Starving Cancer

Unsettled Science 64 Comments

Cedars Sinai- Researchers Look to Fasting as a Next Step in Cancer Treatment

…fasting selectively targets cancer cells based on their vulnerabilities—just like chemotherapy. While healthy cells lie dormant during a fast (and shore up their defenses), cancer cells are already damaged, so they struggle to survive without nourishment.

“I liken it to bears and hummingbirds,” Freedland explained. “In the absence of food, bears hibernate. But hummingbirds, like tumor cells, can’t hibernate—and they’ll die without food.”

64 Replies to “Starving Cancer”

  1. Similar research on the common cold suggests that sick people should not eat for the same reason: starve the virus.

    1. What is that old saying, feed a fever, starve a cold, or was it vice versa?
      What a world. I have seen the same stuff over and over again decade after decade. I will soon be dead and that will be, as M Stewart says, a good thing.
      It is no long funny or discussable.

      1. There’s a reason why ill people are not hungry. It’s because it’s not good to be ill and eat a lot.

  2. Eliminate sugar and carbohydrates, starve the cancer cells. That’s the way to better health.

    There are no essential carbs required in our diet.

    2. I’m currently on a carnivore diet. 6’1” and 207lbs just didn’t sit right with me and so far I’m impressed after only one week.
      Miss my carbs though.

      1. If you’re not fighting diabetes, then a treat now and then is ok.
        Sugar is inflammatory, hence going carnivore can reduce nagging pains in joints. Plus, reduction of BP, and better overall health is a result.
        I’m loving my 95% meat diet, have lost 25 lbs, and when indulging, not gaining weight either.
        Hint, don’t be afraid of FAT (beef, chicken, pork), butter is good too, but avoid seed oils.
        Additionally, intermittent fasting complements this strategy, so don’t eat breakfast, just eat a late lunch and dinner.
        I’ve leaned out well, but it’s a long term process, one I don’t expect to meet my goal until later this year, after a full season of cycling, getting down to my old playing weight of 210 at 6’3”. Not bad for 60, feeling great.

      2. Burton , I have been carnivore since June. Lost 25 pounds in first 3 months and have leveled at 170. Carb cravings will subside, and when they do emerge, indulge them. Just get back on the carnivore next day. As Dr. Shawn Baker says, treat carbs like recreational drugs.

  3. It doesn’t sound like this has been verified yet with solid evidence. Rather they’re in the middle of a large-scale study. More of a “let’s wait and see” than a “I should jump on board with this” situation.

    Many readers might not pick up on that, as the writer Paturel seems more interested in hyping the theory than warning that it’s tentative.

      1. He needs his government masters to Pat him on the head, coddle him, and re-assure his nibs that Nannystate is looking after him.

      2. If a series of well-designed experiments shows that it’s effective then I’ll jump on the bandwagon. Otherwise I won’t.

        I’m consistent that way. You should try it.

        1. I doubt if funding agencies (pharmaceutical companies, government health agencies) will provide money for this type of research. There is no money to be made in keto or fasting. No new drugs for pharma to sell. No “lobbying” of government health agencies for drug approvals.

          It’s the same problem with the researching and repurposing of old but effective off-patent drugs and over the counter vitamins and herbs. No profit, kickback or pay off opportunities.

          Pharmaceutical companies and public health authorities aren’t in the business of health, they’re in the business of making money.

  5. A lot of confounding factors here, as weight loss is a common side effect of both cancer and cancer treatment.

    2. Another problem is that it would not be possible to do a double-blind study. Both the patient and the doctor would know if the patient was fasting or not.

      1. I once recruited Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder for a double-blind study. Why, yes, it involved duck hunting, why do you ask?

  7. Credit to Valter Longo who invented the fasting mimicking diet to be used in combination with chemotherapy which gives cancer a double hit with much improved survival and cure rates than either alone.

  8. I’m going to bet that a very low glycemic index diet won’t make much difference. The cancer cells will scavenge any glucose circulating then the liver and pancreas will kick in to make more from stored fat. Hypoglycemia is not good and the body will self correct.
    I think the back story is institutional hatred of carbs and protein. The last bit where the doc plays the “plant based diet” card is a tell.

