How should young people prevent and detect cancer in time?

"A 20-year-old boy died prematurely of stomach cancer", "A 28-year-old young woman died of breast cancer", and such news are endless. We gradually realize that cancer is getting closer and closer to the younger generation.

In fact, with the rapid advancement of modern medical treatment, most malignant tumors can be cured, but the premise is------early detection! For example, in intestinal cancer, it takes 10 years from benign polyps in the large intestine to malignant tumors; and in gastric cancer, it also takes about 10 years from chronic atrophic gastritis to gastric cancer.

However, the vast majority of young people have never had gastrointestinal endoscopy, or even have the awareness to perform endoscopy during physical examination. Therefore, the vast majority of cancer patients are in the middle and late stages once discovered. It can be seen that the key to preventing cancer lies in early detection and early treatment.

So, how can we detect problems early? After all, many potentially malignant diseases have no obvious clinical manifestations in their early stages.

1. Regular physical examinations and early screening are required.

For example, for people over 40 years old, gastrointestinal endoscopy is added to the physical examination, especially for some high-risk groups (family genetic history, environment, bad eating habits, clinical symptoms, etc.). In order to prevent prostate cancer, it is recommended that men check PSA (prostate specific antigen) every two years from the age of 50 to 70. Those with a family history need to start monitoring earlier. In order to prevent the occurrence of breast cancer, women over 40 years old are recommended to have a mammogram every year.

2. You need to understand your family history. That is, it is clear whether a certain disease is common among family members and whether there is a genetic predisposition to this disease. Because the younger the age of onset of malignant tumors, the higher the correlation with family genetics.

3. The most important thing is actually your own control. After all, the occurrence of cancer is multifactorial. We cannot control the environment, genetics, etc., but we can choose a healthier lifestyle to prevent the occurrence of cancer.