"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.
I looked through your comment history to ensure you haven't already answered this. But what made you get tested ? Did you have risk factors ? No problem if you'd rather not share.
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.
> If you would like to advance a theory that this is because of a specific environmental change
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.
I don't buy their explaining away the effects of COVID by excluding 2020-2021. It was incredibly difficult to access routine medical care (especially colonoscopies!) during COVID. A post-COVID bump should be expected in the 1-2 years after normalization of medical care, when many people had previously skipped screenings. Let's see if the rise continues in 2024+ before drawing any conclusions.
(It doesn’t change your point, but amusingly) I’m 97% sure I caught my first COVID infection from… the admin/consenting clinic visit prior to a colonoscopy. :)
I had the colonoscopy without anasthesia, it was over in 5 minutes with less pain than almost any visit to the dentist. The experience made me baffled at the insistence on total anasthesia, and the assumption the unanasthesized procedure is harrowing, that is often reported by people in private-insurance countries like the USA. So, I agree, if you need the procedure because of age or family history, just get it done.
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!
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.
Colorectal cancer rates are increasing globally, but the data in the older groups needs to take into account changes in screening ages
> 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.
Study shows US colorectal cancer rates are rising again in almost all age groups after 20+ years of decline. NEJM Evidence study finds rates climbing in every age group even when screening is high.
The US also happens to be a country with a notoriously poor lifestyle and equally poor diet involving foods full of additives either not used or banned elsewhere.
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.
All of those countries (except the UK) have a ton of people who are cigarette smokers. For comparison, a third of french adults smoke tobacco. Most US adults who use nicotine don't do so via tobacco, with Japan (the third lowest in the group) having double the cigarette smokers than the US and France having 3-4 times as many.
Deaths from opioids over the last 10+ years has really affected the life expectancy in the US. But no doubt that Japanese lifestyle is much better than the American lifestyle overall, especially at the older ages.
That is the most factually correct and constrained headline and GP comment I've seen in a while. Both are literally true as written, and contain no anecdotal, cautionary, or extrapolated suggestions.
If poor nutrition is the cause (not obviously the case) then it's fair to say our diet in the UK is not so far behind the USA in terms of the availability of unhealthy foods. We maybe eat a bit less of it, but we have rising obesity levels. We don't have anywhere near the same number of morbidly obese or super-obese people, but towards the merely very overweight end of the scale we've probably caught up.
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.
You're third sentence is funny in contrast with the first two.
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.
How are screening methods these days? As I understand it, colonoscopies care a small risk, which tends to cause doctors to not recommend them for fully asymptomatic individuals.
This includes only diagnosed cases of colon cancer, so if India has much less screening and fewer diagnostic opportunities, that will greatly reduce its score. But it is still a striking number!!
What data? The article only seems to be about the US?
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.
Just a random thought, but has there been any research into dishwasher tablets/cleaning agents used in dishwashers? People are ingesting that, everywhere, all of the time
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.
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
How do you square that with this quote in the article?
"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.
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
> 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.
The need to eat more fiber, and the dearth of fiber in most processed food, is something always mentioned in writing on colon cancer incidence by actual researchers. I could understand your post if one were posting in defence of some particular fad diet versus another fad diet, but saying merely "Its the food" is not in any way controversial.
"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/
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.
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!
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
From the abstract:
The alcohol ethoxylates present in the rinse aid were identified as the culprit component causing the epithelial inflammation and barrier damage.
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
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