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This is at the heart of the bowel cancer debates at the moment, because it's very clear that just a few decades ago people under 50 were not getting it, and now they are, seemingly all the bloody time. I know 3 people personally who have had it, and 2 of them are dead.
One of the main theories is that exposure to E. coli and lots of antibiotics early in life changes the gut microbiome and allows more harmful species to colonise that do a lot more damage to DNA and cells , which over time leads to more mutations and hello bowel cancer.
This is quite scary as my daughter had e-coli some years back, but i make sure both kids eat daily walnuts and drink fermented drinks like kefir and there's a good one in bulgaria with a probiotic strain called ayran. Just want to stack the deck in our favour,
Lifestyle goes hand in hand i think, more stress, poor work life ballance, shit health in general for many, and microplastics in everything.
I've read about there being an important distinction between cancer starts and actual malignancies, too.
The Japanese supposedly have high rates of cancer starts, presumably from smoking a lot, but low rates of cancer death, which is ascribed to their lifestyle.
Sorry when I mean genetics (outside of the obvious inherited disorders that appear early), I mean that some families seem to have many members live longer to late 80s and 90s while other families have lots of cancer or die in their 60s and 70s. If your grandparents and parents lived long it's a good sign.
True, but if my grandma smoked a bunch and died early of lung cancer, that doesn't really tell me much about my cancer risk if I don't smoke.
genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger
How much have age-adjusted cancer rates changed over time?
We know our underlying genetics aren't significantly different, so either that change is due to our luck changing or it's environmental.