Opinions? Curing Cancer From The Inside Out

[Baggy]

I would also like to point out that an Okinawan diet != vegan diet. Perhaps the greater life expectancy is down to the fish in their diet, or perhaps it's down to genetics, perhaps there are a thousand lifestyle factors that all contribute towards small increases in life expectancy, and diet is just one of them, perhaps if they stopped eating tofu their life expectancy would increase...

[ObiWanKenobi]

My grand pa was literally a chain smoker for over 50 years, and lived over 90 years (true story).
So can i say smoking has no effect on health?

Are you arguing against me, or against yourself here?

I think all that your personal anecdote shows is that genetics is a greater factor than lifestyle when it comes to life expectancy.

It's just a question. I know it, he smoked even in his 90s one after the another, i saw it when is visited him.
So proof that smoking has no evil effect on health?
If yes, explain me why? Do I have a proof that smoking is not harmful for health (my grandpa)?
Why then it is well-know that smoking is harmful? Or actually it is not?

[LMM]

The trouble with vegan propaganda ideas like "veganism cures / protects against cancer", is that they have a habit of filtering through. I overheard a couple talking in a vegan cafe the other day. One was explaining to the other how meat causes all cancers and that by going vegan she was guaranteeing herself a life free from cancer. This is plainly not true (vegans do get cancer, I'm sure there must be people on this board who can testify to that fact).

I believe there are at least three of us.

4. Person goes vegan, believes the anti-cancer lie. Person gets cancer and blames him/herself for not doing enough to prevent cancer. Person spirals off into ever more extreme raw food / fruitarian diets in the mistaken hope that a more "pure" diet can cure them.

Too true. This is the trap I fell into for a (thakfully short) while. As I mentioned before, on diagnosis with breast cancer I reread Jane Plant's book 'Your Life In Your Hands'; it doesn't even recommend a vegan diet just a dairy-free one, which Plant claims will prevent and cure breast cancer.

I'm not sure what benefit I thooght rereading it would have - was I perhaps not not eating dairy as effectively as she didn't eat dairy?

I also embarked on a diet almost identical to the Gerson diet - which had me throwing up from the huge quantities of juice and vitamin pills , and too weary to get out of bed in the morningand face the dreary food and the dreary routine of juicing ahead of me.

A fifth danger to add to Baggy's list is that someone believing their vegan diet will protect them against cancer may ignore symptoms of possible cancer until it's too late.

[Baggy]

My grand pa was literally a chain smoker for over 50 years, and lived over 90 years (true story).
So can i say smoking has no effect on health?

Are you arguing against me, or against yourself here?

I think all that your personal anecdote shows is that genetics is a greater factor than lifestyle when it comes to life expectancy.

It's just a question. I know it, he smoked even in his 90s one after the another, i saw it when is visited him.
So proof that smoking has no evil effect on health?
If yes, explain me why? Because i have a proof that smoking is not harmful (my grandpa)?
Why then it is well-know that smoking is harmful? Or actually it is not?

Statistics.

If you take a group of 1000 randomly selected smokers, and another group of 1000 randomly selected non-smokers, more of the non-smoking group will reach 90 than those in the smoking group. That's not to say that none of the smokers will reach 90. You can't look at one example and use that as proof that (for instance) smoking is not harmful. Because other factors come into play.

But we're getting off-topic. I'm not sure what your point is.

[ObiWanKenobi]

@gelert

Expression of tumour critical protein metabolism is downregulated, not protein metabolism in general.

Quote:
"... Pathway analysis identified significant modulation of biological processes that have critical roles in tumorigenesis, including protein metabolism and modification, intracellular protein traffic, and protein phosphorylatio ... we conducted pathway analysis using the PANTHER algorithm (21), which identified significant modulation of biological processes with critical roles in tumorigenesis among the genes down-regulated after intervention (Figs. 3 and 4, Table 3, and Dataset S3) ... "

[ObiWanKenobi]

Statistics.

If you take a group of 1000 randomly selected smokers, and another group of 1000 randomly selected non-smokers, more of the non-smoking group will reach 90 than those in the smoking group. That's not to say that none of the smokers will reach 90. You can't look at one example and use that as proof that (for instance) smoking is not harmful. Because other factors come into play.

But we're getting off-topic. I'm not sure what your point is.

Right, absolutely. The point is that we are not talking about "wonder diets", just about statistics, and statistics indicate that there is a general positive effects of a predominant plant based diet on cancer risk like cigarette-smoking has a general negative effect on health. And a "100% plant based diet", unfortunately, is a vegan diet.
But a vegan diet definitely can not avoid 100% of occurrence of cancers, like extreme smoking will not 100% induce lung cancer.

[ObiWanKenobi]

@Baggy

And regarding genetics:
As far as I know according to scientists the genetic factor varies depending on cancer from 2% to 5%, and some even come up to 10%.

[Gelert]

As far as I know according to scientists the genetic factor varies depending on cancer from 2% to 5%, and some even come up to 10%.

That's bollocks. We've already seen the far greater impact on relative risk by having first degree relatives than ANY figure for diet has provided to date.

