Why Cancer Is Rising In Young People—And What You Can Do About It
From Women’s Health Magazine:
When Krystle Harris was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer in 2019, life as she knew it went on hold. She was in a graduate program, was working full-time, and had just been the maid of honor at her childhood best friend’s wedding. She was also only 28 years old. “It felt like absolutely everything about me was stripped away at that moment,” she says.
She moved home to begin treatment: six months of chemo, a lumpectomy, and radiation. She was declared cancer-free in April 2020, but four years later, doctors discovered she’d developed metastatic thyroid cancer—all before her 33rd birthday.
If that story sounds eerily similar to ones you’ve heard from friends, it’s not a coincidence. Since 1990, the global incidence of early-onset cancer (cancers diagnosed in people younger than 50) has increased by nearly 80 percent and is projected to rise by another 31 percent by 2030, according to a study in BMJ Oncology. And compared to men under 50, women of the same age have an 82 percent higher rate, up from 51 percent in 2002, according to the American Cancer Society’s most recent annual report.