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Comment by pancreaticdiet | Hacker News Reader

> anecdotes are not data

It's 2026, this is SOP.

It's why I referenced the metabolic pathways derived from data backed research, linked to a data driven study, and used language like "we had significant success with our loved one" and "if you want something that you can do to try".

Honestly this reads like an "aHCkTualLy!1!" from someone without experience of having a loved one suffering from a cancer diagnosis.

Perhaps you've yet to realize but shallow skepticism against every idea is also distinct from data.

While you chose make this comment without providing links or data to support your claim I will do the real work of finding even more data for you: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652...

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I have had a family member die of pancreatic cancer before age 60. It is, of course, terrible beyond belief. I'm not sure what you mean by "SOP" in this context. Referencing a bio-plausible mechanism is not actually clinically meaningful. It can provide a direction for study, but does not replace an actual clinical trial. As I said, "a patient can try anything they want".

But since we don't actually know whether such a recommendation will harm or help any individual patient, no one should be taking this recommendation as advice, and at the very least you should not be "highly recommending" specific dietary changes to people based on one anecdotal experience.

We all grieve in our own way. I am sorry for your loss.

Standard Operating Procedure.

I appreciated your comment, and strongly believe that diet and lifestyle changes are badly ignored when it comes to treating all kinds of diseases, in large part because of the difficulty of getting people to follow through. To be fair, if you're a dementia or cancer patient, making intense lifestyle changes is much harder than pills or surgery.

Anyway, my point is, don't worry too much about the ignorant "but actually" replies here. There's probably been thousands of people who've read your comments and only two felt the need to make these retorts. The others most likely in the majority felt your comment had merit.

> making intense lifestyle changes is much harder than pills or surgery.

This is very true. It was certainly a lot of work for us, and a lot of work for them.

In the first months I was cooking everything.

By the end of the chemo treatment the patient had learned to cook these new meals for themselves.

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