can read HN without creating a profile and without logging in.
The majority of HN content is not user-generated, e.g., photos and videos created by HN users, it is content from other websites, e.g., news organisations, shared via URL.
Most HN users do not comment or submit. No user-generated content.
Even in the case of "Show HN", the content is almost always hosted by some other website.
"Social media" today is websites with pages that contain advertising purchased by third parties. Where is this advertising on HN.
Every few years some new plastic/common nonstick pan coating/other common substance that you've definitely ingested repeated gets pulled from the market because it causes cancer, and it turns out that the giant chemical company producing it knew for 25 years and covered it up.
Cast iron or stainless steel pots and pans. No coatings. Seasoned cast iron is as non-stick as any flourocarbon coating.
Glass or ceramic drinking glasses, serving and prep dishes and bowls. Wood or metal utensils and wood cutting boards.
You can only do so much though, almost all of our food is processed and prepared with plastic equipment and packaging somewhere in the supply chain.
Heres a thought: Data wise, lumping vaping with smoking is a favor to vaping manufacturers who resist stricter regulations. It lets them hide behind an argument that its safer while not showing what the actual risk is vs not doing it at all.
Yes, I'm shocked that cancer (17 types) in young people is increasing as niche causes like smoking (lung) and drinking (liver, esophageal) is declining. I wonder what's happening to the #1 cause of cancer (all)?
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity-child-17-18/obe...
Oh. Well, there it is.
> apparently obesity is a huge contributing factor
"Apparently". Ding ding ding.
If you're fat post-adolescence, put down the fork.
If you're fat because your parents/caregivers let you get that way and it's difficult to change, you're unarguably the victim of child abuse and you should cut those monsters out of your life and seek help to change the habits they instilled in you. It will be difficult, but it's possible. Look into GLP-1 agonists for a kickstart.
In general deaths from cancer are down considerably. I'm having trouble finding exact stats I want, but believe this is the case for young people as well.
Cases of cancer that result in fatality have been and will always be counted pretty close to 100%, since they will eventually seek medical help.
Cases of cancer that are less serious are more likely to be diagnosed when medical care is good.
The survival rate of cancer is over 50%.
https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/cancer-death-rates-by...
https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/cancer-articles/2...
This shows that the colon cancer screening rate has quadrupled for ages 45-49 since 2020. It says official guidelines were changed in 2021.
I am not going to pretend to be an expert, but I also imagine there could be significant difference in how sensitive these screenings have been over the decades.
I suppose some people believe it is relieving to merely be walking around maimed, reduced organ functionality, high levels of fatigue, various chronic conditions, and a stressor in the back of one's mind with that never-goes-away nag of "will I be here in 5 years?"
I'm not sure what the right course of action here is, but do we really want to continue with a model where we continue pumping new and unknown compounds into our bodies and the ecosystem with little thought to the downstream impacts?
Some of these compounds have made our lives orders of magnitude better and yet they are wreaking havoc in our lives in ways we'll probably never understand.
Well based on how people act, yes I do think we're happy to continue to pump new and unknown compounds into our bodies.
Just take Covid vaccines and Ozempic as recent examples. I'm not here to argue the efficacy or safety of the vaccines, but we all must agree they were new and unknown. That was at least driven by fears of the unknown risk of a novel pathogen, Ozempic is driven by the promise of a miracle cure for obesity.
GLP-1 agonists have been on the market for 20+ years. They’ve been studied for longer.
Meanwhile, lead has a millenia-old track record.
Its reasonable to expect that any serious side effects would hit you whether you are diabetic or obese. The concern I have is how many people are taking it today for cosmetic or vanity reasons rather than because they are morbidly obese and nothing else has worked.
We do know thanks to trials that it seemed safe and effective when tested on a few thousand people. We don't know what happens when someone takes it for decades, or the rest of their life.
I am absolutely not saying there are known side effects that make it more dangerous than what they put on the box. But it is a new and unknown medication being used by a pretty large population today. More importantly to my original point, those taking it almost certainly didn't read the medical research first so it is an unknown to them.
"For example, 1 out of every 333,000 15-to-19-year-olds developed colorectal cancer in 1999. Colorectal cancer became more common by 2020, when 1 out of every 77,000 teens"
https://www.webmd.com/colorectal-cancer/news/20240515/behind...
"The study found that colorectal cancer diagnoses in children ages 10 to 14 jumped from 0.1 cases per 100,000 in 1999 to 0.6 per 100,000 in 2020, a 500% increase. Cases among 15- to 19-year-olds jumped by more than 300%, from 0.3 per 100,000 to 1.3 cases per 100,000 people. In people ages 20 to 24, cases rose from 0.7 to 2 per 100,000 people, a 185% rise."
