Can vitamin C really fight cancer? This may not be the case!

May 7, 2018 / BIOON / - if a headline claims that a substance rich in food can help fight cancer, our suggestion is to read this news critically Photo source: Cancer Research UK vitamin C is such an example In fact, there's been a lot of headlines over the past year that will convince you that eating oranges may cure cancer Interest in these media comes from two studies examining the efficacy of high-dose vitamin C in the treatment of cancer The results also support the existing research results: Vitamin C has the potential to treat cancer, which is worth exploring But no amount of food could provide the high doses of vitamin C that were carefully designed to be used in both studies This is where the simple message "eating x can cure y disease" is ignored So now let's take a look at the real research behind these latest headlines? What progress has this area made in recent years? Oranges are not enough! The interest in these studies seems to come from the fact that vitamin C is a natural substance and is abundant in all kinds of foods, and that high doses of vitamin C can be taken through vitamin C supplements But when we read these studies in depth, we found that they did not treat cancer with either food or vitamin C supplements Instead, the researchers injected patients or mice directly with high doses of vitamin C - a dose that may even be higher than the one you took from food or supplements Professor Anne Thomas, a cancer science researcher at the University of Leicester funded by the UK, says there is a big difference between injecting a molecule and taking it orally At their research center, the work involved clinical research on Curcumin, a substance extracted from turmeric "If you inject a drug, you can usually calculate the concentration of the drug entering the system more quickly." She said "But if you take food or food supplements, we don't know how many active substances this person has absorbed We can estimate it, but we can't know the exact concentration At the same time, this absorption efficiency varies from person to person, because everyone's digestion level is different The way of injecting drugs is more reliable and other factors can be avoided " There's another question waiting for the answer: can high doses of vitamin C really be used to treat cancer? So far, the evidence is contradictory In recent studies, the results of the study temporarily show that high-dose vitamin C has the potential to treat cancer, but it is far from clear In the first study, vitamin C was used to treat blood cancer in mice, and it was found that the disease progressed slowly after injection of high dose vitamin C But mice and people are very different, so we need further research before we can agree that vitamin C can help cancer patients Another study, not a therapeutic study, explored the safety of high-dose vitamin C injections in patients with NSCLC or gliomas These efficacy studies will only continue if they are safe in themselves This early work shows that doctors can safely inject high doses of vitamin C into patients, but the study was conducted in a small number of people, so it's hard to say whether it's safe for everyone That's a long way from the headlines Especially considering that there is no research to explore the long-term effect of vitamin C on cancer patients, and there is no evidence that vitamin C can improve the survival rate of cancer patients Some studies think vitamin C may eliminate some side effects of cancer treatment, but other studies have to stop because of the side effects of vitamin C Even studies have found that vitamin C can interfere with some anticancer drugs, one of which found that vitamin C can protect breast cancer cells from tamoxifen Overall, the researchers' results are contradictory, so it's not surprising that some headlines about vitamin C are often misleading But given that there is no evidence that vitamin C can cure cancer or even have side effects, it is difficult to become an anti-cancer therapy in the short term What should we do? Cancer patients do not always have the opportunity to inject high doses of vitamin C, and the relevant research is still in the early clinical stage But when the headlines link these studies to our food, cancer patients may ask, "do we need to take supplements?" Martin ledwick, head nurse of Cancer Research UK, said patients should not take them without permission until they have consulted with their doctors "What we don't know is whether it's safe to take with traditional effective drugs It is likely that vitamin C will interfere with the action of the drugs in some cases, which may weaken the efficacy of these drugs " But that doesn't mean vitamin C won't benefit people one day But there is no evidence that vitamin C can improve the survival rate of cancer patients Given the current confusing research results, media reports of "exaggeration" of vitamin C do more harm than good Will vitamin C be the next magic drug? The current evidence does not point in that direction Reference materials: [1] vitamin C as a treatment for cancer - the evidence so far [2] restoration of tet2 function blocks aberrant self renewal and leukemia progress [3] O 2 and H 2 O 2 - mediated disruption of Fe metallic causes the different sustainability of NSCLC and GBM cancer cells to medical ascorbate