Well, if we rely on Campbell's cancer research, we could posit that they ingested aflatoxin to cause cancer, then casein to make it grow. But people are not rats, so meh.

I prefer the theory of metabolic disorder, as a baseline at least. Le me put it this way. Think of anything that can cause cancer. Now ask, does that thing also make it grow? It's the difference between kicking a rock off a cliff, and gravity accelerating this rock as it falls. The kick cannot accelerate the rock like that, it needs gravity for that. The same is true for cancer. The initial cause cannot make it grow, it can only create the initial cancerous cell. For a healthy body, that cell is promptly taken care of, just like it does with minor injury and benign infection. For that initial cancerous cell to proliferate and grow into a tumor, the systems that otherwise protect must be disrupted, i.e. immune function mostly. That's not all, the overall environment must also be made growth-friendly, i.e. hormonal signaling and fuel.

So, initial trigger, immune suppression (or immune overwhelm, as in the immune system can't cope), favorable environment.

For our purpose, we should look at what's happening in the colon. We've been talking about gut bugs for a while so we have an idea about that, but we talk about that from the point of view of an elsewhere effect, not in-situ effect. Well, let's imagine that some bad gut bugs are the culprit here, as one possible initial trigger. The stuff we eat is obvious, but I bet not many of you thought of gut bugs, ya? Well, does any of this have the ability to make cancer grow? Possible but doubtful, so let's not get stuck on that as the sole explanation for colon cancer.

For immune suppression, I have a couple ideas. The first is simple. Sugar suppresses the immune system, that's it for that. A more elaborate idea is gut bugs again. Let's say there's some bugs that have adapted to suppress the immune system, and they love carbs. Well, if that's what we feed them, they'll grow and eventually be strong enough to suppress the immune system enough to prevent the normal handling of cancerous cells. Just a few of them won't do it, they need to be an army. Let's grow an army. Done.

Favorable environment is easy. Cancer loves insulin and glucose. The two come together all the time with a high-carb diet. That's it for that.

Turn this around and see how a low-carb diet works to counter cancer. Can low-carb fix that initial cause? Probably not, if it's an infection for example. Can it fix the immune suppression? Maybe, if it's just from diet alone, otherwise only partly. Can it fix the favorable environment? Absolutely, and pretty quickly.

So here's how to use LC to figure out the initial trigger and the immune suppression, and maybe the favorable environment. If LC doesn't do what it should - i.e. cancer growth is not halted or reversed - then we can be pretty sure that the cause of the favorable environment is not merely diet, it's some other agent. The most likely culprit here is an infection by some pathogen with the ability to alter our DNA, a virus probably. We don't even need to look at immune suppression because that pathogen likely has the ability to do that too, and maybe also the ability to trigger the initial cancerous cell. On the other hand, if LC does its thing and cancer growth is halted or even reversed, we know that the favorable environment was mostly diet, but it could still be partly some infection or something else. Either way, it's obvious that there was immune suppression because that initial cell was not taken care of, so even if LC does its thing and everything's going great, look for any opportunistic pathogen that could have taken advantage of the immune suppression to get cozy, fix it, done. At this point, there's not much point in looking for the initial trigger, the favorable environment is gone, the immune suppression is gone, any initial trigger is now in danger of being nipped in the bud.

In a general point of view with regards to early colon cancer, we could look at early diabetes type 2 and early obesity for reference. Whatever happens, now happens earlier. There's no difference between the cause of obesity for a 40-year-old and a 10-year-old - insulin. Well, whatever causes colon cancer in 60-somethings must also do it in 30-somethings. Since they're younger, the dose must be that much higher.

Don't take any of this too seriously, I just made it up as I was writing.