According to the NHS, symptoms of bowel cancer may include:
· Changes in your pooing habits
· Bleeding from your bottom
· Feeling like you need to poo even if you’ve just been to the toilet
· Tummy pain
· A lump in your tummy
· Bloating
· Losing weight without trying
· Feeling very tired for no reason
Dawson’s Creek actor James Van Der Beek, 48, passed away earlier this week following his stage three colorectal cancer diagnosis in 2023. His family announced his death in a statement on Wednesday.
“I’d always associated cancer with age and with unhealthy, sedentary lifestyles,” he previously told People. “But I was in amazing cardiovascular shape.”
“I tried to eat healthy- or as far as I knew it at the time. I thought maybe I needed to stop coffee, or maybe not put cream in the coffee. But when I cut that out and it didn’t improve, I thought, ‘All right, I better get this checked out’.”
A colonoscopy later revealed that he had bowel cancer.
“I think I went into shock,” Van Der Beek added. “You think, ‘How do I fix this? Is this healing me? Is this hurting me? Is this working? Is it coming back?’ As someone who likes answers, not knowing is one of the hardest things.”
The same year Van Der Beek was diagnosed, the American Cancer Society (ACS) reported that 20 percent of diagnoses in 2019 were in patients under age 55 and rates of advanced disease increased by about three percent annually in younger adults.
“If anyone has any change in their bowel habits, if they have any bleeding—even if they think it’s a hemorrhoid, and it doesn’t go away—just get a colonoscopy,” Vikram Reddy, MD, PHD, colorectal surgeon, told Yale Medicine.
“Even if you’re in your 20s or 30s, you should get checked out if you have rectal bleeding, if you have any change in your bowel habits, any change in appetite (like feeling ‘full’ early), weight loss, or abdominal pain that is not explained,” added Haddon Pantel, MD, a Yale Medicine colorectal surgeon.