{"id":212164,"date":"2025-04-23T01:28:25","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T06:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/the-race-to-explain-why-more-young-adults-are-getting-cancer"},"modified":"2025-04-23T01:28:25","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T06:28:25","slug":"the-race-to-explain-why-more-young-adults-are-getting-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/the-race-to-explain-why-more-young-adults-are-getting-cancer","title":{"rendered":"The Race to Explain Why More Young Adults Are Getting Cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"

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But classic risk factors do not seem to fully explain the recent rise in early-onset cancers, says Dr. Cathy Eng, director of the Young Adult Cancers Program at Vanderbilt University\u2019s Ingram Cancer Center in Tennessee. Some of the trends are baffling; young, nonsmoking women, for example, are being diagnosed with lung cancer in strangely high numbers. Many times, Eng\u2019s patients were extremely healthy: vegetarians, marathon runners, avid swimmers. \u201cThat\u2019s why I really believe there\u2019s other risk factors to account for this,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no shortage of theories about what those may be. Many scientists point to modern diets, which tend to be heavy on potentially carcinogenic products\u2014including ultra-processed foods<\/a>, red meat, and alcohol\u2014and may also contribute to weight gain, another cancer risk factor. The foods we eat can also affect the gut microbiome, the colony of microbes that lives in the digestive system and appears linked to overall health. Alterations to the gut microbiome via diet, or perhaps exposure to drugs like antibiotics, have also been implicated.<\/p>\n

Other researchers blame the microplastics littering our environment and leaching into our food and water supplies, some of which, according to a 2024 study<\/a>, have even shown up in cancer patients\u2019 tumors. Other environmental factors could also be to blame, given that everything from cosmetics to food packaging contains substances that many researchers aren\u2019t convinced are safe<\/a>. Even our near constant exposure to artificial light could be messing with normal biological rhythms in ways that have profound health consequences, some research<\/a> suggests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But classic risk factors do not seem to fully explain the recent rise in early-onset cancers, says Dr. Cathy Eng, director of the Young Adult Cancers Program at Vanderbilt University\u2019s Ingram Cancer Center in Tennessee. Some of the trends are baffling; young, nonsmoking women, for example, are being diagnosed with lung cancer in strangely high [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}