I’ve had a hypothesis for close to twenty years now that it’s the result of regular availability of nutritionally fortified food and vitamins that’s the root cause of increasing cancer rates. I have absolutely no medical training whatsoever, and only a rural farm boys self study understanding of biology, but it is my understanding that cancers are mutated cells that grow out of control. From a growth perspective my intuitive belief would be each cell would grow like a plant, only as fast as the limiting factor(NPK or micro in for example corn). There are constantly occurring stressors in the environment that can cause an individual cell to be damaged (mutate), but until extremely recently on the evolutionary scale human also struggled to have “proper nutrition” so these mutated cells would reach a limiting factor in their growth (be it an ameno acid, vitamin, whatever). Humans had seasonally available foods, times of feast, times of famine, healthy cells were able to weather these times but the damaged ones reach the limiting factor and died. Now with fortified foods available year round, and supplemental multivitamins, they never reach that limiting factor and continue to grow and divide unrestrained. From an evolutionary perspective the bodies ability to detect and destroy mutations in individual cells would not have been anywhere close to a priority during all but the most recent times in human evolution, environmental conditions would have provide that by default through the body being under a constant state of stress. Kind of a perpetual low grade “chemo” from malnutrition (or more accurately alternating deficiencies of certain nutrients).
