But since this is all one-party and relatively anonymous, I’d like to take the opportunity to tell everyone that unless you have a PhD or MD in a relevant field, your thoughts about fiber are irrelevant and unwelcome to anyone actually suffering from the disease(s) in question.
If you look at the sequence of events that happen to trigger a heart attack, it becomes really clear how big a role luck is, but still you can mitigate each step. Studying this stuff also makes your body seem like a walking time bomb.
However it's irrefutable that exercising, sleeping and nutrition improves your health.
Will it prevent you from ever getting cancer? no, but it sure helps.
My mother passed away from cancer, she always exercised and took care of herself, it made the quality of her life much better. Looking back, she would have suffered much more had she not done that.
Honestly, given the extent to which many people's diets consist primarily of bleached and re-enriched wheat separated from the germ or simply refined corn, I think there are many more people who are slowly poisoned by their diet than realize it.
Yet there's plenty of hyperbole in my statement too. I don't think you could murder someone by making them eat your diet, unless it consisted of bags of broken glass.
It's a bit hard to tell from your post what you're saying. Certainly I can imagine being annoyed by constantly being given health advice from layman. But this is... a forum.
If it's the former, I'm ambivalent. I don't give advice as a general rule. If it's the latter, I find that totally silly.
Now this may be due to sampling on my end, but I did find the difference extraordinary when asking the same questions to different people.
I don't understand the relevance to the article. Does Multiple Sclerosis come with a higher risk of colon cancer?
I walked in and walked out no issue and went on about my day. Prep was fine but would be hard if I didn't work at home.
Definitely enjoyed the following times with anesthesia because, of course 0/10 as far as I know. Also, anesthesia just trips my mind—how seemingly time travel (going forward in time) seems to be involved.
My doc looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if it could be done without sedation, and reminded me that it would be uncomfortable, but otherwise didn't have any problem with it. I've endured 50k runs, brutal workouts, and traumatizing childhood neglect - I really can't see what the fuss is with mild discomfort that, by comparison, barely registers, and for such a short amount of time at that.
If I ever receive that procedure again, I will ask to skip the fentanyl microdose. The anesthesia and the buzz were not only underwhelming but for some reasons I started to feel the typical opioid warmth when the procedure was almost completed. Had they waited a few minutes after the IM injection I might have had another opinion on the usefulness on fentanyl during endoscopie because the last 30s were almost pleasant!
However, doctors who do it are a bit hard to come by.
With a esophagogastroduodenoscopy, I think the main issue is the gag reflex, not necessarily the pain.
I assume that's not actually a realistic risk, right?
Did you see this? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/health/running-colon-canc...
But I agree with you, I would only want this done if I could get it without sedation.
I thought it was going to be awkward but wasn't at all. We just chatted. It was him and an assistant. I was able to watch the TV of my colon while he was doing it.
And you get diarrhea-like bathroom runs half a dozen times maybe.
Yes it was annoying to get the runs and gross to drink the stuff the first few times, but people eat things like cow tongue or live octopus or whatever... I can handle some bad-tasting Gatorade and some diarrhea just fine, especially given the 5 years of peace-of-mind it buys me afterward.
The prep was horrible, particularly the electrolyte drink they make you take the night before. I almost puked several times trying to get that stuff down.
Actual procedure was a breeze. I was sedated, and then I woke up and it was over.
US diet? Is corn syrup common elsewhere?
It's also the crazy amounts: we're accustomed to high levels of sweetness. Like 40g sugar in a can of soda.
Like where would the need for the fiber come from evolutionary.
All those were very high in fiber. I believe it's estimated paleolithic humans are over 100 grams of fiber a day, whereas I believe the recommended intake today is 35 grams, which less than 2% of Americans meet.
So yes, the Paleo diet is largely bullshit. No, humans did not eat fatty farmed meats. They barely ate meat at all.
And it's also well-documented that the average Western diet is highly deficient in fiber and that this is a thing which has gotten much worse in the last 75 years.
There also seems to be at least some light evidence that there may be generational effects - that the starting point of your gut is already bad if your mother's was.
