Lack of exercise and a diet heavy in sugars and low in nutrients are likely contributors to the rise in certain cancers among the young. (Photo: Shutterstock)
Six out of 12 cancers related to obesity present nearly double the risk to millennials than they did to Boomers at the same age.
So says a study appearing in The Lancet Public Health, which also looked at 18 cancers not tied to obesity; just two of those presented rising rates in millennials.
Thanks to the obesity epidemic occurring over the past four decades, younger generations are exposed for an earlier and longer-lasting exposure to the carcinogen of excess weight than were earlier generations. That likely means that they were also exposed to that elevated risk during early life and “crucial developmental periods.”
According to Hyuna Sung, one of the study authors and principal scientist of surveillance research at the American Cancer Society, there is “quite convincing evidence” that excess body weight increases the risks of some cancers: colorectal, uterine corpus (endometrial), gallbladder, kidney, multiple myeloma and pancreatic. All six occurred more frequently in young adults and in successively younger people. In addition, the risk of colorectal, uterine corpus, pancreatic and gall bladder cancers in millennials is approximately twice the rate at which baby boomers had such cancers at the same age.
“Our finding of increasing incidence in younger generations for some obesity-related cancers has significant practical public health implications, especially for health-care providers and policy makers,” the authors write. “Despite national guidelines recommending screening of children and adults for obesity … fewer than half of primary care physicians regularly assess body-mass index in their patients, and only a third of obese patients report receiving an obesity diagnosis or weight loss counselling.”
Among 18 non-obesity-related cancers, the rates are either lower or the same for 16 of them; the exceptions are gastric non-cardia cancer and leukemia. This lower incidence includes smoking- or HIV-related cancers.
Lack of exercise and a diet heavy in sugars and low in nutrients are likely contributors to the rise in those cancers among the young, in addition to other factors.
“Although the absolute risk of these cancers is small in younger adults, these findings have important public health implications,” says Ahmedin Jemal, DVM Ph.D., scientific vice president of surveillance and health services research and senior/corresponding author of the paper.
Jemal adds, “Given the large increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity among young people and increasing risks of obesity-related cancers in contemporary birth cohorts, the future burden of these cancers could worsen as younger cohorts age, potentially halting or reversing the progress achieved in reducing cancer mortality over the past several decades. Cancer trends in young adults often serve as a sentinel for the future disease burden in older adults, among whom most cancer occurs.”
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Marlene Satter
Marlene Y. Satter has worked in and written about the financial industry for decades.
