When we read an article like this:



it would be natural to wonder what she ate. And, of course, the article does not give any details of her "natural healing" regimen.

But this case, huge in Australia, has been followed closely on the Jack Kruse forums. Because despite calling herself Paleo, what she ate, mostly, was carbs.




And she took it a step further, tweeting out a constant stream of Paleo desserts to her followers.

I'm deeply sorry for all she suffered; her choices were stark and none of them were good.

But for those who think, as I do, that the metabolic theory of cancer holds great promise, this sad story is simply about what doesn't work.

Sad, as it appears she was introducing large amounts of the very food source on which cancer thrives. Not saying this was the cause, and a pure ketogenic approach may not have been effective depending on the circumstances, but we do know that cancer thrives on glucose, and that would be the first thing to eliminate by using dietary controls.

Thanks, that was the point I wished to make. Such incidents further undercuts the dignity of dietary approaches by lumping ketogenic efforts into this same, non-scientific, boat.

Part of my fervor and indignation comes from medical authorities who are terribly arrogant about their methods... even when they don't work very well. If we have an intervention that works well, it is pointless to cast about for an alternative. But even when they don't have very much to offer, they are just as fervent about blocking new avenues.

I have a personal stake because I had a cancer scare. My then-doctor wanted to go ahead and do a full removal of the uterus and ovaries, because it was a 1 in 3 chance of being malignant. But when I researched the issue, I had a 2-3% chance of success with treatment. And I knew all too well what the treatment entailed.

So I told my husband, going in, that I was going to just have the troublesome ovary removed, and if it was malignant, I was going full VLC. He supported me completely. Fortunately, it didn't come to that.

The thing that made me the maddest is that they weren't honest with me. And they were ready to wipe out a whole organ system based on frozen section, which is not reliable in a case like this. (They were floored when I outlined MY treatment plan. But they didn't argue with me. I was right.)

Wow. I'm deeply impressed with your assertiveness. And success! I last visited an ob/gyn about six years ago. He found "suspicious" cervical cells, and recommended surgery. What was I to think? I actually didn't realize that the surgery would be a full-out, general anesthesia deal. Unfortunately, I've always thought of that recommendation of his as a "boat payment" not a safety procedure for me. I have not been back--which is probably be wrong. But I haven't had the courage to take the risk of somebody diagnosing another "boat payment" at my expense. LC eating gives me a sense of empowerment against any form of cancer lurking in my body. Foolish? Maybe. But my trust in the medical establishment is seriously gone.

I see details of what she did, but I see no detail of the effects except that cancer progressed and she died. I mean, when I experiment on myself, I make notes of the effects of those experiments. This way, I know if what I do has the desired effect, the opposite effect, or any effect at all. I rely on facts.

I get the impression that in this case, cancer is surrounded by a whole lot of hope (and faith) but very few facts. That Gerson protocol sounds ridiculous to me, but so does the standard medical protocol. Cut you up till there's nothing left? Give me a break. If that's how this cancer is treated medically, then it's obvious they have no clue. But seriously, "prone to come back, prone to metastasize", that's clear indication of ignorance of the nature of this specific form of cancer. Let's rephrase. This specific treatment for this form of cancer is prone to failure. But that's not how medicine sees it.

From this paper: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16353216


Lemme put it in a way that makes very clear how stupid that statement above really is. You build a house, you use tools and materials, then the house falls down. Then you say, "the destruction of this house was the major cause of construction failure".

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here. Oh I know, they blame the Gerson protocol cuz it's obviously quackery, but they absolutely will not blame standard medical treatment cuz they never see failure-to-treat as failure of the treatment. Like Jessica, the docs have absolute faith in their protocol.

I totally understand. I had the advantage of years of researching my husband's CFS illness, and the confidence that everything I'd tried on him had helped.

And, going in, I had considerable skepticism about how women's issues have been treated. I once read a book that outlined the attitude of many doctors that once a woman is in menopause, her reproductive system is just waiting around for cancer to strike, and they start "harvesting." One doctor declared his retirement by having his office call all his menopausal patients to schedule this procedure.

Hard not to be cynical when you know that.

Thanks to that book, I knew that women's systems still need those organs. There were nightmare stories of "surgical menopause" from the days before they even gave you hormones! So I figured I needed to hang onto mine if at all possible.