Why would more fiber help?
Insoluble fiber speeds up gut motility. Faster gut motility means less time for toxins to sit and absorb in your gut.
Also, fermentable fibers serve as substrate for gut microbes, producing short-chain fatty acids (butyrate is one - a primary fuel source for colonocytes - the cells that line your colon).
It also lowers colonic pH, inhibiting pathogenic bacteria.
Lastly, (although there are tons more benefits I'm not listing), soluble fiber is incredible for people trying to lose weight, as highly fibrous foods increase satiety, keeping you fuller for longer.
> Why would more fiber help?
Because there is an incredible amount of research into high fiber diets being good for your gut, including reduced colon cancer rates. This is the consensus of various organizations such as WHO - high fiber diets have lower risks of colon cancer.
Western diet collapsed its fiber intake well over 80 years ago - it would have shown up already.
Well, you said "can't" and I asked "why", which feels very reasonable to me. Your argument seems to be that it wouldn't account properly for the data - specifically, you're saying we would have seen colon cancer rates rise earlier.
> Western diet collapsed its fiber intake well over 80 years ago - it would have shown up already.
I don't really buy this for a lot of reasons. Probably the two most important are (a) ability to screen historically and (b) the timing isn't particularly "off" for the fiber argument. We did see it already, we've been seeing increases in color cancer risks for decades.
Now, I'm not married to it "just" being fiber whatsoever, but if I were to "bet" on the major contributing factor, naively, that's where my money would go. I think it's very reasonable to not place your bet there.
Fiber does nothing.
1. Ancient egyptians ate fucktons of wheat and barley, lentils, chickpeas, etc. They ate massive amounts of fiber lol I mean holy fuck I just can't believe how wrong you are?
2. Fiber is very, very well understood by ALL health organizations to be preventative for colon cancer.
Very high.
> But if a person is regular and does not have any gut issues, how would more fiber help?
There is a ton of research about this and it's why WHO and other orgs state explicitly that fiber reduces rates of colon cancer.
I would also bet top reason is fiber but it isn't the only reason - multiple factors at play.
My expectation is that it is less that there has been a growing trend of this cancer getting worse, and far more that we have gotten better at many other cancers. That is, overall, this is good news on progress. Not a scare headline.
The choices, personal or otherwise, I have seen can't be good for your body, and some you're simply not allowed to make anymore.
Ironically, sitting on this laptop typing this might be as bad, but win some/lose some.
But some obvious examples?
Ever dip a shirt in benzene because it cools you down? Apparently it feels like Vicks, but doesn't leave that sticky feeling behind.
A good portion drank 6+ beers a day. I know they must have eaten, but some I never saw consume food. At all.
Some smoked a pack or two of cigarettes a day. Asbestos was in everything.
There was no ventilation/filtration for welders, painters, woodworkers, etc. If you could open the shop door it was a good day.
https://seer.cancer.gov/statistics-network/explorer/applicat...
By all means, we should study this more. But the way folks are talking about this is a touch nuts.
>Zoom the chart out, and you would probably be excused for assuming it is flat with some noise.
That's true of all cancers, if not all statistics.
The concern here is two-fold:
(1) The people under 50 now will be over 50 in a decade or so. We can already see that the trend of colorectal cancer among those aged 50 to 64 was decreasing until 2012, but had since gone up. This will likely get worse. Early onset colorectal cancer is a canary in the coalmine.
(2) Unless this trend is caused by a specific chemical exposure or a purely dietary reason, the behavior/lifestyle/health conditions behind it are likely to lead to other types of cancers. Obesity and lack of exercise have been linked to a lot of cancers. I'm worried about losing progress across the board when these young people reach their 60s.
And it is notable that this research largely pointed to genetics as being ~20% of the cases of early onset results. That combined with how it presents in a very different way from older patients seems to point to us also getting better at spotting it.
All of which is good! It is progress. And I hope we get even better at it.
If you are merely noting it as a concern for "things to continue to watch," I'm fully with you. Read the rest of the comments on this post, though. Tons of people pointing at things that just don't present in the evidence. Fear that we will find that one killer ingredient/process to explain the uptick here; all while failing to acknowledge that we did find many such problems in the past and have made quite astounding progress on it.
