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Starving cancer by cutting off its favorite foods

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Re: Starving cancer by cutting off its favorite foods

#141

Post by baked_ziti »

barry-cotter wrote: post #139
baked_ziti wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eliminating carbohydrates from your diet means eliminating vegetables from your diet. I'm highly skeptical of the claim that any such diet can ever be healthy in the medium to long term. I fail to see how malnourishment isn't a certainty under such circumstances. The fact that humans can fast for weeks or months isn't evidence in favor of: > The amount of carbohydrates you need in your diet to survive is exactly zero…

You can go from a normal Western diet to eating nothing but lean and fatty meat for a year with no ill effects. http://www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf > Two normal men volunteered to live solely on meat for one year, which gave us an unusual opportunity of studying the effects of this diet. The term “meat,” as used by us, included both the lean and the fat portions of animals. The subjects derived most of their…

This is a one hundred year old study which literally states on the first page:

> These studies were supported in part by a research grant from the Institute of American Meat Packers.

Inuit populations suffering lower incidence of heart disease is a myth.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12535749

> The mortality from all cardiovascular diseases combined is not lower among the Inuit than in white comparison populations. If the mortality from IHD is low, it seems not to be associated with a low prevalence of general atherosclerosis. A decreasing trend in mortality from IHD in Inuit populations undergoing rapid westernization supports the need for a critical rethinking of cardiovascular epidemiology among the Inuit and the role of a marine diet in this population.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25064579

> Most studies found that the Greenland Eskimos and the Canadian and Alaskan Inuit have CAD as often as the non-Eskimo populations. Notably, Bang and Dyerberg's studies from the 1970s did not investigate the prevalence of CAD in this population; however, their reports are still routinely cited as evidence for the cardioprotective effect of the "Eskimo diet."

They don't have lower incidence of ischemic heart disease than white westerners, they don't have lower levels of atherosclerosis, and these have actually improved as their diets have become more western and less traditional.

Re: Starving cancer by cutting off its favorite foods

#142

Post by Madmallard »

I have endogenous hyperinsulinemia (mostly proinsulin). That means I really can't go without consuming sugar or I will get neuroglycopenic. What's interesting is (they don't know yet) this could be caused by a type of pancreatic cancer. Seems really bad then if the cancer itself wants more sugar. Maybe this is why Steve Jobs tended toward fruits for 9 months and ended up with metastasis...

Re: Starving cancer by cutting off its favorite foods

#143

Post by baked_ziti »

hnick wrote: post #134
baked_ziti wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eliminating carbohydrates from your diet means eliminating vegetables from your diet. I'm highly skeptical of the claim that any such diet can ever be healthy in the medium to long term. I fail to see how malnourishment isn't a certainty under such circumstances. The fact that humans can fast for weeks or months isn't evidence in favor of: > The amount of carbohydrates you need in your diet to survive is exactly zero…

Vitamin and other supplements could probably close the gap? Vegans do this when they lack certain vitamins largely/only present in animal products and I don't see why the opposite can't be true.

It's not a gap, it's an absence, and the deficiencies incurred by eating zero fruits and vegetables are not analogous to a b-12 deficiency (which most meat eaters also suffer, just to a lesser extent than vegans). These deficiencies aren't going to be made up for in pill form. Not to mention consuming no fruits and vegetables means you are essentially on a very low fiber diet, which has huge health implications on its own and is probably a bad idea.

This is a lot of work to go to in order to hang on to a pet diet that is shown to cause arterial injury and doesn't lead to greater weight loss than less harmful diets.

Re: Starving cancer by cutting off its favorite foods

#144

Post by barry-cotter »

baked_ziti wrote: post #141
barry-cotter wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can go from a normal Western diet to eating nothing but lean and fatty meat for a year with no ill effects. http://www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf > Two normal men volunteered to live solely on meat for one year, which gave us an unusual opportunity of studying the effects of this diet. The term “meat,” as used by us, included both the lean and the fat portions of animals. The subjects derived most of their…

This is a one hundred year old study which literally states on the first page: > These studies were supported in part by a research grant from the Institute of American Meat Packers. Inuit populations suffering lower incidence of heart disease is a myth. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12535749 > The mortality from all cardiovascular diseases combined is not lower among the Inuit than in white comparison populati…

> I'm highly skeptical of the claim that any such diet can ever be healthy in the medium to long term. I fail to see how malnourishment isn't a certainty under such circumstances.

No malnourishment in the linked study or in Inuit populations.

> Inuit populations suffering lower incidence of heart disease is a myth.

I never claimed they did. I was responding to your claim that you don’t see how a long term all meat diet can be healthy and that malnourishment is certain with an all meat diet. If the Inuit incidence of cardiovascular disease is not lower I presume it’s also not higher or it’d have been mentioned.

The claim was not that an all meat diet was healthier, but that it was roughly as healthy. If their incidence ischemic heart disease and atherosclerosis is no lower than white westerners but they don’t get diabetes because they don’t eat carbs that’s (incredibly weak) evidence of health benefits.

Again, I’m not saying the diet is healthier, I’m showing evidence that it is healthy in the long run and that malnourishment is not a certainty.

Re: Starving cancer by cutting off its favorite foods

#145

Post by ycalu »

anon1m0us wrote: post #104
snowwrestler wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This information is dangerously wrong. I have asked several oncologists specifically about fasting during chemotherapy and they all recommended strongly against it. Your understanding of how chemotherapy works with cancer and healthy cells seems flawed. Chemo harms all fast-growing cells, healthy or not. That’s why people have terrible tastes, stomach problems, hair and skin problems during chemo; those are all fast-…

https://bmccancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12885-... > Conclusion > [Short Term Fasting] during chemotherapy is well tolerated and appears to improve QOL and fatigue during chemotherapy. https://jeccr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13046-019-... > Abundant and convincing preclinical evidence shows that STF can decrease toxicity and simultaneously increase efficacy of a wide variety of chemotherapeutic…

Just to add to the research ksaun shared, this article reviews and discusses a lot of the key research related to the use of fasting for chemotherapy. https://longevityy.com/fasting-and-cancer-how-fasting-before...

