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Cancer rates are rising in young people (scientificamerican.com)
81 points by Brajeshwar 3 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 152 comments



36 y/o male with stage 4 colon cancer. Diagnosed in 2016. Lifelong triathlete / healthy eater. I think it's easy to write this off and just better screening, but I think that's certainly a necessary, but not sufficient explanation.

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.


Stage 4 as well, diagnosed in 2021. Lifelong vegetarian, mostly ate organic foods and generally active. I always suspected something was wrong with my gut, but didn't think it would be cancer. No genetic component either.


What made you suspect it? What symptoms did you have?


Irregular bowel movements, cramps that I couldn't attribute to what I ate, inexplicable fatigue. Eventually it was a bright red blood in stool which made me force my doctor to take it seriously.


Welp. This sounds like me. Time to talk to my doctor. I’ve been nervous to.


Be careful with this, or at least scaring/stressing yourself with this. Fresh (bright red) blood in stool is 95% of the time hemorrhoids. Most colon cancers will present with old (very dark red, or black) blood in stool.


How did they actually find it? Endoscopy?


Jesus - you had to force your doc to take it seriously? Like beg for a colonoscopy or something?


My doctors have been like that too. I have to pull their teeth when I want some sort of screening done or want to see a specialist, but because I'm relatively fit, healthy, with no family history of anything "bad", they say my risk of things is low. I don't care. I just want peace of mind. Cost isn't even an issue, I would be willing to pay a decent sum to get regular screenings so I'm not blindsided with some stage 4 diagnosis down the road.


BTW The American Cancer Society recommends colonoscopy screenings starting at age 45 routinely now if there are not other indicators to start even earlier.

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/colon-rectal-cancer/dete...


Is it doctors, or is it medical administrations reluctant to deal with "selling" your insurance provider on covering you for a service?

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.


Doesn't make sense at all to have 30 something people with cancer, but we see more and more, although the treatment improves.

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.


Young people have always had cancer at some rate, which is why anecdotes here are not particularly indicative. However rare and tragic, it's not unheard of.

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.


How did you come to this conclusion?

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.


> microplastics, fine particle pollution, noise [..], mental stress, lack of sleep, lack of healthy connections

[..] 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.


30 y/o male with stage 3c testicular cancer. Diagnosis at age 29.

I have a very rare type of cancer and this particular type of cancer has increased in numbers for young men.


3c here as well. The doctors were surprised that it had spread to my bones, and it didn’t show up on the CT scans that they were using for surveillance.


What made you get it checked out initially?


I thankfully caught mine at stage 1 and had lefty removed just after turning 22


For you and other people in this thread dealing with this, I humbly offer Dr. Thomas Seyfried's work on the metabolic treatment of cancer [1]. I think it's important to at least give his ideas a look, there are many interviews of him on YouTube that are a good start.

[1] https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/morrissey/departments/biol...


How is your circadian rhythm? In bed before 10, low lights at night, bright light in the morning? Some interesting observational studies around circadian rhythm in colorectal, as you may have seen already.


Mind sharing where you grew up?


Yeah, my personal theory is that plastics and PFAS are going to be the "things we did wrong for too long" for millenials / Gen Z.


Just like leaded paint before... and perhaps all (fossil fuel) pollution too.

I think the ultimate lesson will be "we're one with the environment, not, in fact, a separate entity from it".


Exactly. I was alluding to things like lead and asbestos. Could've been more clear.


Agreed. We simply have been functioning off the premise that what we do has no impact. But we are in the billions now and most of what we do we do at a huge and unimaginable scale.

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".


What’s the cancer rate for young people in third world countries?

How much of the quality of life in first world countries depend on third world countries?


All the more reason why we should be uplifting the third world. Instead of allowing them to proliferate their own suffering using debt and population booms.


Wouldn't that be imposing cultural values of the first world on developing 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.


Then GenX would be full of cancer of all sorts. Pesticides, plastics, pollution - you name it, it was way worse back then.


