title: From the common cold to cancer: how evolution and the modern lifestyle appear to have contributed to such eventualities.
abstract: This hypothesis suggests that psychosocial stress is the pivotal determinator of many modern day disorders in consequence to consuming today's nutritional intakes of ascorbic acid and sodium. For it seems, as a result of our tropical African evolution, present day intakes of these essential nutrients are incompatible with the maintenance of bodily homeostasis when the body is subjected to any form of stress. In addition, the climatic conditions under which most of us live are seemingly ill-suited to experiencing stress, since it appears that a constituent part of the bodily stress response remains exclusively designed to be effective in a hot tropical environment, where the stress can be expected to be accompanied by thermoregulation sweating and an overheated body. For without such an occurrence coinciding with stress, the stress response itself appears to have been transposed into a reaction that inhibits the body's ability to resist infection and disease.
authors: R A
authors: RA
authors: Leeming
mesh_terms: D001205:Ascorbic Acid / Q000008:administration & dosage; D005075:Biological Evolution; D003139:Common Cold / Q000209:etiology*; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000209:etiology*; D012982:Sodium, Dietary / Q000008:administration & dosage; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000150:complications*
chemical_list: D012982:Sodium, Dietary; D001205:Ascorbic Acid