Baking soda and prostate cancer: what am I missing

142 said...

Vic Hardy said...

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Also, if I can figure out most of the acronyms on everybody's footer, I'll add in my story to date. Seems like a good thing to see everybody's story...

Check the Abbreviations post in the stickies at the top of the forum. That will help a bit.
Also keep in mind that there is a 400 character limit (includes spaces, returns, etc), so we suggest you write it in a text editor, check the character count, then paste it in.
If you go over 400, the software tends to cancel the whole entry, so better to have a copy to work with.
Be brutal in the abbreviations.

so glad you know the difference. it's a pet peeve of mine

https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-an-initialism-p2-1691172

Welcome to HW.

The abbreviations we use are on this sticky thread at the top of the forum: https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=35&m=1019612

Different labs use different levels of sensitivity and different test kits. Always best to stick to the same test method/lab as that removes one level of error. PSA has a natural tendency to bounce around so you really need to be looking at overall trends.

as to your pathology - that's not much PC and likely you're in a low risk group.

This is a very old thread, you'd get more input if you started a new thread.

Andrew

Thank you!

Vic,
Welcome to our forum. If you go with the baking soda, be sure your doctor is in the loop, just so he or she knows in case it affects anything important in your body chemistry. I'm speaking here as a fairly advanced case who has blood tests for more things than I understand. I think my docs can read everything from liver function to my hat size from one test or another.

I am skeptical of anyone who claims cure in one week, because this a disease in which pretty much nothing either good or bad happens in just one week and in which knowing if it is cured or just in hiding comes only over a course of time. I'm happy to say that after a year on ADT I have no detectable PSA and probably nothing that would turn up on imaging, but my medical team tells me the PCa is still there and will be back.

I was pleased to see PDA's reference to Dave Van Ronk. I wasted much of my late teens hanging out at Boston and Cambridge coffee houses during the great folk music scare of the late 1960s. I saw Van Ronk many times and through him found my way to a huge world of blues, folk, and ragtime musical roots I might not discovered otherwise.
Jim

Vic, welcome to the forum. You can try baking soda if you want but I'm highly skeptical that it will do anything but give you gas. I think you would be better served by a good diet and getting your biopsy slides re-read by Dr. Epstein to make sure have an expert reading on what you have. If he confirms your diagnosis, AS might be reasonable but in a structured protocol so that the "active" part of the surveillance is proper.

If you do decide on treatment, there are many medically sound options that should cure your cancer. Baking soda is not likely one of them.

Jim

I will certainly continue on the new, improved lifestyle that I started 3 months ago, IE vegan ala Drs Ornish/Greger, exercise every day and destress (seems hard with this looming over me but I'm trying). Whether the baking soda experiment works or not I think those things need to be a part of my future anyway.

Results in a month...

Tudpock18 said...
...I think you would be better served by a good diet and getting your biopsy slides re-read by Dr. Epstein to make sure have an expert reading on what you have. If he confirms your diagnosis, AS might be reasonable but in a structured protocol so that the "active" part of the surveillance is proper.

Jim, thanks for the input. When you say slides I take it you don't mean the pathology report but actual slides like we used to put under a microscope in high school? I have the report but if that's not what you meant by slides, how can I get them? And who is Dr. Epstein?

Now that I'm a bit more educated, it did seem a bit odd for my urologist to accept my decision for AS but not to want to do anything for 6 months. In any event he did schedule me for an MRI in Sept.

Vic, as Halbert said there are instructions in our sticky thread that tells you how to send the slides to Dr. Epstein. You could also Google it. Dr. Epstein at JHU is one of the world's leading experts on prostate cancer pathology. Reading prostate biopsy slides is very much art as well as science and it's great to have a real specialist read these slides so you can have some better confidence. Personally, I'm a little concerned about your number of cores and the cancer % of a couple of them vis-a-vis AS so would suggest you get some more clarity from Dr. Epstein. Also in my earlier post I mentioned a "structured program" for AS. You can once again Google some of the programs at leading institutions to understand their protocols and follow up so you can better determine whether or not your doctor has the requisite experience to guide you re this route.

Jim

utter horse crap, snake oil comes in so many variations.

JPHighwater said...
...I have a personal connection to this. My brother is currently trying this as well as he also has prostate cancer.

JP

JP, can you say if your brother had any success with the baking soda thing?

I've just completed a couple of baking soda 'protocols' which is basically eating more alkaline-forming foods (mostly plants and veggies) and baking soda as needed to keep my urine pH at 8.0 and above. I did two 6 to 8 day runs at this, then a PSA test yesterday. The results were that my PSA went up, from 6.9 a month ago to 7.3 today.

Sigh, well it did look promising from the couple of you tube people who claimed it cured them, one with stage 4 PC. I'm still of the opinion that keeping your body pH at 7.0 or above through healthy eating is a good goal; it turns out that most plants are on the alkaline side.

So I'm moving on with an MRI coming up in two months. I guess of greater concern is that my PSA continues to rise, started at 6.3 ~4 mo ago, 6.9 a mo ago and now 7.3. I've gone vegan, I'm fasting (IM) 16 hrs/day, lost 20 pounds in the last 2 months, exercising 5 to 6 days per week and I'm not slowing it down. I fear that after my final PSA just before my MRI in Aug and chat with the urologist I'll need to make a decision between surgery or radiation.

The only thing I have not done yet is a focused low-carb diet (somebody recommended that to me on this forum but I can't remember who), and stress reduction techniques (breathing, yoga, meditation). That will be started shortly.

I'm starting to feel that this is a freight train that I can't stop by any means other than medical intervention. I guess that's just the nature of the beast.

Those videos are what we call "testimonials", they cannot/do not prove anything. Waste of time at the very least.Oh yeah - I got that science-heavy university education and have been doing independent research on prostate cancer for 6 years now. There is no science in those youtube videos at all.

Standard medical treatments are the best shot you have. If you research pre-interventional PSA numbers, you will notice that you are approaching a bad place there. The dotted line is at 10, as I recall.

A healthy, balanced diet + a stringent exercise program + low stress + plenty of rest will get you to your healthiest eventually. Very few non - medical interventions can effect cancer. However: if you are in the top 20% healthiest of your age group, your chances of dying from ALL causes (including cancer or being hit by a truck) at any time is reduced by about 25% compared to your peers.

If you get that minimum of 150 minutes a week of serious aerobic exercise AND you weight train at least twice a week for about 20 minutes/session, your chances of dying from all causes goes down 26% compared to your cohort and your chances of dying from cancer go down 31% compared to them as well. That gives you a real measure of control that you do not have otherwise.

I am the proof of this, my doubling time has leveled out several times (currently 13 months) since the failure of standard treatments. The docs conclude that it is my lifestyle that is doing this and informed me of that 3 weeks ago.

Use the baking soda for indigestion.

Vic, well your signature is back today.

As we said before, you'll find in this forum a lot of passion about supplements etc, and in favor of healthy lifestyles. That being said, you'll also see a lot of pushback against headline grabbing 'alternative medicine' treatments: Cancer is a serious disease (or more correctly, family of diseases), and there is little to no evidence that it can be cured by things like baking soda. And, this forum is full of smart people, many trained in the sciences or engineering...so data, real verifiable data..is king.

We are generally willing to be polite to people who want to try some oddball thing, and as long as the evidence doesn't suggest it's actually harmful, we'll keep our mouths mostly shut and let the results speak for themselves.