(Photo: Irina Souiki)
I’ve wanted to publish this post for years.
It will propose a few simple approaches for minimizing the occurrence of cancer.
With 19 billion capillaries in our bodies, on average, virtually 100% of us have microscopic cancers by the time we’re 70 years old, more than 40% of us by age 40. There’s a good chance you have pinhead-size cancers in your body right now. These “cancers without disease” aren’t typically a problem, as they can’t grow larger than 0.5 mm without a blood supply.
But if cancer cells get constant blood and glucose? That’s when you can end up dead.
That’s not where I want to be, and it’s not where I want you to be.
A Little Backstory…
While at the annual TED Conference in 2010, I learned that two close friends had been diagnosed with cancer. The year before, another friend had died of pancreatic cancer in his early 30’s.
This all made me furious and sad. It also made me feel helpless.
As luck would have it, TED in 2010 was abuzz about someone named Dr. William Li. His 24-minute presentation had introduced the crowd to “anti-angiogenesis therapy”: in plain English, how to starve cancers of blood. Dr. Li specializes in inhibiting cancer-specific blood-vessel growth, which ostensibly keeps abnormal growth in check. The simplest “drug” he recommended was tea. Drinking a daily blend of white tea (specifically Dragon Pearl jasmine) and green tea (Japanese sencha).
I started drinking the cocktail immediately, but it was just a first step…
In clinical trials, you see, anti-angiogenesis has been largely been unsuccessful. The father of the field, Judah Folkman, was brilliant, but his brainchild (Avastin) has been a disappointment. For about $100,000 a year of Avastin, one might extend lifespan by a month or so.
So, while I kept drinking my tea, I realized it probably wasn’t enough by itself. That said, it pointed me to new research.
I, for one, believe there are systemic causes of cancer with systemic treatments. This belief began with metformin experimentation in college (not recommended without doctor supervision), followed by reading the work and references of Gary Taubes, all of which has been reinforced by conversations with oncologists over the last decade.
All trails have led back to blood and glucose.
It’s also important to realize that killing cancer cells isn’t hard. Doctors have known how to do this for 100+ years. The real questions is: how do you exploit a weakness in cancer that is NOT a weakness in normal cells? Killing cancer is easy. Killing cancer while not killing non-cancer has proven almost impossible.
The below guest post is written by Peter Attia, M.D.. It explores a simple theory of cancer growth, which simultaneously shows how you can minimize it.
Peter is the President of the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI). Peter spent five years at the Johns Hopkins Hospital as a general surgery resident, where he was the recipient of several prestigious awards and the author of a comprehensive review of general surgery. Peter also spent two years at the National Institutes of Health as a surgical oncology fellow at the National Cancer Institute under Dr. Steve Rosenberg, where his research focused on the role of regulatory T cells in cancer regression and other immune-based therapies for cancer. Peter earned his M.D. from Stanford University and holds a B.Sc. in mechanical engineering and applied mathematics from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
This post is designed to allow you to skim…or go deep. Here are the options:
- The quickie (10-15 min) – Read the post but ignore footnotes. Definitely a good start if you’re in a rush.
- The weekend warrior (30 minutes) – Read the post and footnotes, which provide an excellent intro to the science.
- The semi-pro (60 minutes) – Read the post, footnotes, and at least one top-10 suggested articles. This will give you more of a plan and put you ahead of 90% of the people who discuss cancer.
Enter Pete
One night Tim and I were having dinner and the topic of cancer came up.
Personally and professionally, I have a great interest in cancer, so when Tim asked if I could write something about cancer that was: (i) interesting to a broad audience, (ii) not technically over the top, (iii) not my typical 5,000 word dissertation, (iv) yet nuanced enough for his readers, I agreed to give it a shot, in about 1,000 words.
(Before reading this post, you may find some value in first reading a previous post which sets up the context for this one.)
So here it is, in roughly 1,000 words…
###
In 1924 a scientist named Otto Warburg happened upon a counterintuitive finding.
Cancer 1 cells, even in the presence of sufficient oxygen, underwent a type of metabolism 2 cells reserved for rapid energy demand – anaerobic metabolism 3. In fact, even when cancer cells were given additional oxygen, they still defaulted into using only glucose 4 to make ATP 5 via the anaerobic pathway. This is counterintuitive because this way of making ATP is typically a last resort for cells, not a default, due to the relatively poor yield of ATP.
This observation begs a logical question: Do cancer cells do this because it’s all they can do? Or do they deliberately ‘choose’ to do this?
The first place to look is at the mitochondria 6 of the cancer cells. Though not uniformly the case, many cancers do indeed appear to have defects in their mitochondria that prevent them from carrying out oxidative phosphorylation 7.
Explanation 1
Cancer cells, like any cells undergoing constant proliferation (recall: cancer cells don’t stop proliferating when told to do so), may be optimizing for something other than energy generation. They may be optimizing for abundant access to cellular building blocks necessary to support near-endless growth. In this scenario, a cancer would prefer to rapidly shuttle glucose through itself. In the process, it generates the energy it needs, but more importantly, it gains access to lots of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms (from the breakdown of glucose). The atoms serve as the necessary input to the rate-limiting step of their survival — growth. The selection of cancer cells is based on this ability to preferentially grow by accessing as much cellular substrate as possible.
Explanation 2
Cells become cancerous because they undergo some form of genetic insult. This insult – damage to their DNA 8 – has been shown to result in the turning off of some genes 9 (those that suppress tumor growth) and/or the activation of other genes (those that promote cell growth unresponsive to normal cell-signaling). Among other things, this damage to their DNA also damages their mitochondria, rendering cancer cells unable to carry out oxidative phosphorylation. So, to survive they must undergo anaerobic metabolism to make ATP.
Whichever of these is more accurate (a discussion beyond my word count), the end result appears the same – cancer cells almost exclusively utilize glucose to make ATP without the use of their mitochondria. The point is: cancer cells have a metabolic quirk. Regardless of how much oxygen and fatty acid 10 they have access to, they preferentially use glucose to make ATP, and they do it without their mitochondria and oxygen.
So, can this be exploited to treat or even prevent cancer?
One way this quirk has been exploited for many years is in medical imaging. FDG-PET scans 11 are a useful tool for non-invasively detecting cancer in people. By exploiting the obligate glucose consumption of cancer cells, the FDG-PET scan is a powerful way to locate cancer (see figure).
