CBN: Using a Ketogenic Diet to Starve Cancer

December 16 2012 by in Cancer, Low Carb High Fat

Here’s a remarkably positive new segment from CBN on how a strict low carb diet might starve cancer and treat epilepsy. The reporter is on low carb herself.

Eating a low carb diet not only reduces glucose levels (possible cancer fuel) somewhat in the body. It also reduces levels of the growth hormones insulin and IGF-1, meaning cancer cells might not get the signal to divide.

Earlier posts on low carb and cancer

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66 Comments

51
Zepp
December 22 2012
Is you asking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fludeoxyglucose_(18F)?

Inflamation is about how our imune system react to try to react on things that wrong.. and it its energy consuming.. I think?
52
Armando
December 28 2012
I came across this interesting article showing the success of ketogenic as an adjuvant to radiation therapy.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121204112610.htm
53
Bret
December 29 2012 1
An avid and respecting fan of Gary Taubes, I will not hesitate for one millisecond before absolutely maximizing my ketone activity should I ever find myself receiving a diagnosis of any form of cancer.

There is no doubt in my mind that carbohydrates fuel all types of cancer.

It is so refreshing to see topics like semi-dwarf wheat, true cholesterol science, and ketogenic diets creeping into the mainstream. Dr. Oz and CBN may not have American Idol levels of popularity, but they have significantly large audiences in their own right. The future looks bright for widespread health improvements in the developed world.

Hell, we don't have much of a choice. If things don't change, our health care costs are going to overwhelm us as a collective society.
54
Reply to comment #2 by Docsopinion
nostents4me!
December 29 2012
Here below a link to a full report of a recent prospective clinical study of ketogenic diet applied to advanced cancer patients.
http://www.nutritionjrnl.com/article/S0899-9007(12)00186-4/fulltext
It was published October 2012 in the journal Nutrition.
Although the title is not giving away that it is a study of advanced cancers and low carb ketogenic diet...

The study used ketogenic diet, ketone metering and PET scans to document correlation between cancer progression and ketone changes. The results are an average of 3 times higher ketosis in patients with no cancer progress or regression (5)compared to those with progressive disease (4), with a study time of 26-28 days.
The results is positive in spite of average low values of absolute ketosis, but must of course be tested in larger studies. Larger studies are now easy and low cost with LCHF -menus that are getting more palatable by the day, and home ketone meters coming as integral parts of new blood sugar meters.
55
Richard David Feinman
December 30 2012
It would be hard to describe how difficult this study was to do. There was no problem with the diet. The dietitians were expert in low carb but the difficulty in doing a clinical study lies in support from your colleagues and Institutional Review Boards as well as from the oncologist from whom patients can be recruited. These are the things that kept the study from being done twenty years ago. There was even trouble getting the study published. We were lucky in having a sympathetic editor at Nutrition but the resistance to low carbohydrate diets is still intense. It will still be difficult to scale up but there may be some help from the editorial by Lewis Cantley https://dl.dropbox.com/u/37202414/Cantley%20Editorial%20_Oct%2012.pdf
but whether that only advances other people's funding or whether Dr. Fine will be able to continue his study remains to be seen.
56
Reply to comment #38 by CU
Chaya
January 2 2013
Communities that consume high carbohydrate diets might have higher levels of physical exercise than ours that could compensate by bringing blood sugar levels down.
57
Nan
January 2 2013
Ever since I first learned that cancer cells cannot survive on sugar, but not on fat and proteins, I have told my loved ones to expect me to fast if I ever get such a diagnosis. There has been a fair amount of cancer in my wider family, and one reason I do annual fasts--starting a ten day one today--is to help clear my system of potential cancerous matter. I hope there will be a lot of research in this area.

http://www.sugaraholics.com
http://highfatlowcarbrecipes.wordpress.com/
58
Nan
January 3 2013
I meant cancer cells can only survive on sugars! Ipads!!!
59
Pam
January 4 2013
Not to throw any wet blankets on a good diet, but I'm afraid that while cancer might possibly be prevented by a LCHF diet, I doubt that it can be cured by one.

There is the problem of gluconeogenesis. When cancers demand glucose, I think the liver will respond by breaking down protein to supply it. This is why cancer is a wasting disease - people who have it lose muscle.

As for populations that naturally eat LCHF diets, the earliest humans certainly did - and skeletons from after the agricultural revolution show that they paid a high price for switching to carbs, even though it made civilization possible. Today, there are few populations that still eat this way. Some Masai tribes still do. Up until about a hundred years ago, the Inuit did. They ate almost nothing but blubber (whale and seal fat) and some meat, for most of the year. They were extremely healthy, with heart disease and cancer almost unknown.
60
Zepp
January 4 2013
Not all cancer lives on glucose, and those how those that, we always have glucose in our blood!

Its those cancers that dependant on insulin for there glucose supply that is affected!

Warburg beleved that all cancers was dependant on glucose, now we know that its not so, but the moste is!
61
Frank Ness
January 7 2013
Yes, this is a good example of a theory which likely won't come true in actual practice. The world is full of many. Yet argument by mechanism still rules the internet world.
62
Frank Ness
January 7 2013
Similar show today, but on Alzheimer and coconut oil. Goes too far I think but I've have not heard of ester oil.
63
Rosemary Lee
January 21 2013
Thank you for this very timely article. I have bookmarked it already. Thanks
64
Georgia Ede MD
January 28 2013
How wonderful that this information is starting to leak out into the mainstream media. Thomas Seyfried, PhD, a brain cancer researcher with over 25 yrs of experience, wrote a groundbreaking book in 2012 about cancer called Cancer as a Metabolic Disease, which convinced me both that cancer is not a genetic disease but a mitochondrial disease, and that restricting dietary carbohydrate is the single most effective means of reducing risk for cancer and trying to reduce or reverse its progress once it has taken hold. The book is very difficult to read due to its dense scientific nature, so I summarized his research in plain English (unfortunately not Swedish!) here for anyone who is curious: http://diagnosisdiet.com/what-causes-cancer/
65
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April 12 2013
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1 comment removed
67
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68
Jonna
July 6 2013
I have a family member who was diagnosed with cancer last year. Although it was removed, she is still afraid it will come back, so to ease her fears we put her on this diet. She has been on this diet for a few days now and is doing wonderfully, but I am just wondering whether there is a certain recommended time period a patient must be on this diet to starve off the cancer. So far I have been researching this and have come up empty handed. Is this a permanent change on must make to their diet or should one stay on this diet for a few weeks/ months and then go to a low-carb diet? Please help!!!

Reply: #69
69
Reply to comment #68 by Jonna
Zepp
July 6 2013
Those cancers that react on a ketogenic diet is those forms that is dependant on GLUT4 for there energy suplie.. others that dont get affected of such diet is those with a over expresion for GLUT1, thats not dependant on insulin signaling.

There are others that make there own ketonbodys from fat, to survive, and some howe could be relaying of fat or amino acids!

The thing about cancer cells is that they are new and there whole evolution is in our bodys.. there they is formed of those envirolments that apear there.. often a high reliance of glucose.

If one do shift to fat/ketones.. they are out of that envirolment conditions and cant survive.

You should know that even fasting is often good for cancer treatment, its make the cell metabolism different and often promotes ketosis.

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