Rising rates of colorectal cancer found in nearly all age groups
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"The data showed that the age-adjusted incidence rate fell from 55.2 per 100,000 in 2000 to 36.7 in 2022, then rose to 38.3 in 2023."
If you would like to advance a theory that this is because of a specific environmental change, your theory should cope with the fact that the rate was MUCH higher in 2000 and the rise described here is is 2023. Increased screening is said to be a likely culprit in this case for middle-aged adult prevalence but not for older adult prevalence, because screening has increased somewhat in the middle aged groups.
I am personally dealing with colon cancer, and one of the incredibly annoying things about the awful disease is the number of truly clueless people who use it to advance some culinary agenda they believe in without evidence.
Related, I was told by a doctor to get screened after turning 50. But a reasonable self-estimate given all my risk factors puts my chances of having colon cancer at 1 in 10000. A colonoscopy has a false positive of ~2%[0] for my demographic. Meaning if I get a positive result, it's actually ~200 times more likely that I don't have cancer. It's hard to justify a screening given those odds and the 99%+ chance I will waste my time treating and worrying about a disease I don't have. My guess is an insurance company wouldn't cover a colonoscopy for those reasons.
[0]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7147410/
The link you give is for colon cancer blood tests. Colonoscopies themself are basically definitive, because if they see something suspicious they will snip it and send it to the lab for biopsy. I had one such "suspicious polyp" and it turned out it wasn't a polyp at all, just normal intestinal tissue they mistook. There's your false positive. But the risks and long-term consequences are basically nil, the intestine heals itself in a week or two.
It's a very unpleasant procedure (the prep, not the procedure itself), but it's also very low risk and effective at catching colon cancer cases early when they can still be treated.
Tested at 37, because occasional bloody stool. Found a few polyps but no cancer. Still had to fight with insurance to keep my costs below $2500 for the whole experience. Still upset the doctor thought I was joking when I requested a DVD or Memory stick with the tour of my insides on it.
Processed meat is a known Group 1 carcinogen, in the same category as asbestos, tobacco smoke, and plutonium. Carcinogens are grouped by the strength of scientific evidence on them, not by how hazardous they are. In this case, there are abundant studies with solid methodology that show a link between consuming nitrites in processed meat and a higher risk of cancer, and we also understand how the process works at a molecular level.
This shows how well we understand the link, not how strong the link is. And it turns out that processed meat is a very minor carcinogen. When you average the studies together, the hazard ratio for someone eating 50g of processed meat per day, over an 85 year lifetime, over somebody who eats no processed meat is about 1.18. That means that folks in the former group are about 18% more likely to get colon cancer than folks in the latter group. By contrast, the hazard ratio for cigarette smoking is about 20x (smokers are 2000% more likely to get lung cancer than non-smokers), for asbestos exposure it's about 35-45x (industrial asbestos workers without PPA develop mesothelioma at a rate 3500-4500% greater than the general public), and plutonium exposure is about 7-50x for a single unprotected exposure.
There's a further piece to the statistical puzzle, and that's base rates. Colorectal cancer is relatively rare, with a lifetime incidence (again assuming an 85y lifespan) of about 7%. Combined with the 18% hazard ratio, that means a diet full of processed meats increases your lifetime risk of colon cancer by about 1%. There are far worse activities you could be doing.
https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Monograp...
A related concept is the Prop65 warning labels in California. If you've ever been to the restrooms in the SFO airport, you might notice that there's a warning label of "This restroom contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer." These are pretty ubiquitous, you'll see them everywhere else in California too, like on new cars. Are you going to get cancer just because you transferred through SFO or LAX? No. But the list of chemicals that have scientifically demonstrated carcinogenicity is long, and the good people of California don't really make a distinction between minor risks and major risks.
Whether the known carcinogenicity of processed meats is behind the uptake in colon cancer rates is a separate scientific question. You would need data on processed meat consumption at a population level, over time, to see if that epidemiologically explains the increase we've been seeing. I don't know if this data exists and kinda suspect it would go the other way, but that's what the scientific method is for.
Feed lots for cattle are very disgusting places and have been linked to a variety of illness in humans who live downwind(specifically airborne illness). Chicken farms have similar problems.
what counts as "processed meat"? any processes? specific ones?
