Hello anxious1, 

We have some information on our website about the facts surrounding cancer and sugar. You can read all about it here. 

If you'd like to speak to one of our nurses for some more reassurance then please do give them a call. They are available Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm on 0808 800 4040 (free to call from a UK landline). 

Best wishes, 

Jenn
Cancer Chat moderator

As the article says this is a cplicated area.

My wife was diabetic and when her cancer was most active her sugars were good and vice versa

But that doesn't mean that the sugars were "feeding the cancer" most likely when the cancer was active it was consuming sugars and without them it would have consumed other nutrients.

There is a lot of interest in research at the moment in this relationship but its way more complicated than people would have you believe.

Of course eating well and being as healthy as possible is always a good idea especially when you're on chemo. One of the problems with chemo is that is does hit things lie your body's white blood cells and platelettes etc. If the count gets too low you can't have treatment until they are back up.

This tends to happen further down the road but starting from as good a baseline as possible is obviously good
 

Thank you Jenn and Graham.

I'll have a look at the info as you have suggested Jenn.

I eat a very healthy and balanced diet but there are so many "hidden" sugars I wanted to find out more.

Ah well you're up on me then!

I'm trying to cut out sugar for Lent and finding it a struggle

- So many aren't hidden any better than a warthog in a tutu standing behing a lampost

When I can cut them out I'll worry about the hidden ones!

hi anxious

There is some stuff you can look into, investigate both ketogenic diet, and warburg effect. There is a whole raft of stuff about this. Keep your tin foil hat on and take a lot of it with a pinch of salt. But there are some indicators there and some trials results, if you can stomach such a strict diet. I doubt just giving up sugar (glucose) alone will have any anti cancer effect as carbohydrates in your diet, pasta potatoes bread etc are converted into glucose by your liver. Kim

Ha ha. I like the image of the Warthog. That could well be the subject of my next sculpture

Thanks kimchoson.

I don't plan to make any great changes to my diet but well meaning friends often come up with these pieces of "advice" without any real information to back it up..

I've thought a lot about this and I believe that one of the things about cancer is the feeling of helplesssness that accompanies it.

People feel robbed of control and need to feel that they can "do" something - of course there are very few things you can do to affect your body but you can change your eating - and I think that's one reason that so many of these "cures" are about eating something or not eating something else.

Over time they get examined and a lot of the more outlandish ones fall by the wayside but that leaves us with things that have some affect - Aspirin, Sugars.

People desperate for hope latch on to these and exagerate their effectiveness

Newspapers love a good x cures cancer story too so they'll print it and exagerate it too

It rather reminds me of the Infamous "Daily Mail Oncology List" - I think I might start a seperate thread on that

We all seem to attract idiotic comments from our friends and colleagues when we're diagnosed with cancer! A colleague suggested I should drink green tea instead of "trying chemo" - as if the two were equal.

Sugar rots your teeth, eaten in excess it can lead to diabetes and it can make you fat but it doesn't feed cancer anymore than anything else you might eat.

On the positive side, chemo can give good results. In my case, my stage 4 incurable cancer shrank due to chemo two years ago and so far it has been dormant ever since. 

Good luck!
Dave

Hi Dave / Graham ....

Havent really read through all the posts here but wondered if either of you knew why glucose is injected for a PET scan.  I understood it was something to do with the way cancer cells react to sugar?  Max x