You can probably tell where I’m leading you. What happens if we reduce the amount of glucose in the body? Could such an intervention ‘starve’ cancer cells? An insight into this came relatively recently from an unlikely place – the study of patients with type 2 diabetes.
In the past few years, three retrospective studies of patients taking a drug called metformin have shown that diabetic patients who take metformin, even when adjusted for other factors such as body weight and other medications, appear to get less cancer.
And when they do get cancer, they appear to survive longer. Why? The answer may lie in what metformin does. Metformin does many things, to be clear, but chief among them is activating an enzyme called AMP kinase, which is important in suppressing the production of glucose in the liver (the liver manufactures glucose from protein and glycerol and releases it to the rest of the body). This drug is used in patients with diabetes to reduce glucose levels and thereby reduce insulin requirement.
So, the patients taking metformin may have better cancer outcomes because their glucose levels were lower, or because such patients needed less insulin. Insulin and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) also appear to play an integral role in cancer growth as recently demonstrated by the observation that people with defective IGF-1 receptors appear immune to cancer. Or, it may be that activation of AMP kinase in cancer cells harms them in some other way. We don’t actually know why, but we do know that where there is smoke there is often fire. And the ‘smoke’ in this case is that a relatively innocuous drug that alters glucose levels in the body appears to interfere with cancer.
This may also explain why most animal models show that caloric restriction improves cancer outcomes. Though historically, this observation has been interpreted through the lens of less ‘food’ for cancer. A more likely explanation is that caloric restriction is often synonymous with glucose reduction, and it may be the glucose restriction per se that is keeping the cancer at bay.
Fortunately this paradigm shift in oncology – exploiting the metabolic abnormality of cancer cells – is gaining traction, and doing so with many leaders in the field.
Over a dozen clinical trials are underway right now investigating this strategy in the cancers that appear most sensitive to this metabolic effect – breast, endometrial, cervical, prostate, pancreatic, colon, and others. Some of these trials are simply trying to reproduce the metformin effect in a prospective, blinded fashion. Other trials are looking at sophisticated ways to target cancer by exploiting this metabolic abnormality, such as targeting PI3K 12 directly.
To date, no studies in humans are evaluating the therapeutic efficacy of glucose and/or insulin reduction via diet, though I suspect that will change in the coming year or two, pending outcomes of the metformin trials.
EDITOR’S NOTE:Though it might seem premature to some, let’s make this actionable. To reduce glucose, consider following a diet (way of eating, really) such as The Slow-Carb Diet, Paleo, or any diet that induces ketosis. Many of the most influential researchers in the US, in addition to following ketogenic diets, take slow-acting metformin as a preemptive measure. NOTE: This should NOT be done without medical supervision.
Influences
I’ve been absurdly blessed to study this topic at the feet of legends, and to be crystal clear, not a single thought represented here is original work emanating from my brain. I’m simply trying to reconstruct the story and make it more accessible to a broader audience. Though I trained in oncology, my research at NIH/NCI focused on the role of the immune system in combating cancer. My education in the metabolism of cancer has been formed by the writings of those below, and from frequent discussions with a subset of them who have been more than generous with their time, especially Lewis Cantley (who led the team that discovered PI3K) and Dominic D’Agostino.
• Otto Warburg
• Lewis Cantley
• Dominic D’Agostino
• Craig Thompson
• Thomas Seyfried
• Eugene Fine
• Richard Feinman (not to be confused with Richard Feynman)
• Rainer Klement
• Reuben Shaw
• Matthew Vander Heiden
• Valter Longo
Further Reading from Tim — A Top-10 List
There is a deluge of writing about cancer.
Below, I’ve suggested a top-10 list of articles as starting points. Some are for lay audiences, some are technical, but all are worth the time to read. Here you go:
Looking for articles to pass to your parents, or to read as a lay person? Read these, in this order:
1. Non-technical talk by Craig Thompson, Pres/CEO of Sloan-Kettering
2. Science piece written about cancer (for non-technical audience) by Gary Taubes
Have a little background and want the 80/20 analysis, the greatest bang for the buck? Read this:
Peaking on modafinil during a flight to Tokyo? Want to deep dive for a few hours? Here are three recommendations, in this order:
4. Detailed review article by Tom Seyfried
5. Review article on the role of carb restriction in the treatment and prevention of cancer
6. Talk given by author of above paper for those who prefer video
Want four bonus reads, all very good? As you wish:
7. Moderately technical review article by Shaw and Cantley
8. Clinical paper on the role of metformin in breast cancer by Ana Gonzalez-Angulo
Afterword by Tim
It’s my hope that this short article offers hope. Moreover, it’s intended to offer actionable directions for those dealing with cancer or fearful of it.
Note a few things:
- I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on the Internet. Make medical decisions with medical supervision.
- This is a 1,000-word primer and therefore simplified. It’s not incorrect, but it is not comprehensive either, as it would impossible to digest for most people. Be sure to read the “further reading” above if you’re serious.
Have you stumbled upon any novel science/treatments related to cancer? Please share in the comments below, if so, as I’d love this post to become a living resource.
Many thanks for reading this far.
