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- cross-posted to:
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Researchers are trying to figure out what is making more young adults sick, and how to identify those at high risk
Meilin Keen was studying for the bar exam and preparing to move to New York City last June when she started throwing up blood.
Keen, 27 years old, learned days later that she has gastric cancer. She postponed the bar exam. Brain fog from chemotherapy made it hard to do her legal work.
Surgeons removed her stomach in December. Keen is coming to terms with all that means for her diet, her health, even her dating life. “That’s a fun icebreaker: I don’t have a stomach anymore,” she said.
Cancer is hitting more young people in the U.S. and around the globe, baffling doctors. Diagnosis rates in the U.S. rose in 2019 to 107.8 cases per 100,000 people under 50, up 12.8% from 95.6 in 2000, federal data show. A study in BMJ Oncology last year reported a sharp global rise in cancers in people under 50, with the highest rates in North America, Australia and Western Europe.
Doctors are racing to figure out what is making them sick, and how to identify young people who are at high risk. They suspect that changes in the way we live—less physical activity, more ultra-processed foods, new toxins—have raised the risk for younger generations.
The question that really needs an answer is why has this just started to happen now. Air pollution was far worse decades ago. Ultra-processed garbage has been around for a long time, and was arguably more prevalent thirty or forty years ago. Plastics and micro-plastics have not just suddenly appeared (though perhaps they’ve reached some critical concentration?). Working hours have been largely static since the 80s or so, and have noticeably declined since the 60s.
From looking at a similar article to this, it seems that colorectal cancers have seen the single biggest increase, so you’d be inclined to think diet, but then I wonder if it’s a particular new additive or ingredient or if it’s simply general diet quality, sugar, lack of fiber, obesity, that sort of thing.
Research presented by Zoe (that’s a team that includes 2 well known nutritional scientists) says that the quantity of ulta processed food in US and UK diets has been steadily increasing since the 80s. So we should not exclude that possibility.
The ultra-processed food of yesterday had bad things like trans-fats. That caused issues like congestive heart failure.
They replaced it with sugar to make food taste good, in the 90s.
Cancer cells love sugar, it’s why we use glucose in PET scans. They grab all the sugar for energy to fuel the unsustainable growth. Then the tumors light up on a scan.
The fact that this is a generation that had all of these from birth might be why as well