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Comment by lambdaba | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs is a prime example, he tried to treat his pancreatic cancer with fruit.

Also see Thomas Seyfried's work on ketogenic diets for cancer https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/bcnews/science-tech-and-health/bio...

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He's not a prime example of anything to do with fruit making things worse. His chosen therapy just as likely had no worsening impact on his cancer; the problem was it had no positive impact either and he put off surgery.

He had a rare form of pancreatic cancer that grows from the tip of the pancreas and can sometimes be snipped out without consequence early enough that it doesn't spread.

He presumably freaked out about it all nevertheless (because it's terrifying), avoided surgery for too long and ended up having a Whipple procedure, which is fucking brutal.

But there's still a pretty good chance he would have had early surgery and still ended up needing a Whipple procedure and still have passed away on roughly the same timescale. Because pancreatic cancer is a stealthy thing, and the Whipple procedure comes with its own frightening future.

It's really sad he freaked out, it's really sad he didn't listen. But it's not that unusual. He's far from unique in making irrational decisions in the face of terrifying diagnoses. Should it have been a slam dunk decision? Yeah. Of course. But there we are.

He was following "fruitarianism" on and off even before his diagnosis, I think it's reasonable to suspect it had something to do with his cancer, but I wasn't aware of those details, so thanks for providing them.

And yet:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16172215/

I mean... in terms of our scientific understanding at this point, sporadic pancreatic cancer just comes from nowhere. We don't know why. In the case of the parent I lost to it, it could have been triggered by a response to inflammation from previous surgery. It seems plausible. But nobody knows.

I just think people snarking or factoiding about Steve Jobs' panicked response to an awful disease comes across as projection of other judgements more than anything else. He was a complicated, self-reliant person who made a bad decision when he was scared. And it probably (but by no means certainly) cost him a few years of health. And now he is gone. And it's still sad for the people who lost him and for the wider world.

I'm sorry about your parent.

I didn't mean to dunk on Steve Jobs, but I'm sure even he would agree he had an eccentric and extremist personality and the bit about fruitarianism seems very relevant esp with happenings like [Ashton Kutcher being hospitalized when he tried to mimick it](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jan/28/ashton-kutcher-...)

relevant quote:

> "First of all, the fruitarian diet can lead to, like, severe issues," Kutcher told USA Today. "I went to the hospital like two days before we started shooting the movie. I was like doubled over in pain. My pancreas levels were completely out of whack. It was really terrifying … considering everything."

steve jobs was known to be an asshole. i wonder how much that had an impact on dealing with the condition.

on the other hand, I wonder what kind of steve jobs would the world have had, had he survived.

would he have pushed cancer research further, somehow? maybe by getting involved and providing funding and technology, maybe novel technology, for cancer research? or would he have gone full-cynical and focused on something else entirely?

we'll never know, for sure.

Pancreatic cancer doesn’t have good prognosis in the first place, no matter what you eat or don’t eat.

But his was actually one of the most treatable forms and he could have potentially had many many years added to his life had he initially listened to his doctors.

Yes I was downvoted last time I posted this, but: Don't try to be your own lawyer, and don't try to be your own doctor.

This is the tail wagging the dog.

Jobs' fruitarianism meant he didn't eat eggs, meat, dairy, or other sources of selenium. Fruit doesn't contain selenium. One of Selenium deficiency's side effects, well established in the literature: pancreatic cancer.

> Steve Jobs is a prime example, he tried to treat his pancreatic cancer with fruit.

Pancreatic cancer will fuck you up pretty much no matter what you do. I think it literally is the cancer with the smallest survival rate

He was lucky to get a rare, slow moving form of the cancer that can be cured with surgery if caught early enough. Unfortunately he waited nine months before getting surgery.

Glioblastoma has entered the chat :-)

> Steve Jobs is a prime example, he tried to treat his pancreatic cancer with fruit.

That is true – and probably didn't help. But his case is a poor example since he delayed treatment for months.

EDIT: Also, actual fruits are probably not an issue. It's difficult to eat too much fruit, unless in juice form... which he did.

Another comment mentioned that the mechanism by which fructose promotes tumor growth is that it increases circulating lipids. But I'm wondering, doesn't keto (which seems to fight cancer) also do that?

Not much evidence that keto fights cancer any better than any other exclusion diet; it might even be worse than meat exclusion diets.

"Not much evidence"? That is so far from the truth.

Interesting. There's some evidence that fasting fights cancer, and there's a good deal of overlap between the effects of keto and fasting.

Though obviously "stop eating everything that gives you cancer" is also a good start, and you can definitely eat processed garbage even on keto.

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