This doesn't correlate with my lived experience. I remember almost everything except yogurt and milk coming in glass containers. My family and friends strongly preferred soda from bottles than cans, and we were lower middle class and we didn't use plastic 2 liters very often. (And several families drank raw milk - I know, the horror).

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 far less harmful than any herbicide that was in use before it. That’s why researchers have such a hard time linking it to diseases except in farmers who spray literal metric tons of the stuff. But glyphosate is a red herring - the real nasty shit that is harmful are not herbicides, but pesticides. And what was in use in 70s and 80s is nightmare fuel.


That "nasty shit" wasn't in my sheets and underwear and didn't coat the surface of the Earth. The issues related to claims can be equally attributed to the massive funding of even journals, themselves, plus a nearly unlimited budget to fight everything in courts and out-of-court settlements with gag orders - nearly every dirty trick a corporation can do has been done to protect the producers of glyphosate.


> nearly every dirty trick a corporation can do has been done to protect the producers of glyphosate

Glyphosate is perfectly safe, we just don’t have a scientifically literate population. The nasty stuff in Roundup are the surfactants.


Something that has become clear to me over the years is that when we go one by one through all of the things that were not present in my youth, it is impossible that any of these things could be a cause of anything bad because the scientifically literate people tell me so.

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)_/¯


> it's just something else that we can't detect

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...


Your comment is written to basically say the lower classes are stupid and fat and they get what they deserve.


Yikes. How did you find out? Did you notice a drop in your energy levels? Stomach cramps?


I hope things are looking better and for you and a full recovery.


Unlike the general trend which is that obesity is the primary cause, for your case it might be a combination of elevated stress and your triathlon work. If you were not working with a professional on your recovery and prevention, it might be possible the elevated intensity for longer periods could have affected your health.

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.


This is a bit of a surprise given how the prevalence of smoking and drinking in the younger generations is steadily declining. We also have a lot more effort put into reducing emissions from all industries. The idea that kids of the 70's chain smoking in the smog have lower cancer risk than the teetotaling youth of today is just sad.

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.


Or its the chemistry.

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.


I took all the plastic out of my kitchen.

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.


but isn't the seasoning on cast irons pans basically burned fats and oils? and as such also considered cancerogenous?


Yeah probably. But no flourine, I'd guess.


Even canned goods have a plastic liner these days.


Stress can cause cancer too and it’s possible stress went up for young people.


We can safely say that other second order markers of stress have gone up. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/cdc-data-shows-u-s-teen-...


If you put social media in the equation, I could argue that it’s certain that stress went up for young people.


Not being snarky, but that would be a crazy headline: "Social media causes cancer".


> Not being snarky, but that would be a crazy headline: "Social media causes cancer".

HN is social media, so reading "HN causes cancer" wouldn't be bad either.


"HN is social media, ..."

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.


Please read the paper you've linked, because it's able to do much better job at telling you that HN is in fact social media than I ever could.


The paper lists examples of "social media" websites. HN, which dates back to 2007, is not among them.


or the ability to deal with stress declined


I don't see a reason why the ability to deal with stress declined.


> This is a bit of a surprise given how the prevalence of smoking and drinking in the younger generations is steadily declining.

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.


lung cancer rates have sharply declined at least https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/lungb.html


lung cancer in young people who are non smokers is going up though


I wonder of vaping falls in the category of non-smoking. It really should have it's own category now I suppose.


medically no, i believe vaping counts as smoking


If a patient is asked do they smoke, and they vape but don't smoke, I'm thinking that most will answer that they do not smoke.

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.


I would wager this is more a function of better/earlier detection than anything.

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...


> The survival rate of cancer is over 50%.

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?"


Don't forget the financial burden on you and your family.


There is no modern improvement in screening process that would account for the increase in colon cancer we have been seeing in young adults. Colon cancer screening still does not begin until age 50



Is it only routine screening that would help account for increases or also better detection for symptomatic individuals? Maybe more easily available blood tests or more frequent referrals for colonoscopies for those outside of typical screening groups.


