Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?
121–130 of 380 posts
Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?
#122Google Richard Scolyer: Top doctor remains brain cancer-free after a year. A year after undergoing a world-first treatment for glioblastoma, Australian doctor Richard Scolyer remains cancer-free. Check out Sonalsense - https://www.sonalasense.com/for-patients . Requires specialized machine not in US as of last year. Dr Mitchell Berger out of UCSF is the GOAT.
Scolyer is in the relatively fortunate position of being a world class cancer researcher before getting cancer, so he had the resources of an entire oncology lab to give himself a speculative treatment.
Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?
#123I recently listened to this Diary of a CEO podcast episode [1] discussing the potential link between blood glucose from carbohydrate-heavy diets and cancer. It is an alternate metabolic theory of cancer, and the podcast guest claimed that fasting followed by a keto diet was showing early success as an intervention for cancer patients (as an addition, not a replacement, to existing standard of care). I have not seen the data nor do I know the sample size, but the discussion convinced me to rethink my carb intake.
Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?
#12420mg melatonin daily (perfectly safe for years, doesn't affect sleep patterns at this dose)
Depakote for seizures (instead of something else)
All I know that when those were stopped recurrence started. It was after 5 healthy years on those and nothing else. It was primary anaplastic grade 3 glioma.
Obviously get surgery, radiation and Temozolomide for initial treatment.
Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?
#125I know when someone’s faced with certain death they’ll do almost anything they can to survive if only for a little bit longer, but this thread full of personal antectodes and largely non-reproduced effects from random pubmed articles is the hackernews equivalent of essential oils or smth
OP is explicitly asking for hacks and "out there" solutions, I think this is a reasonable place to post anecdata, papers, personal theories, etc. as long as people state their confidence level and link to sources when possible
Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?
#126The occurrence of GBM is about 3 out of every 100,000 people. If you happen to know 4, is there some commonality? Do you all work together in the same industry? Do they all live in the same town?
No it's so weird, no connection at all between any of them.
All four have the same kind of brain cancer? Or just have some kind of cancer?
Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
My impression formed from my time in cancer drug discovery is that bro science is, within practical bounds, a perfectly reasonable option for one arm of a comprehensive plan for treatment. A lot of things that sound like bro science are actually broadly supported in the literature. But studying this stuff is hard because of all of the usual issues with human subjects, the less than complete reliability of our epistem…
To give a practical example, grapefruit juice contains some compounds that inhibit CYP3A4, a metabolic enzyme that influences the metabolism and absorption of many drugs, which is why many prescriptions tell you not to drink it while taking a given medication. This interaction was not discovered until 1989, and not reported until two years after that. So before 1991, a simple dietary intervention that affected like h…
The problem is you can't figure out where to pick it; it's lost in a sea of superstitious noise.
Even if you could find this fruit easily, "a food that cures cancer when eaten" does not exist. That would surface in epidemiological studies very quickly.
Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?
#128Just read this paper today.
Ketogenic Diet in the Treatment of Gliomas and Glioblastomas
Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?
#129Damn. Sorry to hear that. I have had two friends get it, and neither made it. Another died of it, but it metastasized from their lung (Yeah, I have known a hell of a lot of people with cancer. Most have survived). If you have known 4 people with the same cancer, they call that a "cluster," in the vernacular, and it might not be a bad idea to see if you can figure out where it comes from. Here on Long Island, we have…
> I am pretty cynical that people know the cause, but don't want to deal with it. I looked up "long island breast cancer" and saw a long list of risk factors. Out of curiosity, did you have a specific one in mind?
Long Island is a very dense with overhead power lines, but then again look at Tokyo.
Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?
#130You should ask them if they want you playing doctor. I have a chronic disease, not fatal, and totally manageable. But the most annoying thing is when someone finds out and suddenly pretends to be the expert. Of course my doctors and I investigating it for years were completely wrong! I should’ve ate more apricots! Please just check with them if they want their limited time spent like that.
dont get why that upsets you. I have had a chronic disease my whole life and one of the people who offered help completely saved my life. If anyone else told me to eat apricots Id be grateful for their time and attention. I would probably eat the apricots and tell them it was fantastic, even if it had no effect. Sorry I just have rarely seen my friends or family offer any advice. - Back to OP, Ive always remembered P…
It can be bit annoying because people people think "can't hurt to try" but there's thousand unfounded things to try, little time, no way to pick and some of them could hurt. There's no harm in listening to ideas, being expected to implement them is another thing.