Sugar depleted diet is not a cure for cancer

One of the ideas that circulate among proponents of alternative therapy for cancer is that cancer thrives on sugar and because of this, cancer can be starved to death by avoiding to eat sugar.

It is claimed that the idea is backed up by hard core science – the Warburg effect, which landed the discoverer the Nobel Prize.

Today we know and understand that things are more complicated than that.

In this post we will attempt to simplify the biochemistry/physiology involved and explain why the idea of a sugar depleted diet as cancer treatment doesn’t work in the real world.

Health Ranger Mike Adams And The Death of Steve Jobs

As was to be expected, it didn’t take Mike Adams long to inform the world of the cause of Steve Job’s death. It was of course, as it always is, conventional cancer treatments – chemotherapy and radiation in particular – and not cancer, for in Mike Adams’s world-of-miracles-that-never-happen, there is no such thing as dying from cancer.

Alternative Medicine: Double Corruption

Last year we blogged about Kim Tinkham, who decided to treat her breast cancer with Robert O. Young’s alternative cancer treatment, which he proudly calls the “pH miracle” treatment.

On his website Young proclaimed that his pH miracle treatment had reversed Kim Tinkham’s cancer. Apparently Kim believed him, for she allowed Young to use her in several of his YouTube videos, in which she touted his treatment and stated that it had cured her of her breast cancer.

Why Are Breast Cancer Rates Increasing? Cancer Research UK Provides Some Answers

Breast cancer survival rates have been gradually improving for the past decades and more women are surviving breast cancer than ever before: 8 out of 10 women will now survive the disease for more than five years.  For stage I breast cancers the survival rate is even higher: 9 out of 10.

The downside is that the incidence rate of the disease has also gone up,  and the risk of developing breast cancer is now as high as 1 in 8. Sounds depressing, and the question of course is: why?

In their latest blog post, Cancer Research UK discuss some of the possible explanations.

Luckily, there are a number of things that we can all do to lower our risk of developing cancer:

• don’t smoke – or if you do, stop now
• limit your alcohol intake
• keep active
• mind your body weight
• eat sensibly
• avoid sunburn

Quack Victim Kim Tinkham Dies of Breast Cancer

I just read on Orac’s Respectful Insolence that Kim Tinkham has died of breast cancer.

A few years ago Kim Tinkham was diagnosed with breast cancer. Inspired by Australian Rhonda Byrne’s book The Secret, she decided to treat her cancer with alternative therapy only.

An important part of Kim Tinkham’s treatment seems to have been Robert O. Young’s acid based therapy, which claims that cancer is always caused by excess acid in the body and consequently the only way to cure it is by adhering to an “alkaline” diet.

On several occasions, Tim Kinkham publicly claimed she was cured of her breast cancer thanks to alternative therapy. She appeared in several of Robert Young’s promotional videos (most of which have now been removed) and was touted by him as one of his success stories.

Kim Tinkham also appeared on the Oprah Show, where she explained how The Secret’s “law of attraction”, which claims that we attract what we think and feel, had inspired her and led to her cure.

Sadly, it was not to be.

The Curious Case Of Hollie Quinn And Her Miraculous Cancer Cure

Through a tweet by Blue Wode, who runs the brilliant website ebm-first, I learned of Hollie Quinn and her miraculous cancer cure.

At 27, Hollie Quinn was pregnant with her first child when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In an article on the Huffington Post we are told that Hollie Quinn decided to decline conventional cancer care and treat her cancer with alternative treatments only. And successfully so, for she is still alive and healthy to this day, eight years later. To inspire other cancer patients, she and her husband wrote a book about her extraordinary experience.

Extraordinary indeed. 

Acid, Alkaline Diets, pH Balance And Cancer

There are a number of physiological processes which are so vital to our survival that meddling with them in any way would mean almost certain death.

Maintaining the pH of our blood is one of these vital activities.

Stephen Serenelli’s Scientology Cancer Diet Experience: Read It And Weep

On October 26, 2004, Stephen Serenelli died of bowel cancer.

Initially he was treated conventionally, but under the strong influence of his wife Eileen and Ian Shillington, a naturopathic doctor and Scientologist, he decided to follow alternative treatments only.

The alternative treatments made him feel weak and miserable and resulted in his tumour becoming inoperable. This almost certainly shortened his life considerably and seriously compromised his quality of life. The fact that the alternative treatments wore him out so much may have decreased his survival time even more.

Shortly before his death, Serenelli wrote a letter to his ND Ian Shillington. Serenelli also kept a diary during his illness.

Flora’s Death from Cervical Cancer: How Belief in Macrobiotics Killed my Wife

By Dutch ex-politician Roel van Duijn. Originally published by Stichting Skepsis.

How Belief in Macrobiotics Killed my Wife

Recently I saw my ex-wife again. She was dying. The hot August sun shone through the thin curtains, just as it had done when our daughter was born, eight years ago

We were just married then. An exciting dream. The atmosphere in our home had been sweet and victorious the day that she came up the stairs with the results of a cervical smear. It was PAP-5, unquiet cells in situ. Right away the doctor called too, to make it clear to me. ‘Immediate danger of cancer’, he said, ‘but no reason for panic. Cervical cancer can be effectively prevented in this stage by removing a conical piece of tissue from the cervix. That’s called conisation. I can recommend a good gynaecologist’.