It sort of reminds me of when Lesswrong was fixated on a hypothesis that lithium levels in the water supply was the cause of the obesity epidemic. There was a lot of enthusiasm for the idea at the time, and somewhat understandably as it would have been a single variable that could be tweaked for massive societal benefits.
But there wasn’t really any credible evidence to support it. Trying to reduce the complexity of human biology and lifestyle to single cause/effect relationship is an easy and tempting trap to fall into to explain unknowns in medicine.
I think it's a combination of our pesticide usage and general food processing but like a sibling said these are educated guesses.
It's tempting to focus on some magic bad ingredient/practice to explain our bad health (like seed oils), but we don't exercise, we eat directly against dietary guidelines, and we eat foods that we know are bad for us.
Now add on to that the social media grifters and industry advocates who tell you that eating poorly is good for you.
I don't blame individuals just trying to live their life though. This is how we've let our whole food environment set up shop.
But processed meat consumption would be another good example of where we happily eat against dietary guidelines despite its link with colorectal cancer.
Whatever's going on, it's probably going to end up being complicated and multifactorial.
(I do love me a crucifer, though).
> patterns look stable, except for increases in total calories, in dairy, and in added dairy fats and oils.
So... not stable?
(1) Somebody vouched it.
(2) I had a glass of bourbon in my hand when I read it the first time.
(3) It's written as if maybe I'd continue to debate the data after the first paragraph.
Well played!
If you want to reduce your risk of cancer, your best bets are quitting smoking, stopping drinking, eating less meat, and exercising more.
Drinking, like, diet cola is nothing next to those. We know, without a doubt, tobacco, alcohol, and processed meats cause cancer.
I'll go so far as to say that almost any pesticide or herbicide is likely to be bad for vertebrates and invertebrates alike. This is really likely the case for perservatives as well, for what should be obvious reasons.
It's really not that crazy to assume they're probably not good as a default assumption.
Go into a hardware store and almost every chemical, solvent, paint, etc. that you encounter is not good for you. Eat a salmon and enjoy billions of plastic particles. Open almost any prepackaged food and you'll be ingesting all manner of dyes, perservatives, anti-caking agents, etc. etc. etc. that simply weren't around in your food environment during our evolution. It's a surprisingly good baseline assumption that these things aren't likely to be good for you.
If you think about the study design and epidemiologic studies, it should be clear that it's going to be very difficult to prove harm in a lot of cases for things that are only a little harmful, or only harmful in combination, or harmful only after 20 years have passed since exposure, etc. ...except that the science is VERY clear: something (or lots of things) associated with "processed food" is really bad for you.
I suspect there are other factors at play.
That certainly does not help the situation. Whether it's correlational or causal I'd leave up to people more knowledgeable in the subject.
It is also across normal BMI, "healthy" diet and regular exercising population. Thats what's concerning about the uptick.
The odds ratios for nearly all diseases and all-cause mortality shift so far from those two interventions it's almost unbelievable.
The current US administration is not at all interesting in addressing America's unhealthy food.
[1] https://cen.acs.org/environment/pesticides/glyphosate-roundu...
[2] https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-take...
Those standards put processed carbs like bread/pasta as the largest part of a "healthy diet". Whoops.
"Food pyramid dumb, eat meat" is a very reductive take.
National estimates suggest only 8%-14% of Americans ever followed MyPlate. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40752889/
Also, MyPlate only used "grains" as a category, with a note to make half from whole grains...not just processed carbs. Big difference. And, vegetables are the biggest category.
Adding on to that, if you workout in ANY capacity, you need simple carbs.
Correct. The root of the problem is that corporate interests influence government regulation. [1] That hasn't changed. What has changed is which industry is offering the largest bribes.
Overall, the colorectal cancer story is encouraging https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47078840
My handy heuristic for headlines like this: Is it a scary new trend that means something or did other factors suppressing its natural emergence decline? Or is it a matter of observation?
