Misleading Claims Viral as Dr. Gupta's Advice to be Followed Regarding Cancer!

Various home remedies often get widely circulated among social media users, touted as cures for some deadly diseases. As a result, many people blindly follow these methods without medical supervision, saying that the things mentioned in these methods benefit the body.

However, many need to be made aware that continuing to follow some of these remedies over a long period without consulting a doctor risks developing new undesired conditions. Below is our investigation into the accuracy of a widely circulated post claiming to be cancer prevention circulating on social media in a slightly misleading way.

Social Media Posts:

A post is being shared on Facebook claiming that Dr. Gupta has suggested a diet to cure cancer.

“Dr. Gupta says, No one must die of cancer except out of carelessness;

(1). The first step is to stop all sugar intake; without sugar in your body, cancer cells would die naturally.

(2). Second step is to blend a whole lemon fruit with a cup of hot water and drink it for about 1-3 months first thing before food and cancer would disappear; research by the Maryland College of Medicine says it's 1000 times better than chemotherapy.

(3). Third step is to drink three spoonfuls of organic coconut oil morning and night and the cancer would disappear, you can choose any of the two therapies after avoiding sugar. Ignorance is no excuse; I have been sharing this information for over 5 years. Let everyone around you know. God bless.

"Dr. Guruprasad Reddy B V, OSH STATE MEDICAL UNIVERSITY MOSCOW, RUSSIA🏖🚥🚦

Encouraged each person receiving this newsletter to forward it to another ten people. Certainly, at least one life will be saved ... I've done my part, and I hope you can help do your part. Thanks!✍

Drinking hot lemon water can prevent cancer. Don't add sugar. Hot lemon water is more beneficial than cold lemon water.

Both yellow n purple sweet potato have good cancer-prevention properties. ✍

01.✍ Often taking late night dinner can increase the chance of stomach cancer

02. ✍Never take more than 4 eggs per week

03. ✍Eating chicken backside can cause stomach cancer

04.✍ Never eat fruits after a meal. Fruits should be eaten before meals

05. ✍Don't take tea during the menstruation period.

06.✍ Take less soy milk; no adding sugar or egg to soy milk

07.✍ Don't eat tomato on an empty stomach

08.✍ Drink a glass of plain water every morning before food to prevent gallbladder stones

09.✍ No food 3 hrs before bedtime

10.✍ Drink less liquor or avoid it; no nutritional properties but can cause diabetes and hypertension

11. ✍Do not eat toast bread when it is hot from the oven or toaster

12.✍ Do not charge your handphone or any device next to you when you are sleeping

13.✍ Drink 10 glasses of water a day to prevent bladder cancer

14. ✍Drink more water in the daytime, and less at night

15.✍ Don't drink more than 2 cups of coffee a day; it may cause insomnia and gastric

16.✍ Eat less oily food. It takes 5-7 hrs to digest them, which makes you feel tired

17.✍ After 5 pm, eat less

18.✍ Six food types that make you happy: banana, grapefruit, spinach, pumpkin, peach.

19.✍ Sleeping less than 8 hrs a day may deteriorate our brain function. Taking Afternoon rest for half an hour may keep our youthful look.

20.✍ Cooked tomato has better healing properties than the raw tomato.

Hot lemon water can sustain your health and make you live longer!

Hot lemon water kills cancer cells ✍

Add hot water to 2-3 slices of lemon. Make it a daily drink

The bitterness in hot lemon water is the best substance to kill cancer cells.✍

Cold lemon water only has vitamin C, no cancer prevention.✍

Hot lemon water can control cancer tumor growth. ✍

Clinical tests have proven that hot lemon water works. ✍

This type of Lemon extract treatment will only destroy the malignant cells; it does not affect healthy cells.✍

Next... citric acid and lemon polyphenol in side lemon juice can help reduce high blood pressure,✍ effective prevention of deep vein thrombosis, improve blood circulation✍, and reduce blood clots.✍”

Facebook | Archived Link Facebook | Archived Link

This is how these posts were widely circulated on Facebook.

Let’s try to analyze the claims made in the post.

