Starvation Based Chemotherapy: A Novel Approach for Cancer Treatment [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Starvation Based Chemotherapy: A Novel Approach for Cancer Treatment [pdf]

#41

Post by debacle » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 3:03 PM UTC

adwf wrote: post #5

Note that this paper is heavy on theory, not so much on the evidence. The only "proof" of this conjecture is right at the end where they mention 10 people tried starvation before chemo and reported feeling less side-effects afterwards. I'm actually trying out an intermittent fasting diet right now for weight loss. I'm just always skeptical of new fad diets when they start claiming all sorts of health benefits beyond…

IF is only really about weight loss as an ancillary benefit to the actual benefits. It's incredibly easy to gain weight on IF if you are trying - just eat more - but IF helps you eat less via about a half-dozen different vectors.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/fasting-weight-loss/

The above is a good meta-resource on how and why IF helps you eat less.

Re: Starvation Based Chemotherapy: A Novel Approach for Cancer Treatment [pdf]

#42

Post by barry-cotter » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 3:05 PM UTC

stoicy wrote: post #33

rip747 wrote: post #21

Can someone explain to me what is exactly meant by starvation in the article? Does it means that you don't go without any food for a number a days? Restrict your calorie in take to only 600 throughout the day? Only eat a single meal at night while fasting throughout the day? There really any specifics that I can see.

I don't have any authority to comment what they mean in this particular article, but I have studied the issue quite a bit. So I give you my own world view, whatever it's worth. To get a quick therapeutic effect of starvation, the starvation has to endure several days. During that time the patient drinks water and doesn't ingest any calories at all. There are no exact rules, but after about 4 days the therapeutic effe…

>For someone who already eats correctly (see my other comment in this thread) it's not such a big deal. But then again, you don't see those people on cancer wards as patients too often.

There are plenty of people on cancer wards who had perfectly healthy diets. Most of them are old, because cancer and cardiovascular disease are both primarily diseases of age. There are also cancers like brain cancer, most of which just show up because you were unlucky, not because of any environmental or genetic risk factor. Finally there are plenty of cancers that run in the family like, oh, breast cancer.

So there are tons of people on cancer wards who ate perfectly healthy diets.

Yours, with codial loathing

Re: Starvation Based Chemotherapy: A Novel Approach for Cancer Treatment [pdf]

#43

Post by moogleii » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 3:14 PM UTC

leshow wrote: post #24

adwf wrote: post #5

Note that this paper is heavy on theory, not so much on the evidence. The only "proof" of this conjecture is right at the end where they mention 10 people tried starvation before chemo and reported feeling less side-effects afterwards. I'm actually trying out an intermittent fasting diet right now for weight loss. I'm just always skeptical of new fad diets when they start claiming all sorts of health benefits beyond…

Proof is the wrong term here, I understand you put it in quotations but the correct term would be 'evidence'. In studies like this, there is no proof, there is only evidence for different arguments. In terms of your intermittent fasting diet. Meal timing won't really affect weight loss, what will affect weight loss is your overall energy balance (deficit or surplus), and to a lesser extent macronutrient intake (possi…

Theory would be the wrong term, too.

Re: Starvation Based Chemotherapy: A Novel Approach for Cancer Treatment [pdf]

#44

Post by rfrey » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 3:17 PM UTC

stoicy wrote: post #33

rip747 wrote: post #21

Can someone explain to me what is exactly meant by starvation in the article? Does it means that you don't go without any food for a number a days? Restrict your calorie in take to only 600 throughout the day? Only eat a single meal at night while fasting throughout the day? There really any specifics that I can see.

I don't have any authority to comment what they mean in this particular article, but I have studied the issue quite a bit. So I give you my own world view, whatever it's worth. To get a quick therapeutic effect of starvation, the starvation has to endure several days. During that time the patient drinks water and doesn't ingest any calories at all. There are no exact rules, but after about 4 days the therapeutic effe…

> But then again, you don't see those people on cancer wards as patients too often.

This comment makes it seem like you believe the majority, maybe even the large majority, of cancers are caused exclusively by poor diet.

