A Youtuber who claimed that veganism, faith, and juicing cured her cancer has died of cancer.
Mari Lopez ran YouTube channel Liz & Mari with her niece Liz Johnson, where they explained how Mari "was healed from stage 4 cancer by God through faith". In the videos, which have received hundreds of thousands of views, the two claim that Mari used "juicing, poultices, alkaline & hydrogen water throughout her healing process" after she was guided to by God.
This guidance saw her go on a 90-day juice diet, which she said removed inflammation from her body, despite leaving her feeling "horrible" and like she had the flu. "It's over, it is done with, I am healed. I feel it in my spirit and in my body," she said.
Sadly, Mari passed away in December after her breast cancer spread to her liver, lungs, and blood.
Now her niece is claiming that Mari would have lived if she hadn't begun eating meat again and microwaving food.
In a video titled Stage 4 Cancer Natural Transformation, Mari told her followers "God told me I had to change my diet."
She describes how she was being bombarded with information about cancer, something cancer patients will be all too familiar with. Her niece explains in a new video that Mari had already been through chemotherapy once, as well as having a double mastectomy, and did not want to do it again, which led her to choose a raw vegan diet and juicing.
Towards the end of her life, however, Mari realized that she was going to die of her breast cancer and asked her niece to remove the videos from YouTube, The Independent reports.
Instead, Liz has kept the videos up, even claiming in a new one it was eating meat again and using a microwave to heat food – things that Liz's mom, who was caring for Mari, did – that caused complications in the cancer.
"[M]y mom would cook her things using the microwave [...].I feel like that’s what caused the issues." Liz told Babe, insisting she stood by these claims despite the lack of evidence suggesting any link.
Of course, changing to a healthy diet if you didn't already have one gives your body the best sporting chance to fight an illness, but this should be alongside the recommended medical treatment, not instead of. And the danger in making these misinformed pronouncements on a platform like Youtube is that other people will hear claims like "I recovered from cancer with this [juicing] machine," and follow suit, resulting in what may have been preventable deaths.
Macmillan, the cancer support group, recommends a balanced diet for cancer patients, as well as taking whatever treatment is recommended to you by a physician. If you are concerned about your diet they suggest that doctors or nurses can refer you to a dietician.