Hey Hank, if youre on HN, you're one of my favorite humans that I don't personally know.
Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging
81–90 of 161 posts
Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate to break it to you, but Millennials aren't a younger generation anymore... though I'm not sure they drank any more than the 2-3 generations that proceeded them.
> but Millennials aren't a younger generation anymore... Not younger than GenX/Baby Boomer? How?
We millennials are all middle age.
There's roughly 4 to 5 generations alive at any point and the middle generation is going to be considered both old and young by the generations surrounding it.
Once Gen beta starts we'll be officially old.
Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
This mostly can't explain the fact that mortality is also rising in under 50s. It is true mortality is rising less than incident, and that a small proportion instances of mortality could be deaths related to reasonable risks taken on from treatment side effects (to make up numbers, it makes sense to take a 5% chance of dying from treatment this year over a 80% chance of dying from cancer in 5 years), but this is prob…
Does treatment ever speed up death? Given that chemo is super hard on the body I imagine it could? That might just account for your use of “mostly”, though.
It would depend on the treatment. In my case I had neoadjuvant radiation followed by chemo, then surgery, capped off with more chemo to kill any cancer cells that might have tried to make a dash for it. I would assume that while the radiation treatment elevated my risk for future cancers, the greater risk was my 10 hour surgical procedure.
Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging
#84Hey Hank, if youre on HN, you're one of my favorite humans that I don't personally know.
If Hank Green even knew what Hacker News was, I think my respect for him would diminish considerably.
Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but Millennials aren't a younger generation anymore... Not younger than GenX/Baby Boomer? How?
We millennials are all middle age. There's roughly 4 to 5 generations alive at any point and the middle generation is going to be considered both old and young by the generations surrounding it. Once Gen beta starts we'll be officially old.
Middle age != Middle generation.
I understand your point. But you're redefining widely accepted usage of these terms. Nobody would call a 30 year old "middle age."
Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging
#86It doesn't look like meat consumption was mentioned anywhere.
Frequent consumption of red and processed meat is strongly linked to a higher risk of colorectal cancer, with studies showing a 30% to 40% increased risk for high consumption levels [1]. Processed meat, in particular, raises CRC risk by about 18% for every 50-gram daily portion [2].
Your ultra-endurance athletes might be convinced they need more protein in their diets and are most likely consuming large quantities of meat.
1: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10194058/
2: https://www.umassmed.edu/news/news-archives/2015/10/umms-col...
Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging
#87Excellent science communication, as would be expected from this author.
A recent finding from last year looked at the mutational signatures in colon cancer in those under 50:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09025-8
The different processes that damage DNA have sequence preferences for the direct change in the DNA (e.g. G-->C versus G-->T), as well as the sequence around the damage. Smoking causes very very different signatures of DNA damage than, say, damage from UV from being in the sun.
So every cell in our body carries with it a (noisy) history of the mutagenic processes it has been exposed to.
This paper found some differences in these mutational signatures of later colon cancers, and attributed them to colibactin, a mutagen produced by bacteria.
It remains to be seen what percentage of the increase in under-50 colon cancers this would explain, but it's an additional risk factor that didn't make it onto the chart, likely because it's not coming from standard epidemiological analysis, and instead from the world of molecular analysis.
Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging
#88Wow, I had no idea there is a 15X increase for endurance athletes. Make me want to dial down the running a bit, which make you wonder where the sweet spot is for distance training.
I have an ultra-runner friend who just got diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. Absolutely devastating. He had a colonoscopy just a few years ago. His only symptom was not feeling well after a long race.
Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
This mostly can't explain the fact that mortality is also rising in under 50s. It is true mortality is rising less than incident, and that a small proportion instances of mortality could be deaths related to reasonable risks taken on from treatment side effects (to make up numbers, it makes sense to take a 5% chance of dying from treatment this year over a 80% chance of dying from cancer in 5 years), but this is prob…
Does treatment ever speed up death? Given that chemo is super hard on the body I imagine it could? That might just account for your use of “mostly”, though.
C'mon, I already said that, that was half of my comment!
Re: Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I won't bother checking or disputing the accuracy of your factual claims, because it does not matter. Colorectal cancer is not the same thing as high blood pressure, or type 2 diabetes, or any other cancer that isn't colorectal cancer. Diseases are not a monolith and you cannot assume low risk of some diseases means low risk of others. That is wild guesswork passed off as logic, like measuring the shadow your testicl…
"Diseases are not a monolith and you cannot assume low risk of some diseases means low risk of others. That is wild guesswork passed off as logic..." Diseases are not a monolith, but they do tend to arise and fall in some specific clusters, and that is not "logic", good or bad (too many computer-minded people drag logic into the chaos that is biology), but rather a long-time empirical observation, albeit with some ex…
Sigh. Sure, if you had a gun to your head and you knew nothing else, it would be better to guess that a given population (hunter-gatherers) with low rates of some illnesses (T2D, HBP) also had low rates of another illness (CRC) than the reverse. Okay. That's a slightly better-than-chance guess, not anywhere near a solid basis for speculation.
"Anyways, it makes sense that marathoners get CRC because hunter-gatherers probably don't run that much" is bongcloud lalaland tier guesswork.