6 ms·

I'm active in a community for a health condition. There's a very standard, very effective treatment which is mildly uncomfortable and time-consuming. You can a

I'm active in a community for a health condition. There's a very standard, very effective treatment which is mildly uncomfortable and time-consuming. You can also do diet stuff. The diet stuff is about 20x less effective than the actual treatment, but that doesn't stop people from selling diets or not doing the treatment at all in favor of the diet. That's what I worry about with studies like these. If you have a thing, do the actual treatment, don't mess around with diet. Diet impacts everything but that doesn't mean it can do anything. Do the treatment! Not the diet. This thinking can corrupt anyone, famously even Steve Jobs.

ddorian43 3y ago
> You can also do diet stuff. I don't know your health condition, but this is not "diet stuff". It's pretty specific. Look "ketogenic diet for epilepsy". If you break it, you have symptoms very quickly. It IS a medicine. The grams of protein/fat/carbs were pretty extreme, it's not just "low carb" or "just keto" or "diet" or "eat healthy". The difference is that the diet works on some occasions where nothing works, or on some occasions it works very good. Things like DT2 (virtahealth.com), maybe soon for kidney disease (ex from today Feasibility and impact of ketogenic dietary interventions in polycystic kidney disease: KETO-ADPKD—a randomized controlled trial), many mental disorders (metabolicmind.org, virtahealth will try for depression too), etc.
- apwell23 3y ago
  > diet works on some occasions where nothing works Is there documented example of this for lung cancer ?
  - happytiger 3y ago
    Specifically: https://www.fortunejournals.com/articles/significance-of-calorierestricted-ketogenic-diet-for-lung-cancer.pdf https://www.fortunejournals.com/articles/significance-of-cal... > Conclusions: This study demonstrated the significant beneficial effect of a calorie-restricted ketogenic diet for two types of aggressive cancers with metastases. Even a brief KD intervention has a profound effect, implicating the significant therapeutic potential for the ketogenic diet as adjuvant therapy for cancer treatment. Obviously small sample size etc etc More generally: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6375425/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6375425/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10221628/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10221628/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212877819304272 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221287781... https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.594408/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.59440... It’s primarily as supporting therapy and quality of life, and is tumor specific, and at this time basically “more research is needed” effectively. I would love to hear from those more qualified.
  - ddorian43 3y ago
    I don't know. You can search & ask in /r/ketoscience
jassyr 3y ago
I also have a chronic condition and am experienced with what you're talking about. Personally I favor the approved treatment option, while also maintaining a healthy diet and exercise. I know what you mean though, there is a group of people that will reach for the low probability "cure." I think it's a personality trait of people who think they're in on a secret that no one else knows. Some combination of ignorance and arrogance. Keto operates in both worlds. There are real world, approved applications. Even with multiple sclerosis keto has been shown to help with fatigue and depression, but it's not yet an approved treatment. It probably will never be. On the other hand some people with MS tout keto as a cure, for which there is scant evidence.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Throwfi44 3y ago
Please tell me what "mildly unconfortable" solution is there for stage 4 cancer that *metastases* into brain? I only know of chemotherapy! People try diets (I prefer extended water fasting), because it affects everything! If cancer had spread into entire body, it is the only option, where you may keep your hair, and some sort of normal life!! It is also for free and does not bancrupt your family! Edit: I read the extract from study, keto was used AFTER chemotherapy to speedup recovery. Still, post chemo is nothing "mildly unconfortable". > Three months after the cessation of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, a ketogenic diet (KD) was initiated. This approach was an attempt to stabilize the disease progression after chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
- ddorian43 3y ago
  > People try diets (I prefer extended water fasting) One of the ideas of the epilepsy-keto-diet is to mimic fasting (children would stop seizures when fasting).
  - Throwfi44 3y ago
    You get the same benefits from water fasting, but without kidney stones. And you give a chance to your gut to heal. There is a clinic True North, they do medically supervised fasting, and have a bunch of studies.
    - ddorian43 3y ago
      People have chronic conditions, you can't water fast for 10 years. And you can't afford for your condition to re-activate every time you break the fast to eat.
- aamoyg 3y ago
  Full body radiation I think?
foxyv 3y ago
Yeah, don't just read the headline and think that keto is going to be enough to cure or even prevent cancer. This study is a single patient that went on a ketogenic diet AFTER chemo/radiation therapy and saw a .1 CM reduction. Nothing happened even after they stopped the keto diet. Always take extraordinary claims about cancer treatments with an asteroid sized grain of salt.
- lawlessone 3y ago
