
Life as a cancer patient: ‘it feels like dying from the drugs meant to save me’ - SZJX
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/sep/26/life-as-a-cancer-patient
======
geofffox
I am a pancreatic cancer survivor. It is considered incurable in 2019 and I'm
here because of a 1930s era surgery called a Whipple procedure. Around 9%
survive five years or more -- a number that hasn't really changed.

In a belt plus suspenders move I underwent 2 rounds (six infusions per round)
of chemo plus 28 consecutive weekdays of radiation after surgery. All my
doctors are amazed at my recovery, a few saying the best they've seen (though
it came with diabetes and a different digestive pathway).

Chemo was awful. Mine came with a bag of steroids first to mask the effects
for a few days. I scheduled my sessions for Thursday, knowing it wouldn't hit
me until Friday night. One Saturday I slept around 20 hours.

However, by the end we had figured out how to minimize the effect of the
chemo. I needed my wife who watched me diligently. Cancer is not a one person
job! She made sure every time I opened my eyes I stayed hydrated and ate
something.

Chemo should have gotten worse. It actually got easier.

My cancer never caused me pain. The treatment... that's another story. I left
the hospital with my belly held together by 16 staples.

~~~
jcims
Trying to help my wife through chemo now, and the staying hydrated and eating
something is kicking our butts. Her oncologist believes that her nausea is due
to directly to disease progression and it's relentless.

We're now on a regimen of phenergen every 6 hours but that just prevents
cyclic nausea from occurring AND it knocks her out to where she's sleeping at
least 20 hrs a day. Then when she wakes up she can only eat a little bit or
she'll throw it back up. For hydration we finally just got home health giving
her a liter twice a week plus a liter at chemo once a week.

She just recently over the past day or two has started to be able to hold a
bit more down, but she's essentially got a form of PTSD from throwing up 5-10
times a day for 2-3 months.

Congrats to you on beating it man, especially pancreatic. This stuff really
sucks.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Dehydration itself can make a person nauseous.

You don't have to take anything orally to treat dehydration. A bath or shower
can help with hydration at times when she can't stand to take anything orally.

Dehydration isn't always as simple as a lack of fluids. It can also be
impacted by a lack of electrolytes and inadequate fat.

So it may help to add salt to the bath. Table salt can be problematic for
someone in frail health because of the additives. Sea salt, kosher salt or
_canning and pickling_ salt won't have those additives. You can probably find
the latter two readily at a local grocery store. Good sea salt can be ordered
online.

If fluids and electrolytes are insufficient and you think she may need more
fat, this can also be remedied without giving her anything by mouth.

Coconut oil is high in medium chain triglycerides. These can be used directly
by the body without being broken down via digestion, so the body can absorb it
if it is applied topically (to the skin).

Coconut oil has a long history of being medically recommended by the medical
establishment for people with serious gut issues, such as folks being treated
for stomach cancer.

Don't overdo it though because it can promote nausea and diarrhea, especially
when taken in large quantities. You want to do small amounts regularly so the
body can handle it, not start with a tablespoon of oil at a time. That will
not go happy places.

Coconut oil is a little on the sweet side, so some people don't like cooking
with it because of how it impacts flavor. As an alternative, butter is a
decent source of medium chain triglycerides.

Clarifying butter to make ghee can remove elements that some people don't
tolerate well. This can be helpful to people in frail health as an alternative
to oils they aren't tolerating well while sick.

~~~
jcims
Hey the coconut oil suggestion is awesome, thank you so much! I'll definitely
look at getting some quality oil and adding it to our regimen. I tinkered with
MCT oils and whatnot in the past for my own health and have definitely
'greased the chute' by accident lol.

Totally agree on the side effects of dehydration. I could see the cycle
happening over the course of a week or two and we'd end up in the ER (8 times
in the last four months now). We've finally got her set up with a port and
have home health services coming by mondays and fridays with hydration (and
labs). Then she gets a bit more during weekly chemo on Weds. We're only a week
into it and it is already showing benefit.

Thanks again for the suggestions!

~~~
DoreenMichele
Keep an eye on the port. If they aren't kept adequately clean and end up
infected, it's ugly from what I gather.

Best.

~~~
jcims
Yep. There's a whole protocol that the nursing staff has to do when they
'access' (aka stick) it. Extra disinfectant, both my wife and the nurse wear a
mask, then an adhesive cover applied right after the catheter is put in.