After all, nobody even considers yanking a fellow's gonads, do they?

This case made me think of Steve Jobs and the Ornish diet.

https://www.bulletproofexec.com/ste...etarian-cancer/

I joke that my OBGYN would recommend a hysterectomy for a hangnail. Seriously, he's obsessed with them; brought it up at my FIRST visit, a routine check.

I admire your drive to take control over your own health. It's come to that these days that whenever one of us or someone close to us must make a medical decision or a hospital visit, it's imperative to be informed. You can't trust the recommended protocol, as there are 3rd parties involved who make a living from the very procedures they recommend. Not to accuse the medical community as a whole, but there are conflicts of interest at play sometimes, and the informed patient (and family) is able to make the best decision. Unfortunately, many still rely on their MD or practitioner as the ultimate authority.

If she's eating grains, she isn't paleo.

I think the attitude of many in the medical field was summed up in an old gag line - "The operation was a success, but the patient died."

After more than 40 years of the "War on Cancer", and billions of dollars spent, and millions of lives lost, why should anyone trust the cancer 'establishment'? They don't know what the hell they're doing.

Watch Dr. Seyfried's brand new lecture teaser posted above.
He did list the raw, vegan diet as a possibility to achieve calorie restriction and a helpful Glucose/ketone ratio index...but not easily. The Hippocrates clinic (developed the soup she used) was mentioned in the Q&A...patients having to chew vegetables all day. He lasted three days on it.
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Janet (or Teaser) can you point me to the Seyfried video? Maybe it's in a different thread?

Cancer is what cemented me firmly in low carb too. I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer at 40 when I was doing IVF after years of infertility. I fought like a lion for a solution tailored to me - my actual pathology reports, my family history (of cancers and especially of heart disease) and my own health history. I then navigated the healthcare system in two countries (US where I'm from and France where I live) to find the best solution for me. In my case I had a hysterectomy but kept my ovaries, and was able to create embryos and I've had 2 children born through surrogacy since (and our third baby is due in June!).

My cancer was caught early and was early-stage and low-grade but I believe my body is very capable of allowing similar errant cells to develop and that belief keeps me on the low carb side very firmly. My knowledge, my choice.

But cancer, and all serious illness, is a very personal journey, a balancing of what you're willing to fight for, what you're willing to change, hope and keeping some realism, and integrity with who you are - cancer is terrifying, even "easy" cases like mine. There are many pseudo-science approaches out there and all have some case histories of spectacular success, and all find hopeful adherents, many of whom have exhausted the hopes of traditional medicine already. Seyfried seems as much like quackery and alien to the beliefs of many, as the juicers and alkaline people do to me, so I don't judge any of them.

I wish everyone fighting the battle peace and courage.

Here's the Seyfried video.

http://youtu.be/SEE-oU8_NSU

As some one who has survived not just a cancer scare but a cancer certainty, (endometrial, Stage III) I object to anyone saying what someone else "should" have done.

I hope to unholy hell that if I subsequently die from recurrent cancer, people here aren't talking about me later: "Wasn't she the one who talked about eating fruit, even bananas? What an idiot. She should have been zero carb."

While meanwhile, in another community, perhaps they'd be saying, "Did she ever go to church? She should have been more positive and praying more''.

Or how about, "She was too fat most of her life. Why didn't she just eat less and move more"?

Engaging in hypotheticals about one's own choices and how cancer curative they would hypothetically be may be reassuring, but it's just whistling past the graveyard, imo.

In the link posted on Science Based Medicine, the gist was that Jessica Ainscough's best bet for survival was early radical, disfiguring surgery that the surgeon commenting admitted he himself would have thought twice about.

She put her faith in her body's ability to heal itself with an influx of nutrients and other less straightforward but seemingly harmless interventions, not such an unpromising choice, imo, since cancer seems so mysterious and has been known to lend itself to spontaneous remission. One of the first books I read when I was diagnosed was Gilda Radner's. She did the same thing at the end, just as sadly and ineffectively.

In another discussion on Science Based Medicine, btw, that same surgeon would almost certainly not agree that she "should have gone ketogenic" instead.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org...versus-science/

Ketogenic diet does not “beat chemo for almost all cancers”



I had the recommended treatment: surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. The former was certainly necessary as I was bleeding profusely. The latter two may have been "overkill" but who can say? Anyway, so far, so good; 3 years.