It probably is, but it could be anything. For all we know, (joke,) it could be a pesticide with traces present in salads and fresh fruit, or exposure to a cleaning chemical in public transportation.
But the bigger issue is that the people pushing these theories are pushing them on moral reasons; IE, making an unfair claim that colon cancer is on the rise because people have immoral lifestyles. IE, from eating poorly or the multitude of other holier-than-thou lifestyle claims at the tip of their tongue.
Personally, my money is that we find out that regularly holding in farts increases the probability of colon cancer, and that we need a public health campaign to fart in public.
Sorry to hear this, and it's really a shame that whenever health and disease topics show up, every conspiracy theorist comes out from under their rock to try to explain their "theory" to you. Just look at the comment-trainwreck on this HN article. A significant percentage of the comments are "I have a theory that it's [....]" and it's always something mundane, untestable, and vaguely victim-blamey like diet.
https://mfelix.org/stories/just-get-the-colonoscopy
I will say, the drink prescribed by my own GP tasted just fine, like any electrolyte sports drink in powdered form, so I think you were unlucky there!
Mine was so bad I almost vomited it all up immediately from the taste. Would very much like your option next time.
I would also like to do it without the anesthesia next time to save $1500.
Presumably they still used a nerve block or some sort of local anasthetic on you. How was the recovery?
Recovery? The procedure left no lingering feeling at all except for a little gas; it was as if I had never had the procedure at all. The sole discomfort, when air is blown into the colon to inflate it for inspection, abated as soon as air was no longer being blown.
I intensely dislike American Healthcare. Every little damn thing is a fight.
Change doctors. If they don't listen and work with you tell them that. If you have valid reasons for requesting care and they try to convince you otherwise that isn't a good doctor.
This thread convinced me to sweep aside his bullshit and insist though, and I'm thankful for that nudge. I might not be in a few months when I'm drinking the gallon of paste, but that's a problem for future Mike :)
Although everyone’s experience varies a little - for me, the prep is quite miserable, not because of the obvious, but because I feel very dehydrated/hung over for hours during it. Conversely, a friend who has relatively regular colonoscopies doesn’t share this at all.
And that's before we get to the subject of the US healthcare system.
Of course colorectal cancer has numerous causes but it is worth considering that when reading the somewhat clickbaity headline.
While rates in the US may be rising, they are still below countries like Japan, Italy, France, and the UK.
Average life expectancy in Japan is 85 with average 88 female and 82 male.
Meanwhile US is 79 (avg), 81 (f), 76 (m).
So I suspect diet and lifestyle is still more likely to kill you in the US.
Rates are rising in other countries, too. Global phenomenon.
The rate of cancer deaths is actually growing faster in several other regions like the UK
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42331356/
Probably catching more cases in screening, though.
There is an obvious factor for cases in 2023, which is that a lot of backlogged cases from 2021 and 2022 will be turning up, and the mere presence of a backlog means delayed diagnosis of newer cases. Even if COVID itself doesn't cause cancers or make them worse (and that's being studied), the pandemic did.
Is mostly true for the UK too
---
I saw a 'diabetes isn't your fault' campaign poster at my GP surgery today. I shook my head! (no mentioning T1 vs T2, so the message is obvious)
The "notoriously poor lifestyle" is a oft repeated meme and you're blanket implications of "additives" being causal without naming anything specific or having any sort of evidence supplied. Relying, instead, on the common "knowledge" that's memed around the internet as being self-evident.
The US also has the best healthcare in the world, it's just expensive. People from all over the world come here for treatment.
“The data showed that the age-adjusted incidence rate fell from 55.2 per 100,000 in 2000 to 36.7 in 2022, then rose to 38.3 in 2023.
This is the first time that we have seen an increase in the overall rate since in more than 20 years,”
Please for the love of all things, stop the kneejerk attribution... or at least read the article first.
The scientific evidence isn't there yet for colorectal cancer but its being investigated in studies at the moment and we are expecting a mass disabling event due to Covid and Long Covid and a big increase in a variety of conditions including cancer. Its one of the most studied viruses in human history and it does a lot of bad stuff and most people are catching 1.5 times a year.