The way it was described is that the port doesn't have an immune system, so
infection can camp out there. They said that if she got any kind of bacterial
infection anywhere they may need to remove it because the infection can spread
there and hang out.

That said, she's super stoked to have it (finally). My wife's arm's look like
she's the world's worst junkie. Giant bruises up and down both because she's
always been hard to get started with standard IVs and they've wrecked the
veins in both arms. :/

~~~
athriren
Hang in there, one stranger to another.

~~~
jcims
Thanks !!!

------
joshgel
Traditional chemotherapy is toxic to all cells. Cancer cells grow rapidly
(part of what makes them dangerous). So the toxic effect gets the cancer cells
first, since cells that are growing take up the most chemotherapy. But other
cells grow rapidly too, like hair and intestinal cells, which is why cancer
patients lose their hair and have terrible nausea/diarrhea.

All (almost all?) cells take up some chemo. So, you are actually dying, just
hopefully more slowly than the cancer. And then we stop the chemo before you
all the way die.

This is why the bar for a cancer diagnosis is so high. We need biopsies to try
to get as close to 100% accurate diagnosis as possible.

~~~
nextos
That's right. Chemotherapy is, sadly, a very primitive treatment.

I regret we have spent so much money on cancer genomics, when some outsiders
where trying to push for immunotherapies. Thankfully, that changed 3 or 4
years ago.

~~~
imglorp
Cut, burn, and poison: well practiced and sometimes effective but yeah it's
horrific to experience and barbaric.

I regret we aren't spending more on both genomics AND immunotherapies AND
whatever else bears exploring.

~~~
niketdesai
I am quite optimistic IO and cell based therapies will minimize these
techniques. But there's more baking to be done before they can be rolled out.
The "primitive" techniques can be quite reliable for specific cancer variants.

------
cosmic_shame
In pharmacy school I was told the paradigm in infections diseases was to
identify the amount of medication to kill the pathogen, then give a little
more. In oncology, it's to identify the amount of medication that would kill
the patient, then give a little less.

~~~
stordoff
I've heard it put similarly bluntly - you hope the chemo kills the cancer
before it kills you. I know a few people who are actively undergoing
chemotherapy, and my grandfather died of pancreatic cancer (metastasised to
liver IIRC), and it's quite clear the heavy tole it takes on them.

------
Gatsky
Visual loss is a very rare side effect of chemotherapy, and permanent visual
loss even rarer. The more common and no less serious side effects of heart
muscle damage and secondary leukemia are not mentioned in the tagline, being
ill-suited as click bait I presume.

I have given the chemotherapy described here to many patients. There is wide
variation in how patients experience chemotherapy. Some finish and tell me it
wasn't as bad as they expected. I'm quite sure they only tell me things like
this in the privacy of the consulting room. They would never say this to
another patient in the waiting room. They feel bad for not having had the kind
of widely publicised terrible experience.

Beyond the tagline, the account is reasonably accurate, although at times
indulges in melodrama, about mitochondria of all things. It also doesn't do a
good job of talking about the cognitive dysfunction associated with
chemotherapy. This is a complex issue. In randomised trials, patients
receiving placebo cancer treatments tend to report high rates of some
cognitive problems. That chemotherapy itself is causal in every case is
certainly in doubt. The mere experience of being diagnosed with cancer as you
might imagine can have profound cognitive effects.

I am not quibbling for the sake of it. There are patients who decide not to
have chemotherapy, and sometimes what they have heard about the experience
from 'alternate' channels (such as newspaper taglines) has an out-sized
influence on their decision. This is why a responsible editorial team would
have had this article reviewed by medical professionals and patient advocates,
and taken their advice about more judicious highlighting of potential side-
effects. The article also doesn't quite deal with the fact that triple
negative breast cancer is a really bad disease to have. Metastatic disease has
a median overall survival of 18 months. If chemotherapy had not completely
eradicated the cancer as it did in her case (the chances are about 50-50), 40%
of patients develop metastatic disease in 3 years.

------
sfjailbird
Chemotherapy is scary. It seems so counterintuitive to choose to inflict this
kind of damage to oneself, in the hopes that it will prevent an even worse
outcome.

Part of it is that there is this nagging feeling that it might not even be the
right approach, given the legion of side effects of all kinds. Even
oncologists get vague and evasive when this is questioned. In the end we can
only rely on generalized statistics about survival rates, unsure of how it
applies to individual situations.

