Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

157 points · d--b · 26 days ago

A friend recently got diagnosed with stage 4 GBM. It's the 4th person I know who has it, and it's getting old, so I want to help, bio-hacking style.

I stumbled upon these guys who built a helmet that rotates strong magnets to create oscillating magnetic fields in the brain. They claim the oscillating magnetic fields cause cancer cell death through mechanisms I don't understand at all.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-46758-w

Did anyone try to build one of these?

-- Other avenues:

1. taking vortioxetine

https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2024/09/ant...

2. getting infected with the zika virus (probably the best thing to do IMO)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37324152/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33002018/

364 comments

y33t · 25 days ago

Don't bother, if you're in a position to do so, help them find a first-class brain surgeon. Get them into Sloan Kettering, Mayo, Duke or OHSU or whoever. Help them look for clinical trials to get chemo past the blood-brain barrier (I've heard some promising things in this area, though I'm not sure if it's being tested on humans yet). If they have a family that's taking care of them, offer to help them. Even just a grocery trip a week or something would be a massive help (obviously this depends on how close you are to them but you get the picture). Hell, offer to just hang out with your friend for a few hours so the family can get out and decompress for a bit if they need to.

Don't let them fall into the false hope of "I might have 5-10 more years". The person I knew fell into that and did absolutely nothing they wanted to do before they died because they were in denial and kept holding onto the expectation that they'd get better.

If they have money, every cockroach will come out of the woodwork trying to get a piece. Watch out for them if you can.

I know someone who got scammed out of a very substantial amount by a real brain surgeon in America(!!!), who referred them to a guy that sold a bogus device which he claimed would "destroy the tumor" (no FCC sticker on it and the entire thing was controlled by a Raspberry Pi when I disassembled it). Brain surgeon had a bunch of FDA complaints against them too and performed it in one of the poorest cities in the country, across the street from a burnt out apartment building. The local pharmacy had a constant police presence because of armed robberies for the drugs. These details scream sketch to normal people, but normal people aren't going to be dying of brain cancer in the foreseeable future. Desperate people will do crazy things if they think it offers some hope.

Show replies

ausbah · 26 days ago

I know when someone’s faced with certain death they’ll do almost anything they can to survive if only for a little bit longer, but this thread full of personal antectodes and largely non-reproduced effects from random pubmed articles is the hackernews equivalent of essential oils or smth

Show replies

alecst · 26 days ago

I'm really sorry to hear that. Since you're asking for moonshots and weird things to try, here's something they can ask their doctor about:

> Case reports involving glioblastoma patients using water-only fasting regimens in conjunction with other forms of cancer treatment have reported favorable outcomes with respect to tumor growth https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2874558/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5884883/

From https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6836141/

Show replies

ibash · 26 days ago

You should ask them if they want you playing doctor.

I have a chronic disease, not fatal, and totally manageable. But the most annoying thing is when someone finds out and suddenly pretends to be the expert.

Of course my doctors and I investigating it for years were completely wrong! I should’ve ate more apricots!

Please just check with them if they want their limited time spent like that.

Show replies

cj · 26 days ago

My best friend died of brain cancer.

Although not from the cancer itself. He died of an opioid overdose. He was prescribed pain killers for cancer-related pain, and got hooked. His doctors stopped prescribing, so he found it elsewhere, and got a bad batch with fentanyl. (He was a VC living in SF, well to do, he had all the treatment money could buy, but cancer ended up not being what killed him)

I know this isn’t what you’re looking for, but be sure to not ignore other parts of his health. Addiction and other disorders are common among people with terminal or not-so-great prognosis.

The most you can do is to be a great friend.

Show replies