According to the American Cancer Society, about 1 in 111 adults will develop stomach cancer. The incidence of stomach cancer is even higher in China, with the annual prevalence and mortality rate of stomach cancer more than twice the world average, higher in men than in women at about 3:1, and the risk of developing the disease increases with age.
Thankfully, stomach cancer is not a typical hereditary disease. Most gastric cancers are sporadic or caused by random DNA mutations. This means that even if someone in your family has stomach cancer, you don’t have to worry too much.
Early symptoms of stomach cancer may not be pain
Many people believe that stomach pain is an early symptom of stomach cancer.
It is indeed possible, but for many patients, pain is not the most common sign of this disease in its early stages.
In fact, there may be no pain at all in the early stages of stomach cancer.
Moreover, because its early symptoms are similar to those of common digestive tract diseases, it is extremely easy to be overlooked.
By the time patients go to hospital for examination, they often find that it is already in the middle or late stage.
6 Typical Symptoms of Stomach Cancer to Remember
It is important to detect and prevent stomach cancer in advance. Here are several common early symptoms of stomach cancer, whether your body can be remedied in time depends on whether you detect it early enough.
1.Blood in stool or vomiting blood
There are symptoms of bleeding in early stage of stomach cancer, such as vomit mixed with coffee-colored or dark red blood, and stool is also maroon or black in color. In addition to stomach cancer, blood in stool may also be colitis and Crohn’s disease, but no matter what kind of disease, with blood is an abnormal phenomenon. With these 2 symptoms, you’d better visit a gastroenterologist and have a gastroscopy or fecal occult blood test.
2.Appetite soon decreases
When you sit down to eat, you are obviously very hungry, but after a few bites, your appetite disappears and the food becomes unattractive. Obvious anorexia, or a feeling of fullness and belching and aversion to meat after eating.
Doctors say that this is “early satiety” and say that it is one of the early symptoms of stomach cancer. Especially when your appetite becomes very different from before, you should pay attention to this problem.
3.Persistent pain in the stomach
In most cases, stomach pain belongs to the result of intestinal or abdominal diseases triggered, not cancer. However, in some cases, stomach pain is also a sign of stomach cancer.
Then, how to distinguish the pain of stomach cancer from other pains?
An unusual occasional stomach pain that does not hurt in the future may be a result of eating the wrong things that cause problems in the stomach. Whether it is old stomach disease or stomach cancer depends on the duration of the pain.
Suppose the original pain was only in the upper abdomen every time you ate, but not when you slept; then it evolved into continuous pain after eating and when you slept, this change is likely not simply old stomach disease.
The classic stomach cancer pain is the constant vague pain in the stomach.
4.Unexplained weight loss
Many health problems, including type 1 diabetes,, Addison’s disease and Crohn’s disease, can lead to unexplained weight loss. Stomach cancer is also on this list.
If you are not dieting to lose weight and suddenly lose a lot of weight, it may not be a surprise but a shock because weight loss is a gradual process and cannot be achieved overnight.
Sudden weight loss is definitely a physical disease. For example, stomach cancer causes weight loss because the tumor will compete with the body for nutrients, it slowly grows, your body is robbed of nutrients, and you will naturally become thin.
5.Heartburn and indigestion
According to the University of Texas Cancer Research Center, heartburn, indigestion, with acidity and other common gastrointestinal symptoms that come and go, or progressive aggravation of the disease, may also be the early signs of stomach cancer.
6.Distension, diarrhea and constipation
Stomach cancer, a tumor growing in the stomach, is an extra piece of flesh with insufficient space, so it may make you feel bloated, or it may disrupt your intestinal movement, causing undesirable phenomena such as diarrhea, constipation and abdominal discomfort.
For common stomach diseases, there are obvious triggers, such as drinking or eating cold drinks to stimulate the stomach, but stomach discomfort caused by gastric cancer is mostly without triggers, so you should consider the possibility of stomach cancer.
Finally, we would like to remind you that although the above symptoms may be signs of stomach cancer, they may not necessarily be stomach cancer.