###
Footnotes:
- A collection of cells in our bodies that grow at roughly normal speeds, but that do not respond appropriately to cell signaling. In other words, while a collection of ‘normal’ cells will grow and stop growing in response to appropriate messages from hormones and signals, cancer cells have lost this property. Contrary to popular misconception, cancers cells do not grow especially fast relative to non-cancer cells. The problem is they don’t ‘know’ when to stop growing. ↩
- The process of converting the stored energy in food (chemical energy contained mostly within the bonds of carbon and hydrogen atoms) into usable energy for the body to carry out essential and non-essential work (e.g., ion transport, muscle contraction). ↩
- The process of converting the stored energy in food (chemical energy contained mostly within the bonds of carbon and hydrogen atoms) into usable energy for the body to carry out essential and non-essential work (e.g., ion transport, muscle contraction). ↩
- A very simple sugar which many carbohydrates ultimately get broken down into via digestion; glucose is a ring of 6-carbon molecules and has the potential to deliver a lot, or a little, ATP, depending on how it is metabolized. ↩
- Adenosine triphosphate, the ‘currency’ of energy used by the body. As its name suggests, this molecule has three (tri) phosphates. Energy is liberated for use when the body converts ATP to ADP (adenosine diphosphate), by cutting off one of the phosphate ions in exchange for energy. ↩
- The part of the cell where aerobic metabolism takes place. Think of a cell as a town and the mitochondria as the factory that converts the stored energy into usable energy. If food is natural gas, and usable energy is electricity, the mitochondria are the power plants. But remember, mitochondria can only work when they have enough oxygen to process glucose or fatty acids. If they don’t, the folks outside of the factory have to make due with sub-optimally broken down glucose and suboptimal byproducts. ↩
- Aerobic metabolism is the process of extracting ATP from glucose or fatty acids when the demand for ATP is not too great, which permits the process to take place with sufficient oxygen in the cell. This process is highly efficient and generates a lot of ATP (about 36 units, for example, from one molecule of glucose) and it’s easy to manage waste products (oxygen and carbon dioxide). The process of turning glucose and fatty acid into lots of ATP using oxygen is called ‘oxidative phosphorylation.’ ↩
- Deoxyribonucleic acid, to be exact, is the so-called “building block” of life. DNA is a collection of 4 subunits (called nucleotides) that, when strung together, create a code. Think of nucleotides like letters of the alphabet. The letters can be rearranged to form words, and words can be strung together to make sentences. ↩
- If nucleotides are the letters of the alphabet, and DNA is the words and sentences, genes are the books – a collection of words strung together to tell a story. Genes tell our body what to build and how to build it, among other things. In recent years, scientists have come to identify all human genes, though we still have very little idea what most genes ‘code’ for. It’s sort of like saying we’ve read all of War and Peace, but we don’t yet understand most of it. ↩
- The breakdown product of fats (either those stored in the body or those ingested directly) which can be of various lengths (number of joined carbon atoms) and structures (doubled bonds between the carbon atoms or single bonds). ↩
- (A type of ‘functional’ radiographic study, often called a ‘pet scan’ for short, used to detect cancer in patients with a suspected tumor burden (this test can’t effectively detect small amounts of cancer and only works for ‘established’ cancers). F18 is substituted for -OH on glucose molecules, making something called 2-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (FDG), an analog of glucose. This molecule is detectable by PET scanners (because of the F18) and shows which parts of the body are most preferentially using glucose. ↩
- Phosphoinositide 3-kinase, commonly called PI3K (pronounced ‘pee-eye-three-kay’), is an enzyme (technically, a family of enzymes) involved in cell growth and proliferation. Not surprisingly, these enzymes play an important role in cancer growth and survival, and cancer cells often have mutations in the gene encoding PI3K, which render PI3K even more active. PI3Ks are very important in insulin signaling, which may in part explain their role in cancer growth, as you’ll come to understand. ↩
The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than one billion downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page.
Comment Rules: Remember what Fonzie was like? Cool. That’s how we’re gonna be — cool. Critical is fine, but if you’re rude, we’ll delete your stuff. Please do not put your URL in the comment text and please use your PERSONAL name or initials and not your business name, as the latter comes off like spam. Have fun and thanks for adding to the conversation! (Thanks to Brian Oberkirch for the inspiration.)
Tim,
Great content…hope all is well!
Cool!
Great article Tim! This is excellent and accurate information to give persons of interest a jump start on research. I had colon cancer surgery just over a year ago and have adopted a clean diet void of refined sugar, gluten, and excess sodium. My hats off to the author and also recommend Max Gerson and Norman Walker as additional resources.
Hi Todd,
It’s great that you recovered from Colon cancer with a clean diet! I have some friends who have done a similar thing. Did you drink tea as well why you did it? A few friends of mine drank zen green tea matcha from Japan which is really concentrated green tea ( you consume the whole tea leaf). They keep drinking it now as a preventative! I’d be interested if you tried this or other tea’s?
Awesome Todd! Keep it up. You are on the right track with the Max Gerson and Norman Walker approach. Overdose on fruits and veggies my man! I refused chemo after surgery and did the same thing 10 years ago for colon cancer. 🙂
I have recently been going through chemo treatment for Colorectal Cancer. Unfortunately the results have been unfavourable, and I am now looking to alternative therapies. I have reconfigured my diet, and introduced things like Reiki, reflexology, meditation… I am wondering (long shot as I can see you posted 7years ago) if there is anything else you would recommend 🙂
I had prostate cancer. After going to a seminar from Don Tolman he advised me to eat oats with flaxseed, lemon and wheatgerm oil for breakfast for 90 days ( I have it every morning now for past 18 months…love it) lots of brocolli and brazil nuts and Cabala juice (Carrot, Apple, Beet, Apple, Lemon, Apple)
I now have a clean bill of health and ran my first half marathon on the Gold Coast in Australia last year and have never been fitter or healthier.
Juicing, fasting and whole foods, fruit, veggies, nuts and grains etc have been my medicine along with plenty of water, sunshine, fresh air and exercise. I healed my body with natures own plant life…
Great work Kevin! Happy for you mate, glad to see you’re doing so well now. Don Tolman and his son Tyler Tolman are full of wisdom and really do share the truth about healing disease in the body.
Don’s explanation of cancer makes more sense than any other that I’ve heard on the planet.
After researching several ideas/methods around healing cancer over the last few years, I believe theirs is the most holistic approach.
Tim – Thank you for posting this.
Don Tolman and Tyler Tolman are definitely the go to guys on this subject.
Phillip Day, founder of Credence Health, is also another great one – he has debunked and exposed several healing methods and uses a science-based approach to find what really works to heal cancer. He has a book called ‘Cancer: Why we’re still dying to know the truth’ – highly recommended for those interested in this topic. It’s an eye-opener.
Thanks Brett,
Don and Tyler are definitely the go to guys,
Cheers mate
Hey really intestine to read your threads… my father has been diagnosed with prostate cancer… I’ve been following Tyler and now Don and have seen the Oats etc which I am slowly getting him onto…. but I would love your thoughts as Phillip Day, said NO wheat including oats at all as it raises blood sugars….they both help so many people yet such big view on oats? Is tricky to know which way to go!
I have three friends with almost identical stories to yours, Kevin.
So pleased to hear of another success, good for you!
Possibly the most simple and effective method is the one that gets overlooked the most!
The problems of the world can be solved when we turn to nature.
It’s simply because there isn’t any money in a solution of juicing, fasting and whole foods, fruit, veggies, water etc…
However, those chemo pills do make people wealthy. Just on the wrong side of the table.
I don’t have time to read the whole post yet because I am about to leave for work, but wanted to comment on this, as I don’t know when I will be able to get back on. If this is already mentioned in the post or comments, ignore my reply, but if it isn’t: Has anyone ever read into the Gerson therapy? I’ve watched several documentaries on it, including The Gerson Miracle, The Beautiful Truth, and another one that I can’t think of at the moment, but they’re all on Netflix. It’s all based on using natural fruits/vegetables to cure cancer and other ailments and has a ton of success stories and testimonials. Again, if this was already mentioned, ignore this, I will be back to finish reading the article sometime soon. Tim, sorry for the loss of your friend. Take care, everyone!
