This reminds me of the view, widely held by the less-educated among us, that cancer spreads when it is ‘exposed to the air.’ This belief apparently originated with the observation that cancer pts often undergo surgery, and many of these pts will eventually succumb to metastatic disease some time after their surgery.
I had a pt just last week tell me that his brother died of colon cancer because “he had surgery, and the air got to his cancer.”
“Many underserved groups in the United States experience disparities in cancer survival. Part of the disparity may be due to differences in treatment or treatment uptake. Previous studies uncovered patient beliefs that surgery could cause cancer to spread and have suggested that this belief may affect uptake of cancer treatment. We explored patients’ explanations about surgical treatment of cancer and cancer spread […] We found that nearly all respondents had heard that surgery (“cutting”) and exposing cancer to the air would hasten cancer spread and result in worse outcomes. Most participants expressed agreement with this belief.” [emphasis mine]
That reminds me of the urban legend that the woman from the 007 film goldfinger died because she was covered in gold makeup and “her skin couldn’t breath.”
When someone dies do they continue to get medical treatment? No, they do not continue to get medical treatment. So, why would Big Pharm sell a product that kills their revenue source effectively cutting off future profits from that patient? The answer is, they wouldn’t. It makes no sense from a long-term profit perspective.
This is starting to remind me of the “vaccines are neither safe nor effective, they’re just a Big Pharma conspiracy to make money” canard.
Vaccines are one of the worst therapies in terms of ROI from an industry perspective. The R&D costs are high and the timeline is long, they’re one-time administrations rather than chronic, and profits are low (to the point that many companies were leaving the vaccine market altogether). Vaccines are estimated to be 2-3% of the totality of the pharmaceutical industry. But, you know, PROFITS!
On the flip side, from a society perspective, they offer just about the best ROI for any health intervention - every dollar sunk into vaccine research, development, and implementation gets returned many times over in saved healthcare costs and workplace productivity.
Yet we still have lunatics arguing that vaccines are just part of the Big Pharma conspiracy to make money and keep us all sick.
Big Pharma is a business. No one denies that. There are some egregious cases of misconduct, to be sure, and less-egregious-but-still-troubling things like pushing to get a drug that’s already on the market for one indication approved for a second or third indication (for example, a drug that’s already approved for treatment of migraines being expanded to treatment of generalized anxiety disorder, or something to that effect) based on questionable data (of course, given Zep’s “any therapy should be allowed on the market once it’s proved safe” argument, I still can’t figure out how he would rule on that). This doesn’t mean that every therapy sold by Big Pharma is poison or that Big Pharma’s executives are cackling an evil laugh at the thought of exploiting cancer patients to make a buck.
The same is true at the point-of-care, at least for physicians. They make little to no profit from administering vaccines, and bear a considerable bureaucratic/regulatory burden in keeping/storing them (have to be kept at a certain temp; stocks have to be rotated out regularly; etc). Additionally, they (physicians) usually have to buy the vaccines, then get reimbursed (hopefully) by the pt or third-party payer. I’ve known several pediatricians whose offices lost power over a weekend, with the resulting loss of thousands of dollars worth of vaccines. They just had to eat it.
If chemo wasn’t value add, then the market would figure that out and there would be no more revenue.
Again monopolies play by their own rules not some mythical market.
So where is the value from chemotherapy? Maybe it’s horrible track record of not working very well or the wonderful side effects like losing an extreme amount of weight due to the sickness you have to endure or maybe it’s the loss of all your hair. I could go on and on but what is the point. You have already taken the blue pill, washed it down with a large glass of Kool-Aid while polishing off a plate of freedom fries.
I don’t think I’ve ever said chemo kills more than cancer only that it does kill fairly often.
Further do you actually think the industry is going to allow stats like that out?
It’’s amazing to me that oncologists all know that cancer cells are glucose hogs, but cant conceive that a diet with no glucose in it might be able to aid in killing the cancer. If all a cancer cell can eat is glucose, take the effing glucose away!
There’s a theory that cancer cells form a “biofilm” to adhere to each other. (Biofilm are very real.) Break the biofilm and the cells are free to separate and move throughout the body. Yes, it’s the cutting (or even a biopsy) but no it’s not the air. Again, cancer biofilms are just a theory.
