Unprecedented numbers of young people are being diagnosed with bowel cancer - due to poor diets and lack of exercise, a study warns.
Millennials - those born between 1980 and 1995 - are four times more likely to develop rectal tumors stemming from the large intestine compared to those born around 1950.
An alarming three in ten rectal cancer diagnoses are now in patients below the age of 55. Young people are also at twice the risk of developing colon tumors, which start growing lower down.
And yet, these diseases are still widely thought of as something that hits after middle age.
The study warns the data should be a warning sign that this generation faces an epidemic of digestive diseases - and suggests we begin screening people in their early 20s, rather than in their 60s.