A recent real-world example was the detection of two different objects entering the solar system. The naive speculation was "they came on the same plane, so they must be alien!" But the reality is more mundane: the new detection method that found them, while flexible, started by looking at that plane. So of course both objects it detected were on that plane.
Unfortunately, that doesn't seem the be the case here, and the article goes into this. Deaths due to colorectal cancer under 50 simply used to be incredibly uncommon. Younger people were simply not screened for it. The rise is not solely relative to other forms of death, but in absolute terms has increased.
I'd agree that really smart and plausible theories can turn out to be incorrect. But, I'm not sure I'd necessarily agree that plausible guesses aren't doing anyone any good. So long as theory is otherwise healthy (eg: eat vegetables and exercise regularly) then they might be doing some accidental good, and if they turn out to be correct, give people a bit of a head start.
>E. coli toxin could be linked to rising rates of bowel cancer in younger adults https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2025/04/23/colibactin-e-co...
You would have never guessed he was an unhealthy guy by looking at him, but I do assume it has something to do with foods we consider normal in the US. I've taken a page out of Bryan Johnson's book and started eating well over 100% of recommended daily fiber intake (easy and enjoyable if you make some chia seed porridge every morning), and I will say my digestion has never been better. Keeping the system clear seems like a sane first line of defense to preventing this kind of thing.
But, no. They didn't find a single thing. Blood and stool tests came back fine. Not even a polyp was found during the colonoscopy.
The only thing that kind of sucked, was the prep - there's no way around that. But the colonoscopy itself, no problem. I get some mild sedatives, but was completely awake during the procedure - even watched it on the screen.
- Sugary drinks (≥2/day as teen) - 2x
- Sedentary lifestyle (>2hr TV/day) - 1.7x
- Childhood antibiotics (recurrent) - 1.5x
Have any studies tracked the growth of these behaviors in recent decades, potentially lining up with the increase in early onset CRC?
Found it: https://www.hankgreen.com/crc
I'm likely going to die of either a heart attack (already had one, at age 28), or cancer, and it seems genetic.
EDIT: Specific genes and alleles below, if anyone is curious
Such that, yes, we can still get better. But people here are reacting as if there is some damning evidence that just doesn't track with the data. Even with an uptick in younger people getting this, we still don't have a smoking gun on anything that is directly causal to this.
Also, holy crap, if you have rectal bleeding, don't ignore it! That that is listed as an early warning sign that people ignore is terrifying.
If people enjoy it and really get a lot out of it then I wouldn't judge them for doing it, but let's not pretend it's healthy, because all the evidence is that it isn't.
In terms of cardio being able to run a half decent 5k a couple of times a week is probably a good idea, any more volume than that is really not necessary and at some point becomes harmful
Also there's "distance running" as in running maybe 50k a week, that's probably okay, although as you get older it will increase your risk of stroke. But ultramarathons are a whole different ball game and almost certainly bad for you
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11720530/ says there's a higher rate of AF in older, male althetes but a lower risk of stroke compared to similar aged, non-athletes.
At any rate, the data doesn't seem clear enough to claim that "distance running bad for you" or "any distance over 50K is bad for you".
I think the biggest risk though is acutely doing high intensity exercise (e.g. a marathon) whereas doing low intensity regular exercise (e.g. a 5k jogged at moderate pace 4x a week) is probably good.
So it's not "running is bad", it's more "running insane distances and/or running at insanely high intensity is bad", but the issue is a lot of people who get really into running end up doing one or both of those things.
One sign that marathons (let alone ultramarathons) may not be particularly healthy is that the first guy to do one famously died, and then subsequently people die doing them every single year. Yes the risk is low overall, but that doesn't mean it's actually good for you
I don't find this line of thinking terribly convincing
It's well known that (even young) elite athletes with unknown inborn heart defects sometimes die after extreme exertion. But it doesn't really follow that "extreme exertion is bad for you," the lurking variable is the heart defect.
Antibiotics, Potassium bromate, aspartame, Red 40, rBGH/rBST, Chlorpyrifos, Atrazine and many more
- insufficient fibre
- too much high fructose corn syrup
- too much milk
- too much citric acid
- toxins and parasites (gut cleanse!)
