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Hungry Fat Cells Could Someday Starve Cancer

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Re: Hungry Fat Cells Could Someday Starve Cancer

#21

Post by gametorch »

ricardonunez wrote: post #15
brandall10 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hunger, like cold exposure, is an uncomfortable but transient signal. In many cases it peaks and subsides without requiring immediate action, especially once the body adapts. Anecdotally, my first 72-hour fast was revealing. Around the 48-hour mark my body aggressively signaled hunger, esp. for sugary foods. By the third day, however, hunger largely subsided, and at break I wasn’t hungry at all. For the following wee…

I have similar findings. I fast regularly and take cold showers. Another thing is one meal days are far easier after you do it couple of times. You don’t even think about food which is harder if you have two to three meals per day. Edit: for those wanting to try this lifestyle, everybody is different. do your own research before jumping into regular fasting or even cold showers. Max time without food I did was 6 days…

> Another thing is one meal days are far easier after you do it couple of times.

It's mind-boggling to me that multiple "one meal" days don't incidentally happen to everyone over the course of a year.

I would think most people have those days where they skip breakfast and lunch due to some or other exigency and only get to eat dinner.

Re: Hungry Fat Cells Could Someday Starve Cancer

#22

Post by edwardtay »

The metabolic competition angle is fascinating - it's elegant how this leverages the body's own resource allocation rather than trying to poison cancer cells directly.

A few questions about the mechanism:

1. How selective is this approach? Cancer cells are notoriously heterogeneous - do different cancer types or subtypes respond differently to this metabolic pressure?

2. The cold exposure converting white to beige fat is interesting, but what about the feasibility for actual patients? Sustained cold exposure seems difficult to maintain for someone already dealing with cancer treatment.

3. Has anyone looked at whether this could work synergistically with existing metabolic therapies like metformin or ketogenic diets? The metabolic stress combined with nutrient competition could be powerful.

4. What's the risk of adaptive resistance? Cancer cells are remarkably good at finding alternative metabolic pathways when stressed.

RIP to Nguyen - it's heartbreaking when promising researchers pass before seeing their work come to fruition. Hope the team continues this line of investigation.

Re: Hungry Fat Cells Could Someday Starve Cancer

#25

Post by deepsun »

brandall10 wrote: post #8
OutOfHere wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with chronic cold exposure is that it makes one very hungry, a lot hungrier than usual, with the compensatory calorie consumption risking negating the intended benefit.

Hunger, like cold exposure, is an uncomfortable but transient signal. In many cases it peaks and subsides without requiring immediate action, especially once the body adapts. Anecdotally, my first 72-hour fast was revealing. Around the 48-hour mark my body aggressively signaled hunger, esp. for sugary foods. By the third day, however, hunger largely subsided, and at break I wasn’t hungry at all. For the following wee…

I read blockade survivors diaries, they all say it's easy to get used to hunger, but not to cold.

Re: Hungry Fat Cells Could Someday Starve Cancer

#26

Post by Dumblydorr »

edwardtay wrote: post #22

The metabolic competition angle is fascinating - it's elegant how this leverages the body's own resource allocation rather than trying to poison cancer cells directly. A few questions about the mechanism: 1. How selective is this approach? Cancer cells are notoriously heterogeneous - do different cancer types or subtypes respond differently to this metabolic pressure? 2. The cold exposure converting white to beige fa…

It’s CRISPR and injection changing their fat cells, not cold exposure. They theorized something in cold exposure modulated energy and fat, they found genes and tested which one works best via crispr, the ucp1

Re: Hungry Fat Cells Could Someday Starve Cancer

#27

Post by blensor »

_yb2s wrote: post #6
OutOfHere wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with chronic cold exposure is that it makes one very hungry, a lot hungrier than usual, with the compensatory calorie consumption risking negating the intended benefit.

If white fat converts to beige fat, it is going to be burning a lot more calories, so you ultimately would have to eat more to maintain a stable body weight. It’s not clear to me that this would negate the benefit. If it does negate the benefit than that would suggest that the entire benefit from the beige fat is from putting the body in a calorie deficit, and you would then expect the exact same effectiveness from c…

I recently saw a video discussing fasting effects on cancer.

In the past it seems the consensus was that since cancer cells need more fuel than regular cells, starving them is beneficial in combating it.

But recently it has been discovered that some cancers can grow better with ketones.

So it seems that some cancers benefit from fasting while others are starved from fasting.

Re: Hungry Fat Cells Could Someday Starve Cancer

#28

Post by SoftTalker »

gametorch wrote: post #21
ricardonunez wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have similar findings. I fast regularly and take cold showers. Another thing is one meal days are far easier after you do it couple of times. You don’t even think about food which is harder if you have two to three meals per day. Edit: for those wanting to try this lifestyle, everybody is different. do your own research before jumping into regular fasting or even cold showers. Max time without food I did was 6 days…

> Another thing is one meal days are far easier after you do it couple of times. It's mind-boggling to me that multiple "one meal" days don't incidentally happen to everyone over the course of a year. I would think most people have those days where they skip breakfast and lunch due to some or other exigency and only get to eat dinner.

I only eat breakfast intentionally, as I am not really hungry in the mornings. But as I understand it, it's better to get your calories earlier in the day than late, so I make myself eat in the morning.

Re: Hungry Fat Cells Could Someday Starve Cancer

#29

Post by dustbunny »

_yb2s wrote: post #3

This is fascinating and sounds really promising. However, this article also seems to imply that frequent cold exposure that converts your own white fat cells into beige fat cells could be effective at both treating and preventing cancer. They state without explanation that cold therapy cannot be done by cancer patients, but I don’t see why not. I take an ice bath every morning as it helps with my mental health, and i…

How do you create/store the ice?

Re: Hungry Fat Cells Could Someday Starve Cancer

#30

Post by mettamage »

For the curious among us, here are articles related to cold exposure in mice and cancer [1, 2, 3]. I briefly skimmed it but seems like a somewhat plausible idea in the realm of: if it doesn’t hurt you, it can perhaps benefit you.

Also, I think in some cases you can pair it with the Wim Hof Method to make short extreme cold exposure more bearable. I don’t know what the interaction is with norepinephrine though as doing the WHM, one releases a lot of it [4] (I was part of this experiment as a participant so remember the paper quite well). Note, I am not claiming the WHM may help with suppressing cancer, I am simply claiming that it is my experience that performing the WHM makes cold exposure a bit more comfortable. I suspect this is because tons of norepinephrine goes through your body.

On day 4 of our WHM training we were walking 2.5 hours to the top of some Polish ski resort near Wim’s house. It was -7 degrees Celsius. We had shoes on and shorts. No one got frostbite (24 people in total did it, 2 groups of 12 - a few weeks apart). There were 2 research doctors with us (though they were capable doctors as they needed to apply oxygen to one person almost, as he took the training on day 3 really far as we were encouraged to by the doctors and Wim - ultimately it wasn’t needed. Just before they rushed to apply it he started breathing himself again and regained consciousness).

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05030-3

[2] https://news.ki.se/cool-room-temperature-inhibited-cancer-gr...

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-022-01284-5

[4] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1322174111

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