  The problem is this study is probably already being shared around social media by very questionable people who's interest is selling their diet book. People quite rightly talk about "big pharma" but ignore that diet fads and dodgy supplements are also a billion dollar industry that is far less regulated than the former. I watched a video yesterday where a doctor pointed that drugs to treat high blood cholesterol were more effective AND cheaper than Berberine. Still most of the comments where just calling him a shill for "big pharma" without even a little curiosity about the industry behind supplement's. The worst are the comments from people saying natural supplements worked for them... and then you see their account hasn't been active for 5 years :(
spondylosaurus 3y ago
No idea if we have the same health condition(s) but I know exactly the phenomenon you're talking about. It's interesting/funny how different communities display this at different levels, though: way too many people in the autoimmune arthritis groups try to brute force their way through with sketchy diets (spoiler alert, they don't prevent permanent skeletal damage the way medications do), but most (not all) people in the inflammatory bowel disease groups are like "for the love of god please give me every drug you've got." Doubly interesting that the conditions themselves are often comorbid and the medications that treat one frequently treat both. For cancer specifically, I've heard some pretty wild anecdotes about the Steve Jobs-esque diet truthers... and none that ended well. One guy told me that his dad had cancer, and the "shill doctors" were trying to push chemo, but his dad opted for some pressed juice(?) regimen instead, with apparent success. So I'm like "that's great, man, glad your dad is doing better" and he told me no, his dad did pass away... from getting chemo. Or so he claims. But it sounds to me like he really did just die of cancer.
- lawlessone 3y ago
  It could be that diet left him too weakened to survive chemo. A family member on it had to drink a lot of food replacement drinks to keep their nutrition and weight up during it.
  - spondylosaurus 3y ago
    That wouldn't surprise me. Paired with the fact that the juice diet probably didn't eradicate the cancer, so being chemo-weakened and cancer-weakened has to be a one-two punch for someone malnourished.
scythe 3y ago
I used to work in radiation oncology and I was treated with chemotherapy for testicular cancer. This study specifically states that the diet was used after the patient was treated with radiation and chemo. Anyone who has ever been anywhere near cancer treatment knows that there is a tolerability limit for practically all cancer treatments and that this is one of the most difficult decisions clinicians have to make every day, between a patient in obvious agony and another cycle of treatment increasing the chance of recovery from 20% to 23%. Of course, in the United States of Financiers, the insurer will also have something to say about it. So having another arrow in the quiver is something everyone can be grateful for.
lend000 3y ago
> do the actual treatment, don't mess around with diet No, you should do both. Telling people not to improve their diets is just as irresponsible as telling people not to take an effective medication. Especially in cases where there aren't effective treatments available, like some autoimmune and neurodegenerative disorders. This comes with all the obvious disclaimers like do your own research, make sure there is at least some evidence for the diet's overall healthiness and interactions so that it can't make things worse. Personally, I effectively cured a 2-year stint with long covid through diet (essentially a low sugar paleo diet). Within a few months I was able to exercise again without a fight or flight reaction after years of no improvement. Doctors (including one who was also battling long covid) told me there was nothing they could do to help, but they hoped that some of the experimental treatments like stellate ganglion block might eventually bear fruit. I could have waited around with a much lower quality of life, but instead I started the very difficult diet, and it paid off. There's plenty of snake oil out there, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The world isn't black and white. > very effective treatment which is mildly uncomfortable and time-consuming. I'm not certain, but it seems like you are implying that diet is the easier choice. This is almost never the case, broadly speaking. Perhaps it's different in your specific community. The difficulty of sticking to a diet and knowing what foods should actually be included and excluded from a diet is probably the most significant hurdle to treating conditions that could benefit from diet (especially early onset conditions related to overall health). This is mostly a consequence of what's available and affordable in America, but is nonetheless a significant setback for recommending diets. But where a good diets truly shine is in prevention. Just due to how unhealthy the modern American diet is, it's pretty easy to find benefit, so that should be a starting point alongside exercise when you don't have a cure-in-a-bottle handy.
- kyleyeats 3y ago
  The diet combined with the treatment does make things worse in the case of the condition I'm talking about. The world isn't black and white over here either. It's not cancer stakes but there are lots of people making themselves miserable with this "do both" approach.
  - 3y ago
anonymouse008 3y ago
First principles thinking says, if you remove the fuel and this stops replication while still allowing a host to live, that sounds like it should win outright. We only carry 3.3-7grams of glucose in the blood stream at one time. This is cycled quite frequently, but in the limit, that's all it takes to sustain and let cancer thrive. Jobs unfortunately screwed up the direction and ate plenty of sugars with his only fruit diet. My grandmother made the same mistake with breast cancer. Juices are basically cancer-gatorade.

