TikTok and Cancer Advice

TikTok can be fun, but when it comes to cancer advice, a lot of what you see can be unsafe or unreliable (1). Let’s clear some things up 👇

It’s not because cancer cells need a lot of sugar to function and that cutting sugar out of your diet will “starve” the cancer. All your cells need sugar to function. If you cut all sugar from your diet, you’ll also starve all the other, very important, cells in your body. Plus, because your body wants to survive, it will simply start breaking down fat reserves and proteins in order to get your cells (and the cancer cells) what they need. You simply can’t starve cancer by cutting all sugar from your diet, without starving your whole body (2,3,4). Even if diet plays a role in overall health, there is no evidence that cutting a single nutrient works better than proven cancer treatments. 

Ivermectin is a medication proven to treat parasitic infections in humans, that’s all (5,6). Fenbendazole is also an antiparasitic drug, but it is only approved for animals and has never been tested or approved for use in humans (7). Some lab and animal studies suggest they might slow cancer growth, but the doses used would likely be toxic to humans. Limited early clinical research has shown no meaningful benefit. Most importantly, they do not show that these drugs work better than the standard treatments we already have. There’s currently no evidence that ivermectin or fenbendazole treats cancer (7-13).

Before trying any treatment you see online, check in with your physician.