More Young People Than Ever Will Get Colorectal Cancer This Year

Colon and rectal cancers are increasing among people younger than 50. Experts have a few ideas about why.

Marisa Peters had been experiencing symptoms for years: blood on her toilet paper after going to the bathroom, changes in her stool and difficulty controlling the urge to poop. But she was in her 30s, healthy and physically active. She did not have any abdominal pain, and doctors dismissed the symptoms as hemorrhoids, or normal postpartum changes after the birth of her first son. When Ms. Peters finally visited a gastroenterologist in 2021, after having her third child and experiencing worsening bleeding from her rectum along with changes in her stool consistency, an urgent colonoscopy confirmed that she had colorectal cancer.

It had been four or five years since her symptoms had first emerged. Yet “I did not expect that cancer was going to be what they found,” Ms. Peters said.

A report published by the American Cancer Society in January suggests that rates of colorectal cancer are rising rapidly among people in their 20s, 30s and 40s — even as incidence is declining in people over the age of 65.

This excerpt comes from an article written by Knvul Sheikh, published in The New York Times on 3/27/2024.