I am currently doing Gerson Therapy for my cancer. The first two times I had surgery to remove my cancer with clear margins. The third time it came back. I said bugger conventional therapy and I went natural. It was the best thing I’ve ever done. Whilst the Gerson Therapy is definitely the right therapy foodwise and detoxwise for cancer. It has definitely made a significant impact on my tumour markers for the better, and they are almost at normal healthy levels. (no chemo, radiation or surgery).
I look a picture of health and to be honest have never felt better. My doctors thought I was an idiot when I told them what I was going to do. However, when my blood tests kept coming back with significant improvement, they didn’t say a thing and refused to give me a print out of my results until I persisted.
They will now no longer offer me blood tests. I’ve countered this by going to different doctors and trying my luck. Luckily I have found a not very bright doctor who I’ve got two blood tests from so far, and will get as many as I can before the auditors get onto them to force me to see an oncologist in order to get more blood tests and ‘advice/bullying’
Tumour wise. The therapy for me whilst it certainly is having a positive impact on my tumour. However, I am having to add in other therapy’s such as Paw Paw tea, and powerful proteolytic enzymes to break down the tumour, as well as homeopathic drugs to stimulate and boost my immune system. The regime is tough, but totally worth it. When you have random strangers walk up to you and comment on how well you look its definitely a boost. The therapy is based on starving the cancer with nutrition and rebuilding the body and the immune system and detoxification of the body.
I want to make something clear. Having a ‘tea’ here or there or a juice here or there Will not work for you if you go natural. You have to constantly be juicing and shoving raw nutrients into yourself every chance you possibly get as well as detoxing. Cut out all refined salt, refined sugar, meat and dairy. They are all cancer promoters and extremely bad for you.
I recommend googling ‘chris beat cancer’ and watch the videos from dr Vickers. it will explain a lot. As well as youtubing charlotte gerson and the gerson therapy. On the Chris beat cancer website there are numerous testimonials of people who have beaten their cancer through nutrition.
on google there is a lot of conflicting results on gerson therapy. You need to make up your own mind what you want to do with your cancer. I personally will never go conventional therapy again as this diet has healed all of my ailments.
It is very difficult to maintain a natural treatment plan, as your friends/family will cast you off as a goner for not going conventional treatment. You have to be prepared to sacrifice relationships if you need to. You will find that everyone is an ‘expert’ at telling you what to do even though they have never suffered the disease themselves…
I will say this however. I have been ‘untreated’ for a whole year and 2 months… My health has improved exponentially in all facets and continues to improve, and there has been no metastases.
Also… think about this… We are told to stay away from radiation because it causes cancer… So why would you get radiation therapy to ‘cure’ your cancer if it is responsible for causing cancer in the first place?
We are told to stay away from poisons. Yet, with chemotherapy the people who administer this product have to wear two pairs of gloves, a special apron, goggles and a facemask to pour it into your veins… If they spill any of the solution on the floor, there is a special clean up kit that they have to use. Do you really think that this stuff is going to rid you of your cancer?
There are articles out there that specify that these treatments are responsible for secondary and more aggressive cancers. These can be found on google. Make up your own mind.
The object of my post is to think about your treatment plan. There are always options. I’m not saying what I’m doing will cure you of disease. I’m not saying that conventional treatment is ineffective. There are pros and cons to both.This is entirely your decision to make. I recommend thoroughly doing your research first and choose a plan that is right for you. Talk to doctors/onoclogists, research on google. Talk to others who have had cancer and see what they did with their treatment plans.
Doctors will have you panicked into going into treatment straight away and time is of the essence and yes it is. However, It takes a few years for the tumour to become noticeable. Just because you suddenly become aware of it doesn’t mean it happened over night. Take a week out to research and make up your mind on YOUR treatment plan.
Good Health people.
My mother did Gerson, spent her almost every waking moment juicing or doing something. Spent 150k plus on treatments, started in on the tea at the end. Did everything you mentioned. I have mixed feelings about the therapy, in some cases I think the treatment is worse than the disease. My mother died of breast cancer that metastasized to her liver in the end, she lived 5-6 years and beat the odds. The cancer wasn’t what killed her in the end she picked an extremely rare blood infection from the Gerson clinic in Bountiful, UT. And then after 3-4 3 hour IV antibiotic treatments a day her liver was fried and she died just a couple of months later. She did Laetrile treatments which are no different from chemo. Just another poison that will kill cells. The diet low protein low cal, lots and lots of juicing. So I don’t keep rambling, there probably is some merit to Gerson, but I think it would work much better in combination with non alternative treatments. My mothers markets did not exist either, they had to use multiple markets to even get a baseline because it was far below a healthy person. All I can say is don’t get too caught up in the treatment, remember to live life. When every moment becomes the treatment, its not much of a life at all. Good luck hope you beat it.
My wife has stage 4 metastatic, invasive breast cancer. What helped us slow then at least partially reverse her downhill slide (see my response to Tim’s post) was Life Over Cancer by Dr. Keith Block. He has dealt with advanced cancers over 32 years and the book is well reviewed by 16 professionals (including one from MD Anderson Cancer Center).
You might want to look up a brief video by Dr. Michael Greger at his nonprofit website nutritionfacts.org. Go there and type Gerson Therapy into the search box. Dr. Greger is not “conventional” (he is a vegan) but the studies he talks about on Gerson will be an eye opener.
Nutrition Facts is a nonprofit that exists on donations. He has produced over 800 mostly brief videos on a wide variety of health topics. Dr. Greger pores over the over 6,000 nutritional studies done each year and brings the usable essence to people through his videos and brief blog posts.
Awesome, Kevin.
More people should begin working on their wealth, even before living this situations.
Congrats!
Thanks Alexandre! We know our bodies far better than any doctor…wholefoods are my medicine 🙂
Hey Kevin that’s fantastic. Cheers! From one fellow natural survivor to another. I’m also a fan of Don Tolman “The whole food medicine cowboy”. His Farmacist Desk Reference is an awesome resource.
Did you have an operation or did you cure the cancer only by dieting? I have been diagnosed with a mild form of prostate cancer. The doctor seemed to recommend postsponing the operation as it could have a pretty bad effect on my quality of life.
