Dawson’s Creek heart-throb revealed last night he has colorectal cancer at the age of just 47.
The actor, who shares six children with his wife, Kimberly, said he has been ‘privately dealing with this diagnosis’ and had continued working.
Despite the undoubted shock, Van Der Beek added that he felt there was ‘reason for optimism, and I’m feeling good.’
He added that he was ‘taking steps to resolve it with the support of my incredible family’ — the couple, who moved from Los Angeles to Texas four years ago, share six children.
The former heart-throb, who appeared as Dawson Leery in the long-running series between 1993 and 2003, is just the latest victim of a mystery explosion in colorectal cancer in younger people.
The disturbing rise in the disease — also known as colon or bowel cancer — in under 50s has baffled doctors around the globe.
Colon cancer — which also claimed the life of Dame Deborah James at the age of 40 — has surged by 50 per cent this age-group over the past three decades.
Some experts believe the explanation must lie in the co-current rise in obesity, which affects the health of our digestive system.
Actor James Van Der Beek took to social media on Sunday afternoon to reveal he’s been diagnosed with cancer
The actor, 47, revealed that he has been ‘privately dealing with this diagnosis and have been taking steps to resolve it with the support’ of his incredible family (seen with his wife and six kids)
However, this doesn’t explain the rise in the disease in young people, like Van Der Beek, who are otherwise perfectly fit and healthy.
It is a phenomenon recently highlighted by former BBC Radio 4 producer Molly Guinness, who had been diagnosed with colon cancer aged 39, in a series of posts on X.
In one, viewed nearly 15,000 times, she wrote: ‘I’m one of five young people I know diagnosed with colon cancer in the last year — all of us are slim with healthy diets.
‘I look around the waiting room at the colorectal clinic — everyone I see there has a healthy BMI.’
The vast majority of bowel cancers still affect those aged over 50.
But the disease in older groups has either declined or remained stable while diagnoses in younger people have risen.
Young people with colorectal cancer also appear to suffer slightly different symptoms than typical patients with the disease, according to a new study.
The research also showed patients under 50 are more likely to be diagnosed later when the cancer had spread, perhaps because they dismiss the health changes.
Doctors told DailyMail.com that young people who experience any of the following symptoms should get checked right away and not wait.
The new study looked at 5,000 people in Taiwan of various ages with colorectal cancer, also called colon or bowel cancer. Six in 10 under-50s suffered rectal bleeding before being diagnosed with the disease, compared to fewer than half of over-50s.
And nearly 60 per cent of young people with the disease also experienced changes in their toilet habits in the lead up to or after a diagnosis, compared to 48 percent of older patients.
Dr Cedrek McFadden, an oncologist in South Carolina not involved in the study, said the differing symptoms between old and young patients matched what he had seen in his patients.
‘It certainly makes sense,’ he told DailyMail.com, ‘rectal bleeding had the strongest association, especially in early onset’.
‘Rectal bleeding tends to be an earlier sign of the cancer in them, whereas abdominal pain is a later sign.
‘Sometimes in younger patients, a lot of them have complaints of hemorrhoids, and one of the complaints of hemorrhoids is bleeding.
‘It is common for younger patients to attribute that bleeding to hemorrhoids and never see a doctor about it, but that allows a potential cancer to grow and become somewhat advanced by the time it is ultimately diagnosed.
‘That is why I often tell patients that bleeding, while common, is not normal — and tell them to get evaluated by a doctor.’
The study was led by Taiwan’s Chang Gung Memorial Hospital network, which serves more than 280,000 patients every year.
In the paper, scientists analysed data from the hospital database on symptoms reported by patients diagnosed with colon cancer between January 2008 and December 2019.
Patients aged over 70 years old were excluded from the analysis because, the researchers said, they were at higher risk of dying from the disease.
Taiwan is also recording a spike in early onset colon cancers, meaning Western diets cannot be entirely to blame.
Other theories have suggested the uptick could be linked to food additives like emulsifiers, often used in low-fat products like low-fat yoghurts to improve texture.
And some scientists have also suggested it could be linked to microplastics or high-fructose corn syrup, a sugar alternative often used in sodas.
In the study, doctors analyzed data from 5,704 colon cancer patients, including 1,204 who were under the age of 50 years old.
It found that rectal bleeding, change in bowel habits and abdominal pain were more commonly linked to younger patients.
Among older patients, rectal bleeding and change in bowel habits were also listed as symptoms — but less commonly than among young adults.
The third most common symptom for the group was a shift in the frequency of needing to use the bathroom.
The above graph shows the rise of colorectal cancer in Americans under 50 in the last two decades
The paper also detected an uptick in colon cancer among young people, saying that cases had risen by three per cent a year since 2009 among under-50s.
The doctors did not suggest a reason why these three symptoms were the most common among early-onset cases, but they did note that these patients tended to be diagnosed at a later date when the disease was already more advanced.
The study found that 62.4 percent of young people had their cancer diagnosed at stage four or stage three, compared to 50.3 per cent of older adults.
The rising colon cancer cases trend in Taiwan matches the situation in the US, where the incidence of the disease has surged by 50 per cent among people under 50 in the last 30 years.
Cancer rates among Brits aged between 25 and 50 have increased by 24 per cent over the last three decades, according to Cancer Research UK.
Bowel cancers specifically have risen by 22 per cent in 25-49 year-old Brits since the early 1990s, data shows.
The US now has the sixth highest rate of early-onset colon cancers globally.