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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.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06e-PwhmSq8 [video]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Such treatments attempt to concentrate the radiation and poison where the cancer is, however.
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, and that cancer basically represents an unwanted return to our genetic roots It's not close to even 'relatively' being new. I was giving cancer talks that made mention of it back when I worked in cancer bio, just about 16 years ago now. I didn't come up with it, and it wasn't new then. I used it in tal…
If cancer cells have high metabolic requirements, couldn't you attack them by:
1. lowering the caloric intake of the patient
2. Making the glucose the patient intakes mildly radioactive, say with a beta or an alpha emitter [1]. As the patient is strictly kept on a low caloric diet, the radioactive glucose is consumed and expelled quickly (i.e. doesn't accumulate in the adipose (?) tissue).
Not so radioactive that the person is harmed but radioactive enough to pack an extra punch to the metabolically starved, and therefore stressed, cancer cells (who are drawing more of the glucose to themselves).
That should target cancer more specifically, and I guess it can be done in tandem with other techniques.
Is something similar done? I know that's how cancer is imaged, and the way I see it (I studied optics in a previous life) if you can image it, you should be able to destroy it.
[1] Say replacing the hydrogens in glucose with tritium. Hydrogen hopping will ensure that the water produced by metabolizing the sugar is homogeneously mixed, and therefore expelled with all the water loss mechanisms. According to wikipedia, TO2 has a half life of 12 days. I'd imagine you can lower that by pumping fluids into the patient.
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.
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.
When I look at this image [0] it seems to me that muslim countries (which tend to fast once a year, I guess?) and poor countries have fewer cases of cancer. But at least with the poor countries I'm not sure if it's because people die of other reasons before they even could get cancer. [0] https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-a0728f7c2418f32922558b...
And then you can try to find other correlations.
Someday we'll need to address the issue that talks, with their more extensive and accessible graphics and explanations, are less available to the public than papers.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109727652... [2] https://twitter.com/zhaoqili [3] https://biology.mit.edu/graduate/why-mit-biology/graduate-te...
At the end of the day life is a series of ever complex systems of inputs and outputs. I'm not surprised by the findings and the resolution to this paradox. When we look at apparent inefficiencies of life systems (singletons and complete systems) we have to take into account setting and environmental factors as well as the various layers of abstraction. Looking down at cancer (similar to a defect in software) and ques…
Most animals (actually not only the animals but most eukaryotic cells) can produce energy (in the form of ATP) by transforming glucose into lactic acid, exactly like in the lactic fermentation of milk into yogurt. (Some animals and some other eukaryotic organisms use other fermentation variants, e.g. alcoholic fermentation by yeasts or fermentation of glucose + water into acetic acid + carbon dioxide + dihydrogen in…