I am wondering what your PSA was beforehand and what it is now. How can I learn more to be precise about what you are doing. I had a prostatectomy and when PCa returned, I had hormone therapy and then salvage radiation. Now undetectable PSA, except last reading had a very slight rise. Thank you for your post and any added info.
I had conventional prostate cancer treatments, including surgery, hormone therapy, and low-dose salvage radiation due to positive margins, and then recurrence. What was your before and after PSA count? Never heard of wheat germ oil. Wonder how it helps. Do you make Cabala on your own? Would like to see the receipt. Thanks.
Thank you for sharing, Tim. Sorry for the loss of your friend. With everything you’ve accomplished, if you decide to tackle cancer, my money will be on you.
I recently attended a doctors’ convention where there was talk of 2-methoxyestradiol as an antiangiogenic treatment for breast cancer. I thought it was interesting that it is a naturally occurring metabolite of estrogen that is not usable as a supplement since it has an IND filed on it as Panzem.
What are your thoughts on drugs that increase IGF-1? We so often hear about increasing IGF to increase muscle mass, under HRT or other areas. Is this also increasing risks of cancer?
My initial question is for both Pete and Tim regarding the new “fad” that this seems to relate to. Being a newbie to the depths this topic reaches and then some it’s with a bit of trepidation that I submit this question, but here goes!
I recently have looked into the whole white mulberries thing since a coworker friend has them growing in their backyard and has offered them up come the season. With the leads that seem to be apparent in this post and the research referenced would it follow that the 1-deoxynojirimycin contained in the white mulberry, and its leaves, provide not only a believed benefit of aiding and preventing diabetes but also, potentially speaking, the spread or manifestation of cancers?
Sugar or glucose make the body more acid, terminal cancer patients have elevated acidity in their bodies, cancer cells thrive in acidic environment but die in a basal environment. Don’t look at sugar itself, look at it’s effects on the ph of tge bidy. There lies the key.
Blood PH is altered just by breathing, I am not a believer in alkaline water, I have a biology degree. Water is water, magnets wont change it. And if you go into alkalosis, or acidosis. You die. Your body has a very simple and easy way of dealing with PH, it does not let it vary much otherwise you die. You can drink an acid or a base, your body will adjust.
To James Hall,
“Electrolyzed reduced water” has been used in Japanese hospitals for over 35 years. It has been shown to inhibit tumor angiogenesis.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18175936
Here is another article showing electrolyzed reduced water and glutathione helped kill leukemia cells.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19202298
This type of water is produced through electrolysis, by running water over platinum-coated titanium electrodes charged with electricity. Kangen water is the registered name of electrolyzed reduced water that is made by a machine that is certified as a medical device by the MInistry of Health of Japan. These machines are small counter-top machines that are now available worldwide.
Yes, your body regulates the pH of your blood, however the fluid in and around the cells fluctuates according to what you ingest, the accumulation of acid waste etc. When you say your body will adjust to drinking an acid or a base, yes your body will adjust and that includes the manifestation of different symptoms as a result of low oxygen levels and toxicity caused by too much acidity.
Hi,
I’ve heard about this before.
Here is a link to the man doing the actual research:
http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/biology/facadmin/seyfried.html
(edit: I see Dr Seyfried is already on the list)
And here is a link to the blog article that lead me to the above link:
http://robbwolf.com/2013/09/19/origin-cancer/?utm_content=buffer80ddb&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer
What’s interesting about the blog article is that he mentions people who have followed this course of action. I would love to see those verified too.
This is compelling stuff.
One of the miracle cures that I always thought had promise on the internet was concentrated hash oil. Wasn’t really ever sure how it cured cancer, but perhaps it does so by lowering glucose levels in the blood?
In any case, great read.
My friend has pancreatic cancer. She is getting treatment, and has survived longer than expected. Bitter melon is what she eats a lot of. Apparently this acts like insulin and reduces blood sugar. Just skimmed article, but seems to jive with the general outline.
I have read that turmeric is very powerful against many types of cancer, including pancreatic cancer.
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/curcumin-extract-kills-highly-lethal-pancreatic-tumors-preclinical-study-revealed
You might want to check it out! Also, there is a 100% organic supplement made of wild turmeric called Ukon Sigma. You can find info on it at http://www.Golden-Ukon.info. It is very potent and mixed with vitamins and healthy oils for more antioxidant power and higher absorption.
Great read and info for follow up investigation Tim.
I have become interested in the subject lately from another angle. I was doing a bit or research on anti-aging supplements and stumbled upon telomers (the end tips in our DNA) and the role of Telomerase in slowing down & reversing aging. There is also a definite link to cancer prevention as well.
On you question about what works in cancer treatment/prevention, telomerase is found naturally in astragalus extracts which have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries.
I’m not an expert by any means but the science is fascinating. Here are a couple links to get anyone interested started:
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/chromosomes/telomeres/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18772468
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nobel-prize-medicine-2009-genetics/
Hey Jeff,
I got excited about Astragalus also – in the context of fighting my mother’s blood cancer. I got advice, however, that activation of telomerase may help cancer cells survive; this came from Dr. Rhonda Patrick of foundmyfitness. com (excellent site). I suggested, my mother discontinue use.
Cheers, Jesse
Hey Jeff, on the Telomerase note I’d echo the potential downside Jesse Freitag pointed out. In a recent interview with Aubrey de Grey, he pointed out the same issue – that increasing telomerase, as is now getting popular in the anti aging world, may increase cancer risk by encouraging cancer cell longevity.
TCM treatment specific to APL. You may have read in NPR:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23841729/
Hi Tim and Pete,
What an excellent article for a non medical background person such as myself I did get the message quite easily. Now if this was a post about php, mysql and html5 then I would of left you guys a pretty indepth comment on the subject, However I do with to leave you with a short story of a friend of mine and I too wish this had been published a few years back as well as recently I lost a good friend and client of mine Yvonne to cancer.
I came to know Yvonne and her husband Mike after they hired me to develop a website for their new bushiness “The Holistic Practice”. The two of them purchased the building next door to my office here in Sutton Coldfield with an idea to help the locals of Sutton with holistic therapies and treatments.
Yvonne was a picture of health after beating cancer the previous months before their new venture. Yvonne did not smoke or drink, kept fit and active and was full of life. Yvonne was someone who could bring joy to anyone she met including myself however my favourite memory of her is the questionable language and words she used in virtually every sentence uttered.
