[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?

[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.

[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.

[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.