Crucial Signs for Early Colonoscopy Screening

“People at higher risk [due to] family history or symptoms should have [a] colonoscopy,” Ness said. But if you’re 45 or older with no risk factors, and you’re avoiding getting screened because of fear of colonoscopies or issues with the prep, you do have other screening options, including fecal tests and CT scans.

“The most important thing is to get your screening if you’re in the screening age,” Ness said. “The biggest problem right now… is that we’re only at about 70% of the at-risk population screened, which means that 30% isn’t. And we’ve shown that we can decrease colorectal cancer mortality by at least 50% with active screening.”

And as noted above, colorectal cancer rates in young people are rising. Just because the guidelines say you can wait until you’re 45 to get screened for colorectal cancer, that doesn’t mean you should.

“Something has happened, it’s clear that there’s an upward trend … The curve goes up since the 1950s,” Macaron explained. “And when you look at numbers, those who were born in the 1990s have twice as high the risk of colon cancer, four times as high the risk of rectal cancer compared to those who were born in the 1950s.”

So, it’s important to take family history, personal health history and symptoms seriously. If you have any concerns, no matter how small they might seem, don’t be afraid to ask your doctor about a colonoscopy.

As you wait for your appointment, though, it’s important not to panic. The symptoms highlighted above don’t definitively mean you have colon cancer, but they “could be a sign that something is going on that would warrant a colonoscopy, and one of those things could be that colon cancer is the cause of that symptom change,” Dueker said.

Being on top of your health is never a bad idea. At minimum, it can help you get in control of any bothersome symptoms. And in some cases, it just might save your life.

“Colorectal cancer is preventable,” Ness said, “so please avail yourself of the available testing to find it early and to remove the polyps that become cancer before they have a chance to do so.”

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.