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Comment by sitkack | Hacker News Reader

Makes total sense. Free radicals are thought to damage a cell and turn in cancerous. Antioxidants mitigate the number of free radicals so the rate of damage is lower, but once cancer is occurring, antioxidants aren't going to do anything to prevent the spread of cancer. In this experiment, cancer was transferred directly showing that AO actually hinders the bodies ability to fight cancer. Could free radicals actually be part of the immune system?

Another theory, which i think is interesting is that free radicals damage strong as well as weak cells, those weak cells that are killed by free radicals could actually more easily transition into cancer in the absence of free radicals.

It is too easy to explain less free radicals as good. There isn't a single variable in this equation.

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> Could free radicals actually be part of the immune system?

Yes, it it already well-known that generation of free radicals is part of a normal immune response[1]. Basically, certain immune cells go into an inflamed area and start generating and releasing as many free radicals as they can in order to cause maximum damage. So if that particular immune mechanism is important in the body's response to cancer, then taking excessive antioxidants could plausibly impair the body's ability to fight cancer.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10807157

Is that what they're saying ?

My understanding of the case against antioxidants is that thefree radicals (etc.) are an essential cell signaling mechanism ... and the signal is "kill me, I'm a bad cell".

If you somehow disrupt or eliminate the signal, you allow bad, or inefficient, or perhaps cancerous cells to live longer than they would otherwise.

I'm paraphrasing directly from the excellent, excellent book _Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life_ by Nick Lane, which is highly skeptical of antioxidant supplementation and is a truly fascinating book.

I wonder if this is why fasting may be healthy: it flushes marginal cells.

Interesting, but do you have any evidence that fasting is healthy?

https://news.usc.edu/82959/diet-that-mimics-fasting-appears-... (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9741137)

There's lots, if you search, e.g.:

https://news.usc.edu/63669/fasting-triggers-stem-cell-regene...

https://news.usc.edu/29428/fasting-weakens-cancer-in-mice/

https://news.usc.edu/78953/fasting-and-less-toxic-cancer-dru...

Thank you, I have looked into it before and will continue to do so. However, the articles you linked were studies done in mice and those undergoing chemotherapy treatment. I am hesitant to extrapolate that up my myself.

Thanks for the reading recommendation--that book looks fantastic.

you just explained why low dose chemo/radiation works

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