Over the past 10 years, rates of colorectal cancer among 25 to 49 year olds have increased in 24 different countries, including the UK, US, France, Australia, Canada, Norway and Argentina.

The investigation’s early findings, presented by an international team at the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) congress in Geneva in September 2024, were as eye-catching as they are concerning.

The researchers, from the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) International Agency for Research on Cancer, surveyed data from 50 countries to understand the trend. In 14 of these countries, the rising trend was only seen in younger adults, with older adult rates remaining stable.

Based on epidemiological investigations, it seems that this trend first began in the 1990s. One study found that the global incidence of early-onset cancer had increased by 79% between 1990 and 2019, with the number of cancer-related deaths in younger people rising by 29%. Another report in The Lancet Public Health described how cancer incidence rates in the US have steadily risen between the generations across 17 different cancers, particularly in Generation Xers and Millennials.

  • RBWells@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    Obesity tracks with this. Maybe not the direct cause, there might be some underlying cause for both, but excess fat absolutely does increase your risk of cancer. I’m pretty sure being big in any way does - if there is more of you, more cells, more chance of mutation.

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    Recently I went to Seattle’s children’s museum and when it was about to close I found my self staring at the cosmic particle fog tank. It’s a tank that has low temperature evaporated alcohol in it which creates wisps of fog if highly energetic particles pass thru it. Well I didn’t know what it was until I started noticing the wisps and remembering a YouTube video in the device. It was like a wisp every 10 seconds. Suddenly this family passed by and the little 3 or 4 year old kid approaches the box to see what was in it. The thing lit up like a freaking Christmas tree. Like 10 wisps per second as soon as the kid put his hands on the side of the glass. I looked at him thinking, you don’t know, just live out your life in happiness kid.

      • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        I was totally bewildered. I should have run to the parents to show them. It was just crazy. Maybe they gave him a hammer and a bunch of smoke detectors the day before.

            • spicy pancake@lemmy.zip
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              12 days ago

              would be an injectable radiation therapy or a radiotracer for a PET or SPECT scan. afaik radioactive tracers aren’t used in MRI or regular CT scanning

              • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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                12 days ago

                A radioactive tracer can be used in a PET/MRI scan, or a gadolinium-based contrast medium used in an MRI scan. But I think you’re right about MRI not actually requiring a tracer.

                • medgremlin@midwest.social
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                  11 days ago

                  MRI sometimes uses a non-radioactive contrast depending on what you’re trying to get images of. MRI is probably the safest imaging modality, but it’s very expensive, kind of difficult sometimes due to how long it takes, and isn’t useful for every kind of imaging that needs to be done.

  • Erasmus@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    We’ve poisoned our planet for the last 100+ years and now we are dying off slowly from the fruits of our labor.

    The irony.

    • acosmichippo@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      if that were the case, you’d expect more cancer in older people as well, not just young people.

      edit:

      Cancer deaths are consistently declining in the US. American Cancer Society’s 2023 report

      Despite the pandemic, and in contrast with other leading causes of death, the cancer death rate continued to decline from 2019 to 2020 (by 1.5%), contributing to a 33% overall reduction since 1991 and an estimated 3.8 million deaths averted.

      • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        that could also be because less people are being tested as a result of medical burnout, faculty reductions, or other more lethal illnesses taking it’s place.

        just because it’s declining generally doesn’t mean it’s actually going away.

        • acosmichippo@lemmy.world
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          12 days ago

          more likely the opposite, we see higher “incidents” because of improved detection and reporting. meanwhile deaths decline because of improved treatments and prevention.

  • feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    Does anybody cook anymore? I have started cooking again for my girlfriend and honestly it’s like having another job, it takes fucking ages every day. When I lived on my own I would sometimes go months without a hot meal, because realistically, how can you work full time and attend to the daily tasks of living? Genuinely, where is the time? I’m out for twelve hours of every day.

