Cancer treatment advise please

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Treatment
People with higher vitamin D levels at time of colorectal cancer diagnosis have better outcomes.

Harvard University studied patients with this cancer and vitamin D levels of about 23 ng/mL (58 nmol/L) or 31 ng/mL (78 nmol/L). Patients with higher vitamin D levels had half the death rates compared of those with lower vitamin D levels. A Japanese study found a similar effect for rectal cancer but not colon cancer.

Neither of these studies used vitamin D to treat colorectal cancer. However, vitamin D supplements may increase survival rates. Some cancer treatment centers are giving patients 5000 IU/day of vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol).

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Do you want to find out more and see the research upon which this summary is based? Read our detailed evidence summary on Colorectal cancer."

The article discusses a study being done in Germany using a carb-restricted diet to fight cancer. In pre-WWII days, a German scientist, Otto Warburg, received a Nobel Prize for his work in sussing out the fact that cancer cells don’t generate energy the same way that normal cells do. Cancer cells get their energy, not like normal cells, from the mitochondrial oxidation of fat, but from glycolysis, the breakdown of glucose withing the cytoplasm (the liquid part of the cell). This different metabolism of cancer cells that sets them apart from normal cells is called the Warburg effect. Warburg thought until his dying day that this difference is what causes cancer, and although it is true that people with elevated levels of insulin and glucose do develop more cancers, most scientists in the field don’t believe that the Warburg effect is the driving force behind the development of cancer.

But it stands to reason that it can be used to treat cancer that is already growing. Since cancers can’t really get nourishment from anything but glucose, it stands to reason that cutting off this supply would, at the very least, slow down tumor growth, especially in aggressive, fast-growing cancers requiring a lot of glucose to fuel their rapid growth.


Thomas Seyfried (the same Thomas Seyfried mentioned in the article) has shown that ketogenic diets in animals and humans can stop malignant brain tumors. There is no reason to believe they wouldn’t work in humans as well.

I am trying to help with advise on dietary / herbalism solutions to a) fend off the cancer and b) reduce the negative effects of chemo.

Here in the UK this week the media has been feasting on a recent pronouncement from the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) which urges us to strictly limit our consumption of red meat to protect ourselves from bowel cancer. The WCRF’s statement is based on research conducted recently at the Imperial College London, in the UK. It updated with more studies a similar review undertaken in 2007.

Here’s the opening salvo from the report linked to above: “The most authoritative ever report on bowel cancer risk has confirmed that red and processed meat increase [emphasis mine] risk of the disease…” Those are strong words, and the media has been only too happy to parrot them. Let’s have a look, though, and see if it’s desperately important for us to cut back on red meat for the sake of our health.

The first thing to note, I think, is that the evidence used as the basis for this recent review is epidemiological in nature. Such evidence looks for associations between things. However, just because two things are associated, does not mean one is causing the other. Owning a television is associated with an increased risk of heart disease. Does owning a television cause heart disease? If you bought a TV and left it in the boot of your car or buried it in a field, would you be at increased risk of heart disease? Probably not. The issue is not owning the television, it’s likely something associated with owning it (e.g. watching it and therefore being more sedentary). Related factors that can incriminate an innocent factor in this way are referred to as ‘confounding factors’.

We could have hundreds of studies linking TV ownership with increased risk of heart disease, but they still prove nothing. Likewise evidence regarding red meat and colon cancer.

The fact is, even when properly conducted, epidemiological evidence just simply does not tell us a great deal. And it can’t, honestly, be used to conclude that “red and processed meat increase risk of [colon cancer]”. Such conclusions are scientifically untenable, and are generally made by people who:

1. don’t understand the limitations of epidemiological evidence.

2. do understand the limitations but draw inappropriate conclusions anyway.

That latter category tends to be well populated by epidemiologists, by the way…