@gelert

Tumour critical expression of protein metabolism is upregulated, not protein metabolism in general.

Quote:
"... Pathway analysis identified significant modulation of biological processes that have critical roles in tumorigenesis, including protein metabolism and modification, intracellular protein traffic, and protein phosphorylatio ... we conducted pathway analysis using the PANTHER algorithm (21), which identified significant modulation of biological processes with critical roles in tumorigenesis among the genes down-regulated after intervention (Figs. 3 and 4, Table 3, and Dataset S3) ... "

You don't understand the first thing about how cancer occurs, do you?

A very quick lesson on molecular carcinogenesis.



What causes cancer is encapsulated in what's called Knudson's two hit hypothesis. You have to have damage to two seperate classes of genes.

First you must have damage to proto-oncogenes, and second you must have damage to tumour suppressor genes. In the healthy cell, the undamaged forms of these genes set the pace of cell division.

But if they get damaged by mutations, the pace of cell division goes haywire. Proto-oncogenes become oncogenes, and push cell division, and tumour suppressor genes fail to put a halt to the silly business.

All kinds of things go wrong in the cell's biology as a result. Suddenly you can have thousands of unchecked gene mutations, as you do in the genome of lung cancer genome cells, or cells in your gut start making teeth.

These processes are at the bottom end of that diagram. They do not cause cancer. Some of cancer's effects include deranging them, and derangements in the order of a few of them help the tumour to grow, provided the cancer is there in the first place. Which it isn't in the tissue they sampled.

And so that they change in normal healthy tissue tells us absolutely NOTHING because it's normal, healthy tissue. They're changing all the time anyway. They're changing in non-cancerous bits of you and me right now. They change if you've just had lunch and have a sudden boost in amino acids from your tofu sandwich. They are in flux, like nothing else you can imagine.

So because it's not cancerous tissue, it tells us nothing.

And the only analyses of how their cancers were doing SHOWED NO CHANGES.

Can I make this any clearer to you without breaking out the crayons?

[ObiWanKenobi]

You don't understand the first thing about how cancer occurs, do you?

I would be careful with such terms like "how cancer occurs".

How cancer really occurs is STILL a mystery / not clarified!

If otherwise we knew it, there wouldn't be any cancer any more.

Don't need your "lesson" about "how cancer occurs", because this is just one hypothesis of many.

[ObiWanKenobi]

So because it's not cancerous tissue, it tells us nothing.

And the only analyses of how their cancers were doing SHOWED NO CHANGES.

Can I make this any clearer to you without breaking out the crayons?

Showed? Nothing was shown. There was NO analysis of their tumour material, because there wasn't sufficient tumour tissue available for that. But the healthy tissue showed tumour reducing modifications, and a tumour needs his surrounding healthy tissue to build up blood vessels.

[ObiWanKenobi]

That's bollocks. We've already seen the far greater impact on relative risk by having first degree relatives than ANY figure for diet has provided to date.

Give me per cent figures how many cancer occurrences are due to genetic factors, for various types of cancer.

[Gelert]

I already have. See the list of RRs I gave and the effect of having first degree relatives, for example.

You don't understand the first thing about how cancer occurs, do you?

I would be careful with such terms like "how cancer occurs".

How cancer really occurs is STILL a mystery / not clarified!

If otherwise we knew it, there wouldn't be any cancer any more.

Don't need your "lesson" about "how cancer occurs", because this is just one hypothesis of many.

Well it's obviously a much greater mystery to you than most people with an such a sustained interest in cancer.

This is not hypothesis, it has been strongly accepted within the field of cancer research. It was first proposed in 1953 and reams of scientific publications providing ever greater detail have proved it right on all kinds of molecular levels. Even yer man Dean Ornish would agree!



PS: did you know that the diet Ornish put those men on included 3 grams of fish oil a day....I think your argument for a vegan diet having an effect just finally and irreversibly went down the toilet. First you use rats and now you try passing off a pescotarian diet as a vegan one...gtfo!

[LMM]

How cancer really occurs is STILL a mystery / not clarified!

If otherwise we knew it, there wouldn't be any cancer any more.

How cancer occurs is well understood. It is why it occurs, what causes that process to begin, that is the mystery.

[ObiWanKenobi]

PS: did you know that the diet Ornish put those men on included 3 grams of fish oil a day....I think your argument for a vegan diet having an effect just finally and irreversibly went down the toilet. First you use rats and now you try passing off a pescotarian diet as a vegan one...gtfo!

Still big part is saturated fats. The other part is omega 3 which fish get from algae (plants). So why such a detour, why not taking EPA and DHA directly from algea?

I can do without a "strongly accepted theory" with millions of deaths every year worldwide. This theory needs an update.

[ObiWanKenobi]

How cancer really occurs is STILL a mystery / not clarified!

If otherwise we knew it, there wouldn't be any cancer any more.

How cancer occurs is well understood. It is why it occurs, what causes that process to begin, that is the mystery.

I've talked at least to three hospital directors (oncology) and they said exactly this to me, dear LMM, you know it better?