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?

And people who develop childhood cancers.

And people who have eaten extremely healthily, avoiding sugar, and go on to develop cancer anyway.

I think this thread should go in classics as a good example of how misinformation is spread.

Of course cancerous cells require more glucose, they’re dividing more rapidly that other cells.

But people including the ‘nutritionists’ are getting confused between sugar/sugars and glucose.

a bit of cake, is not going to make cancer more aggressive. Your main risk factors are obesity, smoking and processed food (including lots of the vegan/non-dairy foods).

People can also attend coffee mornings and drink tea and not eat cake. (As I do).

Yes, and they are vile. Unless you have to have the em for dietary reasons, people just aren’t doing it

I have a biology degree and cancer is a fault in replication. I would never, ever, ever belive anything at face value on SM period.

If bloggers have such high levels of education why do that as a carer? Come on, I'd rather go to reputable source at my finger tips via Google.

I would as default roll my eyes on any sm "education". So much shit spouted during covid it actually gave me the rage. Bob down the pub with no science GCSE telling ME about biology?! Do fuck off Bob and come back to lecture me once you have a MSc or pdh love 😄 until the your vastly too uneducated to educate anyone about anything.

The difference between normal cells and cancer cells come from errors during the cell division in the DNA.
At some point all normal cells die by apoptosis. However sometimes cells instead of going into their normal cycle of division and finally apoptosis, they keep dividing without control and don't go into apoptosis. That creates masses or tumors. The only way to stop the growth/ division of cancer cells is by chemotherapy/ radio/immunotherapy.
Cancer is caused by an error in the control of cell division.
There are environmental factors that could contribute to cancer: obesity, alcohol, tobacco. But its mainly the bad lottery of the person's DNA.

Sugar does NOT feed cancer. That's completely false. And also its something terribly unfair and cruel to say to people with cancer. A balanced diet with occasional treats is what's recommended for everyone.
Stop spreading misinformation. It's very damaging.

I wonder if all those cancer charities who hold coffee mornings

Macmillan
Marie Curie
Maggie's

( These are just the ones that helped me )

Cancer Research etc

Who do so much bloody amazing work know like a teeny weeny bit more about it all than this woman and her types.

@sunglassesonthetable PET scans are a diagnostic tool. The reason they asked for your blood sugar to be controlled on the day due to the type of contrast being used for the scan. this has nothing to do with the cancer itself.

and if your docs told you to keep your blood glucose controlled... I am assuming it's because you are a diabetic. and hyperglycaemia (abnormally high blood sugars) would have affected your health in all sorts or ways eg. hampering recovery from any surgery. but that is not to say the cancer is accelerated by sugar.

’someone on instagram, who usually gives advice to new mums on positive birthing’

You lost me there.

@vodkaredbullgirl ah. Rightio.

She can get in the fucking sea. Telling people who have cancer that they’ve brought it on themselves, by eating the wrong things? I’d say she should be struck off, but of course she won’t be part of any regulated profession.

Social media has a lot to answer for. It’s brought very little of any value to the world, but actively causes harm.

The radioactively labelled glucose injected during a PET scan does not only go where cancer is, it goes where any highly metabolically active process is going on - it is taken up by cancer cells because they are "out of control" and growing instead of dying. It's a wild leap of extrapolation to say that sugar causes cancer because cancer cells metabolise sugar. Does sugar also cause TB, infections and autoimmune inflammatory diseases - because those also are FDG avid on PET?

How come when cancer patients lose their appetite and don't eat anything the cancer doesn't stop?

Thank you for the info. I didn't post that though. And I don't want to be associated with it tbh. It was @Momtotwokids

@tt9

Same!

I was diagnosed with incurable cancer nearly 3 years ago and many well-meaning friends advised me to cut out sugar. The utter devastation of my diagnosis and then being told it's due to being rather fond of cakes is cruel. I reasoned that none of the medical team I was under had said anything about diet so asked my oncologist, about 3 months into treatment, whether I should avoid sugar. He said that cancer cells would just find another source of energy to grow and to eat as healthily as possible but treats were obviously allowed.

Also, the chemo unit I attend has a lady with a food and tea trolley which comes round every hour. It's laden with sandwiches, biscuits, crisps, cakes, fruit, jelly, trifles and custard pots. My appointments took all day so the trolley appeared very often for me and others. The staff encouraged eating from it. Surely if sugar were the killer, they wouldn't be pushing it into patients in a cancer hospital.

Most cancer patients have had advice from unqualified people to eat certain foods, kale is a popular one. it's all so ridiculous and offensive.

For context, for my cancer, I had zero risk factors, no family history of any cancer, hadn't ever had anything more serious than a chest infection all my life, was in the younger age bracket to get it and have subsequently tested negative for the gene which causes it. Sometimes, it's just bad luck.

Are you the same poster who posted about carb intolerance?

THIS.

In my 18 years in oncology and haematology, never even once did I hear any doctor, nurse, pathologist, dietician or for that matter porter say that sugar causes cancer. Because it doesn't.

I did however meet plenty of people going through really shitty treatment who had been lied to and guilted that if they only did X or stopped y, they'd not have cancer or their cancer would get better. Some of them died feeling guilty if they had a sugar in their tea or a sodding twix if it was the only thing they fancied. I knew one paed patient whose parents fed her a solely raw food diet until she died, believing this shit that sugar feeds cancer cells

Anyone who spreads this lie is making life that little bit worse for cancer patients and is either dim, cruel or both.

really sorry, linked you by mistake! it was meant for @Momtotwokids

She said on another thread she's a nutritionist..

figures😂😂

@Momtotwokids

There are healthy cakes you know!
Instead of suggesting they are banned why don't you take the lead and start the healthy eating coffee morning??
Instead of declaring a way of raising money should be stopped?
Start with a positive.

@tt9 👍🏻

GCSE Biology time.

When you eat, your food is broken down in your stomach and small intestine into smaller molecules, which are small enough to be absorbed through your small intestine into your bloodstream. Protein is broken into amino acids, fats are broken into amino acids, and starches are broken into sugars. Sugars don't need breaking down. Once in your bloodstream, these molecules are sent around the body to be used directly, converted to glucose for use as energy by your cells or converted into glycogen or fat for storage. This is a GCSE-level simplification, the links give the full story. The point is that every cell in your body metabolises glucose to stay alive, as summarised in the picture (a quote from the carb metabolism page). If you cut every gram of glucose from your diet, your body would turn fats, starches and proteins into glucose because your cells need glucose to live.

Because of this, you cannot starve cancer cells. If you try, you will starve your other cells first. The circulating glucose in your blood is like a wedding buffet and the cancer cells are like those really rude cousins who elbow everyone else out of the way and pile their plates high so that there's no food left for everyone else. It's because the cancer cells are cheeky fuckers who eat more than their fair share that the radioactive sugar works to highlight tumours on a PET scan.

Fats are broken into fatty acids! Not amino acids. Proofreading fail.