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/colon-cancer-rate...
1. https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2018/10/26/study-explains-why-...
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/o...
- stress
- environmental pollutants
- empty calories + nutritional deficiencies (aka "high-calorie malnutrition")
- excessive hygiene and underexposure to pathogens particularly during childhood (even cesarian birth contributes to gut dysbiosis)
- overreliance on pharmaceutical drugs that do more harm than good
All in all a gross misunderstanding of what constitutes health and how the human body works.
For those so inclined, check out Dr. Thomas Seyfried's work on cancer as a metabolic disease: https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/morrissey/departments/biol...
If I had to hypothesize, stress and trauma are large contributors. I don't think by any means that previous generations (women in particular) had it 'easier,' but I think the nature and persistence of low-grade psychological stress we carry now is unique. And our support systems are worse.
Source: https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/08/conversation-old-age-is-n....
Once a person hit adulthood it was low 50s and if memory serves early 60s if you were wealthy.
This is very well said and quite important in my opinion.
As a senior GenXer, I grew up during the cold war, and things were looking pretty scary for us (human civilization) for several years in the 1980s. I remember asking a number of my high school peers if they expected to be around by the age of 21 and more than half though that we'd be nuked by then. (We lived in a place surrounded by primary targets.)
Personally, I was raised by my grandparents, who were born in the late 1910s, grew up on farms where starvation was very close by a lot of the time. My grandfather fought in a number of bloody locations in World War 2 while my grandmother helped build bombers.
I admit, for a while, I was somewhat skeptical of claims that Millennials were dealing with a lot of stress, but I've grown out of that fortunately.
"I think the nature and persistence of low-grade psychological stress we carry now is unique. And our support systems are worse" is absolutely right on target, and I think the science is starting to catch up.
I'm glad you're doing well with your cancer treatment. One thing most people don't realize is how much better, on average, the prognosis is for cancer in developed countries, though the rise of various types is certainly very concerning.
May I ask what kind of cancer you had? Thank you.
I'm generally a believer that hard work is good and that startups are worth investing considerable time and energy into, and I love my career. But working in this industry has certainly been hard on my health, despite ALL my other choices being very "healthy." Leaders have pushed me to ignore my body in order to produce results many times, over prolonged periods of time.
If you don't mind, I won't get into the specific type of cancer here, I'm particularly protective of my ability to remain psychologically positive about it and I don't want to encounter HN-style analysis of my specific type.
One is "chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN)."
The other is "chief executive officer of Color Health, a health care technology company and partner of the American Cancer Society that helps employers, labor unions and public health institutions take action against cancer through preventive health and disease management programs."
It's really hard to have self control and just not eat despite being hungry when even the "good" options aren't satisfying unless you know to buy organic.
I'm not saying self control isn't a problem too. But saying that's the only problem is to kind of gloss over how primal the instinct to "not starve" is. The modern food environment makes it possible to feel like you're starving while you're obese because while you have plenty of calories you don't have enough protein or minerals or anything important.
But you would probably be better off just subsidizing healthier options rather than taxing the unhealthy ones. Or just removing subsidies for sugar and corn.
We need drastic measures for this, I think the vast majority of people are aware of the harm by now, it certainly wasn't the case when I was growing up, but not taking action now is unconscionable.
Rising rates of cancer in young people prompts hunt for environmental culprit
I urge you to listen to your body and to take a proactive approach to your health. if something doesn't seem right and a doctor isn't taking you seriously, it's good to push for answers. I was very fortunate that my GP sent me for a proactive X-ray to check something out.
Although, my personal main suspect would be obesity. Cancer and obesity go together really well.
I can't comment on causes as I'm not a doctor, in my case all the known causes did not apply to me.
It also tends to conflict with causes of those cancers that we were able to discover, and which are usually almost monocausal, especially in younger age. The main reason for lung cancer isn't stress, but tobacco smoke. The main reason for mesothelioma isn't stress, but exposure to asbestos. The main reason for cervical cancer isn't stress, but HPV infection. The main reason for stomach cancer isn't stress, but Helicobacter pylori infection.
In all likelihood, the current cancer resurgence isn't caused by stress either. I suspect something much more specific, like microplastics.
Until I got an endoscopy and was put on Nexium, to prevent the stomach acid from bubbling up into my throat or whatever. Then I didn't have breathing problems anymore.
"Stress" is an easy answer for everything.