Having lost several members of our family to cancer over the last several decades, including my mother, I sometimes question where all the money going into cancer research has gone. Maybe what has been lacking are motivated patients with both the means and the intellectual capacity to drive for solutions. Again, I hope you find a path.
Saw your post, read the first sentence and was curious to see what sources you would provide.
YouTube is hardly an acceptable source as videos do not let people discern information well. It’s basically only a hit better than telling ppl to google for themselves..
> Fasting (1 to n weeks) is said to provide potential benefits for certain types of cancer treatments. Pre-cancer, it is said to potentially prevent cancer onset. This is potentially powerful for those of us with a family history with cancer.
It makes sense. Cells need nutrients for the cell cycle, similar to the way computers need RAM to execute programs.
Fasting not only deprives cancer cells of nutrients, but also triggers a homeostatic response in the entire body. This response includes putting its garbage collection system (autophagy) into overdrive mode so that it can reclaim the limited resources it has left to survive. Fasting is a reductive treatment, like purging oxygen from a server room on fire. It might help slow it down, but it can take healthy inhabitants along with it.
Additive treatments offer more options. If you catch the fire early and it’s contained (non-metastatic), you can target it with a fire blanket (surgery, stem cell transplantation) or a fire extinguisher (small molecules, biologics, peptides, gene therapy, etc.) to put it out. The sprinklers are a last ditch effort for larger fires (chemotherapy, radiation), which could save the building, but result in significant collateral damage.
If we were serious as a society about fighting this disease we would engineer an approach that guarantees early detection on as many people as possible. My guess, not having looked at numbers at all, is that the societal cost of late detection must be staggering. In other words, I am thinking --and I could be wrong-- that even if we provided annual checkups for free with a suitable technology, it might be cheaper than the devastation caused by cancer.
While not all cancers are the same, we cannot ignore the fact that there's a metabolic link to cancer onset and development. Our industrialized food system simply isn't healthy. I don't know how we do it, but there has to be a way to alter behavioral patterns (nutrition, exercise, visceral fat control, substance abuse, etc.) to actually protect people from both bad inputs and, frankly, themselves.
I don't say "themselves" in the sense of suggesting an overlord scenario. The reality is that most people are ill-informed and our industrialized food system is designed to be supremely addictive. Anyone who has battled with processed food understands just how difficult it can be not to consume it, both from a widespread availability perspective and what it does to your brain.
Despite the fact that treatment options and efficacy have improved, without fixing these factors it will be impossible to win this battle at scale.
