Why Are so Many Young People Getting Cancer?

According to the latest statistics, global cancer incidence is on the rise, especially among younger people.

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

According to the latest statistics, global cancer incidence is on the rise, especially among younger people. Between 1990 and 2019, incidence of 29 cancers rose worldwide in those younger than 50, with rates rising faster among women. Cancers on the rise include breast, uterine, prostate, lung, colorectal, pancreatic and stomach cancers.

Between 2016 and 2019, early-onset breast cancer incidence rose by 3.8% annually.1 As reported by the journal Nature in mid-March 2024,2 even teens are now being diagnosed with “improbable” cancers previously only seen in seniors, such as advanced gastrointestinal cancers. And it’s not just happening in the U.S. Oncologists in China and India have also noted this trend.3 According to Nature:4

“Statistics from around the world are now clear: the rates of more than a dozen cancers are increasing among adults under the age of 50. This rise varies from country to country and cancer to cancer, but models based on global data predict that the number of early-onset cancer cases will increase by around 30% between 2019 and 2030.5

In the United States, colorectal cancer — which typically strikes men in their mid-60s or older — has become the leading cause of cancer death among men under 50.6 In young women, it has become the second leading cause of cancer death …

[The] number of deaths from early-onset cancers has risen by nearly 28% between 1990 and 2019 worldwide. Models also suggest that mortality could climb …

As calls mount for better screening, awareness and treatments, investigators are scrambling to explain why rates are increasing. The most likely contributors — such as rising rates of obesity and early-cancer screening — do not fully account for the increase.”

Likely Culprits

The conventional medical model is beyond clueless when they believe the solution for this dilemma is better screening. This is unadulterated nonsense and fails to address the cause, which is a disruption in the microbiome that obliterates the healthy obligate anaerobes in the large intestine.

When your body fails to make enough cellular energy because the mitochondria are dysfunctional as a result of being regularly poisoned by LA and estrogen, they simply are unable to maintain an environment that allows the healthy beneficial bacteria to grow.

When the beneficial bacteria disappear, they are replaced by facultative anaerobes that tolerate oxygen, as a result of the lack of competitive inhibition by the beneficial bacteria. It is these bacteria that are increasing GI cancers, not a lack of screening.

Excessive LA Intake Promotes Cancer

The Nature article7 does, however, point to there being a dietary culprit, stating “The prominence of gastrointestinal cancers and the coincidence with dietary changes in many countries point to the rising rates of obesity and diets rich in processed foods as likely culprits in contributing to rising case rates.”

While the Nature article does not go into specifics about what it might be about our modern diets that contribute to cancer, my own research has singled out linoleic acid (LA) — an omega-6 fat found in seed oils (and hence most processed foods) — as a key contributor.

Like other experts in bioenergetic medicine, I’m convinced that chronic diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s and cancer are bioenergetic diseases rooted in dysfunctional metabolism resulting in poor energy production, and polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs) appear to be a primary contributing factor in this chain of events. As reported by bioenergetic researcher Georgi Dinkov in an October 2022 blog post:8

“The bad news for PUFA (in this case linoleic acid) just keep piling on. At this point, there is hardly a chronic condition out there that has not been linked to elevated PUFA and/or their peroxidation products.

[A December 2022 study in Antioxidants & Redox Signaling9] makes the argument that PUFA peroxidation byproducts (created by the increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) itself driven by PUFA) such as 4-hydroxynonenal (4-HNE), are the cause of diabetes and cancer.

In fact, the study makes the argument that the two conditions are basically slightly different points on the same spectrum of systemic disease (i.e. cancer being the more severe one).”

The study10 published in Antioxidants & Redox Signaling highlights the increased risk diabetic patients face in developing several types of cancer, including hepatocellular carcinoma, pancreatic cancer, colorectal cancer, and breast cancer.

LA intake is linked to several mechanisms promoting cancer, including disruption in energy production in cells, hormonal imbalances, increased oxidative stress, and damage to cellular and mitochondrial membranes.

This elevated risk is attributed to several factors that promote cancer growth in diabetic individuals. These factors include insulin resistance, hyperglycemia, dyslipidemia, chronic inflammation, and elevated levels of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1). These conditions contribute to reductive stress that disrupt the body’s redox balance. As explained by the authors:11

“The consequent oxidative stress associated with lipid peroxidation appears to be a possible pathogenic link between cancer and diabetes” and “the major bioactive product of oxidative degradation of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), the reactive aldehyde 4-hydroxynonenal (4-HNE) … may be the key pathogenic factor linking diabetes and cancer …

Controlling the production of 4-HNE to avoid its cytotoxicity to normal but not cancer cells while preventing its diabetogenic activities could be an important aspect of modern integrative biomedicine.”

