I. Are we not working hard enough?
On Monday morning, when I opened my company mailbox, I suddenly saw a letter from an extremely smart and enthusiastic organic chemist friend who had personally synthesized ZYKADIA, a new lung cancer drug that I had mentioned countless times, just in his 40s. What a blessing.
Forwarding this letter because it shows me the light of an unimaginably optimistic, positive, dedicated scientist. It also reminds me again why I chose the field of cancer biology to consume my youth. The road to developing anti-cancer drugs is a difficult one, but many friends and relatives around me who have been affected by cancer keep spurring themselves to move forward bravely. Always ask yourself: Am I not trying hard enough?
I would like to encourage all cancer biology researchers.
Email title: A new chapter – a celebration of resistance and life
Hi everyone, I never thought I would write this letter, at least not right after I sent you the celebratory email on June 4. (Tom just sent you a letter on June 4 telling you that two years have passed, his cancer has not returned, and he is living a happy life)
I just got the results of my latest CT scan: my rectal cancer has unfortunately come back. And because the cancer has metastasized to my lymph and lungs, I have been diagnosed with grade 4 advanced rectal cancer this time. On the one hand, I found this result beyond ridiculous, and I felt myself to be 100% healthy. On the other hand, since my doctor had noticed my swollen lymph nodes since last August and started all kinds of tests, I had a theoretical 10 months to prepare for the bad news.
The day I got my first CT scan results last September, which showed that my “cancer may have returned,” I couldn’t help but rush out the door to run my first half marathon of my life. Nine months later, after I got the CT scan results again, which confirmed that I had advanced stage 4 cancer, I ran the second half marathon of my life. Even after running over 22km, I didn’t feel out of breath at all, which is not bad for a terminal cancer patient 🙂
My final treatment plan has not yet been determined, but it looks like I’ll be starting a fairly high dose of chemo when I return from vacation with someone this July. The good news is that my tumor is growing very slowly, so there is a good chance that the chemo will work well. This factor combined with my good health makes the doctors feel that I will likely live a long time, so please don’t be too alarmed. If that is the case, it will be a blessing for me to not only share a happy childhood with my daughters Amelie & Eleni, but also to have more time to work with many very smart and hardworking scientists to research better immune-based drugs that can “cure” rectal cancer. I am a strong optimist when it comes to scientific research. My optimism also comes from talking to many patients with advanced rectal cancer and seeing that many of them have lived a long time, and some even had their cancer disappear at the end! If such a miracle can happen to them, it will most likely happen to me too! Anyway, I am very optimistic!
In addition to standard chemotherapy, I am actively looking for new drugs for clinical trials. Over the past few years, there have been many effective new drugs that have emerged for a wide range of cancers. I believe we will find better drugs for rectal cancer as well. If you are doing clinical research on anti-cancer drugs or oncology and hear of any new promising clinical trials for rectal cancer, please do let me know. I hope this letter gets everyone to focus on researching rectal cancer (heck, count that as a hint here). I will also always continue with my conventional treatment, which I believe has been a big part of keeping my body well and my tumors growing slowly in the past: my tumors grew so slowly that it took 10 months to be diagnosed by CT.
I still maintain the extremely strong belief that no matter what happens, everything will be fine! – My new diagnosis has not shaken me from this belief. My goal is to stay with my children as long as possible (ideally for decades!) I want to use my story with cancer to show them to never give up hope (both in spirit and in faith in medical advances), to never give up trying, and to never lose optimism because of the hardships in life. I want them to learn what my parents taught me when I was a child: don’t always think about the disappointing news, but focus on the incredibly good things to be grateful for. For example – I actually had stage 4 cancer last year when I danced with Amelie at her school to “Father and Daughter” (I didn’t know it at the time), but the cancer itself didn’t stop us from having a wonderful, unforgettable evening together. Eleni was our miracle baby because of all the things that happened when her mother was pregnant with her. My cancer had in fact metastasized by the time she was born (I didn’t know it at the time). Eleni brought such joy to my life, so what do I have to be sad about? Eleni miraculously survived and she never gave up the fight. I wouldn’t today either!
Let me tell you a little story: A young daughter asked her dad what he was going to do when he found out he had advanced stage 4 cancer. Dad’s answer: I plan to read you a story tonight, as usual, before you go to bed, and then wake up tomorrow morning like I do every day! Life is still going to go on and it is going to continue to be fun.
I don’t plan to continue to update you all with mass emails from me. But feel free to contact me anytime and ask me anything – I really love hearing from you! You are also welcome to forward this email, as I know I may have accidentally left out some of you who have been very supportive over the past two years.
I wanted to close by showing you the pictures I took with my daughters, Amelie & Eleni, on June 4th to celebrate life. We will be together for a long time to come, fighting the disease and celebrating my life all the time. Also I will be celebrating every day that I am still a cancer survivor – and that started the moment I heard the news that I had cancer.
