The procedure was a piece of cake. As the standard is where I'm from (Norway), I was only administered some sedatives - but honestly I couldn't feel much difference. I watched the procedure on the screen, which was quite fascinating.
The worst part, by far, was the emptying / prepping. A month prior to the colonoscopy I took a stool sample (negative for blood), but my doc wanted to be safe.
In the end they nothing was found, not even polyps.
EDIT: I had put of going to it for the longest time, but a friend of mine (35 years old) was diagnosed with stage 4 last year, which pushed me to get it checked out. He had experienced prolonged constipation, that's it. When the tumor was found, the cancer had spread to both of his lungs and liver. He's still alive, and fighting it.
Unlike the usual Bettridge's law, the answer to the headline is only a qualified "No".
It is a "So is all other cancers!", which is pretty bad news for folks who are young and healthy right now.
One of our better microscopes these days is DNA sequencing, especially for cancer, and the particular base mutations and the sequences in which they occur give heavy clues about the types of mutagens that are going on. The DNA damage from UV radiation from the sun and bulky adduct repair from smoking damage are vastly different. Even when cells have a defect in a repair mechanism, you can tell which repair mechanism is broken based on the particular base changes in which context.
A study from 2025 reapplied these Alexandronv signatures to colorectal cancer with a global set of cohorts, and suggests that colibactin, a mutagen produced by some strains of E. coli and related bacteria, could be driving some of the increase in early age colorectal cancer:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09025-8
Of course we don't know exactly how much of the increase, or the other explanations; causality is multi-causal and I bring this particular cause up because it's one of the stronger leads so far. But when we've lost our keys in the night, even if its easiest to look under the light of the streetlamp, that doesn't mean its the only place we might find them.
My anecdote (M, 35) is that I got one after experiencing symptoms that turned out to be unrelated, but they did find pre-cancerous polyps so now I will be getting them more regularly. I received received meaningful early detection and peace of mind. Also aside from the prep, its a very convenient procedure. You get put under anesthesia and do a quick time travel.
And the FIT+DNA test is so cheap and easy, you can do it every year or three instead of every 10 years with the colonoscopy.
She still recommends colonoscopies for high-risk patients, but she thinks the risks outweigh the benefits for low-risk patients, so she recommends Cologuard in those situations.
I appreciate this risk-adjusted and probabilistic approach rather than one-size-fits all recommendations.
This. The procedure itself was a snap (I was completely sedated; I'm in Canada), but it was NOT a fun 2 days of "pooping" pure liquid and being hungry. I don't think I was away from the toilet for more than 20 minutes at a time.
> In the end they nothing was found, not even polyps.
Same here, thank god.
EDIT: having thought that over a third time, I am not sure it makes any sense.
My Gastroentrologist told me just recently that the stool test (Cologuard) is very accurate but must be repeated every 3 years as opposed to getting a Colonoscopy which should be repeated every 7 to 10 years
Protip to those who have it coming up: Ask for the pill prep instead of the "sludge" prep. You end up spending the day on the toilet either way, but at least it doesn't taste as bad with the pills.
Yes. Nothing to see here. And stop abusing quotation marks.
But not at Kaiser.
$17k later…
A decent number of patients can't/don't get through all the liquid in which case the pills are far better.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/celebrity/articles/kathy...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/202...
Did you miss the BILLIONS in lawsuits against RoundUp and other herbicides?
Did you miss all the deregulation by the first and now second Trump administration allowing crazy levels of pollution and toxicity among all the industries?
They are still using leaded fuel in prop aircraft at hundreds of airports around the country and world, spraying it on unknowning population
Our environment has never been more dangerous yet people never more ignorant or carefree
Based on your concern, the question is whether 'botched' procedures are more or less of a risk (both in incidence and consequence) than non-screening.
The complication rate for colonoscopy is about 3 in 1000, and that is skewed towards people who have polyps, which in and of themselves could be dangerous if not removed.
So it's always a risk tradeoff. You can skip the procedure and risk the effects of the disease it's supposed to detect instead. But if you do the math, you're statistically better off doing the procedure.
If its the polyp removal, I can certainly see how that could lead to problems. But you're a little stuck: even if you use another technique to do the scan, you still have to remove any polyps you find, don't you?
I'm not sure what the botches are here. In the sigmoidoscopy they took out a couple of polyps, in the colonoscopy (more recently than the sigmoidoscopy) they just did a cancer check-up given family history.
I wish those articles discusses the "botches", I'd like to know since from my understanding these are pretty safe procedures
(Yes, but.)
Over the past few years, I’ve seen many articles about mysterious rise in colorectal cancer (CRC) in young people. There are various stories for why this might be happening:
General health. Maybe modern people are unhealthy (obesity, low physical activity, diabetes, poor sleep), leading to insulin resistance and chronic inflammation, meaning faster epithelial cell proliferation and a miscalibrated immune system that fails to stop early cancers?
Ultra-processed food. Maybe people are eating more ultra-processed foods that contain additives (like emulsifiers) that degrade colon mucus, allowing bacteria to contact epithelial cells and drive inflammation? Or maybe ultra-processed food has low fiber and glycemic load, leading to insulin resistance and chronic inflammation, with the problems mentioned above?
Bad meat. Maybe people are eating more red and/or processed meats, which expose the colon to nitrites and secondary bile acids, which inflame the epithelium and promote chronic inflammation?