4-HNE Linked to Obesity and Cancer

In her book, “Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food,”12 Dr. Cate Shanahan details the hazards of 4-HNE, which forms during the processing of most vegetable oils. 4-HNE is highly toxic to gut bacteria, and consumption of 4-HNE has been correlated with having an obesogenic balance of gut flora.

4-HNE is also cytotoxic (toxic to cells), causes DNA damage, and instigates free radical cascades that damage the mitochondrial membrane. As noted by Shanahan in a 2017 interview:

“You can’t design a better delivery vehicle for a toxin that’s going to destroy your health slowly over the course of maybe 10, 20 years, depending on the genetics of your antioxidant system capacity.”

Importantly, 4-HNE occurs even if the oil is obtained from organic crops. It’s an intrinsic byproduct of the refining and processing of the oil, no matter how healthy the oil initially was.

Elevated LA Destroys Mitochondrial Function

Dinkov’s blog also draws attention to another noteworthy study,13 albeit its focus is on Alzheimer’s Disease instead of cancer. The study reveals that individuals with Alzheimer’s have cells that are inefficient at producing energy.

This inefficiency stems from a deficiency in glycocholic acid and an excess of LA. Essentially, LA triggers the production of damaging reactive oxygen species (ROS), which then hampers the cells’ ability to generate energy.

Moreover, PUFAs, like LA, disrupt your body’s hormonal equilibrium, imitating the effects of estrogen and cortisol while counteracting androgens and progesterone. Additionally, they alter cellular interactions with water, making cells more water-attracting. Dinkov suggests that these effects, beyond merely generating ROS, play a much more critical role in the harmful effects of PUFAs on a wide variety of chronic diseases, including cancer.

Seed Oils Undermine Your Health in Myriad Ways

In summary, seed oils in general and LA in particular have been shown to harm health by:14

Make your fat cells more insulin sensitive, thereby causing insulin resistance.15

Creating high amounts of oxidation products when used in cooking (as they are very susceptible to heat), including aldehydes, which are what cause oxidized low-density lipoprotein (LDL) associated with heart disease. Aldehydes also crosslink tau protein and create neurofibrillary tangles, thereby contributing to the development of neurodegenerative diseases.

Damaging the endothelium (the cells lining your blood vessels) and causing an increase in penetration of LDL and very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) particles into the subendothelium.16

In other words, these oils get integrated in your cell and mitochondrial membranes, and once these membranes are damaged, it sets the stage for all sorts of health problems. With a half-life of 600 to 680 days,17 it can take years to clear them out of your body. They also get incorporated into tissues such as your heart and brain.

Damaging your mitochondria and DNA by making your cell membranes more permeable, allowing things to enter that shouldn’t.

Making the cell membrane less fluid, which impacts hormone transporters in the cell membrane and slows your metabolic rate.

Inhibiting cardiolipin,18 an important component of the inner membrane of your mitochondria that needs to be saturated in DHA to perform optimally and facilitate optimal function of the electron transport chain and production of ATP. Cardiolipin can be likened to a cellular alarm system that triggers apoptosis (cell death) by signaling caspase-3 when something goes wrong with the cell.

If the cardiolipin is not saturated with DHA, it cannot signal caspase-3, and hence apoptosis does not occur. As a result, dysfunctional cells are allowed to continue to grow, which can turn into a cancerous cell.

Inhibiting the removal of senescent cells, i.e., aged, damaged or crippled cells that have lost the ability to reproduce and produce inflammatory cytokines that rapidly accelerate disease and aging.

Stripping your liver of glutathione (which produces antioxidant enzymes), thereby lowering your antioxidant defenses.19

Inhibiting delta-6 desaturase (delta-6), an enzyme involved in the conversion of short-chained omega-3s to longer chained omega-3s in your liver.20

Exposing you to toxic 4-HNE, which is highly toxic to gut bacteria, causes DNA damage, and instigates free radical cascades that damage your mitochondrial membranes.21

Exposing you to glyphosate residues, as most vegetable oils are made with genetically engineered crops. Glyphosate has been shown to disrupt the tight junctions in your gut and increase penetration of foreign invaders, especially heated proteins, which can cause allergies.

How to Avoid These Dangerous Fats

Considering the profoundly serious damage they cause, eliminating seed oils from your diet can go a long way toward improving your health. This includes soy, canola, sunflower, grapeseed, corn, safflower, peanut and rice bran oil.

Also, be mindful of olive oil and avocado oil, as both are commonly adulterated with cheaper seed oils. That said, even pure olive and avocado oil are loaded with LA. If, like me, you’re in the habit of eating olive oil, I would strongly encourage you to limit your intake to 1 tablespoon per day or less. In my view, olive oil is not a magic bullet and if you are already consuming 80 grams of LA per day, it will only worsen, not help, your health.

Additionally, as you can see in the video below from Brad Marshall, whose interview with me will post shortly, olive oil is no all it is cracked up to be.

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