Re: Starvation Based Chemotherapy: A Novel Approach for Cancer Treatment [pdf]

#45

Post by stoicy » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 3:20 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #42

stoicy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any authority to comment what they mean in this particular article, but I have studied the issue quite a bit. So I give you my own world view, whatever it's worth. To get a quick therapeutic effect of starvation, the starvation has to endure several days. During that time the patient drinks water and doesn't ingest any calories at all. There are no exact rules, but after about 4 days the therapeutic effe…

>For someone who already eats correctly (see my other comment in this thread) it's not such a big deal. But then again, you don't see those people on cancer wards as patients too often. There are plenty of people on cancer wards who had perfectly healthy diets. Most of them are old, because cancer and cardiovascular disease are both primarily diseases of age. There are also cancers like brain cancer, most of which ju…

You and I probably disagree on what is a "perfectly healthy diet". But I fully agree with you that whatever the diet, it does not give exactly 100 % immunity for cancer. There are a minority of cancer types that seem to have quite normal cellular metabolism. It's unclear whether diet affects them as much as it affects most cancers such as breast cancer.

I also disagree with you that cancer is primarily a disease of age (or ageing). Age is a contributing factor because the longer one lives, the larger the integral of the contributing effects are. Cancer usually takes quite a long time to form and develop so bad that it starts to cause symptoms.

I agree with you that my tone was too harsh. This is a dear subject for me, and I seldom argue about it, because it's so frustrating. I really have no clue why so much hostility arises around this and dieting in general. Maybe because it's so personal and important for all of us. And so, so hard to study by changing only one variable at a time.

So sorry about my harsh tone. Didn't mean to guilt any cancer patients.

Re: Starvation Based Chemotherapy: A Novel Approach for Cancer Treatment [pdf]

#46

Post by ggrothendieck » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 4:01 PM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #13

Rainymood wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm actually trying out an intermittent fasting diet right now for weight loss. I'm just always skeptical of new fad diets when they start claiming all sorts of health benefits beyond weight loss. Weightloss. To me, still means in I fast (skip breakfast/lunch and drink coffee) and start eating when I get back home out of work. I love it because I build up a 'caloric buffer', for when something unexpected happens (ra…

Do you think you'd do better or worse with a 5:2 diet? Want to do IF too but I haven't decided on an approach yet. Also this NPR article [1] seemed to imply 12 hours of fasting per 24 hours would be enough. That's actually simply skipping breakfast which is really easy. [1] http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/12/05/2014/you-are-when...

There is a site and free self published e-book of about 60 pages (hard copy is available too) on an IF diet in which one fasts for all but 5 hours a day for the purpose of weight loss. The book describes the author as a retired medical doctor and former researcher in the Metabolism branch of the National Cancer Institute. Cancer is not discussed in the book although there is a brief section on physiology and the three mechanisms throught to underlie the effect. See http://www.fast-5.org/

Re: Starvation Based Chemotherapy: A Novel Approach for Cancer Treatment [pdf]

#47

Post by JeremyNT » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 4:15 PM UTC

stoicy wrote: post #18

Rainymood wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm actually trying out an intermittent fasting diet right now for weight loss. I'm just always skeptical of new fad diets when they start claiming all sorts of health benefits beyond weight loss. Weightloss. To me, still means in I fast (skip breakfast/lunch and drink coffee) and start eating when I get back home out of work. I love it because I build up a 'caloric buffer', for when something unexpected happens (ra…

The "in People get fat because they eat the wrong food, of which the effect of making them hungry and eat even more is only one of the many detrimental effects of unsuitable food for us or other animals. I don't write this to change your mind, but hope that if someone else reads this, at least this might give them some encouragement, so that they might persist through to read about the issue themselves. It really is…

> People get fat because they eat the wrong food, of which the effect of making them hungry and eat even more is only one of the many detrimental effects of unsuitable food for us or other animals.

Counter anecdote: I "got fat" eating slightly too much relatively healthy, mostly home prepared food over a long period of time. I lost weight by noting how much I ate and reducing intake while continuing to eat the same food. I know some people who eat only fast food and maintain a healthy weight because they have a good sense of how many calories they require.

