Fasting may help to Cure Cancer
Recent research has suggested that fasting may help to cure cancer when combined with chemotherapy. This startling conclusion was reached when a recent study of mice demonstrated that combining fasting with chemotherapy was much more effective than just chemo on its own. If it works in mice it may work in men, but time will tell.
According to a report: “Mice with neuroblastoma—an aggressive nerve cancer that strikes infants and children—all died when treated with only chemo. But a few rounds of medication combined with fasting cured cancer in 20 per cent of mice with widespread cancer and 40 per cent of those with more limited cases.”
“The combo also appeared to be effective against breast, ovarian, melanoma, and some brain cancers in mice.”
“For several cancers, including breast cancer in a mouse model, cycles of fasting were as effective as chemotherapy,” according to the author of the report, Valter D. Longo, Ph.D., of the University of Southern California.
“Hair loss, fatigue, digestive problems—the side effects of chemo are harsh because the toxic drugs harm healthy cells in addition to killing cancer cells.” However, “previous research by Longo—on both mice and humans—shows fasting protects against these as well. In fact, 10 human patients who fasted for 62 hours before and 24 hours after chemo reported fewer of these side effects, according to a 2009 study in the journal Aging.”
“Piles of research money have been spent on the search for sophisticated new medications to target cancer cells. So how could something as simple as fasting strengthen healthy cells while making malignant ones more vulnerable?”
“The answer may lie in changes to cancer cells that enable them to spread”, Longo says. “When normal cells stop getting nutrients, they enter a protective mode that helps them survive. But because cancer cells have mutated to grow more rapidly in normal conditions, fasting produces the opposite effect, killing them off. With each genetic change that enables it to grow and metastasize; the tumour has to give up something, and we think that something is the ability to deal with extreme environments,”
This is fascinating evidence that supports a long held observation that high glucose in the blood from a carbohydrate-rich diet is extremely bad for cancer patients with the presumption that the glucose feeds the cancer. If it is true that fasting helps to cure cancer, how could this knowledge be put to good use right now? Presumably, at present, only in cases where there are few or no other options for cancer patients.
