They Got the Cancer Story Half Right

This week the BBC ran a piece called "11 cancers on the rise in young people - scientists find first clue why it’s happening".

Their answer? Obesity.

It broke my heart a little.

Not because they’re entirely wrong. Many people getting these cancers are carrying extra weight. Yes.

But blaming the weight misses the real driver. And that matters.

Here’s the thing.

You can be slim and still be in trouble. Stressed, sleep-deprived, pumping out cortisol day after day, with your insulin quietly creeping up in the background.

That’s the part the headline missed.

Elevated insulin is one of the most powerful growth signals in the human body. It tells cells to grow, divide, and survive.

This is why insulin resistance keeps turning up in the cancer research. Not weight. Insulin.

Here’s what frustrates me. By framing it as "obesity equals cancer", we let lean stressed people relax. And we make heavier people feel ashamed.

Both groups lose.

The truer story is simpler. Your insulin should spend most of its day low. Quiet. Sleeping. It only needs to spike when you eat carbs, then drop back down.

For millions of us it never drops. Snacks. Sweet drinks. Ultra-processed everything. Broken sleep. Chronic stress.

Insulin stays high. Cells stay in growth mode.

On 16th May my new book, The Insulin Problem, comes out. The biggest chapter is the science of how elevated insulin links to cancer. I spent months studying the research and meeting leading scientists, because I wanted to get it right. This week the headlines didn’t.

You don’t need a lab to start. You need to know what’s keeping your insulin high. And quietly stop doing it.