A recent study published by The Lancet Public Health has shown that cancer risk is rising in Gen Xers and millennials
Dr. Matty Francois is a general surgeon specializing in breast surgical oncology at Carle Cancer Institute in Normal. She said the study should serve as a call to action for parents to set good examples for their children, especially when it comes to diet and exercise.
“Ten out of 17 cancers are related with obesity,” Francois said in an interview on WGLT's Sound Ideas, referring to the cancer types that have skewed younger. “We’ve been talking for a long time about the obesity epidemic and how it has progressively gone from affecting adults to adolescents to children. The earlier onset of exposure is leading to earlier onset of development of malignancies we know are related to obesity.”
The cancer types where younger adults have experienced higher risks include breast, pancreatic, uterine, colon and rectal cancers.
Francois said she has noticed this trend in her practice too.
"As time has gone on and I've cared for more and more of the women in this community, I've have noticed their ages are decreasing," she said. "They are coming to me younger and younger, in their 30s, 40s, and early 50s."
The study looked at both incidence and fatalities; some cases found these accruing at the same rate. This means that not only is the risk of developing cancer increasing, but healthcare professionals are not having as much success treating them because many cases involving younger adults are more advanced, Francois said.
“We want medicine and science to be able to say, ‘It’s the aspartame in our Diet Coke, that why all of us are getting cancer,’ but it ends up being very complex and very multifactorial,” Francois said. “It comes down to the fact our body is not functioning in sync like it’s supposed to ... for example: you get a lot of sun exposure, and you get skin cancer, you drink a lot of alcohol, and you get liver cancer. The more exposures patients have the more at risk they are of developing all kinds of cancers.”
The solution of taking care of your body may seem like a case-by-case thing, but Francois believes that a widespread attitude change may be necessary.
“It has to be a societal change,” Francois said. “We have to go back to caring about things for the correct reasons... We forget that the real reasons we should be caring for our bodies is because it’s the only vehicle we have until we die.”
Francois said that another aspect of the issue was a lack of testing in young people for diagnoses usually occurring later in life. However, now that there is data reflecting a need for testing it has become more prevalent.
The study also showed positive statistics, with HPV related cervical cancer rates lowering due to the HPV vaccine.
