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Comment by oisdk | Hacker News Reader

> do note that youtube is heavily censoring low carb stuff since "it's not mainstream approved" lol

By "not mainstream approved" you mean it's largely discredited and confined to quacks and charlatans online. Outside of its one legitimate use—very specific cases of epilepsy—no serious medical organisation endorses keto for the general population or cancer patients.

The third video you link is of a person who thinks that they cured their cancer with, among other things, juicing, breathwork, "positive mindset", and keto. This is nonsense.

> despite people healing conditions on it that no modern medicine could

If it worked, it would become "modern medicine". The reason it's not accepted in the mainstream is that it has failed every basic test of efficacy. The reason that you will find it promoted primarily on youtube and not in major medical journals is that the youtube audience is less well-equipped to spot it as snake-oil.

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that’s a strange qualification:

“no serious medical organisation endorses keto for the general population or cancer patients” - isn’t having it be effective for the obese and diabetics enough?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6566854/

as to using “medical organizations” endorsement as a sign of “truth” - it took over 10 years to go from the discovery that H Pylori caused stomach ulcers to GI medical organizations recommending antibiotic treatment, such endorsement is a lagging indicator. Or to take another example, almost every american medical organization supports widespread use of “gender-affirming care” for children, including hormonal treatment and surgery, while many european medical organizations have pulled back from their earlier enthusiastic support based on increasing data on harm. So are the european organizations correct, or are the american ones? or is human biology significantly different between europe and the united states? or to take another recent example, were the medical organizations correct when they endorsed the CDC view that “masks didn’t work” (because the cdc wanted to ensure mask supply for medical personnel), or were they correct when they then said they were effective…. until later research showed they made no discernible difference?

https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...

There are studies, but very limited of course that show efficacy with the things you mentioned though. There's limited interest in it though because most of those things simply have no profit potential.

No there are not. There are studies in mice (like this one), studies in vitro, etc.

> There's limited interest in it though because most of those things simply have no profit potential

This is not true. There is a lot of interest in the Keto diet, it has been well-studied and has uses in treating epilepsy. The reason it's not prescribed more generally is because of those studies, which show it doesn't work. Not everything is a conspiracy.

It’s not accurate to call keto well studied wrt cancer or that it doesn’t work. It’s an active area of research and there are many studies showing positive effects, but most/all study designs are limited. It’s also true that without a clear path to making a drug, big expensive studies like large scale human trials are not likely to be funded.

Additionally, any result suggesting a new approach has profit potential. If fasting was effective then a pill giving the same benefits would have a big market.

A fasting pill? Would it lock a person's mouth shut or maybe cause vomiting?

Not much money for the medical industry if they recommend putting down the fork and spoon.

A fasting pill? Like GLP-1 drugs which reduce hunger and thus reduce food intake? There might be a market for something like that.

Sort of, the time restricted eating the article is about would require something different, like a pill that stops your body from absorbing some nutrients for 12 hours or something like that.

>There's limited interest in it though because most of those things simply have no profit potential.

A cancer researcher could rely on charities, academic institutions, and government grants to fund experiments. There is a lot of cash available to cancer research. If the researcher shows a cheap and effective method to combat even a specific type of cancer, that researcher will get tenure, book deals, and fame. So that's a rich researcher.

Big pharma can be a cutthroat industry that prioritizes profit over public health. But they're not a shadowy cabal behind every bad thing in the world.

>> If it worked, it would become "modern medicine".

This is why you fail to get it: if you ever read the cases of people being harmed by their doctors advice and getting healed by going opposite to their doctors advice you would never have said such a thing.

Modern medicine is NOT patient focused: it's pharma focused. Look up statin marketing budgets.

And who do you think sponsors most of those "medicine journal" studies?

>> no serious medical organisation endorses keto for the general population or cancer patients.

Which further proves my point: if thousands of people healed their diseases which the "modern medicine" completely fails to heal using the keto diet and if, by your own admission, modern medicine disregards keto as uselss, what does this tell you about modern medicine other than that it's completely backwards?

> if you ever read the cases of people being harmed by their doctors advice and getting healed by going opposite to their doctors advice you would never have said such a thing.

There are countless cases of shoddy care from doctors. The existence of crappy doctors does not mean keto is effective.

> Modern medicine is NOT patient focused: it's pharma focused.

Again, the existence of bad incentives in medicine/corruption is not evidence of keto working.

> And who do you think sponsors most of those "medicine journal" studies?

There are serious, good-faith criticisms of modern medicine to be made. Blindly saying it's all nonsense, and instead you should do a juice cleanse with keto instead of chemo, is not a serious good-faith criticism.

> if thousands of people healed their diseases which the "modern medicine" completely fails to heal using the keto diet

This has not happened. Keto has not healed thousands of peoples' cancer. There is no evidence (and I mean real evidence, not a youtube video or podcast recounting an anecdote) of keto being effective at curing cancer.

When did keto become a religion?

Mid 2010's in response to the rise in Pastafarianism.

Not yet! Keto is correlated with slowed growth of tumors.

A high carb, low fat diet may very well be what's fueling cancer.

some cancer. We already know different cancers use different 'fuel'. A keto diet would likely speed growth of cancers that can use or prefer ketones for instance. But for ones that only absorb glucose, the rats in the article indicate a maybe.

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