I disagree with the anger people often show towards cancer. It's like people
project some kind of malignant personality onto the phenomenon. I think of it
as a natural part of life, like early hair loss. You can die from it, but
death comes anyway, for one reason or another. At least with cancer you have
time to get used to the idea, unlike an accident, heart attack or whatever. I
guess I am a bit of a fatalist.

~~~
md224
> It seems so counterintuitive to choose to inflict this kind of damage to
> oneself, in the hopes that it will prevent an even worse outcome.

Especially since the "worse outcome" \-- your own non-existence -- is the one
thing in the Universe you are guaranteed to never experience (though your
loved ones can experience your non-existence, and that can be a good reason to
try to avoid it).

~~~
huherto
> your own non-existence -

Why is it so hard to accept this? Why is it so scary?

~~~
cgriswald
I’m pretty accepting of it, and in a weird way kind of looking forward to
either “sleeping forever” or finding out I’m wrong about what happens. Still,
in certain moments thinking about it, I feel fear. I think it’s instinctual.

That said, I think I fear the moments before death more than death. I went to
the hospital recently for chest pain. Heart issues run in my family. Both
grandfathers and all but one of my uncles (on both sides) had heart attacks
before they were my current age. I do keep myself generally healthier than
they ever did, but of course a huge chunk of it is genetic. I didn’t feel I
was having a heart attack, but I didn’t know. (I wasn’t, I found out later.) I
felt a significant level of fear.

My fear wasn’t really focused on death, but on never leaving the hospital; on
the last time I did things being _the last time_ ; on being trapped, in a
sense, prevented from doing the things I still wanted to do; and leaving my
girlfriend and daughter to deal with either a protracted illness or my
absence.

Death itself wasn’t really a worry. I think I kind of grok that things won’t
be my problem anymore then and I’m cool with it. On the other hand, maybe
that’s just delusion. I’ll be third in line when they start handing out
immortality shots. (Trying to split the difference between flawed
implementations and over-regulation.) I think it’s just because I like to
live, but maybe I’m just afraid not to.

------
Lordarminius
A line from a passage I remember reading as a medical student, has stuck with
me after a decade and a half. It described anticancer therapies as having the
effect of "... poisoning patients to the edge of their existence..." It is not
my belief that the side effect profile of anti tumor drugs has improved much.

So, yeah. Treatments for cancer can suck just as badly as the disease itself.

~~~
FakeComments
That’s not just the effect, it’s the mechanism of action for chemo — right?

It takes advantage of cancers rerouting blood and being overly aggressive in
gathering resources to make those the first of your cells to die as you’re
poisoned to death, on the theory that there’s some slightly sublethal dosage
that kills only some of your cells (and hopefully, the cancerous ones).

~~~
Lordarminius
Different classes of anti-tumor drugs employ different mechanisms; some more
than one.

------
pcestrada
My father was diagnosed with lung cancer 4 years ago. He is on his third round
of chemo. I recommend reading "The Emperor of all Maladies" for an insightful
book on cancer. Even though medicine has made great progress fighting cancer,
the scorched earth approach is what most of these treatments come down to.

~~~
hieloz
PBS produced a documentary film named Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies in
2015, which is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2010 book The Emperor of
All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer,

------
anon1m0us
I knew two people who both got cancer about the same time. One said no to
chemo. The other said yes to chemo.

The differences in quality of life until death were _dramatic_. Neither had a
longer life than was expected had they not taken the chemo, but the one who
did lost hair, physical dexterity, then life. Suffered greatly.

The other one suffered much less, but still died.

The doctors all said take the drugs. You don't have to take the drugs. Do the
research. Chemo isn't always beneficial.

Sometimes... it's just _hope_.

~~~
dtech
I know someone who smoked a pack her day her whole life, and died at 90 while
remaining in good health for the age the decade before.

I know someone who never smoked in his life and got lung cancer at 52.

Does that mean anything? Should we now conclude that smoking prevents lung
cancer?

Quality of life, health, remaining lifetime, sickness progressions are all
very complex interactions. All you can do is what happens on average, and play
the odds based on that.

~~~
magic_beans
Dr. Gabor Maté theorizes that one's emotional state influences the expression
of cancer in people who smoke. A smoker who is constantly in a state of
emotional stress is much more likely to develop lung cancer than a smoker who
is not.

