"Five years ago, Tim Cannon, a cancer doctor in Virginia, saw that his colon cancer patients were getting younger and their cancer was more aggressive. He had just diagnosed three people in their 30s with late-stage colon cancer. More perplexing, all three were athletes who competed in long-distance, endurance sports. "Within a six-month period, I saw three extreme athletes in their 30s with metastatic, very advanced, incurable colon cancer," Cannon told Business Insider. All three patients died."
"Cannon had a hunch that this pattern wasn't an anomaly. He examined 100 more long-distance runners between 35 and 50 years old and found that 39 had developed precancerous tumors in their colons. Fifteen of those cases were advanced - far more than the expected 1.2%. Nearly one-sixth of all the runners were at risk of developing colon cancer. It was startling."
""The steepest rise is in people in their 20s and 30s," said Dr. Kimmie Ng, director of Dana-Farber's Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer Center. "They're younger, they're healthier, they don't have comorbidities, they get more treatment - and yet they're not living longer." In January, Business Insider reported on the leading scientific theories for why people with clean diets get colon cancer. Possible answers ranged from microplastics to antibiotics. Leading theories generally pinpointed the modern diet, including too much sugar, and other facts of modern life, like staring into the blue light of our phones late at night, which can disrupt our natural rhythms."
Tim Cannon observed young, fit long-distance athletes presenting with late-stage, incurable colon cancer and recorded three deaths. He screened 100 runners aged 35–50 and found 39 with precancerous colon tumors, 15 of which were advanced, indicating rates far above expected population levels. Nearly one-sixth of the runners faced elevated colon cancer risk. Epidemiological data show steep increases in colorectal cancer incidence among people in their 20s and 30s. Young patients often lack comorbidities yet experience aggressive disease and poor survival despite treatment. Leading hypotheses implicate modern lifestyle factors such as diet, excess sugar, microplastics, antibiotics, and circadian disruption from blue-light exposure.
Read at Business Insider
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]