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Why cancer cells waste so much energy

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Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#21

YSK, cancer as a metabolic disease, and tripping over the truth, are excellent books about this, and why we got cancer wrong since watson and crick.

" Tripping Over The Truth ," seconded.

I’m listening to his other books now, Ketones.

There’s also Emperor of All Maladies (and his other book Genes) from another author that may be of interest.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#23
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a relatively new theory saying that malignant, metastatic cancer cells behave like single cell organisms, and that cancer basically represents an unwanted return to our genetic roots; multicellular organisms used to be single cell organisms a billion years ago and the original genes might carry on within our DNA until today. But they should be switched off. Once they are switched on, the cells will stop coop…

> There is a relatively new theory saying that malignant, metastatic cancer cells behave like single cell organisms, This is the track they are on, but given how shortlived they are, they never get the chance to do much evolution. They only have time to learn a few tricks. Simple things like turning stuff of or up/downregulating existing systems. It's a strange step to "cannot help but switch to the previous single-c…

> given how shortlived they are, they never get the chance to do much evolution

There is a very rare category of cancers for which this is not true, clonally transmissible cancers[1]. They can move from individual to individual like other pathogens. One example is the devil facial tumor disease[2] that has killed around 95% of Tasmanian devils.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonally_transmissible_cancer

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a relatively new theory saying that malignant, metastatic cancer cells behave like single cell organisms, and that cancer basically represents an unwanted return to our genetic roots; multicellular organisms used to be single cell organisms a billion years ago and the original genes might carry on within our DNA until today. But they should be switched off. Once they are switched on, the cells will stop coop…

It also has no scientific grounding whatsoever: https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2020/12/06/the-atavi...

Well, that is why I linked to NIH rather than one scientist's blog.

Myers is very outspoken in his rejection of the idea, but even as an amateur I can see rhetoric sleights of hand in his argumentation. An example:

These “layers” don’t exist! When my car malfunctions, I don’t get a horse

Bad comparison, a car did not evolve from a horse, there is no mechanism for it to have a previous "horse layer".

Myers seems to hate the idea so much and return to it so often and with so many damnations and so few citations that it actually decreases his credibility in my eyes.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#25
post #22

I've been thinking and came to the conclusion that cancer might be a way of the body to get rid of excess sugar and maybe other toxins. Many cancers seem to respond well when ppl go keto for example

That’s.... backwards. Excess sugars and toxins promote environments that are favorable for cancer promotion (eg by weakening immune system by down regulating certain cells within the tumor microenvironment or activating metabolic pathways that should be inhibited and so on).

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#26

I’m curious to see how fasting might influence cancer treatment. I know in other parts of the world it is seen as a legitimate treatment, while also potentially considered to be a hippy dippy homeopathic treatment. Anecdotally it seems you can starve certain cancers to death pretty easily by severely limiting your caloric intake. I sense a relationship between that and this study.

This didn't work for Steve Jobs

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#27

I’m curious to see how fasting might influence cancer treatment. I know in other parts of the world it is seen as a legitimate treatment, while also potentially considered to be a hippy dippy homeopathic treatment. Anecdotally it seems you can starve certain cancers to death pretty easily by severely limiting your caloric intake. I sense a relationship between that and this study.

From a non-medical professional's perspective it doesn't seem that strange. Medical treatments for cancer include "let's slowly irradiate you and hope the cancer dies first" and "let's slowly poison you and hope the cancer dies first". "let's slowly starve you to death and hope the cancer dies first" doesn't seem all that different.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#29
post #26

I’m curious to see how fasting might influence cancer treatment. I know in other parts of the world it is seen as a legitimate treatment, while also potentially considered to be a hippy dippy homeopathic treatment. Anecdotally it seems you can starve certain cancers to death pretty easily by severely limiting your caloric intake. I sense a relationship between that and this study.

This didn't work for Steve Jobs

He wasn't fasting, he was on fruits diet.

Re: Why cancer cells waste so much energy

#30
The research around NAD+ production and cancer proliferation may also give some causal explanation--or at least, a place to start looking--for the correlation between B vitamin supplementation (edit: folic acid, specifically) and increased cancer rates/fatalities in certain high-risk populations: https://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20091117/folic-acid-b12-ma...
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