A long time ago I lived in a place that had a serious issue with roaches which I attempted to solve with my own form of chemotherapy called spray insecticide. It killed all the roaches that were in my dorm room. However this lasted less than a day because my neighbors in the dorm room next to mine continued to treat half eaten pizzas as decorator items to be disposed of only after they started to smell. I learned a very important lesson. It does not matter how much poison you use, if you keep feeding the little buggers they keep coming back.
So let us move from roaches to cancer. The 1931 Nobel Prize was given to Otto Warburg who demonstrated that cancer feeds on glucose and produces lactic acid as a by product. Way back in the 1920s they knew that high carbohydrate diets and high blood sugar made cancer more likely and made it grow faster. This metabolic process is literally known as The Warburg Effect and there is a lot of research being done on how it might be harnessed to slow the growth of tumors. They know that starving a tumor will cause apoptosis and make it die. The problem is killing the cancer without killing the host.
I would like to propose one way this could work. We could stop feeding the roaches.
Human cells, including brain cells, can use one of two sources of fuel. They can use glucose, which they prefer and which comes from sugar in the bloodstream. They can also use something called ketones which are what your body makes when sugar is not available. When someone is on a diet like Atkins, they are using ketones to fuel their cells.
Now whether or not inducing ketosis actually slows down the progression of cancer or makes chemo work any better is still the subject of debate but it is not out of the question. There has been some research done on this in terminal patients.
In the examples cited here, the patients had better quality of life, and some died later than expected when they went on the diet. A little girl with a brain tumor saw the tumor stop growing and she was still alive ten years later. Read the entire article. It’s maddening.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3157418/
There is also more recent work again seemed to show that the diet slowed the growth of cancer.
http://www.thebarrow.org/Research/Neuro_Oncology/213930
Go to page 13 and read about the rats on this one. Guess what happened to their tumor growth. Even with casien in their diet which has also been shown to promote tumors. (see the book The China Study for that one)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3267662/
Oh and on that same study, read page 14 about how doing what comes naturally and not eating when you have cancer also seems to help.
Also we know that eating sugar seems to make the cancer grow faster
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21623683
http://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/abstract/S1097-2765%2812%2900979-3?switch=standard
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21791085
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24077675
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19587591
Be careful how you read this next one. L-lactate is the sugar used in common IV solutions and the issue here is “should we give cancer patients sugar in their IV since it makes the tumors grow a lot faster and it makes them metastisize”.
While they are discussing high ketones in the blood which is common in diabetics, even on a ketogenic diet this should not be an issue for anyone with a healthy pancreas. Insulin should keep the blood levels of ketones normal.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3047616/
Read this one carefully. It says quite casually that we know that hypoglycemia is tumoricidal. A low blood sugar state kills tumors that display the Warburg Effect. You know, invasive tumors, the kind that kill people. Yeah. Low blood sugar kills them.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19264418
I have read on certain medical sites that the diet is too extreme (its 80% fat, 15% protein which is preferably not from animals, and 5% carbs). Extreme compared with what? Is eating this way extreme compared to having poison shot into my veins and being irradiated on purpose? Really?
And yes, it is still unproven, And yes, for some people it is too stressful and yes, for some kinds of cancer its probably not helpful. I get that. But its food, for people whose bodies are telling them not to eat anyway, and really what responsible doctor says that their patients need simple carbs and sugar anyway?
Everyone must make their own choices about what they are willing to try and what makes sense for them. That said, it needs to be an informed decision. It needs to be based on current research. And currently there is some preliminary evidence that restricting sugar, not eating when you feel unwell, and following a ketogenic diet may provide benefits. Not proven, and not necessarily a cure, but better energy, perhaps more time and maybe, just maybe in some cases it helps the chemo just enough. There is enough evidence that more research is being done. And its food. Not lasers or radiation…food.
So now you are informed. Read the papers. Talk to a nutritionist. Find a doctor who takes you seriously and can work with you on a plan. And give her these articles. Hopefully she has already read them.
Make your own decision. It’s your life.
