Protecting Your Colon Health

I’m sure you’ve heard the Benjamin Franklin quote “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” That axiom is true about many things from fire prevention, as Franklin intended, to our cars and lawn mower. The same is true when it comes to our bodies. Paula just had a colonoscopy, so I thought it appropriate to talk about preventive colon health.

To set the stage, experts estimate a colon cancer growth rate of 2% to 3% per year globally. Early stage detection increases the survival rate, which is close to 100% at Stage 0 and goes below 5% at Stage IV.

One of the primary risk factors for colon problems such as colon cancer and diverticulitis is age. Therefore beginning about the age of 50, a baseline colonoscopy is recommended. Depending on the results, it’s repeated every ten years if your colon is clear or more often if growths called polyps are found.

In the future, we’ll also have our microbiome health examined as well. In a recently published study, researchers examined the microbiome of centenarians of Asian descent. There appears to be a similar pattern of microbes between people who live to 100 and longer in that culture. There’s a lot of research to go to establish both patterns and testing procedures. For now, we have to stick with what we know.

What’s a colonoscopy like? How did Paula fare? What can we do to improve our colon health? I’ll talk about all that in the next Memo.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Nature. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03832-5.