It's probably true that some people eat diets that condition them to eat too much, but you can't simply claim something as broad as "people get fat because they eat the wrong food" and be done with it.

The parent's "in true.

Re: Starvation Based Chemotherapy: A Novel Approach for Cancer Treatment [pdf]

#48

Post by s_q_b » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 4:23 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #19

mrfusion wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've come to the conclusion that any diet based on will power just won't work. I've done will-power based diets for up to 8 months before but ultimately I just give in again. That's why I'm hopeful IF might help.

I lost 40 pounds eating once a day and walking. 205-165. It was the quickest, most dramatic weight loss I ever experienced. For three months nobody could see me without remarking on how much better I looked. Yes, it will help.

240 -> 195 in three months with portion control and no snacking. For me, I charted what I was eating and when for three weeks before starting. Then I broke down the calories in my diet by origin.

Then I rebalanced slightly by adding more green vegetables (I was eating virtually none), and reduced the portions of each other category by around %30-%50, bringing me about 500 calories below my basal metabolic rate. One slice of pizza, not two, half a sandwich rather than a whole, a salad once every couple days. Even without removing snack foods, changing the amount I put on a plate radically altered my caloric consumption without me really noticing. Now that I'm at a healthy weight (I should note I'm very tall so a healthy weight is 190-205ish for me), I brought consumption levels back up to slightly above BMR, and will probably increase more as I start weight training.

On a side note, soda and Doritos were regular staples in my diet. When I stopped I noticed that there's a sort of "withdrawal" when you stop eating these hyper-engineered processed foods. Might be the brain not receiving the expected jolt of positive feedback from a high caloric treat. Either that or something in processed foods really affects my body chemistry. All I know is that for weeks in the middle the sight of a bowl of Lays made me feel both tempted and queasy.

Re: Starvation Based Chemotherapy: A Novel Approach for Cancer Treatment [pdf]

#49

Post by stoicy » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 5:32 PM UTC

rfrey wrote: post #44

stoicy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any authority to comment what they mean in this particular article, but I have studied the issue quite a bit. So I give you my own world view, whatever it's worth. To get a quick therapeutic effect of starvation, the starvation has to endure several days. During that time the patient drinks water and doesn't ingest any calories at all. There are no exact rules, but after about 4 days the therapeutic effe…

> But then again, you don't see those people on cancer wards as patients too often. This comment makes it seem like you believe the majority, maybe even the large majority, of cancers are caused exclusively by poor diet.

Should I get cancer I would instantly take today's cancer treatments and not rely on diet. After all, if I do get cancer and it is a metabolic disease affected by diet, then my idea of the correct diet is wrong by definition. I wouldn't expect it to cure the disease it just caused.

"Exclusively" is a tad too strong, but other than that what you said is exactly what I believe. And it's not only a belief, it's based on research and evidence that's publicly available.

To my best knowledge cancer reasearch by and large is off tracks, and it's the aberrant metabolism of cancer cells (which has been known for decades and is not controversial, even PET scanners operate on that principle) that should be studied more. And that's highly linked to diet as well.

I'm more interested in not getting cancer in the first place, and here I believe diet is the key. I know there are many people who died of cancer and thought the same way, but then again, I operate on the logic I stated in the first paragraph. I expect more evidence starts popping up during the years and decades ahead. The results of mainstream ideology are not at all convincing, and to me it seems hard evidence supports the metabolic theory.

Re: Starvation Based Chemotherapy: A Novel Approach for Cancer Treatment [pdf]

#50

Post by leshow » Thu, Jan 08, 2015, 8:08 PM UTC

Lewton wrote: post #30

leshow wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing reasonable about it, it's completely wrong on every level.

What's so unreasonable about saying that different foods can satiate you differently? All calories are not created equally.

That's not what the post said,

"This makes and keeps you healthy, and you cannot overeat even if you try. "

implies that you can make food choices which prevent you from gaining weight, regardless of quantity.