Why is cancer so common now

[KingKitty]

I know 4 people all under 45 who died of cancer within the past three years. It's so so so so sad. They are just so so so young. I am just after hearing of another person with cancer all over her body.

.Why is cancer so common now and why is it taking people even young people?

It's so scary.

People diagnosed bowel cancer today would’ve had it before the vaccine was invented

so get your bingo card out and listen for the inevitable cries of “anti-vaxxer” “conspiracy theorist” to shut down discussion. this point alone is shutting down discussion / mocking someone with an opposing opinion

however, I’ll indulge

could you kindly cite any proof that links vaccines (covid in particular) to cancer? And as I’ve mentioned upthread, the two doctors outlined in the post you’ve replied to have been discredited by the majority of the medical world (people who are heaps more qualified than all the people on your bingo card)

There’s no conspiracy. It’s basic statistics.

better diagnosis. We know it’s cancer now, not “consumption” or some other generic description of wasting away.

people are living longer.

cancer is increasingly more treatable and even curable, plus better screening, so cancer causing genes are remaining in the population rather than dying out.

i first started studying cancer 30 years ago and the rates were exactly the same then.

Interestingly a lot of plastics leach chemicals that mimic artificial oestrogen in the body. Some interesting studies in the feminisation of certain fish etc because if this. Also an important factor in reduced sperm count in males. Perhaps it is also having an impact on cancers?

Better diagnosis.
People living longer.
Too much food.
too many drugs in the britpop and millennium years

We were taught in oncology years and years ago that most elderly men die “with” prostate cancer. It’s more unusual to not have it.

in many cases it’s not even known. In many more it’s so slow growing they’ll die of old age before the cancer is an issue.

increasing blood tests and screening as you say means increasing diagnosis. They still will mostly die of something else first.

Just seen this ... On ITV1 tomorrow (Thursday 3rd April,) the TONIGHT show documentary is about the frightening rise in deaths from cancer in the under 50s! What a coincidence!

https://www.tvguide.co.uk/schedule/96031fe6-1763-542f-af45-80aaaab8c1ef/cancer-under-50-searching-for-answers-tonight

For breast cancer, I think the combined oral contraceptive pill.
My best friend was diagnosed afew years back (33) and they told her to stop taking it straight away when they found out, and also it has warnings on the packet that it increases the risk of breast cancer due to the oestrogen, apparently 'slightly' but who knows.

Nope it’s not shutting anything down in fact it’s obvious from the comments made before I posted that the bingo was already in full swing. The more people with an opposing opinion that post strengthens my view that they’re brainwashed.

I don’t really care if you don’t agree with me and look up your own links FGS if you’ve got such an inquisitive interest. if people take 100 boosters or 10 that’s their freedom of choice.

I was diagnosed with an aggressive breast cancer out of the blue at my very first screening mammogram, 6 years ago.
Going through family history, it was really difficult to find out if anyone of my grandparents generation had cancer as it used to be dressed up as something vague, like "tummy troubles" as cancer wasn't really talked about.
I think it seems more common now as so many cancers are picked up at an early, more treatable stage, whereas a couple of generations ago it was picked up much later, if at all, and usually terminal.
I was 50 at diagnosis, but in a cancer group therapy session I went to, out of a group of 14 I was probably in the middle, age wise.

there’s are literally chemicals in everything we eat, touch and put in our bodies from obvious food types to deodorant cans to sanitary towels to toothpaste. It’s everywhere and unavoidable a lot of the time.

Literally everything is made from chemicals. Water, air, skin, blood, eyes, hair, toenails, chicken, trees, insects. All chemicals. Did you go to school?!

My hunch is pollution/chemicals etc in the soil and water. The world’s population has exploded over the last century. It trebled between 1900 and 1960, rising from one billion to three billion. It’s now eight billion and heading for ten billion. So many people naturally produce more garbage. God knows how much poison makes its way into our food and air and water.

I think there are two main drivers for increase in cancer and cancer related deaths.

In the older population it's largely a simple case of so many people are no longer dying of now treatable conditions which would have previously eventually lead to death such as high blood pressure and diabetes and so they die of cancer instead.

In the younger population, cancer is becoming more prevalent due to environmental factors. Pollution, micro plastics etc.

i would agree with this anecdotally insofar my grandmother always said her mother died of the flu. Recently I was given a photo of her mother from a family member a year or so before she died. She was skin and bone and only in her 40s. She looks like she had cancer. In those days it wasn’t really diagnosed. Flu might have been the final thing that claimed her but she sure wasn’t well beforehand.

Thanks for sharing this. Given our generally poor diets in the UK and the rise in obesity, it doesn’t surprise me that bowel cancer cases have increased so much in the under 50s.

I'm echoing so many posters on here, but it really is a consequence of better specialist equipment/techniques to diagnose, increased lifespan and greater access to medical care

Of the known risk factors for specific cancers (smoking, alcohol, obesity) there is an expected correlation, but this is not new information for anyone. The biggest risk factor for ANY cancer is simply aging.... and lets not forget that cancer survival rates have DOUBLED in the last 40 years

There was a programme 2 weeks ago on BBC Radio 4, an episode of Rare Earth, the health effects of PFA's, (forever chemicals.) I knew they were in frying pans and some fabrics, but the content of this broadcast frightened me.
PFA's are in the soil, in the air, water tables, they are even in our blood !
I'm sorry I don't know how to post a link, if anyone could please?

https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2015/02/04/why-are-cancer-rates-increasing/

this is quite a good basic overview of the wider context for anyone interested?

One of the reasons is in the past people died of other things such as infectious diseases, TB, polio, influenza, cholera, malnutrition would have been big killers just 100-150 years ago.

Nowadays we die of diseases of affluence such as heart disease and cancer. Life expectancy has gone up too.

I think a little of it’s heriditary,
Within my paternal family , 2 aunts and 1 uncle of 5 siblings have had cancer .
Within Maternal family only great grandparents have had cancer , both smokers
The paternal cancers have been liver
Maternal lung through smoking
I suppose it’s a death knell if we have it both sides of the family ?
or can we skip it ? If nobody smoked since grandparents age ?

I wondered how long before a conspiracy theorist would turn up.

I know , what a load of rubbish

Fuck knows! All I know is that my diet & lifestyle is by far worse than my DPs & he's the one who is battling leukaemia & not me. He's 35.

Wow that’s awful OP. Currently feeling lucky that I don’t personally know anyone who has died of cancer at any age. I know a few people who have had it removed in the past though.

This. Something like 1 in 6 died of TB in the 19th century. TB is still around, but the mortslity rates are nothing like 150 years ago. We don't have smallpox any more, either. It's been a long time since we had an outbreak of cholera in the UK. These days, we have far better public health, health and safety, vaccinations, antibiotics and so on. If you need surgery, anaesthetic knowledge is far better, and just the knowledge and ability to keep things sterile. We all have far more chances of surviving - in the past, a of people simply didn't live long enough to develop cancer.

Also, there were probably misdiagnoses - we didn't have the scanning equipment we do now, and the poor wouldn't have been able to visit the doctor often. It's possible that in the 19th century and earlier, "consumption" wasn't just TB, but also lung cancer and various industrial diseases.

That's not to say plastics and other chemicals we use aren't contributing to certain cancers, but the Victorians used to use arsenic as a food colouring and so on, not to mention lead piping etc. So the food we eat has always been some risk. We've just mostly changed what the risks are.

But I think a lot of it is just not dieing from other stuff.