    • HulkSmashBurgers@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      My wife and I have a system that works for us. I do the food shopping and clean up, and she does the cooking (the woman is a sauceress).

      Shopping happens on saturday (sometimes pre-cooking prep too), cooking on sunday. We cook two meals and have it throughout the week. Sometimes we’ll freeze some of what we cook using souper cubes (for soups, stews, and chili).

      You can do it! You just have to get into the routine of it.

      • volvoxvsmarla @lemm.ee
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        12 days ago

        I once read a quote that said meal prepping is the perfect method to ensure that you always have food that is cold, old, and not what you’re in the mood for. And although my love goes out to everyone who does meal prep (it’s great!) this quote put into words a feeling that I always failed to grasp.

        I love cooking and I have tried meal prepping in different forms so often. But 90% of the evenings I end up cooking something from scratch that I am actually in the mood for. It feels - whatever the opposite of empowering is. My spouse is happy to eat the same meal 5 times in a row, I have a hard time even with 2 different meals in between. My freezer is full of “prepared” food that we could just dethaw and eat and it ends up being eaten by my spouse or trashed after months of me not unfreezing it.

        Like, pumpkin soup the other day! So easy to make a big batch! Efficient and fun! I make enough for 6 portions and we have delicious soup and I am so proud that I made enough to last for a couple of meals but I hate to see that soup in the fridge the next day.

        • RBWells@lemmy.world
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          11 days ago

          I agree, but it is possible to prep ingredients without cooking them ahead of time, that can help. Soup is different because it’s literally better tasting reheated, portion it and freeze it! But for other foods, you can (for example ) make chicken one day and quesadillas with chicken the next day and a quick soup or stir fry with the rest of it the following day, planning like that can save both time & money.

          I do work, exercise, and cook supper every day, and yeah it is sometimes exhausting, I just like to eat things that I like, so I do the cooking.

    • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Yeah — I maybe cook 1-2 meals a week, and that usually involves some prepackaged ingredient that saves me time. The rest is quick like oatmeal, toast, etc, or I’m just ordering takeout. I don’t have the energy to cook a lot, nor do I want to spend my free time doing it after work.

    • pscamodio@feddit.it
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      11 days ago

      Prepping as already suggested helps a lot. But make use of appliances too.

      A fish fillet can cook in the oven in 40 minutes but does not require care while cooking.

      A slow cooker is a god send. You can start your ribs the night before and they’ll be ready for lunch.

      Then pasta takes 10 minute to cook and you can just prep some veggies/souces in advance.

    • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
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      Easily: leftovers. Literally just cook on sunday. Takes like 1.5-2hrs. Make 10-12 servings. Dinner for 2 for 5-6 days. Eat it all week.

      I have done this every week for my entire adult life and have never spent more than like 2hrs per week cooking unless I wanted to make something particularly difficult for fun.

      Also, you can make big batches of stuff to freeze or can. Canning is easy: get a pressure cooker, buy some big mason jars - they’re cheap and reusable, look up the pressure and time requirements (especially if the dish contains meat), and boom. Shelf stable food you can store in the pantry and eat whenever.

      Meal prep ideas:

      Spend like 3hrs making 10 dozen pierogies (potato & cheese and pork & mushroom & sauerkraut are my favorites), freeze half & boil/pan fry whenever. Eat the rest for the week with some sauerkraut or cucumber dill salad (umborksalat) as a side. Costs maybe 30 bucks for everything and makes food for 2 weeks (6 pierogies per serving). Make more if you want - it doesn’t take much extra time.

      Chinese style dumplings are the same as pierogies but with square wrappers and more ingredients. Buy wonton wrappers. Make filling with ground pork, garlic, green onion, msg, ginger, salt, pepper, soy sauce, vinegar. Add napa cabbage if you want to stretch the filling. Fill wonton wrappers. Make however many you want. Takes a few hours if you’re gonna make a shitload, but it is easy - pop on a movie and make hundreds if you want. Freeze and boil whenever. Or make potstickers by heating oil in a pan, putting in fresh or frozen dumplings, cooking for a bit before adding some water before immediately covering with a lid. Cook a bit and they should release from the pan - scrape them up with a spatula if they don’t.

