Cancer charity coffee mornings should be banned

[Luxell934]

So someone on instagram, who usually gives advice to new mums on positive birthing, posted today that she though coffee mornings for cancer charities should be banned. Why? because she thinks cancer loves sugar, cancer grows from sugar and people shouldn't be giving sugar to cancer patients. She said instead of eating cakes and biscuits they should be helping cancer patients to educate themselves to change their diets to beat the disease.

My own personal opinion is that she is spreading complete misinformation to her followers not based on any actual factual studies.

For a start these coffee mornings are not held in the hospital rooms of cancer patients to feed them cake. They’re fundraising events often in school halls, offices, community centres or hospitals as a support system where people are coming together to support and raise money for those diagnosed with cancer. They don't target cancer patients, it's more about the general public raising funds for cancer nurses and research. Cancer coffee mornings are just one of the ways charities fund raise. They also do lots of fitness based ones, like the muddy 5k run, race for life, some do walking based ones. Although not everyone would be able to do something physical for charity, so they might choose the coffee morning. Let's face it, cake is nice right, if it was advertised as a green tea and carrot stick morning, it wouldn't be as popular.

Yes I agree sugar isn't healthy for us. We should all reduce our refined sugar intake. Excess sugar can lead to weight gain which can cause serious health issues including diabetes and obesity which could be a contributing factor to some cancers. BUT cancer is not caused by sugar alone, and cancer can't be cured by cutting out sugar. Cancer also can't be cured by diet alone. I've heard the stories of people saying "My husband cured his stage 4 lung cancer by diet alone!" Right.

There is also no actual evidence that cancer cells grow from sugar. All cells, including cancer cells need glucose (blood sugar) to survive. Glucose comes from any carbohydrate, refined carbs (cake, bread) and unrefined carbs (fruit, veg). Glucose is critical for our cells to survive and function properly. Not consuming sufficient carbohydrates can lead to the breakdown of protein stores in our body, which can contribute to muscle loss and possibly malnutrition. There is no possible way for our bodies to stop cancer cells from getting the glucose and only giving it to the healthy cells.

So should cancer coffee mornings be banned?

Sure. A metabolic expert who works with cancer patients knows NOTHING about how sugar and cancer works.

Do you work in the NHS @LMNT?

@LMNT you don't come across as credible, whatever your real job title is, that's the problem here. "Google it" is never going to win any arguments, is it. Cop on.

I think there's something in it, in some cases.

When my first DH had brain cancer, his oncologists were discussing research with us to do with the ketogenic diet - there was a suggestion that this could help to 'starve' the tumour cells.

It's not as simple as 'sugar causes cancer' - but perhaps it does play a role in feeding (some) cancers?

Either way, I agree there is something counter-intuitive about fundraising for cancer by using cake... but I don't think these events should be cancelled if they are actually working.

Thanks. I feel bad for my kids as they will need to be tested but I didn’t know I had it till years after they were born. Giving up sugar hasn’t been as difficult as I thought but that’s mainly thanks to alternatives such as Stevia.

The type of cancer I had was caused neither by sugar nor by obesity.

I would not give my children stevia or any of the other substitutes. So much is not known about them. Too risky. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fendo.2020.00444/full

I would, or course, discourage them from eating a sucrose-rich diet. No-one needs sugar, especially as it's current included in so many things - and traditionally - before the 18th cent - people in the UK did not each much of it.

But a piece of cake - or a bacon sandwich for meat-eaters - as occasional treat? Yes, why not? Statistically irrelevant.

I asked MN if we could have a webchat on this with someone from cancer research or similar as it seems there's a lot of conflicting info. They said it was an interesting idea so if anyone else think it's a good idea maybe you could let them know?

Well a 'metabolic expert who works with cancer patients' could just be someone whom did a 6 week online nutrition course and is now charging desperate people for advice, couldn't it? Not saying that's what you do, of course, but you haven't told us what your job title is or whether you work in the NHS, and the things you have posted bear no resemblance to anything I've come across in 18 years of working in onc and haem in the NHS. So some clarification on your expertise and job role would be extremely helpful and probably reassuring for those who have been alarmed by what you have posted.

Sure. A metabolic expert who works with cancer patients knows NOTHING about how sugar and cancer works.

@LMNT what is this a quiz?
You don't come me across well tbh.

She's also of opinion keto can stop dementia as well according to other threads, just another keto is holy grail crazy.

I can’t be bothered going through the whole thread but noticed that LMNT is still trying to sell the sugar theory.
Firstly she is correct that tumour cells use sugar to grow but so does every other cell in our body. Without sugar, or to be correct glucose, we would die. Glucose is our fuel source, we store it in the form of fat so if we don’t have a ready dietary source we can still keep functioning. So even if we stop eating carbs our body will release glucose from whatever we eat or from fat stores.

But this is where the confusion lies, for tumours to grow they need an energy source but the energy source doesn’t cause cells to mutate and form tumours. Mutations are very common and the resulting rogue cell is either too wrong it doesn’t survive, or our wonderful immune systems get rid of them. Just occasionally one gets past all the defences and hey presto you have cancer.

