How Gut Bacteria Are Shaking Up Cancer Research

Well, correct me if I'm wrong: you can understand the mechanism by which the chemotherapy acts in the body, but when trying to understand the effectiveness of the treatment you couldn't really isolate the "side effect" from the primary effect in terms of its therapeutic value. Unless you had chemotherapies which were effective despite a lack of those side effects.

I'm pretty sure jcot is aware of the problemmatic theoretical foundations for historic bloodletting, and the attending reputation that persists. However the interesting part is that it could have therapeudic uses, but physicians are understandably adverse to performing a procedure considered typical of medieval quackery.

Here's an excerpt from the BMJ:

>Bloodletting was done by the barbers in England at the request of patients and must, therefore, have had some beneficial effect even if it was just a placebo effect. It is very possible, however, that there were very real benefits in selected patients especially those in left ventricular or congestive cardiac failure. In withdrawing blood the venular outflow pressure from capillaries and cardiac filling pressures would have been immediately reduced. The pressure gradient between capillary and interstitial fluid may have been decreased or even reversed if it was elevated(6,7). A reversal of the pressure gradient in oedematous patients would have promoted the mobilisation of oedema fluid and excretion in urine provided renal function was normal. Bloodletting would also have improved capillary blood flow, which can be severely disturbed in septic patients, by decreasing viscosity and improving the rheological chacteristics.

>Repeated epsiodes of bloodletting will cause anaemia which is an independent risk factor for adverse outcome in patients with heart failure (8). As heart failure may cause anaemia by compromising the synthesis in the Krebs cycle of substrate needed for haemoglobin synthesis and blood formation in the bone marrow this risk might be a consequence of the heart failure rather than the cause. In adequately nourished and oxygenated bone marrow haemoglobin pools should be replenished by resynthesis unless the bloodletting was repeated too often.

>In the short term bloodletting achieves what the venodilators glyceryl trinitrate and isosorbide mononitrate achieve, a reduction in venular outflow pressure in capillary beds. In patients with heart failure venodilators improve exercise performance and reduce mortality (9). Whilst ACE inhibitors, angiotensin II receptor agonists and beta blockers may also decrease mortality in patients in heart failure, partly or wholly by similar mechanisms, inotropes and beta agonists may increase mortality from heart failure. These medications have not been established to improve disability-adjusted or un-adjusted longevity.

>Bloodletting might have been much more effective than venodilators and as effective as diuretics for in increasing th tone of the precapillary sphincters and establishing a pressure gradient between interstitium and capillary the excretion of oedema fluid would have been promoted. If in inducing a gastric intramucosal acidosis bloodletting were also to induce preconditioning by, for example, activating anf K(atp) channel, bloodletting might even have had extended benefits not seen with medical therapy. [1]

I wouldn't agree that patients' requests meant that it must have been beneficial, since people willingly do all sorts of crazy things to their bodies based on the most tenuous new age theories. It also doesn't make sense that regular bloodletting would be beneficial to an already healthy subject, since we'd presumably have evolved with a mechanism to dispose of excess "bad humors". However, as an alternate mechanism for achieving results that treat a condition like congestive heart failure, it seems a lot like drilling a hole in your head to treat a head injury — ridiculous sounding, but effective in certain cases.

[1] http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/29/treating-heart-...

Just because Wikipedia says something doesn't make it true. Bloodletting was also practiced as part of Acupuncture in China - without any "humor" theory. Interestingly, when you talk to people who have actually practiced it (I was hanging out with Traditional Chinese Medical practitioners), you hear lots of stories about how effective it often is - even though it is frowned upon since it lacks any modern theory to explain why it often works. (I did recently read about how blood has been found to "group" based on characteristics. And Traditional Chinese Medicine uses various techniques to choose the location of bloodletting. There are lots of things to be discovered - or rediscovered.)

To take a devil's advocate to that, there's not a lot of evidence that much of modern medicine is that helpful. I read about a study where people were given health insurance didn't do better than those without it, even though they went to the doctor far more, got better treatments earlier, etc. Another study that most surgeries weren't better than placebo surgeries. And we don't even test surgical placebos yet. And then another study that a significant portion of deaths were due to hospital errors.

Of course that's ignoring that there is a lot of medicine that obviously does work and is great. No one is going to dispute that antibiotics are literally the greatest thing ever, or that insulin saves tons of diabetics, or that cancer treatment has saved a lot of lives. On the other hand some things we do are quite horrible, like keeping old people alive long past the point it's worth it. Or not cryogenically preserving everyone because it's "weird".

It's a sound bite because it's true. That's not a reason to avoid chemotherapy--it's probably the best method we have right now of fighting cancer--but the biggest concern with prescribing chemotherapy is how much and how long can the patient sustain it, and does the benefit outweigh the costs.

Chemotherapy, for most cancers, achieves tumor shrinkage and a temporary extension of life, at the cost of severe life quality degradation. It's a tradeoff that most cancer patients think is worth it. I think that this therapeutic benefit puts us in a grey zone with regard to the definition of poison. The substances would undoubtably be considered poison in other contexts (e.g. mustard gas) but the doses are carefully calibrated to just-barely not kill a patient. Maybe "poison" is a function of usage intent?

My mother has had cancer twice. My father: twice. My sister: four or five times. My brother: once. My mother's mother died during treatment for cancer. At least three of my mother's sisters have had cancer. I took care of my sister after her first mastectomy.

They do pump cancer patients full of poison. The patients know it. The doctors know it. Maybe I am a little too deep in the weeds here, but I am astonished this assertion is being questioned at all.

