I was recently asked what I thought of high dose vitamin C infusions. The lady who asked explained how frustrating it was to just watch and wait rather than be treated. She wanted to see if there was anything she could do to slow the rate of blood cancer growth in the meantime. I totally get the idea of wanting to see if you can do something about your blood cancer. She was not the first to think that way and she won’t be the last.

Other things blood cancer patients sometimes reach for include green tea, turmeric and other dietary supplements or certain very specific diets. For sure correcting any actual vitamin deficiency seems like a good idea. I’m in remission but it’s expected to come back and I personally take vitamin D3 tablets to correct a deficiency. Research has suggested that a low vitamin D level can be associated with some blood cancers progressing more quickly. Recently my vitamin B12 levels also suddenly plummeted this is presumably due to malabsorption possibly because of my SIBO. They have become so low I have gone onto B12 injections via my primary care doctor. I do also take a multivitamin tablet.

At times in the past (before treatment) I even took both turmeric and green tea tablets for a while. The evidence for lots of these things is not that strong however. It’s often based only on what happens to blood cancer cells in cultures in the lab which may or may not translate into what happens in the human body, where many other things happen which may interfere with an effect we see in the lab.

Green tea is an interesting example as there IS a simple study but NOT a randomised controlled trial (RCT) study that suggests in humans there MAY sometimes be an effect. But the doses needed were much higher than most people today take and at those doses the liver often developed signs of damage i.e., the blood tests for liver function showed changed in the wrong direction.

In the case of many supplements and even just improving our diet and trying to lose any excess weight, there is very little evidence that these things have a direct effect on our blood cancer cells. But despite this, the idea is that anything we can do to improve our general health can’t harm us as we prepare ourselves for a possible onslaught of the blood cancer cells becoming more aggressive and needing treatment. The stronger our body is now–and in particular the fitter we are–then perhaps the easier we may find such a time; however, even that idea is difficult to prove. One of the challenges is that it is incredibly expensive to run good quality trials, so many of these interventions are simply never studied. Pharma companies exist to run trials into medicines. And often clinical researchers will focus on understanding diseases in more detail rather than looking into how what we eat might effect our health.

As we may know much of the previous advice about diets has been shown to be erroneous and so there is a whole new school of thought that low carbohydrate and removing as much processed food from our diet as possible is the answer. Of course there are many conflicting ideas about what is the best diet, and health professionals can often help us navigate that jungle. But maybe the best diet for anyone is the one they will be actually willing to stick to and enjoy eating!

To turn to the specifics of vitamin C infusion, as far as I know there are no clinical trials of this. There is much controversy about its possible effect; however, one theory vitamin C is believed to do is INCREASE the growth of lymphocytes. If this does the same to blood cancer cells (many types of which come from B lymphocytes). then infusing vitamin C might even turn out to be very UNhelpful. Now, there’s not any data I’m aware if that would confirm that will happen in reality. And who knows maybe it helps healthy B cells grow but not unhealthy ones. In fact there is a lab based study that I read that suggests higher doses vitamin C may actually kill blood cancer cells, but not healthy B cells. So it might even have both effects of making them grow more but also die more. If that were true it would depend what the balance of those two effects were as to whether blood cancer would grow or shrink. Of course it is not clear if a vitamin C infusion would normally get to the plasma level used in that preclinical experiment in the lab.

One huge caution about all this is that many people tend to read way too much into small fluctuations in blood test levels. Don’t assume a small drop means your regimen is working but also don’t assume a small rise means it isn’t! Our levels can fluctuate quite a lot.

But “natural” also doesn’t necessarily mean harmless. Some complementary therapy suggestions are frankly dangerous, such as for example eating apricot seeds which contain cyanide and can kill. 

One final point. Some “natural” treatments where they are believed to be almost like a less toxic form of chemo might potentially have the effect of causing the cancer cells to mutate and become more aggressive as we see with actual treatments. So ironically if one of these natural treatments DO work it may still not be clear if actually using them is a good idea. This is one major reason why we delay medical treatments until they are really needed.

So the answer to questions about diet and supplements are always complex. And I would love someone else to spend more time looking at the clinical data for some of theses where it exists.

One very helpful (tho some might argue a bit skeptical) resource is the UKs Cancer Research alternative therapies page. They try to be fair in discussing the evidence for and against certain alternavie therapy. Of course the lack of evidence of effect is not the same as proven evidence of no effect.

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