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Fasting improves chemotherapy results and protects from side effects: study

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Re: Fasting improves chemotherapy results and protects from side effects: study

#171

Post by shekharshan »

Zippogriff wrote: post #163
shekharshan wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@zhynn, Buddhists monks eat one meal a day throughout their lives. Even lay Buddhists who maintain 8 precepts do not eat after noon throughout their lives. As a practicing Buddhist I eat during a 4-5 hour window everyday of the year. Why make a big deal about one religion?

Is this true in practice, for most practitioners? It's sometimes hard to tell how ideals match up to reality when it comes to this stuff, for those without first-hand experience. For my part I've read a fair amount about Buddhism but the real-life experience of a lay practitioner or monk remains obscure to me. In reading about Christian monastics I've found that their fasting practices are, and were even in the middl…

In my own Sangha (community) of lay people, we have several who observe the 8 daily precepts. Every retreat I have gone to, I have never seen monks eat more than one meal a day.

Re: Fasting improves chemotherapy results and protects from side effects: study

#172

Post by blithedale »

blithedale wrote: post #170

ARGH. ARGH ARGH ARGH. Almost no one reads these papers when stuff like this gets posted on HN. And there is shameful statistical fuckery afoot in this paper. People are only repeating the hype statistics at the top of the paper. Their "pathological response" rates touted at the top of paper only come from the 1/3 of women able to actually carry out the diet. This is the "per-protocol" language in the abstract. An hon…

A lot of people might think "Ah, well, fasting is clearly effective for the 1/3 that are able to carry it out, just gotta make sure you have the willpower to be the 1/3."

But hold on. Slow down. There's a good chance the "women who fasted had better chemo responses" story completely REVERSES cause and effect. Here's how:

    WOMEN 1 - Has indolent biology, slower growing tumor than your average breast cancer at this stage.
 - Symptoms: Less pain, neuropathy, less swelling, tumors not affecting distant organs as much

    WOMEN 2 - Has aggressive biology, faster growing tumor than your average breast cancer at this stage.
 - Symptoms: More pain, neuropathy, more swelling, tumors begin to affect distant organs
So ask yourself: Which women is more likely to be able to follow a strictly regimented diet?

Clearly WOMEN 1.

Re: Fasting improves chemotherapy results and protects from side effects: study

#173

Post by blithedale »

blithedale wrote: post #172
blithedale wrote: post #170

ARGH. ARGH ARGH ARGH. Almost no one reads these papers when stuff like this gets posted on HN. And there is shameful statistical fuckery afoot in this paper. People are only repeating the hype statistics at the top of the paper. Their "pathological response" rates touted at the top of paper only come from the 1/3 of women able to actually carry out the diet. This is the "per-protocol" language in the abstract. An hon…

A lot of people might think "Ah, well, fasting is clearly effective for the 1/3 that are able to carry it out, just gotta make sure you have the willpower to be the 1/3." But hold on. Slow down. There's a good chance the "women who fasted had better chemo responses" story completely REVERSES cause and effect. Here's how: WOMEN 1 - Has indolent biology, slower growing tumor than your average breast cancer at this stag…

This is like making people with cancer do an Ironman triathalon.

People about to enter hospice and pass on in a few weeks are gonna be way less able to complete it than someone who has months left to live.

But all you've done is stratify your patients.

The triathalon doesn't make anyone live longer.

Re: Fasting improves chemotherapy results and protects from side effects: study

#174

Post by blithedale »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #161
tyingq wrote: post #26

Interesting. Though cancers that force you to fast, like stomach or esophageal cancer don't have great 5 year survival rates.

That's what I keep thinking. One wrinkle here is that the calorie restricted days are those leading up to chemo, which were the only days my dad (who had esophageal cancer) could eat very much. How could we know if this was survivorship bias? What if the folks who can best comply with the calorie restrictions are those who are already in a good state?

Their "better response rate" touted at the top ignores the 2/3 of women who couldn't carry out the assigned FMD.

When you fold back in those 2/3 of people on that arm, the response rate is the same:

   "The overall pCR rate was 11.7% and did not differ between the two groups (10.8% in FMD group versus 12.7% in control group; OR 0.830, 95% CI 0.282–2.442, P = 0.735)."

Re: Fasting improves chemotherapy results and protects from side effects: study

#175

Post by jnwatson »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #103
zhynn wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find it funny that fasting comes up so often, but a ctrl-f almost never turns up someone mentioning Ramadan. Nearly 25% of the world population fasts for an entire month, but it's almost invisible to the western world. While I don't agree with all of the details of the fast (I drink water), I think it is an admirable holiday, it's way healthier for the world than Christmas or Thanksgiving.

But they eat each day in Ramadan (at certain times), don't they? How is it even "fasting" and why should it be mentioned?

Eating once a day or in a limited time period is called "intermittent fasting".

Re: Fasting improves chemotherapy results and protects from side effects: study

#176

Post by avtar »

Zippogriff wrote: post #163
shekharshan wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@zhynn, Buddhists monks eat one meal a day throughout their lives. Even lay Buddhists who maintain 8 precepts do not eat after noon throughout their lives. As a practicing Buddhist I eat during a 4-5 hour window everyday of the year. Why make a big deal about one religion?

