Recently, a friend of mine messaged me about a comment she saw on a final blog post by a young mom who was dying of metastatic breast cancer. The woman had days, possibly a few weeks to live, as her liver had shut down. The comment on the very heart felt goodbye post that my friend messaged me about suggested that the woman should try drinking carrot juice, because the commenter had read that juice cures cancer. Strike that, the comment didn’t suggest it, the comment urged that the woman try it, because her kids needed her. 

WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK. Did you just try to lay a guilt trip on a dying woman to convince her to drink carrot juice when she has end-stage cancer and her liver stopped working? Did that actually just happen? Please tell me that didn’t just happen. Please? For fuck’s sake, that actually just happened.

Both my friend’s brain and mine snapped, obviously, and then I realized it really was time to start writing a series here on the blog about about Crazy Cancer Cures. I’ve been getting emails and messages about Triple C’s since I was first diagnosed.  I’ve probably sent my oncologist a dozen emails since then with the most, shall we say, interesting of these alleged cures, and never has he said “there is a study supporting that as a viable cancer treatment.” 

And yet this shit persists on the Internet. Why? Well, people with cancer, especially terminal cancer, are desperate for a cure. Desperate people will believe all kinds of horseshit. I mean, when the best options you have are going to make you feel like shit and only extend your life a bit, but can’t cure you? Yeah, it’s easy to start believing in things that clearly can’t be true. And it turns out that desperate people will also spend a crapload of money on something if they believe it will keep them alive.

Because the best way to combat bad speech is with more speech, I’ll be addressing some of the many Crazy Cancer Cures I’ve read since my diagnosis, explaining what they say they’d do, and what science actually says they’ll do. We begin with the no-sugar diet.

The theory behind this Crazy Cancer Cure is that cancer feeds on sugar, so if you don’t eat any sugar, it can’t grow. That’s it, that’s the whole theory, it’s pretty straight-forward. There’s like books and stuff out there selling this cure and saying they’ve cured their cancer by cutting out sugar from their diets; however, you’ll note that none of them are written by oncologists.

Now, it’s true that cancer cells feed on sugar. You know what else feeds on sugar? Every other cell in your body. All of them. Cells run on sugar, it’s their energy source. Even if you don’t eat any sugar, your body will take other foods you eat and convert the carbohydrates in them into sugar. Because that’s what your cells need to function. Don’t believe me? OK, then perhaps listen to the nice folks from Cancer Research UK. 

Is it healthy to eat a lot of sugar? Of course not, are you stupid? Sugar contributes to all kinds of health problems, like diabetes. And who the hell wants to get diabetes? No, I’m just saying that a no-sugar diet won’t cure your cancer. It just won’t. Because even if you don’t eat sugar, your body will just make it, even from the healthy foods you eat. Like those carrots that that asshole commenter said that a dying woman should juice because it’ll cure her cancer. WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK.

If you have a Crazy Cancer Cure you think I should write about, drop a note in the comments, would you?