More people from their teens to young adults are getting cancer than ever before, leaving researchers scrambling for clues. Here's what we know, and how you can protect yourself.
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00:00 What is really alarming, oncologists, is this sharp rise in cancer incidents among young people.
00:07 I was 35 when I was diagnosed, kind of in early 2023.
00:13 I was diagnosed with stage 3 rectal cancer at that point.
00:17 I was laying in bed and copying the symptoms that I had
00:20 and at the bottom it would always be stomach or colorectal cancer.
00:23 And I was like, that can't be me, that's what my grandparents have to worry about.
00:28 When you look at the risk of being diagnosed with cancer at a young age,
00:31 so between the age of 15 to 39, that risk has increased 40% from 1975 to now.
00:39 It's mysterious, it's concerning, and it's something that the whole cancer community is trying to work out right now.
00:44 Everyone's recognising this is really serious.
00:46 I'm Mia de Graaf and I'm a health editor at Business Insider.
00:50 Rates of cancer among young people are rising sharply worldwide,
00:54 but particularly in certain countries that conform to what we would call a Western lifestyle.
00:59 So that's places like the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, certain parts of Europe.
01:05 These are all places that eat more ultra-processed foods, things that are easy, cheap and fast to get.
01:11 Places where people are often driving everywhere or have poorer sleep schedules.
01:16 So there are 14 cancers broadly that are increasing really rapidly among young people.
01:22 Breast cancer, colorectal cancer, endometrial cancer, esophagus, bile duct, gallbladder, head and neck,
01:30 kidney, liver, bone marrow, pancreas, prostate, stomach and thyroid.
01:36 Those are all ones which are increasing in people under the age of 50.
01:39 The oncologists that I've spoken to who treat younger patients,
01:43 the vast majority of patients they see actually seem like a picture of health when they come in.
01:48 They might be marathon runners or lead incredibly healthy, active lives,
01:52 but still have this cancer diagnosis that comes up.
01:55 I've also spoken to a lot of young patients about how mind-boggling it is
02:00 to get this kind of diagnosis at such a young age.
02:03 I was an adamant CrossFit enthusiast,
02:07 and I had spent a lot of my 30s kind of refocusing my diet on trying to be what we all kind of expect to be healthier.
02:13 That, coupled with my young age when I got a diagnosis that is something you're not supposed to worry about for decades,
02:20 it was incredibly shocking.
02:22 When you're at a young age, you are in this kind of sandwich generation.
02:26 You might be caring for your older parents, you might be starting to have a young family,
02:30 you might be trying to save up money to buy a house.
02:32 At that time, getting a cancer diagnosis can be extremely destabilizing.
02:37 I was diagnosed in September of 2015.
02:39 I got a colonoscopy, and within a week I was in surgery.
02:43 And they took 80% of my colon out and started on this crazy long journey of colon cancer at 27.
02:50 A person born in 1990 has quadruple the risk of being diagnosed with colorectal cancer
02:57 compared to a person born in 1950.
02:59 By 2030, colorectal cancer is going to surpass breast cancer
03:04 as the leading cause of cancer death among young people.
03:07 The unfortunate thing about colorectal cancer in general is it really focuses on a part of our body
03:12 that we as society have been conditioned to think of as embarrassing or things we don't want to talk about.
03:19 People even in my town still don't associate colon cancer with young people.
03:24 That's a huge stigma I'm trying to break.
03:27 The thing with colorectal cancer is that a lot of people were coming in with stage 3, stage 4, very advanced,
03:33 and the tumors also looked more aggressive.
03:37 This is something, obviously, which was a huge conversation when Chadwick Boseman died.
03:41 He died of colorectal cancer, and it was stage 3 or 4 by the time it was discovered.
03:46 And that's something that we are really seeing in young people.
03:49 In terms of what's causing the increased cancer rates among young people,
03:53 there's many different factors that researchers are looking at.
03:57 Screening has increased, and it has helped us to detect more cancers, for sure.
