Worrying trend
“We see this worrying trend both in the Netherlands and in other countries, and we see an increase in the number of colon cancer diagnoses under the age of 50 of approximately two percent per year,” said Bolhuis.
That increase has been going on for some time. “We see it starting to increase a bit from the 1990s onwards. There are no clear causes, or at least no conclusive cause is known yet.” That doesn’t mean there aren’t any ideas about it. “We do know that in a significant proportion of people who develop colon cancer at a young age, this is caused by heredity, for example. But that has not changed significantly in recent years, so that cannot explain the increase.”
Lifestyle
However, lifestyle is very important in the research into this. “We are actually looking in particular at lifestyle factors and living conditions that may have an influence on this increase that we see in colon cancer at a young age.”
According to Bolhuis, these factors are the usual ones: “Eating a lot of red meat, a lot of processed food, alcohol, smoking, little fruit, little vegetables, but also, for example, alcohol and smoking and being overweight and little exercise. These are all factors that are related brought with this increase.”
2024-03-29 13:05:02
#people #suffering #colon #cancer