    1. Jam
      And us cancer survivors don’t care if there is a bit of ideological push. Fasting has a long history in the human context, with minimum negative results!

    2. If required, the liver will produce any glucose the body might need, even in a full carnivore diet of zero carbs. Quantities are minute, mind you.

  9. “Even if a fasting mimicking diet makes no difference at all, and I would be hard-pressed to believe that’s the case, just the perception that patients get an element of control back is immeasurable,” Freedland said. “I don’t think we can overestimate the psychological benefits of patients believing that they are a partner in this fight.”

    A strange comment. Is Freedland suggesting doctors lie to their patients about the benefits of fasting to improve their psychological outlook? If so, that has the potential of destroying trust between the doctor and patient, which would have the reverse effect on their psyche.

  10. KM is suggesting that the state of mind of the patient is not a salient factor, and that a therapy that serves to improve the patient’s state of mind is somehow fraudulent.
    What an idiot.

    1. “What an idiot”

      And if the patient finds out that the recommended treatment has no scientific merit except possibly psychological, as they might determine with a simple internet search? Would the patient believe a thing the doctor says to them after that?

  11. I fast once a week (Fridays) I just happen to think it’s beneficial in some way shape or form and I’m not going to pretend I know the science behind it. I’ll leave that for the bigger brains on this board.
    I look at it as a reboot. Two years ago I did it once for three days and almost lost my mind…so that isn’t on my to do list.

    1. Long fasting doesn’t agree with me either. I have oddly low blood pressure/low heart rate and not eating makes me feel terrible after about 20 hours. Somewhere I read that a strict protein diet also produces autophagy so I routinely do 2 weeks or so of a high quality protein and fats diet instead of fasting. Works better for me.

  12. Dr Valter Longo has been working on this for over a decade — he came up with the ‘fast mimicking diet’ when cancer patients and their doctors balked at using a water fast. The premise is to fool the body’s nutrient sensors (insulin, mTor, IGF-1) into thinking the body is starving so that autophagy kicks in to consume dead celluar debris and pathological cells. Stem cells are activated upon refeeding to generate new, healthy cells. Dr, Longo has been interviewed many times — here are two of the discussions. Both are with Dr. Rhonda Patrick:
    Valter Longo, Ph.D. on Fasting-Mimicking Diet & Fasting for Longevity, Cancer & Multiple Sclerosis (7 years ago)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6PyyatqJSE
    How diet and lifestyle regulate longevity with Dr. Valter Longo and Dr. Rhonda Patrick (5 years ago):
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evGFWRXEzz8

  14. Interesting debate if we could only cut out the name-calling.

    Even GYM had something of value to contribute with his experience with cancer, which I did not know about, but would have cared to find out if not for his hostile posts.

    2. Oh, I don’t know. I overhear more substantial conversations at urinals, but it’s hard to find levels of berserk abuse like this anywhere, and most alternatives require protective clothing. These little computer screens catch all the spittle! When these guys get going, they have the awful fascination of battling muskrats, verminous yet weirdly noble.

  15. After WEF’s population reduction via starvation there should be a lot less cancer, then.

  16. Complete bullsh*t. This is the merging of the current health fad with “it cures cancer.” This is factually true, if you stop eating then cancer won’t be a problem after enough time…..

    Most people don’t die from the cancer, rather, they die from either the effects of the treatments (well known but we don’t like to talk about that, do we?) or that the patient’s body can’t feed the tumors as well as the regular body functions.

    That’s right — patients end up looking like Holocaust survivors because the tumors have taken all of the nutrients at a time when appetite is suppressed by treatments, pain, etc. Have you ever seen a long-term cancer victim with obesity? So this “Cure” is doing exactly the opposite of what is needed here — you need to make sure that the body gets as much nutrition as possible in order to try to feed the good stuff and prevent major damage / shutdown of organs.

  17. Doesn’t this overlap with the work done by Thomas Seyfried? Without going back and looking, it’s basically a ketogenic diet punctuated with pulses of chemo.

    m.youtube.com/watch?v=6PJfOFTaYow&pp=ygUPdGhvbWFzIHNleWZyaWVk

  18. There’s a good amount of research on this for those who care to look. The biology is fairly well worked out. Even Mukarjee (Emperor of all Maladies) now uses ketogenic diet as adjunct therapy. A friend in Toronto (an a-level internist) got glioblastoma and received a-level treatment from colleagues. The first thing he was told was to go strict ketogenic. The practitioners read the literature and see the difference.

