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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?

#91

Post by cj »

My best friend died of brain cancer.

Although not from the cancer itself. He died of an opioid overdose. He was prescribed pain killers for cancer-related pain, and got hooked. His doctors stopped prescribing, so he found it elsewhere, and got a bad batch with fentanyl. (He was a VC living in SF, well to do, he had all the treatment money could buy, but cancer ended up not being what killed him)

I know this isn’t what you’re looking for, but be sure to not ignore other parts of his health. Addiction and other disorders are common among people with terminal or not-so-great prognosis.

The most you can do is to be a great friend.

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

#92

Post by hombre_fatal »

myphone8356 wrote: post #16
mixmastamyk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're thinking about it, Vitamin D3 and K2-mk-7 are known to be helpful in that regard.

Not an expert or doctor disclaimer. Sugar is the food cancer cells crave. Not a miracle cure but restricting sugars may help reduce the growth of the tumor.

I'm pretty sure that's an old myth that sugar preferentially feeds cancer cells and that you somehow starve them by reducing sugar intake. After all, the body maintains stable blood glucose levels regardless of how low your sugar intake is.

e.g. https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2023/08/16/sugar-and-cance...

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

#94

Post by matthest »

Always put the phone on speakerphone and keep it away from your head.

This is no longer a fringe conspiracy theorist thing (though research on it is still early and relatively sparse).

For example:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/02/health/brain-tumors-cell-...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5417432/

Maybe it is causing certain cancers, maybe it isn't. Science will probably know more in 10 years. But in the mean time, why take on unnecessary risk?

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

#95

Post by toss1 »

d--b wrote: post #65
toss1 wrote: 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 !

I don't know about trials in France, but this is definitely a very hot research topic globally. A quick search pulled in a bunch of institute names I recognize from over here in the US [0-3].

There are also some immunotherapies that are already approved for use and past the trial stage e.g., [4].

Be bold - keep hunting until you find YES. Good luck to your friend!

[0] https://www.gustaveroussy.fr/en/gustave-roussy-leading-centr...

[1] https://institut-curie.org/immunotherapy

[2] https://sante.sorbonne-universite.fr/en/structures-de-recher...

[3] https://www.pasteur.fr/en/our-missions/strategic-plan-2019-2...

[4] https://www.cancerresearch.org/regulatory-approval-timeline-...

[edit: add #4]

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

#96

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Damn. 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 numerous breast cancer clusters. I am pretty cynical that people know the cause, but don't want to deal with it.

I had a serious non-cancerous tumor, back in '96, but managed to learn to walk and chew gum again, after a couple of months.

The key is whether or not it's operable. Mine was, none of my other friends were operable.

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

#97

Post by cjameskeller »

Very much an anecdote, but when I was younger, I knew someone who attributed the remission of their (expected to be terminal) brain cancer to eating lots of bananas that were so green/unripe that they crunched. I searched for this just now, and it seems there may be some real science behind it, but it's hard to say without digging into it further.

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

#98

Post by MichaelZuo »

dekhn wrote: post #67
deegles wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even more so, Probably 100% of the population over 70 has cancer in the sense of a clump of abnormal cell divison, just that for a lot of them it’s so slow growing or in a benign tumor that it doesn’t get discovered or treated.

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

#99

Post by thomasfromcdnjs »

alecst wrote: 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'm one of those stubborn types that will refuse all medical treatments, lots of fasting is my current go to strategy if some tumor gets out of control.

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

#100

Post by selcuka »

frisco wrote: post #42

Personally knowing four people with GBM and not being an oncologist is exceptional and worrying. That feels like it should be raised to… someone. It is very possible something bad is happening and a commonality needs to be tracked down urgently.

I knew two people (one adult, one child) who lived in the same building and got diagnosed with leukemia (~14 per 100,000) shortly after each other, maybe within a few weeks.

It's anecdotal, of course, but I've always thought that there could have been a connection.

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