Thank you all (friends, family, church, co-workers) for your endless support and prayers for me and my family over the past two years. I want to especially thank my wife, Veronica, without whom I could not have been able to face so many challenges in my life with a smile.
Way to go everyone!
Tom
Two: Amazing antioxidant supplements
When I was young, I used to follow my grandfather and father to tea houses in Sichuan. In the United States, drinking tea has slowly become popular in the past 20 years, because compared to coffee, tea contains similar amounts of caffeine, but drinking tea is better for the body, because tea has health functions, tea is rich in antioxidant ingredients.
I don’t know when “antioxidant” became a household word, especially all kinds of health products, are willing to put the “antioxidant” label on themselves. From simple vitamin E and carotene to more advanced names such as “ganoderma lucidum spore powder”, “grape seed oil” and “astaxanthin”, all of them have “antioxidant” as their main selling point. Anti-oxidation” as the main selling point. Antioxidant supplements can prevent aging, prevent cancer, prevent diabetes, prevent dementia, increase the chances of pregnancy, improve skin, improve sleep and weight loss. In short, it’s amazing!
The main points of the merchants are: (1) our body is subject to all kinds of internal and external destruction all the time, so oxidized free radicals are produced to damage DNA; (2) bad cells will lead to aging or cancer; (3) antioxidant supplements can then stop the formation of oxidized free radicals, thus preventing aging or cancer.
This is (1) scientifically based, (2) right on its own, and (3) a complete and utter “brainwashing advertisement”. An excellent “pseudoscience” must contain some element of real science. Antioxidant supplements are undoubtedly a “pseudoscience” carrying excellent genes.
Oxidative free radicals damage DNA, and damage anything, at the cellular level. The vast majority (>99.99%) of cells damaged by free radicals are automatically removed by our immune system, and it is not their turn to cause aging or cancer at all; what really causes aging and cancer are systemic changes. Even if we take a step back and some individual cells damaged by free radicals survive, there is no evidence that eating antioxidants exogenously will remove such cells or prevent their creation. All the benefits of antioxidant products occur in the imagination of the masses.
And it was not doctors who aroused the imagination of the masses and brought antioxidant supplements to the masses of consumers, but other people with social appeal, such as Linus Pauling.
Pauling is one of the most famous chemists in the United States, and has made considerable contributions to quantum and structural chemistry. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in ’54 and then the Nobel Peace Prize in ’62, making him one of two people in history to have won two different Nobel Prizes (the other was Madame Curie, but I think the Peace Prize is a joke). Perhaps it was Pauling who wanted to win the third medical physiology Nobel Prize and become the first person in the universe, and the so-called peacemaker who did not want to be a good doctor is not a good chemist. Pauling in the second half of his life began to desperately promote the use of vitamin C to cure diseases, starting with the flu, and later developed into cancer. He also collaborated with doctors to design a decent clinical trial to prove that cancer patients could live longer on vitamin C. He published a good article. As a result, it was soon discovered that there was a serious problem with the design of his clinical trial: the patients who took vitamin C had milder symptoms, so of course they lived longer. Later, Mayo Clinic and other large hospitals did a larger trial and found that Vitamin C was completely ineffective. But the masses have unlimited trust in celebrities, whether the celebrity is an expert or not (see a CCTV host’s appeal in anti-gene), and a chemist and peacemaker who wanted to be a good doctor managed to give a science lesson to the masses. Businesses took a look at the opportunity and quickly launched products to brainwash everyone, and a “pseudoscience” of antioxidant health products was born.
De. De Beers (De Beers) company in 1947 an advertisement: “A Diamond is Forever”, was named the best advertising in the 20th century, because this one advertisement completely changed the status of the diamond, diamond rings have become the inevitable choice of engagement rings, before this few people have seen the ring with diamonds, engagement is generally rubies and sapphires. But now, no one is going to pursue why “diamonds are forever, a forever”. Chocolates and roses for Valentine’s Day, candy and costumes for Halloween, decorations and gifts for Christmas, none of the major related businesses have pushed the envelope and changed the values and consumption habits of the entire society in a very short period of time. Antioxidant supplements are also a very successful advertising campaign.
The effectiveness of antioxidant supplements (or any supplements for that matter) in fighting cancer and anti-aging has always been highly controversial. Essentially all large-scale double-blind clinical trials have demonstrated no benefit from long-term consumption of antioxidant supplements (1,2,3). A good scientific report last year directly demonstrated that taking antioxidant drugs instead accelerated cancer growth in animal models (4). On the official website of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), it is also clearly stated that lung cancer patients who smoke actually accelerate tumor growth and recurrence if they take antioxidant drugs (5,6). There are several great clinical trials going on right now that are further validating the effects of antioxidants on patients after radiation and chemotherapy, so we’ll see what happens, but from all the historical data, perhaps the absence of side effects is the best conclusion.
In my opinion, a balanced and healthy diet is the way to go. If you can take less so-called health supplements, you should take less of them, and whoever sells you magical antioxidant supplements in the future, please think twice before refusing.