      Get a very large pot. Make a full pot of gumbo, red beans and sausage for red beans & rice, or split pea soup. You can make gallons of these very cheaply in the same time it’d take to make a smaller quantity. Freeze or can most of it. Cook rice for the week for gumbo or red beans and rice (20mins on the stove, 2mins of prep). Serve over rice (don’t serve split pea soup over rice unless you’re a psychopath). Done.

      Make west african peanut soup. Made of sweet potatoes, peanut butter, chicken if you want, collard greens, tomatoes. Fucking delicious. Very filling and calorie dense. Like 25 bucks for a week of delicious soup. I make like 2kg when I do this. Could double batch and freeze/can half as well.

      Jambalaya/jollof rice/other similar rice dishes. Make 10-12 servings for the week or double it and freeze half.

      Lasagna or other pasta bake dishes. Make one dish for the week. Make another to freeze and pop in the oven to cook whenever. Serve with a quick salad.

      Enchiladas. Same as pasta dishes (can freeze and cook later). Cook meat/other filling. Heat up a bunch of corn torrillas. Fill with filling. Put into a rectangular casserole dish with some enchilada sauce. Top with enchilada sauce and some cheese. Boom. 12 enchiladas - enough for a week. Especially if you make some cilantro-lime or ‘spanish’ rice to go with it (rice, boullion, onion, tomato paste, diced tomato, garlic, little oil, water) - throw it all in a pot, simmer 20mins, refrigerate, eat all week as a side dish. Maybe use canned refried beans as a side too.

      Tacos. Shred up a rotisserie chicken. Pan fry with onions, garlic, peppers if you want (chipotles in adobo are my favorite. You could use salsa instead or jalapenos or whatever). Boom. Freeze or refrigerate. Heat up and put in tortillas whenever with some fresh cilantro/onion/hot sauce. Make rice as with enchiladas. Can serve with beans, too.

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Yes, in particular the non-stick forever chemicals known as PFAS (aka Teflon and its precursors). The same chemistry that makes these plastics so non-stick also makes them resilient to being broken down chemically in our bodies. And the more the government tries to regulate them away, the more the industry plays whack-a-mole with modifications to the formula. It’s the designer drug problem writ large!

      • BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        For colorectal cancer? Do you store your phone in your ass?

        I mean I probably wouldn’t hate my morning alarm so much

      • repungnant_canary@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        Wireless communications radiation physically cannot cause increased mutation rates and this is quite well studied. Wireless communication operates on frequencies (for the most part) below 10GHz, which has wavelengths measured in centimeters and meters. The biggest wave that can impact human DNA is UV which has wavelengths measured in nanometers - orders of magnitude of difference. So no, wireless communications are super unlikely to impact cancer rates.

        • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
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          13 days ago

          So no, wireless communications are super unlikely to impact cancer rates.

          I dunno, some of the shit I read on the internet coming over my WiFi feels like it’s giving me eye cancer

  • thesohoriots@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    Better back that colonoscopy screening up earlier then. I think it’s recommended at age 45 in the US, but I’m guessing insurance won’t want to cover screenings at 5-year intervals for an extra 20 years because money, dear boy.

    • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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      13 days ago

      It was recently dropped from 50 to 45 in the US. Was that also done for other countries?

      Regardless of improved detection, the most likely explanation is increased obesity rates, which is covered in the article.

      Last time I pointed this out, the toxin and micro plastics people blamed chemical exposure for increased obesity. They don’t want the Boogeyman to be a fat guy.

