Young people ageing faster than ever and it could increase risk of early cancers, says doctor
Young people are ageing faster than ever, and it could increase the risk of early on-set cancers, according to doctors and a recent study.
The new study, authored by Ruiyi Tian, a graduate student at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, found that "multiple cancer types" are becoming "increasingly common" among younger adults
It examined the biological age - a measurement of age that can be influenced by factors like diet, physical activity, mental health and environmental stressors - of multiple young people to find that people born after 1965 had a 17% higher increased risk for accelerated aging compared to those who were born between 1950 and 1954.
This puts that age group at increasing risk of lung cancer, gastrointestinal cancer and uterine cancer, the study added.
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Doctors have expressed concern over the findings of the study, with assistant professor of clinical medical oncology at University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center Dr Coral Olazagasti telling the New York Post: “It’s been pretty alarming to all of us.
“In the past, you would think cancer was a disease of the elderly population. But now we’ve been seeing trends in recent years of people getting diagnosed with cancer earlier and earlier,” she said.
Dr Olazagasti suggested that the worrying increase could be down to "environmental risk factors." "Is it the water that we’re drinking? Is it the pesticides in our food? Can it potentially be lifestyle choices, processed foods, decrease in exercise?” Olazagasti questioned. She also pointed to more stress and higher rates of depression and anxiety in young people today, as well as chronic stress.
Meanwhile, Dr Allyson Ocean, a medical oncologist at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, told the New York Post that diet may be an important factor.
Researchers have in the past pointed to dietary habits which could be causing changes to occur in the gut microbiome. “Part of the research that’s going into this [issue] is around someone’s microbiome, which is the bacteria that lives within our intestines,” Dr Ocean said.
Researchers have also pointed to the rise in obesity as a result of consuming more processed foods as a possible explanation for rising rates of cancers in young people. However, Dr Ocean stressed that lots of research still needs to be done in this area to identify a causal link.
She recommended that to decrease the risk of on-set cancer, you should "keep up a healthy lifestyle." “Eat well, exercise, use sunscreen. You know, common sense things to protect yourself,” she told The Post, adding that young people should talk to their doctors about their family's medical history to increase the likelihood of getting the right treatment faster.
Olazagasti also stressed the need to be your own patient advocate, since it might take more convincing to get certain tests if you’re a young person. “As doctors, we also have to check our biases and know that times are changing and what we didn’t used to see in the past, we’re seeing more of,” Dr Olazagasti said. “We have to take patient’s symptoms seriously and be more proactive and dig in to what caused them.”
But Dr Olazagasti was also keen to stress that it is not all doom and gloom - most people will not get cancer. Around 80,000 young adults aged 20 to 39 are diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society. Of those, around 9,000 die from cancer each year.
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