A good mood is really good, and a good immune system is really good!
Is acidic body prone to cancer?
In recent years, the concept of “acidic body” has become a big hit. According to the “experts”, acidic body is prone to various diseases including cancer. People want to know if they are acidic, and if so, how to adjust the balance and get a little alkaline? Does eating salty food help?
”The blood of a healthy person is weakly alkaline, with a pH value between 7.35 and 7.45. Generally, newborn babies are also weakly alkaline body fluids. But with the external environmental pollution and abnormal living and eating habits in the body, so that our body gradually turned acidic. Acidic people often feel physical fatigue, memory loss, back pain, weakness, dizziness, tinnitus, sleep, insomnia, diarrhea, constipation, etc. …… 85 of gout, hypertension, cancer, hyperlipidemia patients, are acidic. Therefore, medical experts suggest that the acidification of the human body is the ‘source of all diseases.” — Excerpt from Sohu Health.
This paragraph perfectly illustrates what I said last time: the first sentence is the pseudoscience of science is the excellent pseudoscience. It is true that the blood of healthy people is weakly alkaline PH 7.4 or so, and birth babies are also about 7.4. But the level of science in Sohu ends here, and the latter is all pseudoscience. In fact, whether you are a baby, or a 90 year old codger, the PH of blood is almost the same, it is all weakly alkaline!
There are three systems in the body to ensure that blood PH is 7.4 weakly alkaline: the respiratory system, the kidney urinary excretory system and the body fluid system (1). If the body becomes briefly more acidic or alkaline, the respiratory system will respond within minutes to speed up or slow down the excretion of carbon dioxide (acidity), thus regulating the PH back within minutes; the kidney system will respond slower, but will also slowly increase or decrease the acidity into the urine over a few days. The normal range of human urine PH is 4.6 to 8.0, which means that both acidic and alkaline are normal, which is a very powerful balancing system. Body fluids regulate PH mainly by the various proteins and buffer ions inside. Because the amino acids that make up proteins are both acidic and basic and can absorb or release acidic hydrogen ions, proteins are super powerful PH buffer systems. The good news is that we have tons and tons of protein in our bodies!
Under the supervision of these three powerful acid-base regulating systems, no one’s blood is acidic (PH < 7.0), so there is no such thing as an acidic body causing disease. In fact, if the blood PH reaches neutral (PH=7.0), the person is already dead.
The pseudoscience of “acidity” is actually relatively easy to debunk: can you go to the hospital and ask if you can help me test whether my body is acidic or alkaline? No one can help you, because there is no hospital in the world to measure the body’s “pH”, anyway, a measure is 7.4. Since no hospital routinely tests acidity and alkalinity, that “85 of gout, hypertension, cancer, hyperlipidemia patients, are acidic body “Where did this conclusion (nonsense) come from? It can only be made up by “medical experts”. It’s just to sell some “health products” that can supposedly “detoxify” the acid.
China is taking great strides towards aging, and people are paying more attention to health care than ever before. Speculators and pseudo-healthcare experts have seen this opportunity and are taking advantage of the various “science” opportunities to preach all kinds of trumped-up health care knowledge. A good friend of mine, who has just returned to one of China’s top universities as a professor, says that from time to time he receives large sums of money from various health care companies in exchange for his written support of a health care product so that the company can label it as “solemnly recommended by Dr. Harvard University and Professor of XX University School of Medicine”, which I believe is a very confusing and attractive advertisement. I believe such advertisements are very confusing and attractive. My friends are not willing to charge such money, but there are certainly people who are (such as these two “experts” in the picture below). So no matter what kind of expert you see, please remember that basic research or clinical medicine, any real science is well documented, and “expert quotes” without citations are “pseudoscience”. It’s not like the old man with more gray hair is reliable.
”The “acidity” theorists also often come up with the concept of “acidosis” to confuse and fool people. Acidosis” is really a serious clinical problem, it is often due to respiratory problems, can not properly expel carbon dioxide, or kidney problems, can not be excreted through the urine acid, but this is only one of the acute clinical manifestations of lung or kidney disease, and chronic acidity is not related to half a penny. Actually, corresponding to “acidosis”, there is also “alkalosis” clinically (persistent vomiting, excessive loss of stomach acid can cause alkalosis), and even “water poisoning”, when drinking water in a short period of time When there is an excess of drinking water (such as a boring water drinking contest), it can lead to an excessive decrease in electrolyte concentration in the body, which can affect brain function and can be particularly severe and lethal. Obviously, we do not conclude that “water toxicity” is harmful and we need to drain water often”; similarly, “acidosis” does not give the so-called Similarly, “acidosis” does not provide any basis for the so-called “acidic body to drain acid”.
In short, I think “acidic body causes cancer” is a complete rumor, so you don’t need to worry about it, and don’t buy any health products or drugs. As I said before, a balanced diet, exercise and a good attitude can strengthen the immune system, which is the best weapon to fight against cancer that everyone is born with, and the effect of any medicine can hardly be expected.