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    Doritos 🌮 Takis and flaming hot Cheetos are definitely in my top 10 culprits for stomach ulcers and cancers. Imagine otherwise where one could get better sources of voluntarily self harming humans for experimentation with very acidic foods.

  • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    Someone I went to high school with just died of colon cancer last week. Guy wasn’t even 40.

    • bamfic@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      Friend of a friend’s husband died of colon cancer in 2016, he wasnt even 40 either.

  • LouNeko@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    The diffrence is “living in an ecological system” and “living in an economic system”.

  • whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    I bet it ends up being caused by something far more innocuous than any of the first guesses that come to mind.

    • marcos@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      The nightmare scenario is it being caused by something even more insidious and omnipresent than microplastics. The second nightmare scenario is microplastics.

      • DavidDoesLemmy@lemmynsfw.com
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        12 days ago

        Most likely it’s caused by boring things that we already know about. But behaviour change is hard. Meat, smoking, drinking, obesity.

  • Ephoron@lemmy.kde.social
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    11 days ago

    Funny how so many responses have skimmed over the implication of antibiotic use.

    Now ask yourselves, these antibiotics… If you’d have asked your doctor at the time “are these drugs safe and effective?”, what do you think the answer would have been?

    Now ask your doctor if the latest vaccine is safe and effective and tell me how confident you feel about their response.

    • lobotomo@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      Funny how the article lists SO MANY other potential causes and the one you pick out is one that fits into your own information bubble.

      • Ephoron@lemmy.kde.social
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        11 days ago

        Its the one that coincides with a concern of mine, yes.

        Do you comment on absolutely everything regardless of whether it interests you or not?

        Are you suggesting that the mere fact of being more interested in some issues than others indicates some kind of unreasonable level of fantisicm?

      • Ephoron@lemmy.kde.social
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        11 days ago

        No, not at all.

        I’m pointing out that concern about vaccine safety is legitimate given that many treatments thought “safe and effective” at the time later turn out to have been harmful. The effect antibiotics have on the gut biome being just the latest example.

        People concerned about the safety of the drugs they are told to use are not all “lunitic conspiracy theorists” as often branded. Some simply have a completely reasonable caution about the hubris of the medical establishment.

          • Ephoron@lemmy.kde.social
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            11 days ago

            Seemed as good a place as any.

            I assume the report wasn’t posted in the spirit of “oh well, nothing we can do about it”. I assume the message was, “let’s try not to let this happen again”.

            But maybe im assuming too much basic human compassion.

    • Kanzar@sh.itjust.works
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      11 days ago

      Antibiotics and other prescription medications are more often prescribed to older folks, so the increase should be seen in those populations, not primarily more in younger populations. It is unlikely that antibiotics or other similar medical interventions are responsible for the phenomenon seen in the op article.

      Also, as a prescriber, I do warn my patients of the dangers of taking antibiotics willy nilly. 🤷🏻‍♀️

      • Ephoron@lemmy.kde.social
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        11 days ago

        Antibiotics and other prescription medications are more often prescribed to older folks

        But https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6996207/

        In this study, we also analyzed antibiotic prescription rates according to age. The highest prevalence rates were observed in patients aged 71 years (80.3%) followed by 4-year-old children (60.7%).

        Since 71 year olds wouldn’t show any long term effects, that leaves the four year old group.

        as a prescriber, I do warn my patients of the dangers of taking antibiotics willy nilly.

        Of course you do, I’ve no doubt you’re very diligent. Because now we know they have serious negative consequences. 40 years ago, however, the people this article is about would have merely been told they were “safe and effective”. That’s exactly the point I’m making.

        You now have to take precaution with a medicine because of new information about its safety that wasn’t known at the time it was developed.

        Same is true for every other factor mentioned in the report. Human innovation is absolutely suffuce with things we thought were safe and effective at the time, but later turn out to be quite unsafe.

        Yet taking this unequivocal fact and applying it to a rational scepticism about new medicines has, since 2020, become ‘misinformation’.