Six stubborn myths about cancer - The internet is awash with misinformation about cancer, with...

Guardian (UK) ^ | 30 August 2013 | David Robert Grimes

[exDemMom]

Unfortunately, your simple act of posting this article had the effect of drawing the gullible snake oil customers out of the woodwork.

There must be some way of teaching people the difference between evidence-based medicine and pseudoscience. But how?

[CutePuppy]

Absent from the article, and from the FDA "fakes" list is: calorie-restricted ketogenic diet (R-KD). People are using it, even in surprisingly late stage cancers, to shrink tumors. Hyperbaric therapy may help (D'Agostino). .....

The curious thing about cancer is that tumor cells survive primarily on glucose, and to a lesser extent on glutamine (but cannot thrive on ketones). Oncologists take advantage of the glucose uptake to get tumors to show up on Xray, but they don't allow themselves to consider using this fact to treat it (why? primarily because consensus medical views on diet and blood lipids are nearly upside down from reality, which is a whole separate scandal). .....

Healthy cells in most of the body can run on glucose (from carbs, primarily) or fat or ketone bodies. Brain cells can't use fat, but run just fine on ketone bodies metabolized from fat, but you only produce ketones when in nutritional ketosis (the Inuit diet, if you will). The "R" in R-KD is because there is as yet no direct way to control glutamine levels other than by restricting overall caloric intake. .....

Thanks for bringing this up, the benefits of ketogenic diet and/or glucose reduction may be starting to get more attention. Diet may be one of the essential factors in prevention and/or treatment of cancers.

See more in this post: New Method of Killing Cancer Cells Developed - FR / Sci-News, 2013 July 19 / 2013 July 24

..... Here is one that's based on the method of substitution - feeding the body ketones and eliminating glucose (which the tumor cells crave - several tests, like PET scan and recently enhanced MRI+glucose are using this fact to identify cancer).

From Starving Cancer: Ketogenic Diet a Key to Recovery - CBN, by Lorie Johnson, 2013 June 21

..... not a surprise to Dr. Dominic D'Agostino, who researches metabolic therapy. When he and his team of scientists at the University of South Florida removed carbohydrates from the diets of lab mice, the mice survived highly aggressive metastatic cancer even better than when they were treated with chemotherapy. .....

The Ketogenic Diet

All cells, including cancer cells, are fueled by glucose. But if you deprive them of glucose, they switch to the alternate fuel, ketone bodies.

Except cancer cells. A defect prevents them from making the switch to using ketone bodies as fuel and therefore, cancer cells can only survive on glucose. All other cells can use either glucose or ketone bodies.

"Your normal cells have the metabolic flexibility to adapt from using glucose to using ketone bodies. But cancer cells lack this metabolic flexibility. So we can exploit that," Dr. D'Agostino explained.

People like Hatfield, who want to deprive their cells of glucose and fuel them with ketone bodies instead, eat what's known as a ketogenic diet. It consists of almost zero carbohydrates, but lots of natural proteins and fats.

Gloria said the food on the ketogenic diet is in every grocery store and is pretty easy to prepare. .....

[AZLiberty]

Thank you for the information about R-KD. I have been hearing more and more about the role of sugar in cancer — and the related acid/base issue — but this sounds really interesting.

I have reserved the expensive book through interlibrary loan (my favorite library feature).

[ican'tbelieveit]

Actually, I disagree with your comment entirely, being a cancer survivor. Two years ago about this time I was suffering from cancer, was diagnosed, surgery performed and I can now count myself among survivors. There was no silliness in my treatment, the drs sent me right to the best treatment without delay so there would not be any prolonged complications and I could get back to my life as soon as possible.

[Moonman62]

To be fair, the prognosis on pancreatic cancer is so poor that it probably doesn’t matter to the patient whether he gets radiation/chemo or snake oil. I doubt that anything Jobs did would have made a difference.

Jobs had the one type of pancreatic cancer that is curable.

[exDemMom]

Jobs had the one type of pancreatic cancer that is curable.

He had a type that is more amenable to treatment than other types, but not necessarily more curable.

Given that Jobs underwent surgery to remove his tumor in 2004 and died in 2011, his seven-year survival after treatment is consistent with the average survival for these kinds of tumors, Libutti said.--Dr. Steven Libutti, pancreatic cancer expert and director of the Montefiore-Einstein Center for Cancer Care in the Bronx.

I tend to agree with Dr. Gorski's assessment (mentioned in the original article of this thread), which I have read in-depth. The kook quackery probably had no effect on Steven Jobs' survival, and Steven Jobs actually did undergo conventional, evidence based treatment.

[exDemMom]

I have to correct myself. Gorski was mentioned by you, not the original thread article.

I spend a lot of time over at various science and medicine blogs. I don’t really post in them, though.

[diamond6]

So I take it that you do not believe in “the list?”

[Captain7seas]

The FDA. That’s a bunch that you can rely on fer sure!

[pops88]

“So I take it that you do not believe in “the list?””
“The list?” A list of supplements that are helpful regardless...I don’t have the time or energy.

[IncPen]

The greater point is that if someone wants to use alternative treatments, that is their right to do so.

Yes, but only until Obamacare kicks in...

[IncPen]

The greater point is that if someone wants to use alternative treatments, that is their right to do so.

Yes, but only until Obamacare kicks in...