Colonoscopies are invasive procedures and not without risk. Perforations can turn this "routine" procedure into a life-threatening emergency.


https://www.epicresearch.org/articles/colorectal-cancer-scre...

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.


High risk patients with a family history of colon cancer are expected to start at 30


I think it is not necessary improvement to the quality of the screening process, just that it is more widely available?


It's not available to anyone under 45 that it wasn't already (i.e. expressing symptoms, which indicated an advanced status, AKA not a "screening" use case but a diagnostic one)


What percentage of adults are presenting with symptoms, and what percentage of them end up with a diagnosis?


A shrinking group percentagewise in an ever more growing old cake can be by the magic of statistics made to look like anything.


It feels like everyday a new paper is published showing either massive levels of compounds that interfere with endocrine system in the blood. Microplastics, being the biggest one. So when I see headlines like this, "Cancer is up in young people." I can't help but sigh and think, this is expected.

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.


> 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?

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.


> we all must agree they were new and unknown

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.


Semaglutide (Ozempic) was first tested in 2008 if I'm not mistaken, those trials were for type II diabetes. It was only tested for obesity in 2021.

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 anyone actually wanting real probabilities, a quick google on colorectal which the article mentions as the most common cancer for young men:

"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...


By 2020? Interesting elephant in room.


How much of this is explained by the increase in obesity in young adults? I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first specific cancer TFA mentions is colorectal. In the last sixty years the obesity rate has tripled with morbid obesity growing nearly ten fold.


Colorectal is also related to bad diets: too much processed food, not enough fiber, questionable additives, possibly microplastics, etc.


Reframe obesity as a relative of gut health - not a stretch - and the increase in digestive system related cancers is no surprise. Bombarding that system with unhealthy foods also compromises the strength and health of the broader system. So it's a 2x whammy.


By explained do you mean cause and effect? What is the link between the two? More cells = more that can become cancerous?


The relationship is more biochemistry = more opportunities for cancer. Obesity causes increases in a broad range of hormones as well as a generally higher rate of inflammation and stress, which can impact gene expression and cause higher rates of mutation, leading to higher cancer rates.

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/o...


This connection is seemingly true for tall people[1]

1. https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2018/10/26/study-explains-why-...


There is a theory that that has to do with endocrine disruptors, bisphenol A & suchlike. A related theory links the increase of hyperthyroidism in cats with the increasing popularity of canned cat food, it's chemicals from the can liner interfering with the thyroid.


There is a correlation between obesity and poor gut microbiome, which could be an explanation for some colon cancers. (There are a lot of caveats and uncertainty, but this is an active field of study).


Obese people probably eat terribly too. Candy, fast food, snacks, soda etc. No one is getting obese eating broccoli and chicken breasts


My "TOE" for cancer (and other chronic diseases):

- 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...


I went thru very aggressive cancer treatment a few years ago (am a woman in my late thirties) for a type that was def not lifestyle caused nor hereditary. So far so good. I have received great care but no one has given me so much as a hypothesis as to what caused it. The type I had is rising amongst women under 50.

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.


> 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.

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.


Yes, agreed. I think in this industry we ought to sometimes reflect on how hard we expect everyone to work, and how hard we push people who may not always be in situations where they should be pushing.

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.


I totally get it, best of luck to you and yours.


Why does there have to be a hypothesis? Why can't it just be random? I understand the need to identify a reason, but randomness exists and there's a good chance that had more of a role in it than anything else.


Sure, it can be. But that's about as disempowering a thought as you can have if you need to try to live life as a cancer survivor. If you have any inkling that something may have contributed to its cause then you potentially have agency to help prevent it from recurring.


if I can ask what kind of stress was it? Because most stress comes from lifestyle


I addressed this in the comment below and sure, stress comes from lifestyle. By lifestyle I'm referring more directly to diet, choosing not to smoke/do drugs, exercise, etc. I was a lifelong athlete, non smoker, healthy eater.


I assume they're talking about the doomscrolling / social media / letting the world dictate your emotions kind of stress.


No, I am talking about the high-stress job and abusive partner kind of stress.


