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If you think long and hard about the core reason a PET scan works then it's inescapable that Coca Cola causes cancer, depending on your definition of "cause".

If you think long and hard about the core reason a PET scan works then it's inescapable that Coca Cola causes cancer, depending on your definition of "cause". In fact, we've know about this, the Warburg hypothesis, for a long time.

mijoharas 6y ago
> If you think long and hard about the core reason a PET scan works then it's inescapable that Coca Cola causes cancer Could you expand on this point? My background is in physics, and I think I've got a fair understanding of how PET scans work, but I think I'm missing the connection.
- bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
  Sure. Once you get a positive cancer diagnosis, or sometimes before, you give someone a PET scan to see if it's gone metastatic. A PET scan will "detect cancer" down to a few mm in resolution. It will only miss cancers smaller than that. It detects all cancers, though there is noise. What is it detecting? Positrons. From memory you dope glucose with decaying fluoride. You inject this or drink it after fasting. Fasting clears out (some or most) your blood glucose and some glycogen in your muscles and other places. So you get a rush of this glucose and it goes straight to the tumors. There, it emits higher amounts of positrons due to concentration (and maybe metabolization, I forget). So why does glucose go straight to tumors? Because tumors exclusively process glucose. The other pathway to ATP, fat (triglycerides to ketones etc) is broken. That's why a PET scan works. Sugar. The stuff in coca cola. Although today there's a lot of fructose too (fun fact, fructose is a poison just like alcohol). To go further, human beings didn't used to eat nearly the quantity of sugar or at the frequency we do today. You can become much healthier by fasting and avoiding carbs (which are in some ways one and the same thing). A similar analysis of dentistry will lead to the same conclusions.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    Tumors eat more food, because that's what tumors are. Fetuses eat more food too, but eating food doesn't cause pregnancy.
    - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
      That's sort of true depending on the stage and type but not the causal mechanism behind why PET scans work. Fetuses can upcycle ketones to ATP, tumors can't.
      - mijoharas 6y ago
        It is exactly the causal mechanism behind PET scans.
        bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
        With respect, that's the dogma. We don't even teach the respiration and ketone metabolism pieces that Warburg found so interesting. We long ago declared the whole thing genetic when it looks much more likely to be metabolic and mitochondrial. See https://www.amazon.com/Cancer-Metabolic-Disease-Management-Prevention/dp/0470584920 https://www.amazon.com/Cancer-Metabolic-Disease-Management-P... For an introductory text.
  - mijoharas 6y ago
    So, it feels like you have cause and effect mixed up. Cancer cells are essentially just cells that outcompete other cells, which becomes a problem. They do this in a few different ways, accelerating their cell growth, and preventing the normal apoptosis process that would stop these cells from growing. Accelerated cell growth means a higher concentration of glucose is required. This means there is a very strong concentration of glucose in cancer cells, because cancer cells gather glucose to fuel their growth. This doesn't mean that if you get some healthy cells and expose them to higher than normal concentrations of glucose they will be more likely to become cancerous. In fact, that sounds like a well defined experiment. I'd be surprised if it hasn't been carried out.
    - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
      You're sidestepping the broken ketone metabolism that we know about in tumors. But anyway, your point about causation, that's why I said originally that it depends on your definition of causal here. We absolutely know that low carb and fasting leads to better outcomes. I'm not saying glucose magically turns cells cancerous, but it is the fuel - the only fuel - they can use. So in a sense our massive use of sugar is causal. There's even historical accounts of introducing sugar to cancer-free populations and they all get diabetes, cancer and bad teeth. See https://www.amazon.com/Cancer-disease-civilization-anthropological-historical/dp/B0007DXZQG https://www.amazon.com/Cancer-disease-civilization-anthropol... For a great example.
      - mijoharas 6y ago
        Ok, that's a fair point. If we change my hypothesised experiment to be add high glucose concentration to cells and look for a cancerous tumor that is greater than $size after $time, I think you'd find an effect (you can read about the effects of hyperglycaemia on cancer, and given that a cancer is present, it will grow more quickly in the presence of more glucose). I guess I wanted to clarify that glucose doesn't cause cancer, but I think I understand your point now, and I think we're in agreement.
        BoiledCabbage 6y ago
  - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
    I find the down votes fascinating. I'm literally listing facts of the process which anyone can check. Maybe cancer makes people uneasy or something, or they really like drinking coca cola? It strikes me as ironic too given the recent of essays on thought police and cancel culture. We need a new kind of social media perhaps where different subs (like subreddits) can have some rules like only able to vote if you're over 14 years old and this is verified. Or can only downvote if you haven't downvoted lately. Let people experiment with rules like that. Maybe we will find better communication methods by letting people play with those kinds of rules...?
    - non-entity 6y ago
      Tbh I've been wondering about what removing downvotes altogether would do. I imagine without a low effort way to attack the post, many people would simply ignore and move on. Some would probably engage in discussion, which could lead to either good (or neutral) discussion or bad discussion full of irrelevant attacks and trolling, but that's easy to take care of.
    - kryogen1c 6y ago
      > I'm literally listing facts The second post you made in reply to someone asking you to clarify is thought provoking and fact intensive. the first post you made is very unclear and its meaning is not obvious. I think you got downvoted because it was more easily (mis)interpreted as sarcasm or as a troll. HN does have a little bit of thought policing, but I dont think this was it. EDIT: specifically, the phrase "If you think long and hard" is rhetorically redundant and shifts the tone from helpful/discussional to condescending and patronizing. IMO, anyway, but also probably in the opinion of others as you got downvoted by others.
      - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
        Yeah I could phrase things better.

