Every single piece of information related to health is available on the internet nowadays. This has both good and bad consequences. But when the same information leaves research papers and reaches social media and your WhatsApp, it becomes misleading to a great extent, and when the matter is related to health, it becomes even more dangerous. One such message regarding health is going viral, in which a 'Dr. Gupta' is quoted as claiming that stopping the consumption of sugar, and drinking warm lemon water and organic coconut oil can cure cancer. When the India TV Fact Check team investigated this viral post, some other truths came to the fore.
Claim
The viral post has been shared on Facebook by a user named Mast India, in which a long message has been written along with a photo of a person in the uniform of a doctor who looks like a senior. It is written in this post-
Dr. Gupta said, apart from negligence no one should die of cancer.
- The first step is to stop consuming sugar. Without sugar in your body, cancer cells naturally die.
- The second step is to add lemon juice to a cup of warm water and drink it in the morning before meals for 1-3 months, and cancer will be gone. According to Maryland Medical Research, hot lemon water is 1000 times better, stronger, and safer than chemotherapy.
- The third step is to drink 3 tablespoons of organic coconut oil in the morning and at night, the cancer will disappear. You can choose any of the other two remedies, including avoiding sugar.
"Ignorance is not an excuse. I have been sharing this information for more than 5 years. Tell everyone around you, dying of cancer is an insult to anyone; Share widely to save lives," said Dr. Gupta.
In the viral post, quoting the alleged Dr. Gupta, it is claimed that cancer can be cured by following a sugar-free diet and drinking warm lemon water, as well as drinking organic coconut oil.
India TV's Fact Check team investigates
When we reverse-searched the picture shared in this viral post on Google, we found that the original photo of this person was shared on Facebook on June 9, 2019, by a user named Aconteceu em Bertioga. In this post, this person has been described as Dr. Gupta and his full name has not been given anywhere. In the post also the same things were written about cancer which were written in the viral post we received.
After this, we started collecting scientific facts about the claims written in the post one by one.
Claim turned out to be wrong
The first claimed that stopping sugar intake would kill cancer cells. A Google search led us to an article by Cancer Research UK, which read, "There is no evidence that following a sugar-free diet reduces your risk of cancer, or increases your chances of survival."
In an interview with ABC News, Professor Sanchia Aranda, CEO of Cancer Council Australia, explained, "Cutting off the supply of sugar to cancer cells will also mean that your body's healthy cells will be deprived of essential sugar. By doing this, you will lose weight, and at the same time, your immune system will become weak. In such a situation, there will be more chances for cancer to grow."
We then started gathering scientific facts for another viral claim 'Hot lemon water is 1000 times better than chemotherapy'. When we searched about it, we found an article by the National Center for Health Research titled: "Do lemons prevent cancer?" According to this article, "The claims that lemons are a proven remedy against all types of cancer and that lemons are 10,000 times stronger than chemotherapy are patently false."
The article states, "There are no studies that compare the effectiveness of lemon to chemotherapy."
We then fact-checked the third viral claim, 'Organic coconut oil causes cancer'. When we searched Google, we found some research papers by scientists. We visited the National Library of Medicine, an official website of the US government. We perused a research paper titled 'In vitro anticarcinogenic activity of virgin coconut oil and its fractions in liver and oral cancer cells'. In this research paper, it has been said that the scientists conducted tests on some cancer cells with different forms of coconut oil. During this, each cancer cell line was treated with different concentrations of virgin coconut oil (VCO), Pure Coconut Oil (PCO), and fractionated coconut oil (FCO).
In this research, scientists have found that Virgin Coconut Oil (VCO), Pure Coconut Oil (PCO), and Fractionated Coconut Oil (FCO) have anti-carcinogenic efficacy and can be used to treat cancer, especially liver and oral cancer.
The thing to note here is that the kind of coconut oil that scientists found to have an effect on cancer cells in research is not the edible coconut oil available in our homes and markets, but scientifically controlled coconut oil for research. There are different concentration forms. Also, this research is the conclusion of a test done directly on cancer cells in the controlled environment of a science lab, not the results obtained after human trials.