> The authors saw the sharpest increase in incidence rates among the 45-49-year-old age group, with an increase of 12.76% annually from 2019-2023. They said that this increase is likely driven by more people undergoing colorectal cancer screening after national recommendations lowered the age to begin screening from 50 to 45.
So the rates for 45-50 year olds can’t be directly compared in the US.
The strange part about the change in colorectal cancer rates around the world is that it’s showing a large increase in much younger people. I’ve read some studies where the sampled time period showed cancer rates declining for elderly people while they increased for very young people.
Eating too much processed food? There are studies showing an increase in risk. Sit too much every day? Ditto. Long distance running? When taken to the extreme it increases colon cancer risk (recent research)
A measured, balanced lifestyle regarding your activity and habits is the best thing you can do to put yourself in a good position to avoid diseases or health complications.
My doctor’s favorite phrase :“Here is your prescription - Eat a little better and move around a little bit. You’ll outlive your enemies”
From the abstract:
The alcohol ethoxylates present in the rinse aid were identified as the culprit component causing the epithelial inflammation and barrier damage.
https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(22)01477-4/ful...
Wonder how many other every day chemicals we interacted with have long time side effects that we're slowing finding out about.
"milk" is a cow eating soy and grain, intended for a baby cow, but it's mostly made out of the same plant that the cow ate.
"meat" is cooked animal muscle that has been built more slowly than milk, but is also built out of the plants ingested by that baby animal.
virtually all 'meat' is made out of animals that could be easily considered to be babies of that kind of animal. :(
anyway, that doing bad things like this is bad for everyone who does it is not surprising.
What terms do you propose? What adjudication?
Indian diets are very different from the average American diet. Loads of vegetables. Even non-vegetarians get tons of fibre and are often eating 20-30 different plants in a day. Most of it fresh too.
I’m actually surprised by the placement of some of these countries. I assumed Japan would be much lower.
Maybe it is per-se. Overall the Japanese diet is substantially more healthy than the US one. However Japan is also quite a white rice heavy diet on average, so comparable to the US's preponderance for processed bread. So if you're not careful in Japan you can quite easily go days without much fibre – it is much easier to get a healthy meal in Japan, but its also easy to get poor meals in Japan (e.g. 7-11 snacks) !
However the thing about Japan is they have an aggressive annual health screening programme which is mandated by law for all employed individuals (twice per year for those working in hazardous environment).
So the more interesting question for Japan might be in relation to early diagnosis and associated outcomes. I suspect both would be materially better than in the US but I haven't gone looking for the data.
It's always a mix of the "true rate" vs screening/detection rates vs "dying of other things before detection" rate
So it's not really a surprise our food and drink quality and safety would suffer alongside that
It's probably going to get worse
This isn’t some mystery, this isn’t happening in a vacuum. There are correlated trends like rising profits of the food industry, food becoming plasticized. Everyone’s fat now
"The data showed that the age-adjusted incidence rate fell from 55.2 per 100,000 in 2000 to 36.7 in 2022, then rose to 38.3 in 2023."
Were more people fat back in 2000? Was the food worse? Though I don’t really doubt that the food industry and trends like you mentioned do contribute, that stat also seems to directly contradict the hypothesis.
That’s not how science works
Show me correlating graphs to the rise in colorectal cancer. There has to be a meta-analysis about this, my money is on food being a major contributing factor
https://tylervigen.com/spurious/custom_correlation/757_new-c...
No wait it's GMO use in corn grown in Texas:
https://tylervigen.com/spurious/custom_correlation/758_new-c...
No wait it's the popularity of the first name Devon:
https://tylervigen.com/spurious/custom_correlation/759_new-c...
No wait it's the number of postal service machine operators in Texas:
https://tylervigen.com/spurious/custom_correlation/760_new-c...
Pretty certain this isn't how science works either. Be careful mistaking correlation for causation, and in relying on intuitive hunches.
That's not how science works either.
Your sibling comment from 1 minute earlier:
> I am personally dealing with colon cancer, and one of the incredibly annoying things about the awful disease is the number of truly clueless people who use it to advance some culinary agenda they believe in without evidence.
There’s an overconsumption of sugar
Sugar is awesome for cancer