mijoharas 6y ago

> If you think long and hard about the core reason a PET scan works then it's inescapable that Coca Cola causes cancer Could you expand on this point? My background is in physics, and I think I've got a fair understanding of how PET scans work, but I think I'm missing the connection.

bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
Sure. Once you get a positive cancer diagnosis, or sometimes before, you give someone a PET scan to see if it's gone metastatic. A PET scan will "detect cancer" down to a few mm in resolution. It will only miss cancers smaller than that. It detects all cancers, though there is noise. What is it detecting? Positrons. From memory you dope glucose with decaying fluoride. You inject this or drink it after fasting. Fasting clears out (some or most) your blood glucose and some glycogen in your muscles and other places. So you get a rush of this glucose and it goes straight to the tumors. There, it emits higher amounts of positrons due to concentration (and maybe metabolization, I forget). So why does glucose go straight to tumors? Because tumors exclusively process glucose. The other pathway to ATP, fat (triglycerides to ketones etc) is broken. That's why a PET scan works. Sugar. The stuff in coca cola. Although today there's a lot of fructose too (fun fact, fructose is a poison just like alcohol). To go further, human beings didn't used to eat nearly the quantity of sugar or at the frequency we do today. You can become much healthier by fasting and avoiding carbs (which are in some ways one and the same thing). A similar analysis of dentistry will lead to the same conclusions.
- sukilot 6y ago
  Tumors eat more food, because that's what tumors are. Fetuses eat more food too, but eating food doesn't cause pregnancy.
  - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
    That's sort of true depending on the stage and type but not the causal mechanism behind why PET scans work. Fetuses can upcycle ketones to ATP, tumors can't.
    - mijoharas 6y ago
      It is exactly the causal mechanism behind PET scans.
      - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
        With respect, that's the dogma. We don't even teach the respiration and ketone metabolism pieces that Warburg found so interesting. We long ago declared the whole thing genetic when it looks much more likely to be metabolic and mitochondrial. See https://www.amazon.com/Cancer-Metabolic-Disease-Management-Prevention/dp/0470584920 https://www.amazon.com/Cancer-Metabolic-Disease-Management-P... For an introductory text.
- mijoharas 6y ago
  So, it feels like you have cause and effect mixed up. Cancer cells are essentially just cells that outcompete other cells, which becomes a problem. They do this in a few different ways, accelerating their cell growth, and preventing the normal apoptosis process that would stop these cells from growing. Accelerated cell growth means a higher concentration of glucose is required. This means there is a very strong concentration of glucose in cancer cells, because cancer cells gather glucose to fuel their growth. This doesn't mean that if you get some healthy cells and expose them to higher than normal concentrations of glucose they will be more likely to become cancerous. In fact, that sounds like a well defined experiment. I'd be surprised if it hasn't been carried out.
  - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
    You're sidestepping the broken ketone metabolism that we know about in tumors. But anyway, your point about causation, that's why I said originally that it depends on your definition of causal here. We absolutely know that low carb and fasting leads to better outcomes. I'm not saying glucose magically turns cells cancerous, but it is the fuel - the only fuel - they can use. So in a sense our massive use of sugar is causal. There's even historical accounts of introducing sugar to cancer-free populations and they all get diabetes, cancer and bad teeth. See https://www.amazon.com/Cancer-disease-civilization-anthropological-historical/dp/B0007DXZQG https://www.amazon.com/Cancer-disease-civilization-anthropol... For a great example.
    - mijoharas 6y ago
      Ok, that's a fair point. If we change my hypothesised experiment to be add high glucose concentration to cells and look for a cancerous tumor that is greater than $size after $time, I think you'd find an effect (you can read about the effects of hyperglycaemia on cancer, and given that a cancer is present, it will grow more quickly in the presence of more glucose). I guess I wanted to clarify that glucose doesn't cause cancer, but I think I understand your point now, and I think we're in agreement.
      - BoiledCabbage 6y ago
- bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
  I find the down votes fascinating. I'm literally listing facts of the process which anyone can check. Maybe cancer makes people uneasy or something, or they really like drinking coca cola? It strikes me as ironic too given the recent of essays on thought police and cancel culture. We need a new kind of social media perhaps where different subs (like subreddits) can have some rules like only able to vote if you're over 14 years old and this is verified. Or can only downvote if you haven't downvoted lately. Let people experiment with rules like that. Maybe we will find better communication methods by letting people play with those kinds of rules...?
  - non-entity 6y ago
    Tbh I've been wondering about what removing downvotes altogether would do. I imagine without a low effort way to attack the post, many people would simply ignore and move on. Some would probably engage in discussion, which could lead to either good (or neutral) discussion or bad discussion full of irrelevant attacks and trolling, but that's easy to take care of.
  - kryogen1c 6y ago
    > I'm literally listing facts The second post you made in reply to someone asking you to clarify is thought provoking and fact intensive. the first post you made is very unclear and its meaning is not obvious. I think you got downvoted because it was more easily (mis)interpreted as sarcasm or as a troll. HN does have a little bit of thought policing, but I dont think this was it. EDIT: specifically, the phrase "If you think long and hard" is rhetorically redundant and shifts the tone from helpful/discussional to condescending and patronizing. IMO, anyway, but also probably in the opinion of others as you got downvoted by others.
    - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
      Yeah I could phrase things better.