This isn't just hypothetical speculation. When the Black Plague hit, some people were convinced that cats were contributing to the problem, so they killed them. But the rats were the carriers, not the cats. And so by killing the cats, the rat population ran rampant, which seriously deteriorated the overall situation.

My sons and I have talked about that and have wondered if killing the cats ultimately helped. As I understand it, ultimately some other rat population crowded out the rats that were carrying the vermin. Perhaps that was more effective (and perhaps indirectly supported by reducing the cat population). I don't have the answer, I am just saying I have wondered if a different conclusion is in order.

Couldn't it be that your family's survival rate isn't due to nutrition?

Sure. It could also be that I got well with cystic fibrosis by sheer luck and happenstance. However 10+ years of steady forward progress seems to imply otherwise. :-)

FWIW: When my dad had colon cancer at the age of 69 and wasn't diagnosed until after he lost half his body weight, my parents focused heavily on hydration. They calculated how much fluids he needed daily and anything containing caffeine did not count. (Alcohol would not count either but my dad gave up drinking many years earlier.) When he was really nauseous from chemo, she made him homemade "slushies"/milkshake-like drinks. She used ice cream, milk, and fresh or frozen fruit...not sure what else. When he was too sick to tolerate that, she used ice, frozen fruit and fruit juice. On bad days, he got this twice a day in place of meals. She was putting so much weight on him at a time when most patients are losing weight that his doctor basically yelled at her for it. He has a long-standing heart condition and the doctor was concerned that regaining so much weight so quickly would put too much strain on his heart.

My mother also came up with some excuse for him to miss one radiation treatment a week. She watched her mother die from cancer in her teens and she is convinced that the radiation killed her. I have been told she came up with excuses even though she kept his skin in such good shape that he never had radiation burns, which is apparently a common reason (especially with older people) for delaying treatment. She used Penaten cream (a German product for treating diaper rash) to keep his skin in such good shape. My understanding is this product was adopted by two different cancer clinics because of her use of it on him. She also used it to help his 13 inch surgical scar heal better.

I also used adequate food and hydration to break my sister's fever the first twenty four hours after she was home from the hospital following her first mastectomy. I have always put more emphasis on hydration with my sons and my own health issues than on eating. It takes 2 to 3 weeks to starve to death (or more in some cases). You can die from lack of fluids in as little as 2 days. Dehydration can be misinterpreted as hunger and this probably contributes to obesity and is probably why drinking a great deal of water is a dieting technique that helps some people lose weight.

Maybe you have the right idea about nutrition, but you don't know --- so you're gambling with people's lives by telling them things that may only make the situation worse.

I do wrestle with such questions. I have a website where I try to share information about how I got well. I often wonder if it should come down. Though I worry more about people misunderstanding it and thus misusing it and getting into trouble that way. The approach itself is very conservative, much more so than conventional medicine. And we all impact our body chemistry every single minute of every single day with myriad small choices, starting with every single thing we eat or drink. Study after study after study indicates that diet and lifestyle play major roles in every major deadly disease but then when you come down with something doctors have no idea what to tell you about nutrition. The state of the art nutritional advice for my condition -- where having a dietitian on staff is common for CF clinics -- is to recommend a "high fat, high calorie, high salt" diet. In practice, this means they actively encourage people with my condition to load up on junk food. This runs counter to my experience of what works. It also is the opposite of what most folks with my condition are doing who have better than average success in the face of this problem. So I am hardly the only one, my example is just more dramatic.

So, for now, I leave the website up and struggle with how to better convey what I understand. Because I think it is clear and well established, even in "conventional" mental models for health, that diet and lifestyle do make a big impact and since no one can stop eating entirely or cease to have a lifestyle, it seems to me the only sane thing to do is try to encourage and support better education and mental models for those pieces of the puzzle.