04:02 But that sharp rise that we're seeing in young cancers, it just cannot be accounted for alone by screening.
04:09 If this was accounted for by screening, we would actually be seeing a lot of early stage cancers.
04:15 And that's not really what's being borne out in the data.
04:18 We're seeing a surprising increase in young people with later stage cancers, too.
04:24 One of the main factors we're looking at is diet,
04:26 because 8 of the 14 cancers which are increasing among young people are related to the digestive tract.
04:33 And our diet has changed a lot in the last few decades.
04:36 And we know that the diets that we largely eat now in the US and in other high-income countries is not very good for us.
04:45 So that's more red meat, more sugar intake, more alcohol, low intake of water,
04:51 food that is high in calorie, low in fiber.
04:54 It can increase your risk of diabetes, that can affect how you control insulin.
04:58 These are all things that are linked to cancer.
05:01 So then you have inactivity.
05:03 So if you're living a more sedentary lifestyle, perhaps you're not moving around as much,
05:08 you're not burning as many calories, you don't have that regular movement which offsets inflammation in the body.
05:13 Poor sleep is a really big factor, which if you speak to any oncologist, they will talk to you about sleep schedule.
05:19 Very often people will be up sort of late into the night and then they'll wake up very early to go to work.
05:24 Or you get a lot of night shift workers now, which you didn't have in, you know, pre-1950.
05:30 One of the factors which is part of the conversation when we're talking about young cancers is our environment.
05:37 So obviously there are microplastics, toxins, pollution.
05:42 We do suspect that they are playing a role, but they're much harder to measure.
05:47 Children today seem to be exposed to chemicals that they probably wouldn't have been exposed to in the 1950s.
05:53 And that's why we're trying to pass out.
05:55 Is there a shift in terms of what children are exposed to in the environment now?
06:00 One of the rogue factors that people are speaking about is increased height.
06:04 So generally humans are getting bigger.
06:06 We're all much taller these days.
06:08 There does seem to be a correlation with increased height is increased cancer risk.
06:13 Marginally, but it is there. And one of the theories is that simply having more cells in your body increases the risk for more cell division,
06:23 which could increase the risk for cancer to grow.
06:26 The way you're born is a really interesting potential risk factor here for cancer.
06:31 So if you're born by C-section, you do technically, according to a few studies, have an increased risk of cancer.
06:39 There was a study done in Sweden recently that caused a big splash,
06:44 which was that women who were born by a C-section had an increased risk of colorectal cancer in their young adulthood.
06:51 And we have seen other studies that being born by C-section increases a child's risk of leukemia.
06:56 When you have a vaginal birth, the baby is coated with microbes, and that seems to fortify their microbiome.
07:05 We've seen this sharp increase from 1990 to now.
07:10 We don't know exactly what that looks like from now on.
07:13 Can we reverse this trend? Is it going in a linear fashion?
07:18 In terms of turning this trend around, the most important thing is research, obviously.
07:22 We need to better understand what the causes are. And until we better understand the causes,
07:27 we can't make a societal effort to turn this trend.
07:31 A lot of attention is paid to what we could be doing as individuals.
07:35 You'll hear everyone talk about diet and how you should be walking more, socializing, being part of a community, sleeping better, drink less alcohol, don't smoke, don't do drugs.
07:46 And then, of course, do screenings and see a doctor.
07:49 But really, if we want to see a societal change and to turn this trend around, it is an infrastructure question.
07:56 So can we make cities more walkable or can we make it easier for you to access fresh foods?
08:02 There are some positives. The rate of cancer mortality is way down.
08:06 We've made so much progress in terms of treatment.
08:09 There are certain vaccines like the HPV vaccine that has dramatically reduced mortality from head and neck cancers, for example.
08:16 And then we're also preventing a lot of cancers that are to do with, you know, alcohol consumption and smoking.
08:22 Of course, it's alarming, but the whole cancer community is rallying around this and is starting to pour investment and attention into this area to try and work out what's going on.
08:32 And I think that momentum is a real cause for optimism.
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