(Some) gut bacteria form biofilms, and there’s speculation that this biofilm plays a role in colon cancer development. To my knowledge, no one has suggested the cancer cells themselves form a biofilm.
@yorik I don’t know if your just trolling @Zeppelin795 or not. But just in case.
I’m a fan of low carb diets myself. But this “keto starves cancer cells of glucose” bullshit can’t fly. When you go on a ketogenic diet your blood sugar lowers to the normal range (if it was unhealthy before). It doesn’t go away. You still have blood sugar even if you eat no carbohydrate (gluconeogenesis), you will die without any blood sugar.
The first article that comes up on PubMed for “ketosis and type 2 diabetes” with 28 overweight type 2 diabetics. Notice how bloods sugar normalized. It didn’t go to zero.
It’s important to note the “magic” often attributed to keto misses one huge variable. If you take a person eating the S.A.D. and put them on keto they will eat less calories every time. It’s almost like protein and fat are more satiating or something. Notice how the people all lost weight without calorie control in the study? When you lose weight on any diet all of your blood markers get better. Every time.
Hemoglobin A1c decreased by 16% from 7.5 ± 1.4% to 6.3 ± 1.0%
I will concede the point that blood glucose won’t drop to zero; I didn’t mean to suggest it would. I can see how a reader might misinterpret my suggestion. As for your study, it might be more appropriate to research blood glucose levels in cancer patients than diabetics. I might do that research later today. I haven’t looked into that yet.
As I understand it, PET scans work by injecting radioactively tagged glucose molecules. The scan finds cancer clusters because the cancer takes up huge amounts of the tagged sugar. This supports the assertion that cancer is a glucose hog.
Nonetheless, if one reduces their blood sugar levels to less than desired by cancer cells, or to a level where ketone bodies are being processed by normal cells, then the cancerous cells will be at a disadvantage because they can’t get enough glucose to sustain out of control growth rate. I didn’t write down where I read this, but apparently cancer cells do not adapt to ketosis like normal cells.
In effect, you want to reduce the availability of excess glucose to cancer cells like reducing the amount of food available to an overweight couch potato.
Consider the studies (well, the one mouse study I know of) that couple fasting with chemotherapy. The survival rate of the mice with chemotherepay was something like 28%. The survival rate of mice with chemotherapy who were also fasted was a whopping 90%. This is documented in PubMed. I personally think this is strong evidence for strict blood glucose control as part of any cancer treatment.
I absolutely agree dietary factors should play a role in cancer treatment. I wish I had known what I know now before my sister passed away from complications due to breast cancer.
Excuse my annoyance. But certain alternative types push that a ketogenic diet (or Apple cider vinegar or pot etc…) is an effective treatment for cancer and tell people not to use their chemo. Gullible people listen to that and die needlessly.
Your study showed that keto in addition to chemo improved survival rate for that one type of cancer in that population of rats. Good. I’m all for “in addition to”. Not “chemo is poison just avoid carbs you’ll be fine”.
Remember there are over 100 types of cancer. Assuming they all work the same won’t help.
Where did I say that chemo kills the majority of people?
Post the stats then. From medical studies. You really believe they would post the awful studies?
Who cares? This is a thread about cancer not pot. At least stay on topic, shit. It has a lot to do with this thread as studies that wont support the status quo will not be studied. It may effect their profits and we couldn’t have that.
Obviously. I have a reasonably informed view, you have conspiracy theories… No what you have are years worth of propaganda in which you believe. And conspiracy. Not theories, the real thing.
And what is your well informed view based on? Corporations whose primary goal is profits?
When someone gets healthy does the medical industry make any money from them? No. So why would Big Pharma not try and suppress-with everything they have-any therapies that could compete with their status quo treatments? The answer is that is exactly what they have been doing for quite some time. It makes perfect sense when profits are your primary concern.
And since that is their primary goal it only makes sense to try and keep the patient alive as long as possible, not heal them. So the public has to suffer so they can make more money. Absolutely immoral. Once the health insurance industry is all but eradicated I hope pharma is next in the cross-hairs.
