Why should young adults care about colorectal cancer?   Colorectal cancer is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer worldwide and the second leading cause of cancer death. In 2022 alone, approximately 1.9 million people were diagnosed and more than 900,000 died from the disease. 1   The majority of young adults do not consider themselves at a risk for colorectal cancer, and there is little awareness of symptoms that should prompt medical intervention. However in recent decades a new, dangerous, and less recognized trend in colorectal cancer cases has been on the rise. People under 50 years old are increasingly being diagnosed with early-onset colorectal cancer, often in later stages, due to very subtle symptoms or dismissing warning signs as something else . The reasons for this increase are not yet fully understood. Researchers believe it is probably multifactorial, with possible contributions from obesity, dietary patterns, physical inactivity, alcohol, smoking, early-life...

          Long before the 20th century, when it became a fact that smoking directly causes cancer, the tobacco plant, Nicotiana , was widely celebrated across Europe and South America for medicinal practices. For centuries tobacco was thought, without any evidence, to be a remedy for colds, fevers, and other illnesses. It wasn’t until the late 1800s, when smoking tobacco exploded in popularity, that doctors and scientists slowly began to notice the steady increase in lung cancer patients. 1 Decades later, overwhelming evidence that tobacco is extremely carcinogenic began to pile up, and smoking became a major public health concern. 2             Today, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in women the leading cause of cancer-related mortality remains breast cancer, but both groups combined, it’s true that it’s lung cancer worldwide. Modern medicine has come up with ways to detect and treat lung ca...