- washing chicken in chlorine (voiced as hypothetical)
- ultra-marathoners - maybe their supplements and too much carbs or dehydration?
- too much processed junk
- vitamin and mineral deficiencies
- radiation
- insufficient veggies
I’m more amazed at the toxic (no pun intended) comments in this post. It seems HN isn’t a place to voice health theories.
In addition a lot of the speculation assumes something specific to the US where this is a trend in multiple countries, predominantly high income ones[0][1], but this speculation that it might be 'chemicals' is fairly dull to read and adds nothing. Why this cohort specifically? What commonalities are there between countries with an observed increase? If it's diet why would it only impact the younger cohort?
[0]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2... [1]: https://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(21)00010-X/...
I work with health research doctors and I've too much respect for them to humour "health theories". And they don't tell me how to do my job either.
Earlier screenings are just compensating for poor education. It's not a solution to anything but the question of how to raise insurance costs for young people.
Just eat your damn vegetables!
Some things to consider:
>There are classifications of fiber, insoluable vs soluable
>Even those classifications are overly generalized, and can/should be broken down into basically individual foods.
>Fiber and the various types have impact on your gut bacteria. If your gut bacteria is bad, you might be fueling growth of bad bacteria.
>You don't actually need fiber
>You don't actually need a colon
>I think gut bacteria management will probably be the next big thing. A combination of more scientific probiotics + fiber/prebiotics.
>I'm guessing the colon cancer thing is probably due to pollutants. Not necessarily air, but could be from food.
Splitting hairs beyond that, like insoluble and soluble, is the kind of thing that just confuses and intimidates people about nutrition advice.
It's a bridge you can cross once everyone is eating 50g+ of fiber per day, has chiseled physiques, and are looking to min/max.
> You don't actually need fiber
Hey, you know what fiber is good for? Speeding up gut motility! You know what a faster gut motility is good for! Getting toxins out of our body quicker!
I want to emphasize I'm not making any grand claims of advice. I'm more being skeptical of traditional advice as someone who had/has a colon issue and tried everything under the sun.
At least if you can find some not previously doused in poison.
eat healthy my lads. trust not the media
I recommend everyone do a gut cleanse once a year.
Gut cleanse, colon cleanse, detoxing. None of this is supported by science. Nor would any of these things cure, prevent or in anyway help a parasitic infection.
Here are some common parasitic infections and how they're treated. None of these treatments recommend gut cleanse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giardia#Infection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Treatment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascariasis#Treatment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookworm_infection#Treatment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinworm_infection#Treatment
Gut inflammation can be a problem, but I would not recommend treating it or even diagnosing it without evidence.
I had gut dysbiosis for the past couple of years. Went to an alternative/func doctor and she helped me do a program such as this, in a safe manner: https://www.gutprotocols.com/products/full-moon-kit-parasite...
While yes this isn’t scientifically backed, because there’s just no clinical trials yet, doesn’t mean it is bunk. I did a program myself and it fixed all of my problems. My stool inflammatory markers went down drastically, as did my myriad of symptoms that caused me issues every day.
Perhaps I was wrong in strongly recommending people just go do this randomly without any doctor oversight. Whatever. I just wanted to offer my experience because it helped me and can help others. Take it or leave it.
This is an interesting statistic, but it is not a global statistic.
For similar reasons, I also wonder about people who consume raw milk. These people are more likely to endorse ivermectin for e.g. covid, because it made them feel much better. Maybe it's possible these people aren't lying about that, but not because it cured their covid.
And I’m not sure what toxins is supposed to mean and how Americans are more exposed to toxins than developing world children scouring through our electronic garbage on a daily basis
Parasites are quite a global problem: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbio.... I don’t even know why we’re arguing this.
Now we don’t know what toxins are? Really?
Doing an ambiguous preventive activity on 1 out of 365 days doesn't sound effective.
Yes I can eat this 4200cal Costco pizza, I did my cleanse last month.
“gut cleanse” obviously is a trigger phrase on HN it seems.