The microbiome. Maybe it’s the microbiome. For example, maybe people’s guts are getting colonized by strains of E. coli that produce genotoxic colibactin. Or maybe overuse of antibiotics in early life depletes protective bacteria in the gut, allowing harmful strains to expand, e.g. strains of B. fragilis that cause inflammation, or strains of F. nucleatum that can survive in the gut and drive tumor growth?
Environmental exposures. Maybe people are getting exposed to bad stuff in the environment (microplastics, forever chemicals, pesticides, endocrine disruptors, air pollution) that does bad stuff (damages gut barrier, screws up the microbiome, disrupts hormonal signaling)?
Maternal health. Maybe poor maternal health (obesity, diabetes) exposes the fetus to elevated glucose / insulin / inflammation, and these in turn program the child for a lifetime of metabolic issues and inflammation?
Whatever. Maybe alcohol / smoking / painkillers / calcium / vitamin D / inflammatory bowel disease / hereditary syndromes / screening bias?
None of the experts seem to agree on which of these is the culprit, so I figured that I (person with blog) should help.
If you poke at these stories, most of them are individually pretty weak. It can’t all be detection bias since CRC deaths are also going up in younger people. And several proposed causes (air pollution, tobacco) have actually fallen in rich countries. Other explanation, like E. coli producing colibactin, seem biologically real, but there’s no evidence that they’re increasing over time. Still other suggested causes (microplastics, forever chemicals) are mostly mechanistic speculation at this point. Obesity, inactivity, and chronic inflammation also all seem biologically real, and they are likely increasing, but why should they specifically cause colorectal cancer in young people?
A plausible answer to that last question is that they aren’t. They’re doing it, but not specifically.
This will sound pedantic, but bear with me: If you say that CRC is increasing in younger people, what exactly does that mean? After all, the set of people who qualify as young changes over time. (Ever notice that you keep getting older?)
Siegel et al. (2026) plot how often CRC was found in different age groups in 1995 and in 2022.
They also provide this plot of how common different types of CRC are in different age groups.
At a glance, this doesn’t look so bad. If you’re young, you might think, “OK, my current risk is higher than previous generations faced at the same age, but I can look forward to decreasing rates when I’m old.” You could easily think this is good news: While there’s a relative increase when you’re young, it’s tiny compared to the absolute decrease while you’re old.
Unfortunately that’s the wrong way to think about it.
Downham et al. (2026) plot CRC rates in different age groups across the Anglosphere over time.
Everyone I’ve shown this plot to has said it’s confusing, so let me explain: The different lines track age-bands as people born in different years move in and out of those bands. For example, in the US plot in the bottom right, the “20-25” line starts with the left-most dot showing the CRC rate for people born between 1965 and 1970 when they were 20 to 24 years old (around 1990). The next dot shows the rate for people born between 1970 and 1975 when they were 20 to 24 years old (around 1995), and so on.
That figure is weird, because the lines connect different groups of people. I wanted a plot where there are lines for different birth cohorts as they age. For unknown reasons, no one seems to make such plots, and the data isn’t trivial to access. So I used a plot digitizer to click on every damned point that US figure above and then replotted it:
Now the individual lines show specific groups of people tracked through time. For example, the “1932.5” line shows CRC rates for people born between 1930 and 1935, when those people were at different ages. If you look closely, you’ll notice that these rates are higher those for people born between 1940 and 1945 for all ages (where we have data).
That was the pattern for a long time: Between 1920 and 1950, later generations enjoyed lower CRC rates across all phases of their lives. But between 1950 and 1960, that pattern reversed and since then later generations have had higher CRC rates at all ages.
We don’t know for sure what will happen in the future. But I think it’s likely this trend will continue. Yes, if you are currently young, you face higher CRC risk than previous generations did when they were young. That’s the bad news. The other bad news is that when you are old, you may also face higher CRC risk than previous generations did when they were old.
The other other bad news is that CRC isn’t the only type of cancer that’s rising in later generations. Sung et al. (2019) give this plot:
These are again the confusing graphs where individual lines show age bands as different people move in and out of them. But you get the point: Lots of cancers are going up in younger people later generations, including uterine, gallbladder, kidney, liver, pancreas, and thyroid. (Their additional material contains plots for 18 other cancers.)
Note that these plots have a logarithmic y-axis, meaning the changes are larger than they might appear. Moving up a quarter of the way between two vertical ticks corresponds to an increase of a factor of ≈ 1.78.
If lots of cancers are becoming more common in later generations, then why is everyone talking about CRC? I think that’s because CRC in unique in that it is:
For example, thyroid cancer diagnoses have skyrocketed in recent decades. But that’s partly because of more detection, and thyroid cancer is highly treatable, without clear benefits from early detection. Pancreatic cancer also seems to be increasing, but we don’t have good ways to screen for it and even if we did, we don’t have good ways to treat it.
CRC is really unique in that you can save lives by telling people, “Hey! CRC is going up! You should get screened!” If you’re interested in public health, that’s the most important thing. But if you’re interested in unraveling the mystery of CRC going up, it’s important to note that CRC isn’t really unique at all.
No:
Colorectal cancer is going up in young people.
Yes:
Various kinds of cancer are going up in later generations. (Definitely at younger ages, possibly at all ages.)
This blog endorses colorectal cancer screening. We don’t yet know if colonoscopies are better than other methods of screening (sigmoidoscopy, stool tests), but we do know that screening is better than not screening. When caught early, CRC is highly treatable, often with only surgery (no chemotherapy or radiation) and a return to normal activities within a couple weeks.