Things were looking good for Yvonne and Mike as they loved the shiny new website I had built for them and the opening well really well employing our local member of parliament to open it while he was in the national news at the time for allegedly calling some police officer a name while leaving downing street one night but that’s an entirely different story anyway.
A few months after the opening of the business Yvonne’s cancer came back and this time it was terminal. I remember attending her funeral last year and was amazed at how many people had turned up there literally was hundreds. It’s not fair that fit healthy and happy people like Yvonne who has touched the hearts of hundreds if not thousands of people should be taken away from us and unfit and unhealthy people like myself should remain (Well I am not that unfit now but I could be better).
This is an excellent post guys and I will make sure that my good buddy Mike gets to see this. i just wish this was published a wile back as well. Still lets hope it brings hope to all those other people suffering with Cancer at this moment!
Thanks for letting me leave this comment I really do appreciate it.
Have a great day guys.
– Phillip Dews
Hello Tim,
I have been a big fan for a long time. Thanks for the post!
I recently lost 22 kg through intermittent fasting. One of the reasons for starting on this diet regimen was to lower/control insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1). According to a BBC Horizon show “Eat, Fast and Live Longer” presented by Michael Mosley a reduction in IGF-1 puts the body into “heal” mode. This looks like it could be related to the affect of lower glucose.
I don’t necessarily want to live longer but to live more healthily for the time that I do have.
Thanks,
Dean
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a famous Russian writer, was cured from cancer by Dr.Maslennikov. And this is despite having severe metastases. He was using chaga mushrooms (inonotus obliquus).
Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote a howto in 1974. You may read it in Russian http://imgur.com/qr5HE0h
Chaga extract was produced in USSR under the name ??funginum.
* The correct name of the chaga extract is befunguim (not sure why it wasn’t posted correctly)
Hey I have about 100 lbs of Chaga have an Aunt that collects it, sure she would sell it all to you. As far as a cancer treatment I don’t believer there is a single legitimate study out there. Just my two yen, worth less than a penny.
“The semi-pro (60 minutes) – Read the post, footnotes, and at least one top-10 suggested articles. This will give you more of a plan and put you ahead of 90% of the people who discuss cancer.”
Dude, you are so hardcore hahahaha
Honestly, I have no guts in reading this post, Tim. But many times even I feel that with such a progress in Science and Technology such diseases should be curable. They try to cure it through Chemotherapy which is not suitable to most of them because if the disease doesn’t kill people then the side effects from such treatment do as it took life of my aunt. She got so depressed that she took her own life. So there are healing therapies as Ayurveda and Japanese Healing treatment Reiki which provides much relief to the patients with their other treatments. The links don’t work here but the articles are worth reading. http://www.jiva.com/ayurveda/about-ayurveda/102.html
http://health.india.com/diseases-conditions/can-cancer-be-cured-with-alternative-therapies/
Recently Steve Jurvetson shared future predictions of Ray Kurzweil as there is a fire side chat asking people as to which of the predictions to probe. Inspite of being an all through Management student, now already MBA, I love reading Artificial Intelligence whenever I get time because it always speaks about the future which fascinates me the most.
So I comment on Steve’s post: “I think human intelligence can make most of the above possible but the 2020 about fat cells and last 2040 are rather challenging. A field of study Transhumanism which is a part of AI says that science and technology can overcome all human physical and intellectual limitations where aging is one of the criteria. If one day AI can cure Cancer or other such diseases that would be real futuristic achievement.”
Later what his reply seems an obvious answer to any cure of cancer.
He said:
“One of his (Ray Kurzweil) cool ideas – finish the evolutionary transport of the single-stranded mitochondrial DNA to a double stranded copy in the nucleus (there are just 13 more genes to go) since there is no error correction in the mitochondria and mutations build up as we age. He also has a cancer therapy focused on the RNA-DNA duplex (with its unique polymerases) found in fetal stem cells (after organogenesis, they are no longer needed and can become the source of cancer that survives chemotherapy). As for AI, he’s all over it, and we’ll be talking about that. It’s all part of the Google Master Plan.”
I think this is a part of Genetic engineering or genetic modification. Always wanted to ask Tim if he has heard about Reiki and its benefits since it originates from Japan?
I have 4 small children and have recently stepped up to be the house cook because of my wife’s work commitments. I’m a poor cook but have been doing my best to cook healthy food for them. I want to introduce more veg to their diet as they eat anything and I am health conscious. I came across this video yesterday and it blew my mind. We feed our kids so much carcinogenic foods and the world governments generally promote this so that politicians can get finance from the big corporations (my opinion). Take a look at the video to learn how diet can totally improve our health. The number of diseases that are simply cured by diet is astounding!
Another important factor is water, which arguably is even more important since it makes up 75% of our body! Check out Kangen water, which is tap water that has been first filtered, then split into alkaline and acidic streams using electrolysis. The alkaline water is called Kangen water and it is richer in oxygen, is very antioxidant and is more hydrating (better absorbed) than regular tap, filtered or bottled water.
This type of water has been used in Japanese hospitals for over 35 years and there are many scientific studies on it. Its scientific name is “electrolyzed reduced water”.
The quality of the water we drink affects the nutrient absorption and utilization from your healthy diet! And also the ability of the body to neutralize toxins and excrete them.
feel free to contact me for more info.
I have recently been researching and reading testamonials on a natural medicine originally from Native American medicine called, Black Salve, and or Cansema made primarily of Bloodroot. There are negative comments and quack watch types that poo poo this, but after reading the blogs and then asking around, many people I have met say it works. It is used primarily in skin cancers, but I have also read of people taking capsules internally, and or applying the salve on the outside of body such as on the location a breast tumor, or pancreas and it coming out through the skin. It is a dramatic medicine, a corrosive and drawing nature can make for a spectacle, however many are opting for this instead of MOHs surgery. In fact, after reading the doctor that created MOHs also used Cansema to locate the skin cancer’s boundaries then removed them. But many testimonials from various cancer sites say this stuff works, and some even take internally. Check into it, it is fascinating.
I used bloodroot extract on a raised freckle that I had near my neck. People were telling me to check it out for cancer. I went to a dermatologist in a hospital where they scared the heck out of me and told me I should have a biopsy immediately and that it was probably melanoma.