    The article should note that the protocol should also eliminate glutamate, which cancer cells can use as alternate fuel.

    Also, it should emphasize that ketogenic diet is used as adjunct therapy.

    Of course there is no pharma profits in ketogenic diet, so there is huge commercial incentive to attack it. The attack has been going for decades but the published peer-reviewed research on ketogenic benefits—especially epigenetic signalling—has been increasing exponentially each year.

    1. “Of course there is no pharma profits in ketogenic diet, so there is huge commercial incentive to attack it.”

      Prior to Covid and the Mad Science Jab, I would have rejected this argument. But now, post jab, I must concede your point. One need only look at the huge push to regulate the vitamin industry to see these forces at work. Political effort like that does not come from nowhere, and to accept that the government wants to protect the public from charlatans is laughable.

      Also the corrupt state of peer-reviewed medicine cannot be ignored. Journals which will cheerfully print studies that claim gas stoves cause all the pediatric asthma in the world are not to be trusted on dieting as a possible treatment for cancer. There’s no money in dieting, easy for them to lie about it.

      1. In the United States, an account submitted by poison control centers reported that annually more than 60,000 people, including children under the age of 6, are subjected to life-threatening outcomes due to vitamin toxicities.2,3

        Research studies have reported that in well-nourished individuals, prolonged intake of the antioxidant supplements, including vitamin A and vitamin E, may increase mortality.
        https://www.uspharmacist.com/article/hypervitaminosis-a-global-concern

        1. Vitamin A is well known to be toxic in high doses, as the body does not flush out excess amounts. Pregnant women are warned off liver in part for that reason.

          If you need vitamin A, consume beta carotene (e.g., carrots), which safely converts to Vitamin A if the body needs it.

    2. Yep.
      I remember reading a medical textbook from the 1930s that clearly stated malignancy was graded on the volume of available glutamine. The less glutamine the higher the malignant grade.
      Today I perceive a chicken / egg question: cell differentiation / glutamine scarcity.
      Ketogenic diets should increase available glutamine and decrease glucose.
      Excellent that you’ve brought up a recommended decrease in glutamine. I think this will ultimately prove ineffective and potentially deleterious. However I will put this article here (2019) which supports that position.

      https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/10/02/starving-cancer-cutting-its-favorite-foods-glucose-and-glutamine-14314

  19. Take this with a grain of salt but it’s not just regulating supplements, I hear they are buying up supplement manufacturers.

  20. Canadians should have very low rates of cancer, going forward, We simply will not be able to afford to eat!
    /S

    Even junk food, which is notoriously high in carbs and other sugars, is becoming unaffordable.

  21. well lm out.
    my metabolism was hard wired early when l was born in a wood frame uninsultated.
    winter heat papa got up 4 or so stoked the oven ma b’fast then thru the day until evg.
    mois, newborn to 5 yrs wintered under the blankies. the instructions loaded into the biological ROM are presently to burn off calories in body heat.
    l was still doing it when l took my late native buddy to an all you can eat before covid.
    theyre gone now too. before even covid. anyways, 4 entrees and 3 deserts.
    last weigh in 185

  22. Well, I will throw a wrench into the mix. I believe the fasting has definite merit. Three years ago I heard an interesting story from someone who beat their cancer in a non- conventional way. Joe Tippens, from Oklahoma, had “beat cancer”, but it came back with a vengeance. A veterinarian friend suggested using Fenbedazol, a dog dewormer. Ten weeks later he was in remission and six month later the was cancer free and remains so six years later. At the same time he enrolled in a cancer drug trial. Of the 1,000 participants, he was the only one with good results. Turns out that the dewormer works because it operates on the principle of cutting off sugar receptors. Same sort of principle causes fasting and keto diets to also help; lack of highly available sugars in carbs.
    Also, the older we get, the survival rate for chemo plummets, because you need to be robust to survive that treatment.

  23. After Lazar Kaganovich introduced fasting in the Ukraine no one died of cancer.

    (Lazar lived a long life and died peacefully at the ripe old age of 97.)

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