ddorian43 3y ago

> You can also do diet stuff. I don't know your health condition, but this is not "diet stuff". It's pretty specific. Look "ketogenic diet for epilepsy". If you break it, you have symptoms very quickly. It IS a medicine. The grams of protein/fat/carbs were pretty extreme, it's not just "low carb" or "just keto" or "diet" or "eat healthy". The difference is that the diet works on some occasions where nothing works, or on some occasions it works very good. Things like DT2 (virtahealth.com), maybe soon for kidney disease (ex from today Feasibility and impact of ketogenic dietary interventions in polycystic kidney disease: KETO-ADPKD—a randomized controlled trial), many mental disorders (metabolicmind.org, virtahealth will try for depression too), etc.

apwell23 3y ago
> diet works on some occasions where nothing works Is there documented example of this for lung cancer ?
- happytiger 3y ago
  Specifically: https://www.fortunejournals.com/articles/significance-of-calorierestricted-ketogenic-diet-for-lung-cancer.pdf https://www.fortunejournals.com/articles/significance-of-cal... > Conclusions: This study demonstrated the significant beneficial effect of a calorie-restricted ketogenic diet for two types of aggressive cancers with metastases. Even a brief KD intervention has a profound effect, implicating the significant therapeutic potential for the ketogenic diet as adjuvant therapy for cancer treatment. Obviously small sample size etc etc More generally: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6375425/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6375425/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10221628/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10221628/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212877819304272 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221287781... https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.594408/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.59440... It’s primarily as supporting therapy and quality of life, and is tumor specific, and at this time basically “more research is needed” effectively. I would love to hear from those more qualified.
- ddorian43 3y ago
  I don't know. You can search & ask in /r/ketoscience

jassyr 3y ago

I also have a chronic condition and am experienced with what you're talking about. Personally I favor the approved treatment option, while also maintaining a healthy diet and exercise. I know what you mean though, there is a group of people that will reach for the low probability "cure." I think it's a personality trait of people who think they're in on a secret that no one else knows. Some combination of ignorance and arrogance. Keto operates in both worlds. There are real world, approved applications. Even with multiple sclerosis keto has been shown to help with fatigue and depression, but it's not yet an approved treatment. It probably will never be. On the other hand some people with MS tout keto as a cure, for which there is scant evidence.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Throwfi44 3y ago

Please tell me what "mildly unconfortable" solution is there for stage 4 cancer that *metastases* into brain? I only know of chemotherapy! People try diets (I prefer extended water fasting), because it affects everything! If cancer had spread into entire body, it is the only option, where you may keep your hair, and some sort of normal life!! It is also for free and does not bancrupt your family! Edit: I read the extract from study, keto was used AFTER chemotherapy to speedup recovery. Still, post chemo is nothing "mildly unconfortable". > Three months after the cessation of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, a ketogenic diet (KD) was initiated. This approach was an attempt to stabilize the disease progression after chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

ddorian43 3y ago
> People try diets (I prefer extended water fasting) One of the ideas of the epilepsy-keto-diet is to mimic fasting (children would stop seizures when fasting).
- Throwfi44 3y ago
  You get the same benefits from water fasting, but without kidney stones. And you give a chance to your gut to heal. There is a clinic True North, they do medically supervised fasting, and have a bunch of studies.
  - ddorian43 3y ago
    People have chronic conditions, you can't water fast for 10 years. And you can't afford for your condition to re-activate every time you break the fast to eat.
aamoyg 3y ago
Full body radiation I think?

foxyv 3y ago

Yeah, don't just read the headline and think that keto is going to be enough to cure or even prevent cancer. This study is a single patient that went on a ketogenic diet AFTER chemo/radiation therapy and saw a .1 CM reduction. Nothing happened even after they stopped the keto diet. Always take extraordinary claims about cancer treatments with an asteroid sized grain of salt.

