Cancer Rates Are Rising in Young Women. Here’s What You Can Do

On top of all that, young people’s cancers tend to be more aggressive, often because they’re diagnosed at later stages. Colon and rectal cancers lead the uptick with the fastest rate increases, followed by uterine, blood (leukemia), kidney, and breast.

Traditionally, one of the biggest risk factors for cancer has been age. Now, being young isn’t the protector it once was, and scientists are disturbed, to say the least. Even if you don’t have someone in your life affected by cancer, you’ve probably noticed the increase in the news.

Former Bachelorette star Katie Thurston was just 34 when she found a cancerous lump in her breast; Jessie J recently shared that she was diagnosed with breast cancer at 37; Teddi Mellencamp was 41 when doctors discovered melanoma; Kate Middleton was 42 when she talked about her cancer diagnosis; Olivia Munn was 43 when she underwent a double mastectomy and hysterectomy for stage I aggressive breast cancer. All this prompts the question: What’s going on?

Behind The Climb

For starters, young women often get diagnosed with cancer later than they should because it’s not routine to look for it—screenings don’t start until age 40 or later for most common types. (Screening ages for some cancers have begun to inch down, but general recommendations haven’t dipped below 40.) For example, people at average risk are advised to start mammograms between the ages of 40 and 45 and colorectal cancer screenings at age 45, according to the American Cancer Society. These ages are recommended partly because of the burden that earlier screenings would put on the medical system and because screening technology that works for older people might not be as effective on younger folks.

Mammograms, for one, aren’t as reliable in younger women, who tend to have denser breast tissue, says Ann Partridge, MD, MPH, interim chair of the department of medical oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and cofounder and director of the Program for Young Adults with Breast Cancer. “You’d be looking for needles in haystacks, unfortunately,” she says.

There’s still a lot more that researchers need to learn about which individuals are most at risk so they can start screening those candidates earlier. In the meantime, it might feel tempting to turn to pricey private companies that offer cancer-screening blood tests (like Galleri) or whole-body MRI scans (like Prenuvo), but those are not quite ready for clinical application yet, says Veda Giri, MD, a medical oncologist and director of the Early Onset Cancer Program at Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital.

But while we wait for better research, tumors in adults under 50 are only getting bigger—and their symptoms more severe. “If a colon cancer is diagnosed at 42, it wasn’t due to screening; it was due to symptoms,” says Therese Bartholomew Bevers, MD, medical director of the Cancer Prevention Center at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

For Jenna Putala, 27, a diagnosis took years to receive. Throughout her college softball career she was riddled with unexplained injuries and other health problems that sent her to an orthopedic surgeon and a neurologist. “No one did any scans,” she remembers. “Doctors just told me, ‘Move on, keep stretching, you’re fine.’” It wasn’t until last year, when a chiropractor sent her for an MRI of her back (where the pain originally was), that a scan showed the tip of an eight-centimeter tumor lower down, on her pelvis. Doctors think she’s been living with this PEComa, a rare form of sarcoma, since 2018.

Because of the tumor’s size, its placement, and her age, doctors don’t want to remove it; it would alter her quality of life too dramatically. She could lose part of her bowel or sciatic nerve or her pelvis could cave in on itself. Instead, Putala attempted to harvest her eggs to preserve her fertility (but couldn’t because it turned out her tumor was estrogen-sensitive), underwent 40 rounds of radiation, and is on chemo.

For the rest of her life, to keep her cancer as manageable as possible, she’ll get regular screenings, go to physical therapy, and try different chemo treatments until they stop working or make her too sick to continue. Today, Putala is back at work and fighting for a sense of normalcy after a “whirlwind” year, but that doesn’t make her prolonged diagnosis any easier to swallow. “I honestly don’t even think it crossed doctors’ minds that I could have cancer,” she says.

