Dr. Trisha Pasricha

But these also apply to colorectal cancer at any age.

Okay.

And so these four symptoms are one, abdominal pain.

Two, rectal bleeding.

Three, iron deficiency anemia.

This is a blood test that tells us that your red blood cells have become smaller and that's due to iron loss.

This is really important in women because when women have iron deficiency anemia and it can feel like fatigue or tired,

You get the blood test.

Oftentimes, people will say this has to be due to your period because we lose a lot of iron.

We lose blood with our periods.

If you have these other symptoms or you're like, wait a minute, but my periods are kind of light.

I really want you to pause and not brush this aside.

And then the fourth symptom is anxiety.

The most important and also the most vague, so it's what makes it really complicated, is any change in your bowel habits, meaning new diarrhea, new constipation, some change to the pattern.

Maybe suddenly your bowel, your poop went from being really thick to really, really thin.

Anything that's new for you that seems to stick around,

get attention because this study found that people who have three or four of the four symptoms I just mentioned, they had a six-fold higher likelihood of having colorectal cancer than people who had fewer.

Six-fold?

Six-fold.

Yeah, I would go get help for any of these symptoms, no more than one or two weeks if it's persisted.