See: [https://drgabormate.com/preview/when-the-body-says-no-
chapte...](https://drgabormate.com/preview/when-the-body-says-no-chapter-one/)

------
cancerwriter
I struggled to read the Guardian article thanks to the overly purple prose (I
write professionally, that sort of writing really ticks me off), but the
comment discussion here is fascinating.

I’m a cancer patient, a year out of chemo. Almost 1.5 years ago I was given
2-3 years to live. Bladder cancer metastasized to lymph, liver and lungs is
not a good thing to have, apparently, and I was put onto a fairly aggressive
chemo course to try and hold it at bay for a while. The chemo was tough, but I
started an intensive treatment course of my own at the same time: cannabis
oil, large amounts every evening. It massively buffered my against the side
effects; I had a good appetite and my hair got a bit thin but never got too
bad. All the same I did very nearly die from sepsis a few days after I
finished my chemo course – cannabis can’t help when your immune system is
trashed and you pick up some normally minor and forgettable bug!

But the big deal for me is that scans now show “no evidence of disease” rather
than just shrunk and static. My consultant is saying this level of response is
unprecedented and he now expects to be having these meetings for years to
come. I know we need proper large-scale trials, I know I’m presenting an
anecdote here, and like most of y’all I’m suspicious of miracle cure stories.
But the results I have now are SO far beyond anything my oncology team ever
expected that I am convinced cannabis has played a significant part along with
the chemo in the cancer battle itself.

I’ve been documenting my experiences and listing my methods and techniques in
a blog. Is it acceptable to post the URL here?

~~~
nate_meurer
Yes, please do.

~~~
cancerwriter
The blog is at [https://cancerwriter.com/](https://cancerwriter.com/) and it
explains what I’ve done and how others can do it for themselves, in detail. At
the very least it brings great relief, and I do think it’s far more valuable
than just that.

~~~
nate_meurer
Thanks, I've been looking through it. I was really hoping for good news about
your treatment and I was happy to find it. Cannabinoids are an exciting
medical frontier and I think you're doing a good thing here.

------
killjoywashere
As someone doing cancer research and running a clinical lab, diagnosing cancer
every day, I read the accounts of folks with cancer with a certain degree of
lachesism. I want to know what this is. I know chickenpox and a broken leg and
I know what it's like to have a loved one with cancer. But the thing itself, I
do not know.

I spend every waking moment thinking about how to hunt cancer. It used to be
reflex, now it's been so long it's somewhere between habit and addiction. My
cognitive self knows I don't want cancer. But there's definitely a weird,
fucked up interest in what it's like.

~~~
srik
I have a lot of admiration towards your “obsession”; it way more meaningful
than any of mine, so respect! May I ask, in your opinion, what can I do to
lower my chances of getting cancer. So far, I monitor grilled meat
consumption, do yearly fasts and watch my carbs. I’d appreciate any advice :)

~~~
nugget
Cut out any food or drink that includes processed sugar.

Limit alcohol consumption, except for a few glasses per week of red wine.

Reduce intake of any animal products with hormones or artificial feed sources
in the supply chain.

RO filter water in the home, whether it’s to drink, cook with, or for other
uses.

Filter air in your home, especially if you live near pollution sources (e.g.
within 1500 ft of a major roadway). Make sure you buy an air filter with a
carbon/charcoal component.

Exercise 30 minutes per day, moderate cardio is fine.

Avoid cheaply processed home goods (think: dollar store inventory) in favor of
higher quality products, e.g. wood furniture instead of plastic or synthetic
material.

Avoid carpet and synthetic flooring materials in favor of porcelain tile or
natural wood.

Do most household cleaning with non toxic cleaners, e.g. vinegar based
products with few extra ingredients.

The rabbit hole goes deeper, but there’s a list to start.

------
nisa
cancer treatment can also cause cancer and does - it was likely the cause of
the death of my grandpa - but he got 10 more years due to a chemo-therapy from
an otherwise lethal cancer - fuck cancer.

------
brent_noorda
Being alive to criticize the treatment is usually better than the alternative.

~~~
niketdesai
You capture the nuance by saying usually.

Many people, logically, would arrive to this conclusion. When the treatment
starts, one is even energized. Then, in the middle a person regrets being so
optimistic at all. They find their assumption of life being better than death
more naive than they could have imagined.

