Died after eating brown rice to treat cancer.

Doctors at K Hospital recently advised that many patients, upon being diagnosed with early-stage cancer, have refused surgery and chemotherapy, opting instead to treat themselves at home by eating brown rice.

Some time later, the patient returned to the hospital with a severe case, but it was too late. The claim that eating medicinal rice could cure cancer, which surfaced about a year ago, has been confirmed by scientists as unfounded, yet many people still blindly believe it.

Treating cancer with rice?

According to Ms. Thu Yen (Quang Ninh), her mother was diagnosed with early-stage stomach cancer at K Hospital, and surgery was sufficient for complete recovery. Hearing about the surgery, her mother was terrified and insisted on going home to treat herself. A friend suggested that simply eating red rice, herbal rice, etc., could cure stomach cancer.

Like a drowning person grasping at a straw, her mother switched to eating brown rice, even drinking brown rice water instead of regular water every day. After a few months, noticing her mother had lost a lot of weight and looked weaker, she advised her mother to stop eating brown rice, but her mother stubbornly refused to listen.

One day, her mother experienced severe stomach pain and vomited blood. When she was rushed to the emergency room, she was shocked to hear the doctor say that the stomach cancer had metastasized and was incurable. "I regret it so much. If only I had persuaded my mother to seek treatment sooner, I wouldn't be on the verge of losing her like this..." Yen said, weeping.

The case of Minh Thuan's father (from Hung Yen) is similar. After learning he had a tumor in his colon, the doctor advised surgery followed by chemotherapy, saying he could live a healthy life because the tumor was still small. However, thinking that surgery would quickly lead to death, he refused treatment.

Upon returning home, he began a campaign to encourage people to eat herbal rice after seeing an online advertisement claiming that this type of herbal rice could cure cancer, especially gastrointestinal cancers, and that it could "sweep away" tumors.

After eating herbal rice for months, thinking his illness would disappear, he found that bowel movements became increasingly difficult, sometimes going weeks without a bowel movement, and experiencing constant abdominal pain. His children rushed him to the hospital, where they discovered a large tumor was completely blocking his colon, making defecation impossible and posing a high risk of bowel rupture. He immediately underwent surgery to remove his colon, had a colostomy, and was given only a few months to live. "Just because he believed those baseless advertisements about herbal rice, my father lost his life..." – Thuận lamented.

The above are just two of many cases where people blindly believed that eating "miracle" rice could cure cancer, leading to tragic outcomes. Just sitting around with patients' families at Cancer Hospital reveals countless anecdotal cancer treatments being spread. Eating brown rice or medicinal rice is a method almost every patient eagerly believes in. They are unaware that these unscientific cancer treatments are inadvertently causing them to surrender to cancer.

Many cancer patients believe that eating brown rice can cure cancer.

Rice is not a medicine.

Professor Vo Tong Xuan, a leading expert on rice cultivation, believes that medicinal rice varieties contain many vitamins and nutrients, making them very beneficial for health. He argues that many rice varieties currently advertised as curing cancer are exaggerations. Rice is not a medicine but rather serves to support and supplement the body with essential nutrients.

According to scientific literature, brown rice has a high nutritional content, especially a large amount of anthocyanin. Anthocyanin in medicinal rice is a compound with many valuable biological activities, possessing high antioxidant properties and effects that help reduce and prevent atherosclerosis and type 2 diabetes. However, whether medicinal rice can cure cancer remains unproven by any research or studies worldwide.

According to Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Thi Lam, a nutrition expert, brown rice is essentially rice that has only had its outer husk removed, while retaining the inner bran layer. Therefore, it still contains fiber and other important nutrients such as vitamins, calcium, iron, zinc, and protein.

Especially when the method of using brown rice and sesame seeds to treat diseases was considered a research work by a Japanese professor and recognized by the World Health Organization, the movement to eat this type of food quickly spread to many countries. However, to date, no scientific study in the world has confirmed that brown rice has the ability to prevent cancer.

Associate Professor Dr. Lam also noted that brown rice is only a source of carbohydrates, providing only a portion of the nutrients. It is still essential to supplement it with other food groups such as those rich in protein, lipids, and fruits and vegetables to provide the body with sufficient vitamins and minerals. Even for healthy individuals, let alone cancer patients, excessive daily consumption of brown rice without additional nutrients over a long period can be harmful, leading to severe physical weakness due to a lack of nutrients that brown rice does not contain.

According to Giadinh.net