If you tolerate this...
The single biggest risk factor for cancer is widely reported as age, in line with the theory that accumulated DNA damage is the root cause. But the theory is wrong and it's making our children sick.
Earlier this week my day was derailed by a message from an old friend with news I really didn’t want to hear.
It’s hard to describe the bond we have. I still think of her as a girl really. We started boarding school together on the very same day: 20th September 1973. As I waved my parents off with gullible glee, Jo bounced through the door. I offered to show her around: two unsuspecting nine year olds embarking on a new adventure. Reader, we were best friends for three glorious years. Until one nithering North Yorkshire afternoon Jo came to see me hand in hand with my nemesis, Claire, and together they told me that we were breaking up; Claire was going to be her new best friend. There were tears.
Funny how things stick in your mind, isn’t it? Funny, too, how the bond we made is still there over fifty years later, even though life sent us off in different directions. When Facebook reconnected us a few years ago we made an annual promise to do more than message, to FaceTime, or even meet up, but the years rolled on.
Until last Monday when her name popped up as a new subscriber, at the same time sparking my curiosity.
Age is not as important as we think
It turns out I still have an unsuspecting side to me. Nothing could have prepared me for the message I found on my phone. Jo’s son, 34 years old, has been diagnosed with colorectal cancer with spread to lymph and liver.
I know. You were expecting the bad news to be about her, weren’t you? That’s the normal order of things. Or at least it has been. But something has shifted in the past few years. There is a shocking rise in cases of colorectal cancer together with a drop in age at diagnosis. Yet another massive hole in the theory that cancer is a diseases of ageing, of creeping DNA decrepitude. When our fit young men who eat the right things, hit the right weight, do the right steps and lift the right weights start to succumb we can be sure that it’s not about ageing.
There is something fundamental we are missing behind the rapid rise in cancer cases. The fact that the biggest rise is in the under-50 age group in high-income countries is strongly suggestive of a lifestyle link.
Of course, my desire to make a difference was activated in true Thunderbirds style.
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But that would have been the wrong thing to do…