[pcorsaro]

The debate about Vitamin C in the cancer world is never ending. My wife had stage IV colon cancer a few years ago, and we went through tons and tons of research to try and find things to supplement her chemotherapy. A lot of the "alternative" medicine people suggest doing extremely high dose Vitamin C intravenously because supposedly at higher doses, it becomes oxidative and generates free radicals in the blood stream which can kill a lot tumor types. Her oncologist didn't like the idea because there is also lots of research that says it spurs growth in tumors. He said that Vitamin C gets studied so much because it's cheap to get, but it's never really produced any meaningful results. There was a study he liked about taking extremely high doses of Vitamin D, but I can't really remember why.

[pazimzadeh]

That exactly right, high dose vitamin C that doesn't go through the GI tract (given IV) is pro-oxidant rather than anti-oxidant. Intravenous High-Dose Vitamin C in Cancer Therapy https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/ras/ras-cent...

High-dose vitamin C enhances cancer immunotherapy https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.aay8707

posted this in response to the wrong comment earlier

[Alex3917]

> Her oncologist didn't like the idea because there is also lots of research that says it spurs growth in tumors.

To be fair, if that's the effect you're going for it doesn't seem like the best option. If you want something to promote oxidative stress, take something like pawpaw supplements or a drug like metformin.

Tumors need more energy than normal cells, and oxidative stress interferes with the ability of your mitochondria to produce energy. So yeah, it makes intuitive sense that antioxidants are not what you'd want for cancer. Although as you mentioned, these systems are pretty complicated and there are a lot of chemicals that can act as antioxidants in some circumstances and oxidative agents in others.

[chasil]

> Tumors need more energy than normal cells, and oxidative stress interferes with the ability of your mitochondria to produce energy.

Isn't the mitochondria usually silenced in cancerous cells?

[azalemeth]

Not exactly. My understanding of the Warburg effect is that cells rely upon glycolysis for their _additional_ energetic demands but still have functioning mitochondrial with the ability to oxidise fats; a lot of the pentose phosphate pathway is upregulated in tumors as they're busy making amino acids for protein biosynthesis. Of course, tumours do literally everything imaginable somewhere so take this with a glacier sized disclaimer. The main thing is that the reactions that are favoured tend to be either anaplerotic (contributing carbon towards the Krebs cycle) or straight up anabolic. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-39...

[hattmall]

>Tumors need more energy than normal cells

Could this be why meditation was shown to reduce tumor size? I saw a recent article, on here I think, about a study showing proof via imaging that meditative practices of aligning chakras was successful at reducing tumors where chemotherapy could not. Could it just be that extreme relaxation causes the tumors energy demands to exceed the bodies supply in a relaxed state?

[ta988]

I was involved in some vitamin D work. It is really close to what this doctor described about Vitamin C. Or most really ubiquitous natural products really. I've seen all kind of incredible claims and their contrary, and in the end no epidemiologic study or clinical trial showed anything conclusive.

[Aurornis]

Vitamin D deficiency isn’t great, but the health influencer industry really blew this out of proportion. The number of people taking excessive doses because they think more is better is getting scary.

You don’t need a lot of Vitamin D to avoid deficiency. Taking even 5000 IU for an extended period of time can cause Vitamin D excess.

Vitamin D confuses a lot of people because it accumulates over a very long time period. You can take the same dose every day but not approach overdose range for a year or more. It builds up if you’re taking too much, and there is a lot of overlap between “too much” and some of the regimens pushed by health influencers.

[wouldbecouldbe]

vit D is even more random because it's correlated with so much more; being outside; sun exposure; moving etc.

[oldgradstudent]

That's why observational studies consistently show vitamin deficiency correlates with various types ill health, but controlled experiments consistently show that supplementation fails to improve it.

[hombre_fatal]

Apparently it’s because of ethics committees. You can’t do a controlled experiment on people who are vitamin deficient, so iirc modern studies are such comparing people who are not deficient to people who take additional vitamins and find no effect. Which of course doesn’t mean that vitamin supplementation is worthless.

[noobermin]

How about clinical reports/studies? Clearly doctors can give reports whether deficient patients' vitamin D or C levels improve with supplements.

My doctor literally gave me such an oral prescription as my vitamin D levels are low.

[Spooky23]

I may be a square, but I think it’s insane to self-medicate with supplements without the oncologist being fully aware and supportive.

Cancer sucks and is complex enough without adding more variables. Especially if you’re dealing with immunotherapies and managing secondary infections and other complications. Plus, any problems that develop are going to be divvied up between various specialists.

[bettercallsalad]

As somebody with a relative identified with stage IV cancer, did you have any luck to finding an effective supplement to chemo?

[ambicapter]

Tim Ferris' Tools of Titans has a section from a doctor (not oncologist) who recommends fasting the days before chemo treatment. Supposedly it sensitizes the cancer cells to the chemo. I'm hesitant to give advice to cancer patients on the internet but there's more recommendations (in my book it's pg. 32-33). He also mentions keto diet, exogenous ketones, metformin, dichloroacetic acid, and finally hyperbaric oxygen, rapamycin in "modest, intermittent doses" and finally sequencing the tumor to see if a checkpoint inhibitor could be effective.

Again, recommendations from a health guru book and not an actual doctor, that I'm just copying here in case it helps. I have no experience with cancer other than a close relative passing away when I was much younger.

[rgbrenner]

It sounds like a really bad idea for a Stage IV cancer patient to fast. In later stages they frequently already have substantial weight loss... and in the last few weeks, people actually stop eating entirely as the body starts to shutdown. Death usually occurs when the weight loss reaches 30-40%.

