I can't figure North Americans out. I mean, in a culture where an endless line-up of seemingly adult human beings are ready and willing (eager, in fact) to go on TV to talk about (and even act out) some of the most intimate (and disgusting, although the two don't always go together) details of their lives, only a very few are willing to talk about or listen to information about their tuches (which is a Yiddish word, by the way, that is always mispronounced by the Not-Chosen People but which is much more descriptive than the leading English candidate of "butt").
But hey, folks, if you don't pay attention to that end of things, your tuches is very likely to get you - in the end - so try to overcome your natural reluctance and allow me to give you some news about colorectal cancer, news that might save your life.
Colorectal cancer is one of the three leading causes of cancer death in the developed world, but it's also one of the most preventable forms of cancer death. Why? Because most colorectal cancers start as polyps that can be picked up when they are still small and very easily treatable, yet because of our aforementioned hesitation to discuss anything to do with our rears, never mind our unwillingness to get that part examined and especially to get potentially life-saving colon cancer screening tests (even doctors often talk themselves out of doing a rectal examination on a clearly unwilling patient), the death rate from colorectal cancer continues to be far too high.
Before I tell you what you need to know about screening tests, though, let me back up a bit and give you some news about how your diet can lower your risk of colon cancer.
For the last three decades, experts have linked the huge number of cases of colorectal cancer in North America to our western diet, specifically to its low fiber content. This link was first made by a guy named Denis Burkit who came back from Africa convinced that the low incidence of colorectal cancer (as well as appendicitis, irritable bowel syndrome, gall bladder disease, and a number of other bowel and digestive conditions) in Africans was largely the product of their huge intake of fiber.
The trouble is that several well-done studies have concluded that in North Americans, high-fiber diets don't seem to slow the progression of colon polyps to frank cancer, in other words, the data doesn't back up Burkit, so most experts are now less enthusiastic about pushing a high-fiber diet purely for the purposes of preventing colorectal cancer.
Others, however, like me, to be sure, argue that there are significant flaws in the studies that have failed to find a good effect on the bowel from high-fiber diets, primarily that those studies have been too short-term. In other words, for a high-fiber diet to have a positive effect on your risk of developing colorectal cancer, I think you probably have to be on that kind of diet for a long time, preferably from an early age on and perhaps even before you get a polyp in the first place.
So the very good news is that the latest update of the Nurses Health Study, that huge American study that's been following the health of over American 70,000 women for many years found that, over a period of 12 years, women who ate a "prudent" diet had a 50% lower risk of colon cancer compared to women who ate a "typical" American diet.
A prudent diet consists of the usual suspects: lots of fruits and veggies, beans, legumes, fish, poultry, whole grains, etc., in other words, a diet with lots of fiber, among other good things.
A "typical" North American diet consists of, well, you know what: sweets, fats, meat, refined foods, etc., in other words, a low-fiber, high-fat, and high-sugar diet.
So is this the last word on diets and your bowel? Of course not (you know by now that when it comes to medical studies, there is never a last word), but until they come up with something better, a "prudent" diet, such as the Mediterranean diet I tend to favour and which I follow, should be the route you go to protect your innards.
Finally, about those screening tests, I have only two words for you: get 'em.