Sodium bicarbonate

That cancer is a fungal infection which alkaline sodium bicarbonate neutralises, and that the same bicarbonate cures peptic ulcers by neutralising stomach acid.

The cancer version comes almost entirely from Tullio Simoncini, an Italian former doctor struck off the medical register and later convicted of manslaughter after a patient died following bicarbonate infusion. The ulcer version is much older and is a distorted memory of something real: bicarbonate was a standard antacid for a century before better drugs arrived.

Paraphrased summaries of publicly circulating reports, not verbatim quotes from identified individuals. Unverified by definition.

• “Years of burning stomach pain. A spoon of bicarb in water knocked it out every time, so I stopped bothering with the doctor. Two years later it turned out to be H. pylori and it took two weeks of antibiotics to actually fix.”

  reported improvement, cause untreatedReported 2017

  The most common shape of the ulcer account: real relief, wrong conclusion

• “My mother did the alkaline protocol for her breast cancer instead of surgery. She was convinced her pH strips were proof it was working. She died fourteen months later.”

  reported deathReported 2016

  Family accounts posted after the fact, a recurring genre in these communities

The ulcer claim contains a kernel of truth and a serious error. Bicarbonate genuinely neutralises stomach acid and will relieve heartburn for a few minutes. It does not cure an ulcer, because most peptic ulcers are caused by Helicobacter pylori infection or by NSAID use, discovered by Marshall and Warren in 1982 and awarded a Nobel Prize in 2005. Curing them requires antibiotics. Symptom relief that masks an untreated ulcer allows perforation and bleeding. The cancer version has no support at all: tumours are not fungi, and systemic blood pH is tightly regulated regardless of what you eat.