Science Vs · Spotify Studios

Colon Cancer: Should Young People Worry?

March 19, 2026·41 min·2 clips

Becca Lynch, 29, wakes up from her colonoscopy to find the nurse bringing her friend back—and sitting alone with a bag of goldfish crackers and a Sprite before hearing she has cancer.

Becca Lynch starts as the patient people might not picture. She is 30 now, lives in Colorado with her dog, and remembers a 20s life packed with school, work, climbing, running, and music. Then her bathroom routine changed. At 28, she was going five or six times a day, and dark bloody mucus showed up every time. Hard to shrug that off, but symptoms like this can still get explained away. The host walks through how colon cancer can do that kind of damage. A tumor can press into the colon and narrow the space, almost like a tunnel getting squeezed. That can mean skinny stools. Becca had a lemon-sized mass, and she connects that pressure to the constant trips and bleeding she noticed. The explanation makes sense. The timing is the rough part. Symptoms can show up late, after the cancer has had time to grow. Becca noticed them for only a few months, but by the time doctors found the cancer, it was already stage three. From there, the episode gets sharper. It is not arguing that young people have a separate kind of disease. It is looking at how colorectal cancer can sneak past both patients and clinicians. Some signs are vague. Some young patients get told they are too young for it, so testing waits. One survey found four in ten young people with colorectal cancer were first told they were too young to have it. That is the kind of fact that stops the room for a beat. Studies show the delay too: compared with older people, young people waited 40% longer to get a diagnosis from an oncologist, and experts say they can arrive further along in the disease course.

As heard by us

A clear look at why colon cancer in young adults gets missed.

Science Versus frames Becca Lynch's story as a plainspoken account of how early colon-cancer symptoms in younger adults can slip by. It works best when it stays close to the details: more frequent bathroom trips, blood, pencil-thin stool, and a lemon-sized tumor that helps…

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Why you'd press play

Wondering why colorectal cancer can slip past young adults and their doctors? Start here.

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