arnt alot of people found to have the cancer syndrome, like lynch since cancer found under 50+ are often people with genetic mutation for it, rather than sporadic caused like from red meat, cigarettes,etc.
Got my first colonoscopy coming in two weeks.
Fingers crossed.Pro Tip:Whisk(e)y is considered a clear liquid. And if you are lucky, you can have your colonoscopy at a teaching hospital and get to have a train run on your ass by 3 or 4 med students practicing on you while you are sedated.
Good Luck! I’m pullin’ for ya!
plus side of colonscopy any polyps they find they cut asap and biopsy it, if you’re younger group, you might be able to ask for genetic testing for cancer syndromes.
Some populations are more at risk than others. Alaska Natives have the highest documented colorectal cancer mortality in the world, but Siegel said that, because the total number of Alaska Natives is so small, it’s hard to get funding to study why.
I don’t doubt that it is difficult to get funding (especially now), but seems kind of dumb.
If anything such a small population in a relatively isolated environment seems like it would allow researchers to better control variability. Unless it’s strictly a genetic risk factor, it would seem that any significant environmental risk factors they find could then just be helpful when determining what risk factors to consider in bigger heterogenous populations, right?
Eat shit, die from it, i see no problem here.
Just coming back now after my stage 2 surgery…
Here’s the thing, my symptoms didn’t even seem to be colon or cancer related. I was having fatigue, out of breath, tired all the time.
Not unusual for a dude with 2 heart attacks and congestive heart failure, but the blood work was showing anemia, low red blood cell count, low hemoglobin, small red blood cells.
Something was chewing up the blood, but it wasn’t clear what.
Enter the colonoscopy/endoscopy… 17 polyps, 2 of which unusually large (20mm and 30mm). But NOT cancerous. Not even pre-cancer.
Rule of thumb is anything more than 5 or bigger than 5mm, you get re-checked 6 months later.
6 months later… 6 new polyps, and a 20mm monster that was full blown invasive stage 2 cancer.
Went under the knife 2/19, they pulled my sigmoid colon and all the related lymph nodes. If the cancer got into the lymph system, that’s stage 3 and cause for chemo.
Well, they got it all! No stage 3! But I’ve kinda been rolling around in bed ever since. 2 more weeks of recovery.
That’s awesome! I hope you have clear sailing and everything is rainbows from now on!
Working on it, Friday was a tough day. Lots of pain and feeling sick. 🙁 Pretty much lost the whole day.
But our kid and his wife came over to help out and that was good!
Family is what gets us through things like this.
did you ever get genetic testing, if you had something lynch syndrome?
Genetic testing was required after the first colonoscopy and they checked, I dunno, 180? 200? known gene markers for cancer?
I was clean on all of them, but they turned up one abnormality that is flagged as “unknown” for cancer risk:
"FLCN Variant, Unknown Significance: p.G66E
Variant of Unknown Significance Detected"
I can’t remember what all that means, but it’s a crazy small variant. One section of one gene, they found a “E” where they expected a “G”.
“Wait, ‘E’? I saw GATTACA - ‘E’ isn’t DNA!”
Correct!
hey, good luck on recovery. I don’t know much about cancer recovery, but i’ve had so many gastro surgeries that they named a room after me at the hospital on the trauma ward. if you ever need a listening ear, send me a dm.
Between my wife and myself, we’re in the same boat with the Emergency Room.
“Oh, room 13? Yeah, we know where that is…”
have they gotten on your case for muting the iv pumps yet? they’re so easy to mute and i don’t need hearing loss, right?
We bug them and make them do it until they get sick of hearing from us and mute it themselves. LOL.
When you’re down to the last 100 ml of saline and reprogram the pump to slow down so it won’t run out so the alarm doesn’t go off and then you page your nurse, just FYI that’s too far. That’s the one that really got me in trouble
God damn, good catch! Wishing you the best of luck in your recovery and your remission.
Yeah, I tell this story because going from 0 to stage 2 in 6 months is terrifying.
Yeah that’s nuts. I’ve only heard of that in the super aggressive cancers like glioblastoma
AML is quite similar very aggressive, other rare type of leukemias can do that.
Best of luck on your recovery!
Thanks!
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3 congenital defects in the heart. 1 bypassed, 1 stented, one… lurking. I’m told it’s in a super complex place and would be more dangerous to try to fix. OTOH my heart is trying to grow a natural bypass around it so I got that going for me!
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Why are you being an asshole to a cancer survivor?
I am just a bundle of recessive genes… Extra ribs, extra vertebrae, spinal stenosis, spina bifida occulta… Fun times!
If it’s not one type of cancer it’s another. I’m certain a scientist found a way to kill cancer cells and the pharmaceuticals buried it. Cancer and flu are highly profitable businesses.
flu is pretty much a given, because it has very high mutation rates, so its hard even get a vaccine for it every year. covid, flu, HIV have one of the highest mutagenic rates.
