There has been a lot of press recently about lifestyle factors that positively or negatively affect your chances of having colon cancer. However, without good screening and early treatment, altering your lifestyle may not help prolong your life. The reason for this is that colon cancer early symptoms, are notoriously difficult to diagnose, so without the disease being detected by screening, the cancer is often fairly advanced by the time an accurate diagnosis can be made.

One reason that the levels of screening for colon cancer are low (only half of those over 50 who are recommended to have screning do so) is the invasive nature of a colonoscopy.

Recent developments, however may mean that the colonoscopy could be replaced with an xray,or “virtual colonoscopy. Should the test become widely available, the take up of screening is expected to sharply increase.