Are these two foods behind the epidemic of colon cancer in young people?

Red meat and sugar, staples of the Western diet, could be to blame for the mysterious rise in colorectal cancer among young Americans, according to a new study.

These findings come at a time when colorectal cancer deaths among people under 40 are expected to double by 2030. the leading cause of cancer death in young people by the end of the decade.

The study, published by a research team at Cleveland clinicstudied metabolites, substances produced in the body when food breaks down.

The researchers found that people under 50 with colon cancer had lower levels of citrate than their older counterparts. Citrate is a compound created when the body converts food into energy.

Citrate is shown in recent research to inhibit tumor growth and progression of colorectal cancer.

The researchers also found differences in the way young people break down proteins and carbohydrates in certain foods, which they say could mean that red meat and sugar intake is related to developing colorectal cancer at a younger age.

‘The way we use our carbohydrates to make our energy; the way we consume proteins and amino acids from our diet and other exposures really had a very strong relationship to cancer incidence,” said Dr. Suneel Kamath, gastrointestinal oncologist at Cleveland Clinic and senior author on the study.

“It’s really something that hasn’t been described before in colorectal cancer.”

Dr. Kamath said more research is needed, but there’s enough evidence to suggest it’s a good idea to limit red meat and sugar in your diet.

‘We have known this as a risk factor for colon cancer for a long time. And so I would certainly say our data supports that,” he said.

‘Moreover, we know that obesity is a major risk factor for the development of cancer, including colorectal cancer. So we think the findings we’ve shown with carbohydrate and energy metabolism probably have something to do with that as well.”

The study consisted of 170 colorectal cancer patients, 66 of whom were young. This means that those patients were younger than 50 years old.

The findings were presented earlier this month at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.

This research comes at a time when cases of colon cancer in young people are on the rise.

Cancers of the colon and rectum are currently the third most common type in the US and the third leading cause of death for both men and women.

The American Cancer Society estimates that about 153,000 cases of colon cancer will be discovered this year, including 19,500 among people under the age of 50.

About 52,550 people are expected to die from the disease.

In a March report from the ACSscientists warned that the rate of colon cancer in people aged 50 to 54 nationwide was now nearly 60 per 100,000.

In comparison, between 1975 and 1979, the rate was around 40 per 100,000, indicating a 50 percent increase in about 45 years.

About 43 percent of the diagnoses were in people ages 45 to 49.

The US is not the only country with these alarming numbers. A 2023 assessment found that while the US had an early-onset colorectal cancer rate of 12.4 per 100,000 people, Australia had 13.5, Norway had 10.5, Korea had 10.1, and the United Kingdom had 9.3.

More than half of respondents said they had been misdiagnosed with conditions such as hemorrhoids, irritable bowel syndrome, anemia and mental health problems. And patients ages 19 to 39 were more likely to feel rejected by their provider.

Other recent research has also linked these foods to an increased risk of colon cancer.

Sugar-sweetened foods and drinks have never been more ubiquitous, but a 2021 study found that excessive consumption of them greatly increased the risk of developing this cancer.

Researchers studied the dietary habits of more than 95,000 nurses who participated in the comprehensive Nurses’ Health Study II between 1991 and 2015.

They also took into account the diets of about 41,000 women when they were teenagers.

The researchers found that adult women who said they drank two sugar-sweetened drinks a day had more than double the risk of developing colorectal cancer than women who drank less than one sweetened drink a week.

And for every sweet drink consumed per day as a teen, the woman had a 32 percent increased risk of early-onset colon cancer as an adult.

In addition, a review in the European journal of epidemiology showed that high consumption of red meat was associated with several cancers, including colon, breast and lung cancer.

And the World Cancer Research Fund analyzed nine studies on colon cancer and red meat and found a 17 percent increased risk per 100 grams of red meat consumed per day. The study also found an 18 percent increased risk per 50 grams of processed meat per day.

A study published last month in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that the most commonly reported symptoms of colorectal cancer were abdominal pain, blood in the stool, diarrhea and iron deficiency anemia.

In addition, a 2020 study of Colorectal Cancer Alliance, 68 percent of participants said they experienced blood in their stool. The mean age of the participants was 42 years.

The same study also found that many patients with colorectal cancer symptoms were initially misdiagnosed or discharged.

More than half of respondents said they had been misdiagnosed with conditions such as hemorrhoids, irritable bowel syndrome, anemia and mental health problems. And patients ages 19 to 39 were more likely to feel rejected by their provider.