Got you. I thought medieval work life would be comparable to our modern lives so I've been looking in other corners.


Perhaps true but medieval life expectancy was not particularly great.


I think it was pretty decent once you made it past childhood. I want to say it was around the mid 60s


Life expectancy in medieval Engalnd was early 30s in the cities (accounting for infant mortality).

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.


That is true if you can afford to isolate yourself from the rest of the world. Otherwise, social interactions are a source of stress over which you don’t have much control even if you give up on social media. Or the way society works in general. Or the state of politics. Or the environment. “It’s your lifestyle” is an easy answer that is far from complete. It is also a common way of blaming the victim. It is very difficult for most people to extract themselves from their social situation.


You can do a great deal. I have changed my life completely. We underestimate our power over our circumstances.


Beware of the conflict of interest of both authors.

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."


Might make sense to net zero tax sugar (and hand consumers the taxes at the end of the year). Obesity is the main correlate according to most of these studies.


I used to be on the freedom side. Now in some areas it's becoming clear to me that we as a population do not have any self control and both sugar addiction and drug addiction is out of control and causing mass suffering


A tax is a disincentive, not a restriction of freedom. As in, if you want that sugar, you will pay extra for it due to the increased strain on the healthcare system you likely will add to down the line. You can still consume as much as you want at the end of the day.


By removing options from people you take responsibility from individuals. Do you stop on red because of possible fine or danger from collison with other vehicle?


If it turns out that there is no increased strain on the healthcare system (because, for example, people who consume a lot of sugar die younger and so don't require as much old-age care), would you then advocate removing the disincentive?


Young people dying early puts huge strains on other parts of the system so this argument doesn’t work.


This is way over-simplified. Dying young does not mean that they don’t need expensive invasive treatment before they do, possibly for a couple of decades. It’s also a completely inhumane way of looking at these problems.


Just wanted to add: we should also hold vendors of these things accountable.


Driving through some towns recently I saw fast food chains as the main source of food for people. These corporations are like vultures feeding on people who are not able to control their own behavior. Looking at the people you could see years of overeating of very unhealthy food as they were extremely overweight, sometimes by hundreds of pounds. I used to live in Japan and the population looked normal and healthy. Coming back to the US and looking around me is astonishing and sad.


I live in N. GA part of the year and compared to SoCal, it is damn near impossible to even get a salad. The food available outside of the grocery store is pure garbage. It definitely contributes to a lot of negative ills


Their food scientists and data scientists have hacked our evolved primitive addiction circuits. It's closer to coerced consumption than a truly free decision.


I think sugar consumption is a symptom of a deeper problem like food not actually being nutritious anymore and glyphosate on everything chelates what nutrition you do actually get.

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.


I would probably tax the producers of foods with sugar in them. It would encourage reduction of sugar content in everything while increasing the price of purely sugar filled stuff like candy and ice cream.

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.


At minimum there should be mandated warning labels like on cigarette packs. The contribution of sugar to inflammation, obesity, and cancer cell growth is well-established.


It does, and most importantly, parents should be warned and assisted to not feed these products to their children, it's insane we let children form these powerful addictions and that it's legal to advertise it.

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.


My sister had to do a double mastectomy at 35 and almost died on so many occasions throughout the process during the chemotherapy. It's absolutely terrifying.


That is terrifying... I hope she's ok now... :(


She's done the reconstructive surgery now and seems to be handling it well. That last year must have been living hell.


Ultra-processed foods is the new tabacco or even worse. I wonder how long until we start to see the warnings on each package like on cigarettes.


Most are probably unaware of it, but so far the only presidential candidate that puts health as a core campaign issue is RFK, whatever you might think of him https://www.kennedy24.com/end-chronic-disease.


Yeah but unless he does something very stupid(which is hard considering there is Trump) he has no chance/traction.


I find it unlikely to be resolved any time soon and the trend will just get worse. The primary factors in this revolve around difficulty in pursuing dispassionate analysis of all environmental changes impacting people (i.e., topics and even words cannot be discussed or uttered without being canceled from many forums merely for words, not even for "bias"), special interests heavily influencing pretty much everything that has any influence on opinion, oligarchical control over the entire food chain, and regulatory capture at all levels.