Fact Check:

When searching for a doctor named ‘Dr. Guru Prasad Reddy B.V.” at the Osh State Medical University, no such person was found online. Also, the Osh State Medical Facility was founded in Kyrgyzstan, not Russia.

“Maryland College of Medicine” only returns results for the University of Maryland in Baltimore in the US. While the university was founded in 1807 as the Maryland College of Medicine, it was rechartered as the University of Maryland in 1812. The university has a school of medicine with a center for cancer research.

In the post, three specific diets are prescribed to cure/prevent cancer.

1. Avoiding sugar intake will lead to the death of cancer cells?

According to Cancer Research UK, ‘there’s no evidence that following a “sugar-free” diet lowers the risk of getting cancer or boosts the chances of surviving if you are diagnosed.

news.cancerresearchuk.org | Archived Link

In an interview with ABC News, the CEO of Cancer Council Australia, Professor Sanchia Aranda, says, “Stopping sugar getting to cancer cells would also mean that your body’s healthy cells get starved of essential sugar energy sources. This would make you lose weight and make your immune system less efficient, and as a result, it is more likely that cancer would progress.” So, avoiding sugar totally might sometimes affect negatively too. A similar article by American Institute for Cancer Research can be read here. Archived Link

Sugar provides a vital energy source for the body and is part of many healthy foods. But excessive sugar consumption leads to obesity, increasing the risk of cancer. Due to this, doctors advise people who are suffering from excessive obesity to control their diet.

Here is an analytical fact-finding that sugar consumption alone does not naturally cause cancer and that there is no evidence that eliminating sugar cures cancer.

2. Does Drinking hot lemon water can prevent cancer?

‘National Centre for Health Research’ published an article titled ‘Do Lemons Prevent Cancer?’ on its website. According to the article, “the claims that ‘lemons are a proven remedy against cancer of all types’ and ‘lemons are 10,000 times stronger than chemotherapy’ are false.” Some more articles on this issue by medical organizations can be read here and here.

A 2017 study of all previous research on the “anticancer potential of citrus juices and their extracts” concluded that there wasn’t enough data from clinical studies to support the claim that lemons prevent cancer. The research report is here. Archived Link

A report by Cancer Research UK says that while citrus fruit does have important anti-cancer properties, there is no evidence they can cure cancer – as the Facebook post claims.

This is supported by a University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences report on the hoax. “The myth significantly exaggerates the potential of lemons and lemon juice as a cancer remedy,” it says.

“The beneficial compounds in lemon juice have shown promise in recent studies, but the levels found in foods may only enhance the body’s ability to fight off cancer. In the end, there is no proven scientific replacement for radiation therapy or chemotherapy.”

Fact-checking site Snopes has looked into this and found it to be false.

3. Can three spoons full of organic coconut oil daily, morning and night, cure cancer?

Some articles reporting that a few components of coconut oil affected some forms of cancer can be read here and here. But even those articles pushed for further studies on the topic. Archived Link | Archived Link

Some studies show that virgin coconut oil can reduce the side effects of chemotherapy, and lauric acid, a component of coconut oil, has been found to inhibit the growth of colon cancer cells. But there is no evidence that coconut oil cures cancer.

The American Society for Nutrition has warned that coconut oil is not a miracle food with magical cure-all properties.

The Harvard School of Public Health on its website (Archived Link) writes, ‘Many of the health claims for coconut oil refer to research that used a special formulation of coconut oil made of 100% medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs), not the commercial coconut oil most available on supermarket shelves.’ So, even if some research studies claim that coconut can cure cancer, they may not be based on coconut oil readily available in the consumer market.

Dr. L.P.A. Karunathilaka, a former senior lecturer at the Institute of Indigenous Medicine, University of Colombo

“Most of the facts here are correct according to the Ayurvedic system of medicine. But many statements about cancer are not true. The most important thing is that if they are cancer patients, they should follow the advice of qualified medical professionals, and healthy people should also get advice, clearly from a doctor, to what extent these methods are suitable for them, how much, and for how long along with the required quantity. Otherwise, they will have many more problems,” the doctor said.

Follow us and stay up to date with our latest fact checks.

Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Google News | TikTok