Went though a cancer journey with a loved one a few years ago. I was quite surprised at the complete lack of specialized guidance on nutrition. It was basically ‘eat healthy’, which isn’t bad advice but it seems like there are probably optimizations to be had there.
(Of course there’s no end of it on the Internets, but as part of heathcare it was absent)
We tend to emphasize diet a lot, I think because it's something we can control, but it might not help as much as we hope.
Eating a healthy, plant-forward diet while minimizing alcohol and red meat might give us most of the benefit we can squeeze out of diet for cancer risk reduction.
You cannot stop cancer with diet alone. Full stop. If you could, then starvation would stop cancer before the patient dies. Or a radical diet would cure a patient. It doesn't.
This has been debunked so often, yet people really want to believe that food diet can cure everything!
Totally agree, but it seems likely to me that diet can make a body more or less hospitable to cancer, which in turn could lend less or more effectiveness of targeted therapies.
The first half of her book talks about nutrition and health but the second half talks about her company that offers services to give people personal guidance on nutrition and monitoring their health, so there are some attempts to do this.
https://www.caseymeans.com/goodenergy
I don’t know why this is downvoted. The lack of profit motive is a big reason that nutrition and supplements aren’t as well studied through rigorous trials as drug therapies. The ones that are run are funded by grants. Rather than just “more funding” I think there needs to be more systemic ways at reducing the cost of clinical trials or using alternate methods of getting high quality scientific data for answering these questions.
For example, there is a good trial running now on ketogenic diet in glioblastoma patients, NCT05708352, I think with a NIH grant and maybe the NCI as well. Here is a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W31kR0MzyRA
With low fructose content (less then carrots per 100g), it's not a stupid choice. Naturally, if you don't binge on it, otherwise 2-3 slices daily won't kill you. I mean wholegrain, sourdough bread, to be precise.
They also will gladly prescribe you statins for life without mentioning that losing your excess 30kg and walking every now and then would likely greatly improve your cholesterol issues (or even solve them) and improve your general health. You can apply this to pretty much any modern wide spread disease.
I think doctors don't even bother because they assume people already do as much as they're willing to do, the problem is that the interests of capitalism are diametrically opposed to your well being so most people start with quite a disadvantage, just look at supermarkets: the alcohol, candies, coke, cakes aisles are all bigger than the healthy food aisle, together they're like 80% of the building
"Doctors won't mention that losing weight and exercising more will make you healthier" is quite a take.
I've heard exactly the opposite from any number of people: that if you're overweight at all, many doctors will tell "lose weight and exercise" and then usher you out the door, rather than pay attention to the specifics of your medical problems - sometimes missing serious issues as a result.
When they have to turn patients over at the rate of 10 per hour due to the policy of the private equity group that owns their practice, they will be inclined to offer blanket advice that, while actually good and applicable for 80% of people, will tend to miss the edge cases.
(Of course there’s no end of it on the Internets, but as part of heathcare it was absent)