I got diagnosed last year at 30 years old. I had lower abdominal pain that lasted a little over a month that I figured was IBS from a traumatic life event that recently happened. It was slowly improving until one day I woke up in extreme abdominal pain. There wound up being a mass at the very start of my large intestine.
The doctors found no obvious reasons as to why it happened- no family history, no substance abuse, no excessive energy drink or alcohol consumption. I now make a large effort to cut out as much processed food in my diet as I can.
Also up your fiber. Low fiber is linked to increased colon cancer risk and most Americans get well below their recommended daily dose.
Glad you’re still kicking with the living though and good luck
I doubt seriously that this epidemic is a fiber problem. This generation is ingesting something we shouldn’t be. I’d suspect plastics, but we’ve been eating out of Tupperware since the 1950s. Maybe PFAS? Maybe a newer plastic formulation? A more recent pesticide like Roundup? Some preservative we didn’t start using until the 1990s?
I impatiently await the scientific study that reveals the right link.
You might want to consider nano particles. I learned about them in chemistry class not to long ago. It honestly sounded very concerning. Apperantly they are even used in foods and can end up in the water supply. They do bring some health risk which haven’t been study too well as its a relatively new field. Some of them have been linked to cancer tho I think. Regulations also seem to be lacking.
I couldn’t find out much about them, which honestly is probably due to my lack of research skills and low frustration tolarence at that time
Have a gander at 4 known digestive carcinogenic compounds that are used on american food that are banned everywhere else.
Add in the known carcinogenic effect of over processed and fried foods we are probably on to something.
A single data point but Owsley famously wouldn’t touch fiber and only ate raw meat all of his life and he didn’t die of colon cancer.
nitrates are in most cured meat, also celery salt as well if you are looking for nitrate free products, but it has celery salt, since celery acumulates nitrates naturally. some people can actually smell and taste the nitrates easily, its a very awful smell and the taste too.
teflon maybe? idk. maybe it’s a left handed type thing where now we notice, or we all just died and/or suffered and were just “picky eaters” before.
You’re going to be disappointed because there’s almost never any one thing.
We know, for a fact, that lower fiber intake increases colon cancer risk. So if you lower fiber intake while also increasing ingestion of something that increases risk, well how do you say which is the right link?
Oh, this goes with all the normal caveats of studies still need to be done, I’m not a doctor just try to stay informed, etc, but some more recent studies have shown a link between excess sugar intake and increased colon cancer risk. The sugar source doesn’t seem to matter so much as amount (so honey vs high fructose corn syrup doesn’t matter). We’ve been slowly adding more and more sugar to everything, at least here in America, so shrugs eat less sweets and more beans.
I have to say, I don’t think it’s going to turn out to be any one thing, but it’s probably a lot of somethings that are different for Gen X and Millennials vs Boomers.
Maybe it’s related to eating processed food during some kind of critical window that occurs earlier in life (and processed food just didn’t exist to the extent that it does now when my dad was growing up), but comparing the current diets of most boomers to most millennials, I have to say I know a lot of boomers that have continued eating like America did throughout the 90s, while a lot of millennials began making healthier food choices.
Like this seems to be at least one reason that the fast food industry is dying, especially now that it’s not even cheap anymore.
I know a lot of boomers that have diets like my dad, and good lord that man ate bologna and other processed meats and foods non stop when I was growing up. He also smoked for several years. He’s coming up on 73 and cancer free so far. Granted that’s an n of 1, but it also seems there was a reason it was trendy for boomers to scoff at millennials for enjoying their avocado toast for breakfast instead of bacon and eggs.
For people over age 65 colorectal cancer is “continuing to decline rapidly by more than two percent a year”, Siegel said, whereas for younger people, it’s jumped from the fifth to the first leading cause of cancer death since the 1990s.
There seems to be little doubt it is hitting earlier for younger generations, but decreasing in the boomers that were feeding us the processed foods and also eating it over the same length of time we were growing up. Is it just because of screening?
It’s also not like it’s only hitting younger poor people. Even Kate Middleton was suffering from it a couple of years ago. Granted you never know how somebody eats, but given the relationship between income and food deserts, I would expect income level to be a stronger predictor.
Some populations are more at risk than others. Alaska Natives have the highest documented colorectal cancer mortality in the world, but Siegel said that, because the total number of Alaska Natives is so small, it’s hard to get funding to study why.
Also found this to be really interesting. There are very high poverty rates in Alaska, but junk foods and processed foods can actually be cost prohibitive since everything has to be imported. Also would expect less fast food consumption in Alaska for similar reasons.
could be genetic bottleneck population? limited diversity increased for lethal alleles to appear in a small population.
There’s a ton of sugar in canned beans, especially baked beans.
sugar isnt usually increasing the rate of colon cancer, makes you susceptible to diabetes type 2.
Baked beans sure but I just checked the can of black beans and the can of chickpeas on my shelf. Only thing in ingredients is beans, water, salt.
Yup, multiple things often have effects that when co bined are worse than the sum of their parts. Like smoking is bad and obesity is bad but smoking while obese seems to be even worse than the two just added together. Plastics plus shitty diet plus massive amounts of stress are going to wreck people’s health far worse than any individual part.
