Table 1.

Four major cancer risk factors that may reflect the same underlying energetic mechanism^a

Risk factor	Local or systemic?	Proposed mechanism of risk
Dietary caloric intake	Systemic	Hyperglycemia
Hyperglycemia	Systemic	Cell hyperproliferation
Obesity	Systemic	History of hyperglycemia
Chronic inflammation	Both	History of energy oversupply

^aThe right-most column summarizes the proximal causal mechanisms we propose in this article.