Encouraging them to stop eating seems like it would just accelerate death.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5114624/

[jsperx]

I just went through 6 cycles of 5-day IV chemotherapy (AIM) and I fasted for all of them, for a total of over 35 days of water-only fasting during the last 5 months. I can’t find the PubMed link right now but there were small studies that looked like healthy cells would go into kind of a suspend/preserve mode that lessened side effects, whereas cancer cells still experienced the intended cytotoxicity. I tolerated the treatments quite well, lost hair of course but only vomited twice during the whole time. Lost weight each time but was able to put it back on quickly during the following week for each cycle, though I do want to watch body composition (don’t want to trade muscle for fat).

Did it make a difference in effectiveness? I actually have my follow up scans tomorrow to find out. As you can imagine, I really really hope so.

https://news.usc.edu/29428/fasting-weakens-cancer-in-mice/

[rgbrenner]

I'm not a doctor. Ive just spent a lot of time looking into this (as im sure you have) because a close relative died from Stage IV lung cancer.

There are studies on fasting with chemo.. and depending on the type of cancer its either effective or ineffective. My comment was specifically about the end stages where cachexia is common (from my link above):

"Cachexia is associated particularly with cancer where the prevalence can reach 50–80% in advanced malignant cancer."

And all of the advice Ive found says fasting is not recommended for patients with cachexia.

It sounds like it was fine in your case though because you were able to regain the weight. Best of luck with your scans.

[drunkenmagician]

All the best - Cancer sucks!

[krashidov]

Best of luck to you!

[bluecheese452]

Good luck!

[chasil]

There have been studies that p53 can be reactivated by fasting.

In the context of chemotherapy, couldn't that be a quantitatively useful benefit?

"Fasting improves therapeutic response in hepatocellular carcinoma through p53-dependent metabolic synergism"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35061544/

[ggfdyjgfth4455]

I am not a doctor. It is very sunny in the middle east (skin cancer?). Fasting is part of their cultural/religious tradition.

[chasil]

Sorry that you were down voted.

I did upvote you.

[ambicapter]

In the book he recommends against in cases of muscle wasting (cachexia), yes.

[maxk42]

Certain hard cancers are known to depend on blood sugar for growth as they can't metabolize anything else. It makes sense that a keto diet, therefore, would slow tumor growth, and I've heard of oncologists recommending it. Keto diets prevent prevent elevated blood sugar naturally. It's not a silver bullet but when it comes to cancer you've got to take every advantage you can get.

[pcorsaro]

Lots of people have responded to this with similar strategies to what we used. Keep in mind, my wife was 35 when she went through this. We had a 1 and a half year old, she was breastfeeding and was in decent shape overall. For the first few treatments, she was able to fast for a couple of days before. She did a fairly strict keto diet for a few treatments as well, with her ketone levels being 1.5 millimolar or higher. She did take metformin for a little while, although she quit taking it after a while because she just forgot and was overwhelmed.

All that being said, she pretty much abandoned all of the additional about halfway through her treatments. She had to have half her liver resected, and she had a HIPEC procedure at the same time. When they did the final biopsies on her metastases in her liver, it was 100% dead. She's now been NED (no evidence of disease) for a few years now. I don't have delusions that it will never come back, but I can hope.

I don't know if anything she did helped the chemo do it's job. It's not exactly something you can A/B test. I think it's possible, but I also think her being so young and in good shape to start with made the biggest difference.

[torcete]

Have a read to the book: Cancer as a metabolic disease.

I don't know how true is what they claim in the book, but basically it's the following.

All cancer cells obtain their energy from fermentation and not oxidation. They use glucose for that fermentation process and they propose fasting and a ketogenic diet as a treatment.

Antioxidants can actually promote fermentation and inhibition oxidation.

[darkclouds]

IF you do an excess of iron (chloride), it reduces the CD4 cells and increases the cytotoxic CD8 cells.

I say chlorides because consistently for many studies, notably zinc but applies to Iron, phytates and tannins bind and inhibit the absorption of these two metals, but leave copper alone. Chloride based metals get into the body very quickly.

I'd also look at the mistakes in some studies, different parts of the world have different theories and its possible if you look at enough to see old theories being quoted and not assertions from more recent studies.

The jury is out on what is a good diet to consume for different types of cancer let along a healthy life, its contradictory at best, zinc is good for tackling some cancers, and bad for others. Copper is good for tackling some cancers and not others, and that just looking at two common metals in the diet.

So if the experts knew, I think they would recommend a diet to go on, but they are so steeped in patient privacy they undermine their own authority I think, not to mention come across in general as quite dictatorial.

I have also been messing with some body building amino acids and I liked histdine which is one of the four amino acids that start with zinc, the other three are glutamic acid (glutamate), aspartic acid and cysteine (N-Acetyl Cysteine). Histidine is precursor for histamine which helps immune cells migrate through tissue. Aspartic acid mediates some cysteine based immune responses.

Its also worth looking at vit D, a Wellcome trust study had reverse engineered the human genome about a decade ago and found that most of the Vit D receptors are concentrated around immune system genes (2776 iirc). But you need zinc and cysteine to build the zinc fingers found on these vit D receptors and vit D will switch on some genes and switch off some genes.

Oncologists have access to the testing and measuring equipment, I see no harm if interested in this stuff to get the data from their tests and check their theories against studies found in google scholar, if you wanted piece of mind.

These experts dont always publish their theories so there isnt the transparency, and they dont ask about diet which can be significant in some cases, so they undermine their expertise imo.

And thats before you get into the debate of hackers tampering with results and other things which seem to question the fragile nature of computer security.

And I'm not recommending anything other than question the experts.