Over the past 10 years, rates of colorectal cancer among 25 to 49 year olds have increased in 24 different countries, including the UK, US, France, Australia, Canada, Norway and Argentina.
The investigation’s early findings, presented by an international team at the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) congress in Geneva in September 2024, were as eye-catching as they are concerning.
The researchers, from the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) International Agency for Research on Cancer, surveyed data from 50 countries to understand the trend. In 14 of these countries, the rising trend was only seen in younger adults, with older adult rates remaining stable.
Based on epidemiological investigations, it seems that this trend first began in the 1990s. One study found that the global incidence of early-onset cancer had increased by 79% between 1990 and 2019, with the number of cancer-related deaths in younger people rising by 29%. Another report in The Lancet Public Health described how cancer incidence rates in the US have steadily risen between the generations across 17 different cancers, particularly in Generation Xers and Millennials.
What’s the stereotype you think I’m playing into? 😂
I literally work from home in the tech sector. I’m a young, fit 30 year old with this exact same set of issues. There’s no problem with WFH, what I’m pointing to is that a sedentary lifestyle which is boosted by people who only walk 5 steps from bed to office (like me) has helped to exacerbate an issue. My parent had work from home days back in the 90s and early 2000s, so we know they existed and started growing, much like this issue with cancer. It’s not because of only WFH, but it’s part of that grouping of a sedentary lifestyle. I think you’re taking my position on that as some sort of attack on WFH, which it isn’t.