It turned out in the end that it was nothing, just caused by my rubbing vitamin E oil on this mishaped freckle, plus friction from my saxophone strap (I am a saxophonist and used to practice a lot wearing a strap to hold my saxophone). Anyway, I read about bloodroot in Dr. Alexander Weil’s book called “Spontaneous Healing”, He mentions that it is said to remove tumors, and I believe he tried it on his dog and some other friend tried it successfully. So anyway, I found a tincture of it, and started applying it to this raised freckle of mine, and in two weeks it was gone! It did bleach the skin there, so it doesn’t tan evenly with the rest of the area…
Call me naive, and I’ve recently been reading about some hunter/gatherer tribe that eats a looot of honey in their diet. I believe I’ve also read in the past of other tribes with high intake of carbohydrates in their diet.
Question is… why are incidents of cancer low in these environments?
Makes me think that, yes while food is supremely important, that something (more likely, many somethings) about a modern western lifestyle influences cancer beyond diet.
I also wonder how much the imbalance of omega 6 fatty acids to 3’s in the western diet relates since those are the ones that promote cell growth.
Fascinating stuff. I’ll be on a flight to Tokyo next week… so I’ll definitely bookmark all of this for reading.
Thanks for touching the subject Tim. Why did you wait years to post this?
Tim and Pete,
What are your feelings on gerson therapy or something similar as a treatment for cancer?
Hi Tim,
In your editor’s note you recommend Slow Carb, Paleo or any diet that induces ketosis, but when I read the following statement “the liver manufactures glucose from protein and glycerol and releases it to the rest of the body” wouldn’t it then seem to be beneficial to go easy on the protein also?
Great article… I don’t want to sound negative, just trying to understand.
Cheers
Greg
You know the MMS?, Because if you want a little chlorine dioxide on health, at least I think you be amazed to find cases of improvement and healing of cancer. MMS (Master Mineral Solution), also looking for Jim Humble and Andreas Kalcker and draw your own conclusions.
Hug.
Yeah, I used chlorine dioxide (ClO2) to cure my Covid, as well as a horrible fungal toenail infection years ago. Covid symptoms cleared up in about 7-8 hours. There’s a lot of talk about this in Argentina and in Bolivia. In Mexico it was used in a clinic in Queretaro: (video in Spanish) [Moderator: link removed.]
The basic problem is that pharma companies would lose money if they paid for clinical trials of unpatentable medicines. We have set up a system where they can only afford to research patentable medicines. That’s REALLY DUMB of us. We need to be making choices from the total pool of medicines, both patentable and unpatentable. And we need to find ways to create appropriate financial incentives for research into ALL substances that can have medical effects.
Very interesting indeed. I only have anecdotal evidence of something relating to diet (low sugar/more alkaline) and this is in regard to a Swedish man I used to know when I was travelling overseas. His wife suggested a raw foods diet when he contracted bowel cancer; he recovered. Maybe the diet had something to do with it, but then again there is the mind effect.
Interesting. So managing your glucose levels should be important for everybody, in the long run.
I find the topic of excersize is mostly unmentioned. I eat healthy (lots of plants), but not paleo, as I also engage my body a lot (biking, DIY,etc) without resorting to external engines if not necessary for task at hand. No carbs doesnt feel ok, though i do stay away from short carbs. do you have any info on the effect of systemic excersize on cancer?
I’ve been long awaiting this article, let’s see how those human trials go. If the hypotheses are confirmed then this could make a revolutionary change to the way people eat.
Great article Tim!! I’ve read a lot about tea and cancer prevention. Have you heard of Matcha green tea from Japan? It’s been shown in a tonne of research to do things like shrink tumour size and combat PSA levels in cancer patients. I drink matcha every day- zengreentea.com.au- is where I buy from. They include scientific studies on their website in the health benefits section. You should write snapshots of other common diseases like Alzeimers, heart disease etc so interesting
Have you read “Anti-Cancer” by David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PhD? I found it to be an inspiring and informative book. Because of this book I actually had some idea of what you were talking about, for example what angiogenesis is, and the effects of glucose on cancer cells, and detecting cancer by measuring glucose in PET scans. A couple months ago I would’ve been completely lost when reading this post. Being diagnosed with a brain aneurysm at 27 spurred my obsession with health and prevention. Not long after, I started eating a plant-based diet and after reading Anti-Cancer, I feel even more confident in my decision. Drastically limiting sugar intake and following an anti-inflammatory diet are definitely some of the best things we can do for prevention. And green tea!
Thanks for this article!
An acquaintance of mine read “Anti-cancer” while he was in remission. Within the year, he was dead. It’s certainly not a silver bullet.
I would never say that it is. Unfortunately there is no known silver bullet for curing or preventing cancer, and the author himself passed away after 20 years of battling brain cancer. He survived much longer than he was told he would. It’s a good resource for people who would like some insight on how cancer forms in the body and what they can do to try to prevent it or create healthy living habits in general.
I’m sorry your friend passed.
Would love to hear your opinion on the “China Study” ( http://www.amazon.com/The-China-Study-Comprehensive-Implications/dp/1932100660/ ) which describes rural china’s diet: no simple sugars and almost no animal protein. In rural China cancer was practically nonexistent. As soon as they started to modernize, cancer came.
The modern food we eat today is not the raw food we ate over millenia, to which our bodies adapted. Change any variable of the environment and you force the organism to leave the status quo and seek adaptation. Cancer is just a byproduct of this process.
Live as our far ancestors did and you will be just fine.
http://touch.dailymotion.com/video/xvdbtt_eat-fast-live-longer-hd_shortfilms
This video from the BBC talks about this.
A stipulation: (nothing more, nothing less).
Interpretable by Any as: “Jibberish”/Useful; Each is free of mind to decide.
(Please delete if bothersome/a nuisance).
While studying Cancer itself is useful, it may not serve as a primary tool towards Cure.
Rather – examining Why, Cancer, Exists, and has, may lead to further answers as to how to both A) Eradicate it , B) Harness it, C) Prevent It
Cancer = lack of communication between cells, an outward growth of internal deficit, which originates within the mind. Fundamentally, it is not a platelet, cell, blood, or “cancer”, problem itself, but an error of synaptic balance. All body problems go beyond the “body” itself, as
“the body” is only a physical mesh harnessing the purposes of the vessel residing in it.
Accurate study of cancer patients frequently shows that prior to the onset of Physical cancer,
their lives are full of Trauma. Whether A) Psychological, B) Physical, C) Combination
Trauma, improperly addressed, leads to error – which can develop at a rapid speed into
any disease. Cancer is a popular choice of error, because it is simplest for the function
of killing the vessel – death.