Is this true in practice, for most practitioners? It's sometimes hard to tell how ideals match up to reality when it comes to this stuff, for those without first-hand experience. For my part I've read a fair amount about Buddhism but the real-life experience of a lay practitioner or monk remains obscure to me. In reading about Christian monastics I've found that their fasting practices are, and were even in the middl…

> Is this true in practice, for most practitioners?

I think it would be more common to find a lay practitioner adhering to the first five precepts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_precepts

Re: Fasting improves chemotherapy results and protects from side effects: study

#177

Post by blithedale »

agumonkey wrote: post #162
faeyanpiraat wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give examples?

I forgot but let me try: - cancerous cells often break the mitochondria forcing cell into a secondary respiration mode - they also trigger vascular growth but chaotically - since the cell is in this alternative respiration, they don't need normal arteries to get energy so the chaotic arterial network they grow is not a problem - IIRC this network also impedes chemotoxins to reach the cell as fast as normal cells - if…

Good stuff.

Also of note is tumor heterogenity. Not only are cancers different between cell origin and across different patients, cancer is not one uniform genetic entity even inside a single person.

Why? The cancer's ability to repair DNA mutations is crap, so different chunks of tumor can rapidly evolve different mutations.

You might be able to drug one portion of the tumor based on a fancy receptor/biomarker, but that tumor chunk will get outcompeted by a different cancer blob that doesn't express that.

Re: Fasting improves chemotherapy results and protects from side effects: study

#178

Post by crusso »

kongolongo wrote: post #143
crusso wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"bullshit", "quackery", ""healers" and witches" Is all that really necessary? When it comes to human health, the unknowns are legion. Medical science is in its infancy, but too many act as though it's a mature discipline built upon rock-solid theories with few problems. 20 years ago, I noticed that my mental fog cleared up and I felt healthier when I ate very low carb, I looked to pioneers like Atkins and others who…

The food pyramid was never backed by any high quality evidence. It was primarily pushed by various agriculture lobbies. Calories in calories out is 100% valid for weight loss. The problem is that people interpret it to somehow be a claim on overall health when it is just a statement on weight gain and loss, which while can be beneficial to health, isn't everything. A calorie is just a calorie, so much as color is col…

"The food pyramid was never backed by any high quality evidence"

And yet medical organizations backed government efforts to force it upon our society.

"Calories in calories out is 100% valid for weight loss" "A calorie is just a calorie, so much as color is color."

Yeah, and you can tell an obese person to cut off their legs to lose weight. Sure, you'll be factually accurate, but are you honestly talking about weight loss?

"If you care about overall health then obviously there is a lot more to it than just calories."

Is weight loss without health considerations really the subject you think people discuss when they talk about weight loss? Nobody talking about actual dieting and weight loss is talking about thermodynamics. We're talking about the complex interactions between food, exercise, mental health, and our individual bodies in order to reliably lose weight and be healthier.

Re: Fasting improves chemotherapy results and protects from side effects: study

#179

Post by mountainboy »

keithwarren wrote: post #98
markus92 wrote: post #27

Interesting study with, as always, a lot of caveats. The most we can take from this is that it's worth to study more, the effect is existing but not extreme. I don't get the submitted title here claiming that it protects from side effects. The study does not mention this at all, just that the side effects are similar despite omission of dexamethason in the fasting arm of the trial - it increases appetite, so makes se…

My wife is Stage 3, ++- (43 yo) and half way through the taxol phase of an ACT regimen; she is progressing well but I know she has the discipline to do a fasting diet if we thought it would help. Any thoughts on starting this mid-way through the treatment?

fasting is good. Watch the documentary: The Science of Fasting.

Also, the Budwig protocol is very good, and you can easily make it yourself at home. very inexpensive. Google it.

Oxygen therapy is good. Look into hyperbaric oxygen chambers. Deep breathing exercises. Oxygen/ozone machines. Anything to get more oxygen to the cells.

Must, must, watch all the videos by Barbara O'Neill on Youtube.

You might also want to look into the books and treatments of Dr. Jerry Tenant, in particular the Healing is Voltage books.

Add turmeric and pepper to all her foods.

There are more, but these are some off the top of my head.

Re: Fasting improves chemotherapy results and protects from side effects: study

#180

Post by blithedale »

markus92 wrote: post #27

Interesting study with, as always, a lot of caveats. The most we can take from this is that it's worth to study more, the effect is existing but not extreme. I don't get the submitted title here claiming that it protects from side effects. The study does not mention this at all, just that the side effects are similar despite omission of dexamethason in the fasting arm of the trial - it increases appetite, so makes se…

I'm not convinced the 2/3 dropout rate of the FMD didn't simply select for people with less aggressive tumors, given that the Intention-To-Treat analysis found no difference in response rate, and that this paper is telling a nice story that actually happens to reverse cause and effect.

Basically, this?

   HAS AGGRESSIVE TUMOR ---> CANNOT DO THE FMD

   HAS SLOW-GROWING TUMOR ---> ABLE TO MAINTAIN FMD
Since you're researcher in this field and I'm just a weirdo who likes watching scientists argue on Twitter, I'll ask: Anything you can see in the paper that would give a clearer picture regarding possible bias that might have snuck in?
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