There's an impressive body of research on this subject already, it's just unfortunate that many (most?) oncologists haven't caught up yet with the science.

A common objection is that chemotherapy causes weight loss, and it's important that patients keep their weight up. Where this argument falls down, is when you look at why chemo patients lose weight - and it's primarily due to the treatment reducing their appetite.

So if you're then able to reduce side effects of chemo (which it appears fasting does), patients are then more easily able to eat and maintain/recover their weight.

Re: Starving cancer by cutting off its favorite foods

#146

Post by ycalu »

newen wrote: post #58
anon1m0us wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my research, yes it can. I read a study that said patients who fast during chemotherapy treatments fare better too. The mechanism seems to be that during periods of fasting, normal cells "hunker down" and restrict the consumption of nutrients and other materials. Cancer cells don't do this though and continue to consume the nutrients, which are actually chemotherapy drugs in the patients. Fasting therfore increa…

Got any links to the research? Would be helpful to me and other readers. Thanks.

This article reviews and discusses a lot of the key research related to the use of fasting for chemotherapy. https://longevityy.com/fasting-and-cancer-how-fasting-before...

Papers it discusses include: * Starvation-dependent differential stress resistance protects normal but not cancer cells against high-dose chemotherapy – Lizzia Raffaghello, Valter Longo et al. (2008) https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wmq7q6azyzfsubm/AACoCigKOQYxthruL...

* The effects of short-term fasting on tolerance to (neo) adjuvant chemotherapy in HER2-negative breast cancer patients: a randomized pilot study – Stefanie de Groot et al. (2015) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4595051/

* Fasting and cancer treatment in humans: A case series report – Valter Longo et al. (2009) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2815756/

* Fasting-Mimicking Diet Reduces HO-1 to Promote T Cell-Mediated Tumor Cytotoxicity – Di Biase et al. (2016) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27411588

* The effects of short-term fasting on quality of life and tolerance to chemotherapy in patients with breast and ovarian cancer: a randomized cross-over pilot study – Bauersfeld et al (2018) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29699509

Re: Starving cancer by cutting off its favorite foods

#148

Post by ycalu »

drwasho wrote: post #88
entee wrote: post #68

Cancer favoring glucose has been known for a very long time, this is called the Warburg Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_effect_(oncology) Interesting new pharmacology for sure, but the end of the article is critical here: "Additionally, an accompanying commentary by William Katt and colleagues indicated that there are no FDA-approved drugs that target glucose and glutamine metabolism. This is because pr…

I worked on this for multiple myeloma. DCA is nice but the concentrations you need for treating people gives them peripheral neuropathy, which isn’t trivial. But fwiw combining DCA with other drugs looks promising. The issue is that cancer is polyclonal so there is a sub-population that predominantly relies of aerobic glycolysis, but the sub-populations that mostly metabolise glutamine or fatty acids will escape trea…

That sounds like fascinating research. Besides chemotoxic agents, do you know what other compounds are being experimented with, in combination with DCA?

Re: Starving cancer by cutting off its favorite foods

#149

Post by kingkawn »

DrScump wrote: post #130
kingkawn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the diet you describe the body would preferentially reserve all glucose for the brain and run the rest on ketones. The body can manufacture glucose when needed from other energy sources but it’s an energy intensive biochemical process and not ideal for efficient use of available nutrients.

the body would preferentially reserve all glucose for the brain No, because the brain can use ketone bodies as fuel. Some other organs (such as the heart) cannot.

Always happy to find out new understandings of physiology and biochemistry so I dove back into some research this morning after seeing your comment.

The brain does use ketones in starvation sitautions, but it always needs to use some glucose, so over time the available glucose ends up redirected there.

From what I can find it appears that the heart does utilize ketone bodies for fuel, contrary to what you are asserting. There is correlation to heart failure, possibly from stress in utilizing an energy source with less efficient bioavailability.

For simplicity here's the wiki link as a summary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketone_bodies

I'd love to see the research that shows your point in more detail.

Re: Starving cancer by cutting off its favorite foods

#150

Post by Zelphyr »

usaphp wrote: post #62
Zelphyr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on Keto for almost two years and recently had someone adamantly scold me about how bad it is for my brain. My n=1 suggests otherwise. Things like focus and mood are all significantly better than they were before. Physical and mental stamina have both increased. I went from an "Obese" body fat percentage to "Athletic" in six months. But still, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and sincerely asked him, and…

> things like focus and mood are all significantly better then before... Was your keto diet the only change in your life? Going from obese to athletic in 6 months probably includes some other good habits like going to gym/physical activity and good sleep etc. So maybe your change in a lifestyle helped you improve you mood and focus, not necessarily the keto diet in particular?

I did start working out more. I had to in order to work off the excess energy I suddenly had. But I wasn’t completely sedentary prior to starting Keto. I trained for and ran 5K’s but always felt so sluggish both physically and mentally. So while I’ll grant that the mental gains are influenced by my physical activity, it’s clear to me that the lions share of it comes from my nutritional changes. That was the main reason for starting Keto in the first place; I felt my mental acuity dramatically decreasing and nothing else I was doing seemed to help. The weight loss was icing in the cake, no pun intended.
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