Related:

Rising rates of cancer in young people prompts hunt for environmental culprit

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41178776



I believe part of this is how good our technology has gotten with detection of cancer. Cancer is a part of everyone as we have roughly 37 trillion cells in our body. Which puts it at a failure rate lower than the computers we maintain on a daily basis. Most of the time our bodies take care of cancer cells when they are in small amounts, sometimes they grow wild and our bodies can't keep up and that is when it gets serious.


as a cancer survivor I would like to add that one of the tragedies with young people is that all too often they ignore symptoms for too long.

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.


I wonder what our increasingly clean world has to do with this. I think there has been an uptick in autoimmune disorders that has been sometimes attributed to a lack of stuff like dirt and bacteria in our normal environments. I know that gut autoimmune issues are a huge risk factor for colon cancer.

Although, my personal main suspect would be obesity. Cancer and obesity go together really well.


all of these intuitions are right, it's the stress, the environmental pollutants, the empty calories, the nutritional deficiencies, and, as you said, 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


Yeah if possible get screened and when in doubt about something in/on your body please get it checked. I also had to suffer through chemo this year because of metastasis – had I checked sooner I might've gotten away by just having the surgery and no chemo. Last chemo was two months ago, still have side effects, mostly neuropathy. Compared to other patients I shared rooms with I still consider myself lucky but definitely an experience you want to try and avoid (unless you need it, of course). Now hoping my next CT is clean.

I can't comment on causes as I'm not a doctor, in my case all the known causes did not apply to me.


Thank you for sharing. What caused you to finally look into it?


I had a very mild pain on and off again that I assumed would go away and waited with going to the GP way too long.


The tendency to explain increase in youth cancer by stress, even among HN readers, is somewhat unsettling to me. It is an almost unfalsifiable explanation, plus, historically, people had a lot of stress too - Gen Z is absolutely not uniquely distressed. Was there an epidemic of youth cancer among Holocaust survivors or people who lived through the terror of the Khmer Rouge? Likely not.

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.


Stress knocks out your imune system.


When I kept having breathing problems and none of the respiratory tests or cardiac tests showed a problem, it was "stress".

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.


But is it raw stress or perceived stress? If the latter then maybe solutions can suggest themselves. I think the expression is '(not) letting it (the situation) get to you!'.


bingo - stress is the trigger, what loads the gun is - high calorie malnutrition + pollutants/mutagens


But the immune system is the quarterback, the last line of defense against celks regressing to wild meat coralreef.


[flagged]


This was a trend even before COVID. Data linked by the article is almost entirely pre-COVID.


Not obviously. For example, from ninininino's comment in this post:

For anyone actually wanting real probabilities, a quick google on colorectal which the article mentions as the most common cancer for young men:

"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"

--

Pretty difficult to blame a vaccine that wasn't in use yet for a 4.32x increase in colorectal cancer rates in teens.


> Secondly, I became convinced Trump had to be using some type of an advanced intuitive capacity, as, based on the information that would have been available to Trump at the time the decisions were made, I could not see any other way to explain how he’d made some of the choices he made. [0]

Why are you reading an unironic Donald Trump mega glazer?

[0]: https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/catalyst-events-and-the-t...


The rate of incidents in GP's article show a large increase in the 90s.

Are you insinuating that covid vaccinees were available to the public at the time?


No I’m saying the rate of incidents in GP article are fraudulent.

They are covering for the drastic, sudden increase in cancers from the Covid vaxx by pushing misinformation it’s been increasing since the 90s. If you follow EthicalSkeptic you’ll see a ton of ways they rig the stats:

https://x.com/EthicalSkeptic/status/1794022026178421023


PFAs, processed food, WiFi signals, lack of outdoor activities, high levels of stress and experimental vaccines.


Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances is PFAS, the S is also uppercase. The rest of your comment also needs sorting through.




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