Many people know that rectum is the last part of intestine, but few people know about colon. Actually colon connects to the small intestine and consists of four sections which form a big “M” surrounding the small intestine: ascending colon transverse colon, descending colon and sigmoid colon. As for the function, colon removes water, salt, potassium and nitrifying bacteria (billions of bacteria coat the colon to help digestion and synthesis) and helps defecate.

Unhealthy Diet and Pressure May Cause Colon Cancer

Why would teenagers tend to become the target of colon cancer? This is closely related to their lifestyle. Among the risk factors of colon cancer, eating habit is the most important one. People who often eat food high in fat and oil and take little dietary fiber will aggravate the burden of the intestinal tract, and since the fiber promotes bowl movement and helps digest and resolve fat, thus people who are lack of it tend to develop constipation and cause toxic substances accumulate in intestinal tract. Besides, doing less exercise is also one of the risk factors of colon cancer, because it slows down the movement of bowl and prolongs the time that stool stays in the intestine, causing the reabsorption of the toxins in the stool.

Of course, colon cancer is also related to heredity and psychic factors. Some doctors point out that when people are under pressure and tension, it is hard for them to keep diet and take exercise regularly, furthermore, large pressure would decrease people’s immunity, furthermore if intestine function is weak, cancer cells will have an opportunity to develop.

Look at the Stool When Flushing Toilet

For doctors, the colon cancer patients’ survival rate is directly related to its severity, if the cancer is found in early stage and cancer tissues are cleared completely, the surgical outcome of colon cancer is very good. Unfortunately, many patients missed this chance since they ignore the signs of colon cancer leading to delay of detection and treatment. Therefore, to avoid the above tragedy, it seems very important to have a glance at the stool when flushing toilet, if the stool becomes loose or very dry suddenly, or diarrhea and constipation developed alternately, including the times of defecation increased and unexplained bloody stool, once those symptoms occurring, you need to go to consult a doctor timely. In addition, due to different location of the lesions, some patients will develop abdominal pain, anemia in early stage, so you should also pay attention to those changes.

The specialists from Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou remind you that except the daily observation, doing examination is the best way to confirm whether you develop colon cancer or not, so people at 40 or above whom often have unhealthy eating habit or intestinal diseases should do an endoscopy every 3-5 years while common people can do anal inspection in regular check-up.

*Surgery, in addition to the appropriate chemotherapy and radiotherapy, are effective in treating early cancer, but certain patients in late stage of cancer may not be tolerate surgery well as they can be relatively weak. A combination of carefully planned minimally invasive therapy, chemotherapy or radiotherapy can effectively reduce the side effects and discomfort of treatment and may help patient get better efficacy.