Plus Tupperware by itself with a moderately ok diet had the balancing effect of keeping food fresher as a tradeoff for the plastic ingestion, like the plastic lining in canned foods.
I read a study about consumption of processed meats a while ago as a contributing factor but scientific studies that affect corporate bottom lines often get buried
E. All of the above
I would suspect processed food too. It seems like this trend has tracked with the rise in ultra-processed foods.
I’ve done the same. The most processed food in my diet these days is cheese. The best number of ingredients to be listed on a package is one.
The rule of thumb is “can I have this ingredient on my kitchen?” If not then that food is ultra-processed. Of course you have to apply this rule wisely, for instance, the list of ingredients that you can have in a kitchen contains only the traditional things people used to prepare food.
Another good rule of thumb: If the packet says it’s healthy, it isn’t. It came in a packet.
msg is traditional some places (peruvian super spice anyone) therefore i am keeping it
Processed foods have been around since at least the 1970s. We were eating Kraft dinner, La Choy, Doritos, canned foods, tv dinners, sugary cereals etc.
Thats 50 years. That’s not that long
Edit: From the Article
Experts aren’t yet sure why colorectal cancer has risen in younger people, but Siegel said it’s an example of the “birth cohort effect”. That people born after the 1950s face heightened risk “tells us that there was some exposure, some risk factor that was introduced in the middle of the 20th century that’s increasing our risk of this disease”, Siegel said, “and it’s increasing the risk more and more with every subsequent generation”.
Many are looking to changes in the food supply for answers. Increased consumption of processed foods, processed meats and foods packaged in plastic are all possible, not proven, contributors. “We now know microplastics can cross the blood–brain barrier, so the colon is clearly being exposed,” Siegel said.
more microplastics bullshit.
Here’s the world breakdown. China is worst because of industrial pollutants.
Lol. This is a population map. Projections to 2040? Without knowing cause, this is conjecture.
India and china have roughly the same population… unless india is severely under diagnosed.
The best number of ingredients to be listed on a package is one.
Is that even legal in the US?
Only if the ingredient is HFCS.
also MSG
Question MSG on the internet and people will call you racist.
I just use it. I was at the carneceria (Mexican meat market for all y’all uncultured you know what get your assets to the local Mexican grocer they’re awesome see for yourself) and saw “Peruvian Super Spice” and color me intrigued, right? Pure MSG. Cracked me the fuck up.
Also hard boiled eggs!
Ingredients: Eggs.
Allergy warning: Contains eggs.
(While funny at a glance, it is better to be consistent and always include the warning even when it is the thing.)
Got a test coming up in about a month for the first time closing on 48. It’s such an obnoxious thing to try and deal with because nobody wants to talk about why their guts and ass are all messed up.
I think the best way around it is to recognize that it’s just like any other medical thing. Throat hurts you go get it looked at, why not the other end of the path too.
Rectal bleeding, bloody stool, and narrow poops. You might also get intermittent constipation with no apparent cause, and a feeling like something is constricting your intestine.
Unfortunately it sounds like this isn’t because other cancers have fallen, just that this has increased.
This is also a function of the Manosphere bro diet and the trend of only eating protein. Those diets slow digestion and allow carcinogenic metabolites from gut bacteria to accumulate in the colon.
Leading cause of cancer death for under 50’s. Heart disease reigns supreme last I checked for untimely demises.
In USA, not the rest of the world. But Americans never ask why some diseases are rare outside the US.
I think heart disease is up there for most of the world. India has a huge problem and huge population. Most western countries have similar diets to the USA, albeit not as bad with less obesity but still much more than precious generations.
The zeitgeist on here is that Europeans and Japanese people eat perfect diets. Yes. Italians turn their nose up at crap pasta. There is still fast food everywhere just not like the levels in the USA.
Germany pretty much eats it’s body weight in kebabs. France adds butter and cream to everything to bring joy. England is even more industrial than most of the USA with the diets to match. These are not necessarily bad things. I love butter and cream too, but we need to be realistic and accurate when looking at health outcomes and risk factors.
Sure, there is more good quality food and ingredients and less fast food and less obesity, but the trajectory is in the wrong direction.
Heart disease is a problem worldwide. And a growing one. With aging populations, it’s gonna continue to get worse.
Really? Interesting. One wonders if it has to do with all of the fat people here. I know, I’m a real detective. /s
But I bet the higher heart disease follows to all the fat countries, a quickly expanding list. India is over 30% I think now, traditionally skinny. The UK, Aussies, Canadians, all fat, about 50% overweight. US is about 50% overweight in white people, men and woman about equal. East Asian Americans are rarely ever overweight, but black and hispanic woman especially have really high rates, the NIH breaks it all down by demographic.
But there are a bunch of other countries getting overweight I think.
Age 25-44 the leading cause of death is unintentional injuries for males and cancer for females.
Reminds me of those why women live longer videos I saw on the internet.
You sure it’s not Trump and his cancerous bootlickers?