This is really a moment for everyone to rethink who a cancer patient is. Young women with no family history or obvious risk factor like smoking—women who are doing everything right—are still being diagnosed, so doctors and patients alike shouldn’t rule out the possibility. “I was a college athlete, I went to the gym all the time, I ate healthy,” Putala says. “I was doing all of these things that could help prevent cancer, so why did I get it?”

The Hunt For The Cause

Doctors are racing to figure out why cancer rates are rising, but the unsatisfying truth is that there’s not much experts know for sure yet. While it’s unlikely one single cause will be found, there are some prime suspects.

For starters, our diets have changed across generations. Today, ultra-processed foods (UPFs) make up more than half of the American diet and take up 70 percent of our grocery store space. Foods such as processed meats, sugary drinks (including artificially sweetened ones), and spreads and condiments have been linked to cancer. Compared to past generations, people today are consuming UPFs at younger and younger ages, potentially meaning that the damage is starting earlier.

These dietary habit changes can affect our gut microbiome, inflammation, and insulin levels—all of which can play a role in developing cancer, says Jeffrey Meyerhardt, MD, MPH, codirector of the Colon and Rectal Cancer Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Younger generations may differ in body composition as well. From 1990 to 2020, adult obesity has doubled while childhood obesity has quadrupled, according to the World Health Organization. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has linked obesity with 13 different kinds of cancer, including colorectal, endometrial, and ovarian. “We think it’s because having extra body weight can lead to chronic inflammation,” says Dr. Bevers. Extra weight might also impact sex hormones, which play a role in some cancers, and insulin levels, which can be a growth factor for cancer, says Dr. Meyerhardt. (On the other hand, muscle is actually associated with improved insulin sensitivity, he says.)

No surprise that physical activity also probably has a hand in this. Moving—and exercise—are thought to decrease cancer risk because of their effect on the factors we’ve been talking about: inflammation, insulin, body composition, and hormones, says Dr. Meyerhardt. While it doesn’t explain the rising cancer rates in younger people specifically, globally, one-third of adults didn’t meet the recommended physical activity levels in 2022. That’s up by about five percentage points from 2010, and this number is expected only to increase.

These potential risk factors leave us with as many questions as answers, especially among people who have none of them. “Diet, activity, obesity—that’s not going to explain everything,” says Dr. Meyerhardt.

So, What Can You Do Now?

Bear in mind: Cancer at younger ages is still not super common. (We’re talking roughly 103 out of every 100,000 individuals, according to a study in JAMA Network Open.) Rather than freaking out (because who wouldn’t?), it’s best to focus on being proactive, says Dr. Giri. There are things you can do—and they’re all pretty simple.

1. Keep up with the basics.

It’s not the most exciting thing you’ve ever heard, but the core tenets of Healthy Living 101 apply here. Eat well (focus as much as possible on whole foods, including fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and limit highly processed foods, sugar, and red meat); hit 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity each week; get the recommended vaccines, especially for HPV; and avoid smoking and drinking as much as you can. Alcohol and tobacco are Group 1 carcinogens, per the IARC, which means there’s sufficient evidence to classify them as carcinogenic to humans. UV light is also a Group 1 carcinogen—so protect yourself from the sun too.

2. Flag your symptoms.

Any new lump, unexplained weight loss, change in bowel habits (like blood in your stool or black tar-like stools), abdominal pain, or cough is a symptom to take seriously, says Dr. Bevers. The American Cancer Society also lists fatigue or extreme tiredness, eating problems, skin changes, unusual bleeding or bruising, and bladder changes as potential signs.

That might sound like a broad list, but the bottom line is this: “Whether it’s a new lump, a new pain, a new discomfort—something that’s just different and not going away—be sure to bring it to your doctor,” says Dr. Giri. Feeling like something is off can give rise to a range of emotions, she adds, including fear, guilt, and shame, but it’s important to not let that stop you.