It's not just the treatment. It is the wider picture of your life stopping.
And within that context your body, deteriorating, is only one component.

~~~
jcims
It's not really clear to me what people are asking for. If cancer pays a
visit, you have two main options:

1 - Don't treat the disease and either do nothing or basic palliative care.
The cancer is unlikely to go away on its own and will begin to spread to your
lungs and liver and brain and mutilate your body until it doesn't function and
you die. Less up front pain, possibly less area under the painful waking hours
curve, but almost certainly an early death.

2 - Treat using standard of care chemo/surgery/radiation. Doctors do the
mutilating and poisoning a bit more selectively, you lose dignity, bodily
functions, jobs, relationships and gain a stigma and a curse of uncertainty.
Maybe they get the upper hand and you live a life with lower but possibly
acceptable quality. Maybe they don't and you still die but possibly a bit more
slowly.

There's no good option yet. People are stuck between a rock and a hard place
right now. That's why you can't go more than a few hours without hearing about
cancer on TV and see walks and fundraisers and ribbons and shaved heads.

~~~
niketdesai
Yup. It's a challenging position for patients, caregivers, and medical
professionals alike. Each burdens the quandary in a different way.

------
scotty79
My gf had grade III brain cancer. She had chemo two times. As chemos go, the
one for brain cancer is fairly bening. The only side effect was nausea on
initial chemo dose. Easily countered by antiemetic given only before first few
initial doses, later withdrawn. The only other side effect was low blood cell
counts that didn't manifest any symptoms but caused chemo to be delayed by a
week till it recovered. Steroids given for brain swelling had more effect as
they increased her appetite and kept water in her body causing her face to
swell a bit. Ask your doctor for medication that amplifies urine production if
you are given steroids. That helped when she was given it for the second time.
Also after steroids were stopped her skin needed few weeks to recover from
being prone to acne.

Possibly the only drug that might have felt like it was killing her was the
morphine, as it can depress respiratory system, but at this stage there were
so many things that might have been killing her that it wasn't important.

------
chrisan
My wife worked in oncology for about 5 years as a clinical pharmd. She and all
of the doctors said they would never put themselves through chemo

------
algaeontoast
If I ever have a cancer diagnosis that would require extreme treatment or a
pro-longed period of suffering, i.e. stage 3 or 4, I'd seriously consider
shooting myself rather enduring months if not years of agony.

In theory I'd have insurance, however why put my family through years of
seeing me suffer and become a person they might not recognize?

~~~
adrianm
Because there is hope.

~~~
algaeontoast
My point wasn't about hope, I "hope" to live a life without years of agony.
Living through years of chemo on to live a diminished or slightly less-painful
life with a looming chance of the cancer re-occurring isn't a life I "hope" to
live.

------
pharaohgeek
Aspiring survivor of a stage 3 sarcoma here. I went through 8 months of
treatment in 2016. I had no symptoms, no pain, NOTHING prior to being
diagnosed. There was just a huge lump on my shoulder. The idea that I was
about to willingly pump poison into my body and make myself sick when I felt
perfectly fine was definitely hard to wrap my mind around. But, no question,
it was the right thing to do. I'm married and have 2 young kids. Telling them
I had cancer was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Thankfully, I live
near one of the world's best hospitals and had amazing doctors and nurses. My
treatment was in-patient and they kept me loaded full of fluids and anti-
nausea meds. Yes, those 9 months were grueling, but they were bearable. I'm
very fortunate. I've known others who've gone through much, much worse.

------
danieltillett
This is an alternative to maximum tolerated dosing chemotherapy (standard) and
it is called adaptive chemotherapy [0]. The aim with adaptive chemotherapy is
to just stop the cancer from growing larger and using the growth advantage of
the chemosensitive cancer cells to keep the resistant cells under control.
This approach is much easier on the patient. I would look very carefully at
this approach if I was ever in need of considering chemo.

0\.
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160224164357.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160224164357.htm)

------
DoreenMichele
I've had multiple relatives have cancer, some multiple times. Two relatives
had cancer twice. Another, five times. Assorted others had cancer at least
once.

I took care of a relative following a mastectomy. Making sure she got
adequately hydrated brought her fever down. I got two hours sleep her first
night back from the hospital because I devotedly pushed fluids at every
opportunity.

She coughed up phlegm after I made her get enough food and drink into her to
drop her temperature a degree. She said I probably prevented post-operative
pneumonia.

My late father had colon cancer in his late sixties. He lost a third of his
body weight before it was diagnosed.

My parents were told to get their affairs in order. He wasn't supposed to
live.