That's how chemotherapy works. Primarily it just kills cells. Typically it has a more potent effect on faster reproducing cells. Because cancer cells often lack the repair mechanisms and support systems of healthy cells they are sometimes more susceptible to being damaged than healthy cells. That plus the focus on fast dividing cells means that sometimes the cancer cells will die off while your non-cancerous tissues persevere and are able to recover after the end of the treatment. It's also why chemotherapy has its notable side effects though (weakness, paleness, nausea, and hair loss) because hair follicles, the digestive tract lining, and new blood cells are also targeted.

Classic chemo drugs are cytotoxic which is safe to refer to as a poison. Modern targeted therapies can take different approaches

Out of curiosity, mariodiana, do you take probiotics? If so, which ones?

Not GP, but these have worked for me:

L. reuteri ATCC PTA 6475[0]

L. reuteri DSM 17938[0]

Lactobacillus reuteri Protectis[1]

[0]- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AH3RT9Y

[1]- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001XUQNN4

I was taking others too, as well as some prebiotics but I stopped for awhile and been taking these two again for about a week and already feel much better - at least as good as before when I was taking more.

  Many probiotics are labeled as "active". I think this 
  means they are dead but the remaining proteins are 
  "active". They'll only last as long as proteins are 
  available.

Incorrect. Probiotics are supposed to contain live, active bacteria: the large "CFU" number on the front stands for "colony forming unit": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony-forming_unit

Labdoor (which is advertising-supported) tests probiotics based on how accurate their CFU numbers are: https://labdoor.com/rankings/probiotics (These tests, of course, don't say if the probiotic in question is actually good for you or not.)

I've taken both General Biotics Equilibrium and (115 strains, 1 billion CFUs, shipped unrefrigerated) and Renew Life Ultimate Flora Extra Care. (10 strains, 50 billion CFUs, refrigerated)

If either of them had any effect at all, I didn't notice it.

Their CEO posted some HN comments in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8600201 I'm waiting for them to post the results of their study.

I've had those. I think they improved my digestion. I have had IBS-like symptoms for years. For a while it was diarrhea. Then it switched to constipation. I could go to the washroom only with coffee.

Starting taking these, suddenly was able to use the washroom normally. No coffee needed, finally quit that. No diarrhea.

It's been about three weeks. So I doubt it's a coincidence. In a span of that length I would have had multiple problems in the past. Only alternate cause I can think of is that I was reducing coffee before I took them, but still drinking decaf. However, digestion had been entirely the same during this reduction process.

And I was on the pills + coffee for about 10 days, with improved digestion, so I suspect the pills.

For me (Colitis), they made me worse. I had tried many brands, then settled on GB for like 3 months, I kept records, they made it worse. Within two weeks of stopping my symptoms improved.

I basically got rid of all of it at my house but none of the crazy stuff (some people replace their cookware, etc. I think that is a misunderstanding of the problem).

I notice when restaurants use it but it doesn't really ruin my life or make me descend back into bad health. I just notice I am more anxious/blood sugar volatile for a few days after. So I avoid obvious large sources of wheat, but I accept that restaurants regularly use it in sauce, etc. and it causes noticeable but manageable issues.

I have the heterozygote version (1 variant of HLA gene) rather than the homozygote version (2 variants of HLA gene) so it is less severe and only affects some of my cells. If you have both variants, your risk of Celiac goes to about 50% and you normally find out early in life.

I would also confirm it is not some other category of food sensitivity affecting you - my fiance went through a similar process and found some links to IBS which leads to a low FODMAP diet. Wheat is a FODMAP but other FODMAP foods affected her also where for me it is 100% wheat.

TL/DR: obvious wheat things is a big step, I noticed difference in anxiety, skin health, brain fog, focus, migranes, sleep. 80% of those issues for me went away by getting rid of obvious sources at home.

For me, it was a fear driven response to anti-science rhetoric. I think anti-vaccine narrative really convinced me the extent to which people act irrationally about personal health. I observed parents self-diagnosing their children with all kinds of made-up conditions solved only by avoiding certain categories of food like GMOs.

As someone with immediate family members with autism, people claiming that removing wheat and dairy from their child's diet would "fix" their "autism" was offensive to me. I trust doctors for the most part to be a superior model to the mommy blogger/anti vaccine crusade. GMOs are another example of misinformation and fear mongering trumping science.

I have since learned the value of genetic self awareness and how little we understand about health and diet issues, especially chronic ones, and so have reversed my position towards people with food sensitives, made up or otherwise, to empathize with the fact that we probably don't understand a given issue well enough yet to fix all of the eating problems people have and so people can do whatever they want.

Thats... really interesting.

I sincerely hope there will be more research into this in the coming years. The problem I think is that we need to do more personalized research and experiments, but somehow figure out the baseline to compare individual results against. Someone who has a system with X properties will respond differently from someone with Y properties, and we don't know enough about those properties to understand the different response types.

You're welcome. I almost feel backwards when I tell people about it, but the results are obvious (to us).

I'd love to see any results that you may have. Especially if you figure out a good way to track it.

You're welcome. She's just been following the serving size on the bottles from the healthfood store on the keefir (usually half a bottle a day), with some other random fermented foods thrown in (shredded carrots + garlic, ginger is one of my favorites)

No, GP's statement assumes only that serotonin in the bloodstream outside the brain has different effects from serotonin in the brain, so let's put that lid back on that kettle of fish.

How do you tell the difference between mold and scoby? Is the mold black or dark?

Wow, kefir made with coconut? That sounds wonderful, I'll have to read more on that.

Interesting. Pure coconut juice is reasonably easy to obtain here so that might be feasible.