It’s a rule Harris has lived by ever since her diagnosis. After she offhandedly mentioned to her doctor that her throat swelled and felt itchy one evening while at a friend’s house, her doctor sent her for an ultrasound, which is how they discovered her thyroid cancer. Now, “any small concern—even if I think it might sound stupid, even if it’s embarrassing, I really don’t care—I bring it up to my doctors,” she says.

And if you mention it to your physician and they blow it off or their recommendation doesn’t help? “Don’t feel discouraged. Bring it back to them,” says Dr. Giri.

3. Get a clear picture of your risk.

Risk assessment is a key to avoiding a too-late diagnosis and to giving yourself more options, and it’s something anyone and everyone should be doing, per experts. When Alison Hall, 33, calculated her breast cancer risk assessment score—using the same free online tool that Olivia Munn used (the Tyrer-Cuzick Risk Assessment Calculator)—she discovered that she had a 36 percent risk, which is a low score on a math test but high when it comes to cancer risk. A doctor told her to start getting biannual screenings. Her first mammogram was clear, but an MRI just six months later found cancer in its earliest stage of malignancy.

Hall opted for a double mastectomy. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking down at my breasts and wondering what is going on in there,” she says. Plus, the alternative, a lumpectomy and 5 to 10 years of hormone therapy, would delay her family planning by several years (and might have raised the risk of a recurrence during or after pregnancy, as a result of fluctuating hormones).

A large part of calculating your risk involves understanding your family history of cancer—which isn’t always easy to do. You can plug this info into an online risk calculator, like the one Munn and Hall used, Dana-Farber’s Assess Your Risk tool, the CDC’s My Family Health Portrait: Cancer Edition (an app), or the ACS’s CancerRisk360. But ideally, once you’ve gathered your data, you can bring it to your doctor and ask about next steps. “I certainly didn’t have this on my bingo card, but the earlier that things are caught, the better,” Hall says. Instead of being scared by the prospect of finding things out, she says, “see it as something you can be empowered by.”

How To Find Out Your Family History

For people with a family history of certain cancers—including breast, ovarian, uterine, and colorectal—screening and testing might be recommended at younger ages, even up to 10 years earlier than when your relative was first diagnosed. But that means finding out your family’s health history. There are plenty of reasons someone might not be able to access much info about their blood relatives’ medical histories, and that’s okay, says Dr. Giri. Doctors are able to work with the info you do have and can help sleuth out as much as possible. But here’s what to aim to get details on.

If you can speak to relatives about their health history, find out this info:

• Ask if they ever had cancer, what kind it was (keep in mind that sometimes people have multiple types, which is helpful to know), and the age they were diagnosed.
• Inquire about your grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins (living and deceased). Sometimes doctors can identify generational patterns.

Ease into the conversation with these strategies:

• Think about the best people to turn to, both in terms of who you suspect will be most receptive and who will have the most information. Some families have one person who knows a lot about the entire clan, Dr. Giri says.
• Be strategic about when to talk—when everyone is around for the holidays, or in private with certain people? Hard conversations like those about health and cancer might need to unfold over time.
• Be prepared to explain why you’re asking. Sometimes leaving family members with a resource to read on their own (like this story or one of the American Cancer Society’s flyers) can help get the ball rolling.

If no one will talk or you don’t have anyone to ask…

• Consider genetic testing. Just work with a doc to see how useful it will be before you do it, and be aware that you might have to pay for it out of pocket.
• Be careful with home tests. The American Cancer Society warns that these don’t actually provide info on your risk of developing any particular type of cancer.

This story appears in the Summer 2025 issue of Women’s Health.

Olivia Luppino is an editorial assistant at Women’s Health. She spends most of her time interviewing expert sources about the latest fitness trends, nutrition tips, and practical advice for living a healthier life. Olivia previously wrote for New York Magazine’s The Cut, PS (formerly POPSUGAR), and Salon, where she also did on-camera interviews with celebrity guests. She’s currently training for the New York City marathon.