Mutations happen much more frequently as cells age, a bit like Chinese whispers the more divisions a cell goes through the more likely the words/gene sequences are mistaken.
Sugar may drive the growth of the tumour but it is the extent of the mutation that dictates growth rate/aggression/invasiveness/ability for remote spread.
Sugar does not cause cancer.

Radio active glucose is used to show up the tumour cells which scavenge glucose at a higher rate than normal cells. In fact, it’s common to lose weight when you have cancer because the tumour uses the glucose/sugar quickly starving other cells in the body. If you were to go sugar free your body would use its fat reserves to supply the cancer with glucose.

Finally, as a cancer sufferer it is incredibly insulting to be blamed for your own cancer. Only 3% of cancer have an identifiable cause.
97% are pot luck.
I have oestrogen sensitive breast cancer diagnosed after 3 yrs of HRT. I stopped HRT immediately and take aromatase inhibitors so I very low level of oestrogen. I avoid foods which mimic oestrogen and I don’t take marine collagen because tumour cells like collagen. So I am actively preventing my tumour from returning by starving any rogue cells of oestrogen.

I do intermittent fasting to reduce the time my body is exposed to glucose. Not for breast cancer but for reducing heart disease and diabetes risk.

But I’m damned if I’m going to give up the occasional cake.

Just to add, I’m a dentist who has an intimate professional knowledge about sugar. I have spent most of my working life encouraging people to limit refined carbohydrates. In all of that time I have never come across any legitimate clinical or scientific information that sugar is a direct cause of cancer. It may be an indirect cause via obesity but to claim that giving up sugar is going to cure cancer is extremely irresponsible.

Well, you're only a dentist! Whereas @LMNT is a metabolic expert!

I would do the laughing emoji only nothing about this is funny

If it was a proven cause of cancer it would make my job infinitely easier to convince people to reduce their refined sugar intake. Although smoking is a proven cause but it doesn’t stop people smoking.

Yes, as long as they cover all cancers, not just those which produce solid tumours. Blood cancers, taken together, are the fifth largest type of cancer in UK, but often get missed out because they do not produce solid tumours.

Thank you for your thoughtful and intelligent contribution @Angrymum22. Really interesting and well laid out.

I know who you are talking about and haven’t liked her for a while now! But this sealed the coffin and I have unfollowed

Cancer patients undergoing chemo often become severely neutropenic, at which point they're in constant danger of sepsis, and the list of healthy foods they cannot eat is quite long - nothing that might harbour live bacteria, i.e. any rare meat or lightly cooked fish, raw vegetables, salads, many cheeses, yoghurt with live bacteria... At that point, you are happy to be getting any calories into them. Even cake.

@Angrymum22 @LMNT @Clymene @sunglassesonthetable @Luxell934 @eyesopenedatlast I hope this link is useful, I shared it earlier in the thread but I don't think it has been seen by anyonehttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9775518/ Understanding the Link between Sugar and Cancer: An Examination of the Preclinical and Clinical Evidence. I shared the Conclusion and also the abstract summary, it's from December 2022.
Also, just because it's what and where it is doesn't make it right. It all depends on who paid for it, the methodology, which is why I mentioned earlier that I haven't critically analysed it.

'The average consumption of sugar in the US is significantly higher than the World Health Organization’s, the American Cancer Society’s, and the American Heart Association’s recommendations for daily sugar consumption. This review summarizes the research on the link between added sugar and cancer and the plausible mechanisms for a causal association. Evidence from epidemiologic and preclinical studies demonstrates that excess sugar consumption can lead to development of cancer and progression of disease for those with cancer independent of the association between sugar and obesity. The mechanistic preclinical studies in multiple cancers show that high-sucrose or high-fructose diets activate several mechanistic pathways, including inflammation, glucose, and lipid metabolic pathways.'

'In conclusion, research suggests a direct link between sugar and cancer. Preclinical studies and studies of people with MetS show that high-sucrose or high-fructose diets activate several mechanistic pathways, including inflammation, glucose, and lipid metabolic pathways, suggesting a causal link between excess sugar consumption and cancer development and progression that is independent of weight gain. Dietary guidelines and US policy need to reflect this new knowledge. Concerted action is needed to lower sugar intake in the US and other countries, better inform the public of the risks of excess sugar intake, and conduct more robust research in the field of added sugar and cancer.'

and conduct more robust research in the field of added sugar and cancer.'

This

Our local cancer charity cake sale has just raised £5k on a rainy weekend. Cake is good.

Firstly Thomas Seyfried is doing tons of research in the field. It’s just not picked up by mainstream media because of advertising revenue impact.

Added sugar is a terminology slight of hand by food manufacturers.

All carbohydrates (grains, cereals, starches and sugars) are digested as sugar regardless of whether you eat a jacket potato or a doughnut.

All of these foods contain sugar:

Potatoes - sugar
Oats - sugar
Wheat - sugar
Corn - sugar
Milk - sugar
Rice - sugar

Its basic chemical composition of the macronutrients interacting with digestive enzymes. The rate of release of the sugar and the amount of sugar varies but don’t be deceived by the term added sugar.

@LMNT I see you've still not replied as to your qualifications?

I'm still wanting chocolate fudge cake after reading this thread

@AutisticLegoLover sorry I haven’t been following the thread closely.

What was the question about my qualifications?