lawlessone 3y ago
The problem is this study is probably already being shared around social media by very questionable people who's interest is selling their diet book. People quite rightly talk about "big pharma" but ignore that diet fads and dodgy supplements are also a billion dollar industry that is far less regulated than the former. I watched a video yesterday where a doctor pointed that drugs to treat high blood cholesterol were more effective AND cheaper than Berberine. Still most of the comments where just calling him a shill for "big pharma" without even a little curiosity about the industry behind supplement's. The worst are the comments from people saying natural supplements worked for them... and then you see their account hasn't been active for 5 years :(

spondylosaurus 3y ago

No idea if we have the same health condition(s) but I know exactly the phenomenon you're talking about. It's interesting/funny how different communities display this at different levels, though: way too many people in the autoimmune arthritis groups try to brute force their way through with sketchy diets (spoiler alert, they don't prevent permanent skeletal damage the way medications do), but most (not all) people in the inflammatory bowel disease groups are like "for the love of god please give me every drug you've got." Doubly interesting that the conditions themselves are often comorbid and the medications that treat one frequently treat both. For cancer specifically, I've heard some pretty wild anecdotes about the Steve Jobs-esque diet truthers... and none that ended well. One guy told me that his dad had cancer, and the "shill doctors" were trying to push chemo, but his dad opted for some pressed juice(?) regimen instead, with apparent success. So I'm like "that's great, man, glad your dad is doing better" and he told me no, his dad did pass away... from getting chemo. Or so he claims. But it sounds to me like he really did just die of cancer.

lawlessone 3y ago
It could be that diet left him too weakened to survive chemo. A family member on it had to drink a lot of food replacement drinks to keep their nutrition and weight up during it.
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  That wouldn't surprise me. Paired with the fact that the juice diet probably didn't eradicate the cancer, so being chemo-weakened and cancer-weakened has to be a one-two punch for someone malnourished.

scythe 3y ago

I used to work in radiation oncology and I was treated with chemotherapy for testicular cancer. This study specifically states that the diet was used after the patient was treated with radiation and chemo. Anyone who has ever been anywhere near cancer treatment knows that there is a tolerability limit for practically all cancer treatments and that this is one of the most difficult decisions clinicians have to make every day, between a patient in obvious agony and another cycle of treatment increasing the chance of recovery from 20% to 23%. Of course, in the United States of Financiers, the insurer will also have something to say about it. So having another arrow in the quiver is something everyone can be grateful for.

lend000 3y ago

> do the actual treatment, don't mess around with diet No, you should do both. Telling people not to improve their diets is just as irresponsible as telling people not to take an effective medication. Especially in cases where there aren't effective treatments available, like some autoimmune and neurodegenerative disorders. This comes with all the obvious disclaimers like do your own research, make sure there is at least some evidence for the diet's overall healthiness and interactions so that it can't make things worse. Personally, I effectively cured a 2-year stint with long covid through diet (essentially a low sugar paleo diet). Within a few months I was able to exercise again without a fight or flight reaction after years of no improvement. Doctors (including one who was also battling long covid) told me there was nothing they could do to help, but they hoped that some of the experimental treatments like stellate ganglion block might eventually bear fruit. I could have waited around with a much lower quality of life, but instead I started the very difficult diet, and it paid off. There's plenty of snake oil out there, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The world isn't black and white. > very effective treatment which is mildly uncomfortable and time-consuming. I'm not certain, but it seems like you are implying that diet is the easier choice. This is almost never the case, broadly speaking. Perhaps it's different in your specific community. The difficulty of sticking to a diet and knowing what foods should actually be included and excluded from a diet is probably the most significant hurdle to treating conditions that could benefit from diet (especially early onset conditions related to overall health). This is mostly a consequence of what's available and affordable in America, but is nonetheless a significant setback for recommending diets. But where a good diets truly shine is in prevention. Just due to how unhealthy the modern American diet is, it's pretty easy to find benefit, so that should be a starting point alongside exercise when you don't have a cure-in-a-bottle handy.

kyleyeats 3y ago
The diet combined with the treatment does make things worse in the case of the condition I'm talking about. The world isn't black and white over here either. It's not cancer stakes but there are lots of people making themselves miserable with this "do both" approach.
- 3y ago

anonymouse008 3y ago

First principles thinking says, if you remove the fuel and this stops replication while still allowing a host to live, that sounds like it should win outright. We only carry 3.3-7grams of glucose in the blood stream at one time. This is cycled quite frequently, but in the limit, that's all it takes to sustain and let cancer thrive. Jobs unfortunately screwed up the direction and ate plenty of sugars with his only fruit diet. My grandmother made the same mistake with breast cancer. Juices are basically cancer-gatorade.