His surgery that was supposed to be two hours lasted six. The cancer was much
more extensive than they expected, but it hadn't invaded other organs. They
peeled it off the outside of them instead of cutting out parts of them.

He had a thirteen inch scar from sternum to pubic bone with a dent going
around his belly button. My mother treated the scar with German Penaten cream
and treated his skin with Penaten cream.

Her mother died from uterine cancer when my mother was in her teens. My mother
was convinced that radiation treatments killed her mother. She always had some
excuse why my dad couldn't make one of his radiation treatments every week.

He lived about another two decades.

The cancer clinic at Martin Army Hospital was impressed with the condition of
dad's scar and asked what they were doing. My mother explained it was the
Penaten cream. They added it to their regime.

After my father defied his sentence of death, the civilian cancer doctor that
treated him interviewed my mother on tape for two hours and changed the
practices of his clinic based on what she said. The doctor knew my mother is
the person who kept my dad alive.

Their big thing was hydration. They calculated how much fluids he needed and
they made sure he got enough every day. Caffeinated drinks and alcohol did not
count.

When he was too sick to eat, she made him homemade milkshakes or slushies once
or sometimes twice a day in place of meals. On not so bad days, I think she
used milk, good quality ice cream and fresh fruit. On super bad days, she used
ice, frozen fruit and fruit juice.

He was gaining so much weight during a time when most cancer patients are
continuing to lose weight that his doctor yelled at her to slow it down. He
had a long-standing heart condition and her doctor was afraid she was kill him
by putting too much strain on his heart with the rapid weight gain while he
was still undergoing treatment.

My mother wanted to be a doctor in her youth. She delivered babies in her
teens. She never got to be a doctor, but she was always patching someone up as
long as I can remember.

~~~
magic_beans
That's a lot of cancer in one family :/

------
agumonkey
I'm also very curious about oncolytic toxicity.

personal sad story: uncle diagnosed with stage4 (mets) in late dec, got rounds
of chemo 4 months after the diagnosis during which time the tumors didn't grow
(based on the few bits we could read in his file). But after the 3rd round his
health dropped to the floor, didn't last long after that. I believe the toll
on his system was just too high. And I'm curious what are the mechanisms at
play.

------
itissid
I cannot possibly fathom the terrible experience of cancer patients going
through chemo. My great hope though is that a bunch of these will be rendered
treatable with the immunotherapy solutions out there and being developed right
now, which though expensive today for most people today, might be bought down
by the demand supply mechanics of economics....

------
mannanj
I'm surprised no one has talked about diet here. Not a single one. There are
many cases of cancers being completed reversed by change of diet, many cancers
survive off of glucose and so switching to a fat based diet has helped many
people go into remission as well as dull and intensify the effects of
chemotherapy.

Cancer is a living biological cell after all and will prefer certain sources
of energy over others. Starve it of it's primary energy source (glucose) and
it will die. Human non-cancerous cells on the other hand are very versatile
and can survive off either fat or carbs. Sad how the first thing people would
rather do is try chemo than give up off their carb and sugar addictions.

~~~
guntars
Human brains survive exclusively on glucose, according to your theory they’d
die too.

~~~
rleigh
No. They can make use of glucose or ketone bodies. I recommend a biology
textbook before commenting on fairly basic and long-established facts.

However, even if they only metabolised glucose, the brain's requirement is for
a constant but low level supply. It doesn't need to be provided by a dietary
source; the body will synthesise it on demand from its energy stores. The
cancer will need to compete for that small quantity with the rest of the body,
which will limit its growth.

When you eat sugar, the body can't immediately store it since it takes time to
do so, and blood sugar levels spike for a period before reducing back to
baseline levels. During this time sugar is in great excess in the bloodstream
and tissues, and the cancer is able to utilise as much of it as it can, which
can result in its survival and growth.

The survival and growth of a cancer is largely based upon various kinetics,
proliferation rates vs death rates, and the evolution of a cancer through
selective pressure over time. One of the key switches is to anaerobic
metabolism. It lets them switch to lactate production to survive a lack of
oxygen. But it comes with a limitation: they are restricted to glucose and
other simple sugars to survive. By strictly limiting their availability, it
can have a significant effect upon tumour viability. Until it undergoes
another change under selective pressure, of course, but it's a simple and
potentially very effective course of action, without any great risk of harm.

------
anon91831837
Immuno-oncology and fasting are the future, but polychemotherapies still have
their uses.

