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Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

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Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

#61
I had a family member diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, and we were able to shock the doctors with their progress and recovery.

Our goal was to contribute as much as we could to the treatment effort, and so we focused on diet and rest.

Namely we removed all sugar and glutamine (animal products), and took care of all household tasks: cleaning, cooking, getting to appointments, etc.

Each cycle when we would get the blood test results we would add items to the diet to address any numbers that were falling.

For example, increasing iron, folate and b-complex rich foods like lentils to support platelet production.

There is a lot to be said about where chemo and radiation treatments are these days, and I am thankful for the medical interventions.

The drug treatment designed by the doctors, and our efforts at home, led to the tumor shrinking at such a rate that my family member is considered a statistical anomaly, and their blood protein markers are at below normal levels; down from 27x the normal level when we started treatment.

This book is a great resource: https://www.howtostarvecancer.com/the-book/

In addition to diet advice it also covers a lot of new or experimental treatments for nearly all cancers.

I truly believe diet can make a huge impact on addressing cancer.

Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

#62

My mother has “frozen” breast cancer for 15 years using oral bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis). To give you the short version of the story about how it works for HER: taking bloodroot causes the cancer to shrink too small to take a biopsy, but not go into remission, and when she stops taking it per the doctors advice, it gets very large and they start talking about surgery. Nobody really understands how it works and…

She also swears by a product (basically a huge B17 dose) called Cascading Revenol that a guy on an old set of CDs Phillip Day (“the Truth about Cancer”) recommended to take with blood root.

It advertises itself as a natural tumour growth inhibitor.

Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

#64
post #2

I have heard some people having luck by switching to a ketogenic diet. Here’s a paper I could find on PubMed about this. Sorry to hear about your friend. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9504425/ Edit: I am not a doctor. My wife is a physician and I spoke to her before posting this.

+1 on this. I did my thesis on Glioblastoma-related imaging stuff [1]. The state of the art at the time (~2016) was that, realistically, none of the current treatments were "great", unfortunately. In short, you have 1) surgery, 2) chemotherapy, 3) radiation. Those treatments did extend survival in studies, but the overall survival of Glioblastoma patients was (tragically) still very bad at 12-24 months, and none of those therapy options were a cure.

As a side note, I recommend the book "Being Mortal" from Atul Gawande. The TLDR here is that our healthcare systems tend to overtreat patients, especially those with cancer who actually have a rather bleak prognosis, because it's easier for a physician to simply order all treatments and tell the patient "all good here, good luck" instead of taking the time to sit down and have a (long) conversation about the bleak prognosis and which options are actually still worth it. By "worth it" I mean that there are trade-offs to each treatment option, and it takes some very careful weighing whether each one provides a net benefit for your friend's individual situation. E.g. surgery might extend survival by X months, but might also create, worst case, new disabilities. So now you're faced with the very difficult decision of whether to potentially live for a shorter time with less disabilities, or for a longer time with more. There's no perfect answer, but having this sort of discussion is a good step which many patients unfortunately never take. I think this is a failure in our healthcare systems and maybe in the education of physicians.

Now, if I personally had a Glioblastoma, on top of the standard of care (surgery probably makes sense etc.), I think the ketogenic diet would currently be my best shot. Yeah, sure.. it's mostly only case reports so essentially anecdotal evidence, but it does look promising.

Good luck for your friend!

[1] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=tinu7tYAAAAJ&hl=en

Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

#65
post #39

Sorry to hear about your friend; awful for both of you. Anything you can build or brew at home? About as good as chanting spells at the moon on alternate Tuesdays. And definitely do NOT go get infected with some virus, which will only create greater complications and misery. The only real chance I'd see out there is to get into a trial of some of the new immunotherapy treatments [0]. These create custom profiles and…

Thanks a lot. I am in France though (should have said in the main text), and I don't think there's any fancy trial going on in France currently. Hopefully your comment can help someone else !

Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

#66
post #58
post #10

I'm really sorry to hear that. Since you're asking for moonshots and weird things to try, here's something they can ask their doctor about: > Case reports involving glioblastoma patients using water-only fasting regimens in conjunction with other forms of cancer treatment have reported favorable outcomes with respect to tumor growth https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2874558/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articl…

I have a relative with glioblastoma who could see his granddaughter born if he extends his life a while. Thanks a lot for sharing!

You're welcome. I read a lot about fasting and I have a lot of experience with it. It's helped me, personally, heal many things (but not all of them -- it's good to have low expectations.) In any case, it's a mind-expanding experience to go without food for a while, regardless of the outcome.

Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

#67
post #43

The 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?

My aunt is in her 70s and has 5 friends currently with cancer. My belief is that it's downstream effects from Covid wrecking people's immune systems and their ability to naturally fight cancer. Time will tell.

Bayes and Occam would suggest otherwise. If you're in your 70s in the US it's likely many people you know have cancer (unrelated to COVID). Especially now, given that detection is better than ever and more people are surviving longer with cancer.

Re: Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

#69
Not sure if applicable and how to get in. Afaik price is around 100k for a personalised vaccine but you have to give them vaccine candidates based based on DNA data. Maybe some local biotech uni could help with that.

https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/data-insights/inno...

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