Everyone, Welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays. Today we are going to investigate why the age of onset of a lot of cancers seemed to be getting younger, and it appears to be an almost global phenomenon. Now, you may have seen in the news a few months ago there was a headline doing the rhymes that showed an explosion in bil cancer incidents in the under fifties. And one of the leading theories as to why this was occurring was the declining quality of our diets and specifically
the huge increase in ultra process food consumption. And the thinking was that there were twin drivers. The crap that's in ultra processed foods, such as flavor enhancers and multifiers and preservatives that we know now damage the lining and create an unhealthy microbiome. And then there's the double wamy of the crowding out of nutritious food that feeds a positive microbiome and a healthy cut lining. Clearly, if you're eating more crap food, you're eating less healthy food, so
we get this double wammy effect. Now, this week I read a thought provoking article from the Journal of the American Medical Association Oncology that highlights increased rates of many different cancers in younger people, and it actually explores what's going on and whether or not that these increased cancers in young people are actually a symptom of accelerated biological aging.
So let's start with the background. Traditionally, cancer has been a disease that we associate with older age, but recently there's been a noticeable bump or a spike in cancer diagnosis among people under fifty. And we're not just talking about borl cancer that I mentioned earlier. It's also breast cancer, pancreas cancer, kidney cancer, and even head and neck cancers. It appears to be global. It's growing, and it's affecting
millennials and Gen zs born in the eighties and the nineties. Now, in this article, they actually suggested that some of the usual suspects explain this, things like poor diets, sentary living, pollution,
increased microplastics, and even antibiotic overuse. Now, what if these cancers aren't just random or lifestyle driving, but what if they're actually assigned that these people are biologically older than their birth certificates suggest So, as you will be well were chronologically is the number on your birthy cake, and it's a blunt instrument. Biologically, is is what's happening underneath the hoot how your sales, tissues and organs are actually functioning.
And twenty years ago I actually developed a biological age test and that was used in lots of gyms that basically give people a needs and based on their fitness and strength levels. But more recently there's been a lot of these biological aging clocks that you may be aware of. I've talked about some of them that look at the aging of cells and different processes in a body, epigenetic markers and all of these sorts of things, things like grimm AADs that are out there and they're now used
in lots of research studies. So these studies show that two people can both be forty, but one may have a biological age of a sprightly thirty five and the other are weary forty eight. And it's kind of like comparing at twenty ten Toyota Corolla. It's been lovingly serviced and driven by one very careful owner to one that's been doing laps in a dirt track in the outback. So when we see thirty five year olds being diagnosed with cancers we normally associate with people in their sixties.
Maybe they're just aging faster. And here's a concept that I loved that was outlined in the paper, the expose home, and it is the total sum of everything your body's being exposed to over time. Crap, food, pollution, stress, poor sleep, poor social conditions, financial stressors. It's the whole chaotic buffet
of modern life. And if the exposed home has gone off the reels by ultra processed diets, chronic stress, loneliness, even trauma, lack of physical activity, all of this speeds up your internal war intern and that's what's by accelerated aging. And you will be aware that I have talked about
the different hallmarks of aging, and here's the thing. Aging and cancer share many of the same biological pathways, and some of those I covered in that series on the twelve Hallmarks of aging, the ones where there's a very very clear overlap or things like DNA damage that's the big one, and mitochondrial dysfunction inflammation. Tellome are shortening, and their suggesting is that some of the others may be
affected as well. So if you're aging faster at a cellular level cancer might not wait until retirement to come knocking. So here's the thing that we can all act on. Right, the same behaviors that slow aging can actually help prevent cancer if we flip them in terms of the impact that we're having on them, or they are the behaviors that we're having. So we're talking here in terms of reducing aging and reducing your risk of cancer, doing regular exercise,
having caloric moderation. So I don't mean starvation, I just mean not overeating. And we are a society of overfed and undernourished individuals. What I mean by that is we're consuming too much calories and their crappy calories, so our nourishment is actually going down. That affects many of our cellular processes. The third one is avoiding smoking, avoiding binge drinking then would be the fourth one. Then it's about minimizing unmanageable stress, not the stress that helps us to adapt,
but the stuff that actually breaks us down. And then it's about building strong social networks, because we know that loneliness is shocking for your health, but having good social networks is actually very good for your health. And then exposure to nature, having good sleep, having a sense of meaning and purpose in your life. Basically, the lifestyle that's good for your brillan, your mood and telomeres is also
the best defense against these early onset cancers. And there's even this whole field emerging called gyro science which looks at slowing aging itself as a way to prevent a host of diseases, cancer included. So what does this mean
for all of us? Well, maybe it's time we started looking before the age of fifty as the magic number for cancer screening as it typically is right now, Maybe we need biological age based guidelines because if you're thirty eight but your biology is more like fifty eight, you should probably be screened sooner. And it also means that prevention, the fundamental stuff that I talk about all the time, like movement, nutrition, connection, sleep, it is more powerful forever.
It's not just about how long we live, but how soon before disease shows up. And the data in Australia and other countries is showing that people are getting chronic disease earlier and early. It's not just cancer. And this basically say is that we are aging at a much faster rate than we were decades ago. So the new longevity mindset's not just about living longer, it's about not breaking down too early. It's about increasing your health span.
So the big takeaway here is if early onset cancer is a sign of accelerated aging, which it does appear to be, then our day to day choices are more than just healthy habits. They're actually investments in cancer prevention. And we don't need to live like monks, but we do need to pay attention to the life that we're living inside of our body. And I think the big thing here is really around kids, because the kids who are walking around these days eating crap diets, not moving
very much and overwegh it. As young children and teenagers, they will definitely be getting cancer and other diseases much sooner than their parents. So on that tragic note, that's it for me for this week. Catch you next time.