Each human holds a specific, unique, function to perform, when that human is or has become, unable to properly fulfill that function, the law of nature eliminates this human from the humanity gradient in order to ensure the progression of the species. This saves the energy of the flawed/dysfunctional human as well as the specie. One person dies, another is born, the one which is born perhaps a vessel of that same function which the one who died was unable to fulfill.
To save the dysfunctional human into aligning back into function, the root core of:
1) Purpose of this specific human
2) Reason for accumulated failure of function of this purpose,
must be found.
This is a complex psychological, spiritual, mental evaluation, there is no
immediate physical-platform-only substitute for the thoroughness required to
understand the function of a human being. If there is an error of the system (human, being a system
to fulfill a function),
it is nature eradicating that human from suffering, as well providing room for The Function to be fulfilled by another human.
Cancer is an effective tool for eradication.
Cancer also has been used by The Law – of Force – Root – Source – Nature,
to return human beings to The Archetype of Martyr. The Martyr dispersed throughout the planet, is necessary
to ensure overall faith, belief, and hope gradients in all other humans to continue Living.
The Force decrees the primary function of all human beings to Survive, Live, Ascend, Evolve.
Evolution is not possible without human hope that there is an idealism present within the universe beyond their imagination.
This idealism is typically a mix of suffering and triumph, adversity and victory, woe and glory. The deeper the opposites within any one human being, the deeper is the
positive impact upon any human psyche, which is necessary for collective specie survival. The Olympian Athlete who is diagnosed with Cancer, “fighting until the end”,
is a popular choice of The Source, for example. Creates “infallibility of specie” within the minds of the masses, provides ‘Hope’ – potent firmament for specie survival.
—> Example B, The Archetype: Righteous Angel
Usually, the specimens chosen for death through cancer to be fashioned into martyrdom share
key characteristics which separate them from other humans:
-purity of heart, spirit, character, and heart
-faith in a given discipline, service, principle, or idea (typically, family-based)
-extreme discipline in any given area (the devoted housewife to 5 paralyzed children), (the 1-legged ‘Nam survivor), so forth.
At least 6 cases of The Archetype dying of cancer in the past 6 months on the global viral network e.g YouTube (only mentioning the top popularized by the mainstream – as well as alternative media), have caused massive positive ripples across the human ether, which led to an enormous raise of “positive thinking” and interconnectedness amongst the tribes.
Katrina, had a similar effect.
Sometimes, a human being’s primary function from the onset of birth is to be The Archetype : Righteous Angel,
and death through cancer or any popular-at-that-point-in-history disease is the method of fulfilling the function.
Nothing is random in the universe, all follows a precise pattern and plan, always.
When the dots are connected, the pattern can be seen, sometimes immediately, sometimes decades or centuries after.
Ebola – as an example, led to the creation of hundreds of artworks, novels, inventions, and musical compositions that changed the tides of humanity.
All apparent “negative” events, are not, in fact – negative. They only appear to be if looked at from an isolated standpoint.
All is connected, purposeful, precise, leading to One, and Several, Primary Agendas for The Specie – Collectively.
–:
It is Rare for The Source to give The Bad, The Faulty, The Damaged or The Viced, Cancer.
These cases often follow other patterns that ultimately lead back to the prime purpose – “Hope” / “Survival of Specie”.
Cancer is ascribed to the most positive of souls, usually for – Martyrdom.
Possible Cures = 1. Deep meditation , purification of the fractal core within a human being,
which leads to Silence, Stillness – all health problems originate from Noise within the Self.
Pineal Gland Activation.
Kundalini.
No Enlightened Beings will ever incure cancer. This is an impossibility, for cancer occurs due to fractal disbalance.
Ah, but are not “The Righteous Angel Archetype” enlightened beings? No. Enlightenment differs from soul purity – as enlightenment must be performed by the mind prior to emotional sanctity.
2. Resonance healing –> prime example of Real practitioner of it with Measured results (personally witnessed, Legitimate): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCHFkw7fgKc
3. Qi Ghong – harnessing Chi.
The Chi is not examined in most Cancer patients – but it is a real living form, within the Living, and its place in the Cancer vs. Human battle cannot be underestimated.
Possible Methods:
1. Separate cancer cells from non-cancer cells through radio-magnetisim. Pinpoint a – from – b through x-rays after injecting radioactive dye (non-harmful) into patient.
Let dye A) fuse to only cancer cells, dye B) fuse only to non-cancer cells
2. Pin-point kill cancer cells, eradicate, then implant stem-cells in the exact positions of gap after cancer-cell elimination
to regenerate growth of healthy cells quickly, without loss of body function.
3. Kurzweil has long proposed that increasing the lifespan of telomeres is the answer to immortality (though many in the scientific community argue this to be biologically “impossible”.)
It may follow though that the Cure to Cancer, is through the telomere as well.
4. If enough of a canyon can be created within the body, a vacuum of sorts, replacing Heat with Cold, cancer may die off naturally. – Postulate.
– Given that Extreme Cold kills even extremophiles in severe circumstances, why not apply Temperature as a weapon for Cancer?
Back to Point B from Top:
Harnessing Cancer?
Yes. Harnessing cancer.
Implant cancer into natural crops – ergo, tomatoes, carrots, so forth, to increase size for mass production and availability of food throughout nations.
Imagine, tomatoes the size of buildings.
Imagine, any void within a human being that lacks muscle mass – a leg after a shark attack, infused with cancer cells – then after initial bulbous growth, killed off through chemotherapy, but new tissue remains.
—-***
Ultimately, however, The Totalitarian Requiem of Cancer will only, Be, when All Human Beings are Enlightened.
Cancer will not be eradicated through either the Western or Eastern medicinal practices, because it originates for purposes beyond the body, science, and medicine.
The Enlightenment of Humanity is Inevitable – it is however, a matter of Time – or rather, the Illusion of it.
I was fortunate enough to attend a presentation by either William Li or his brother Vincent. The main thing I look away from it was: TOMATOES. Eat processed tomatoes at least 3 – 4 times per week.
Amazing article. It’s frightening how bad glucose is for you…
Fantastic article – thanks a lot Tim for sharing. I already hear about the theory of “starving cancer cells to death” by avoiding glucose as much as possible, but I din’t really have a clear idea about it.
One of my friends had cancer about 7 years ago. The doctor urged him to do chemotherapy, but he finally decided to try a raw food died together with homeopathic treatment.
Luckily, this worked for him and the cancer disappeared within 6 months. I’m just wondering if there is a difference between the glucose in fruits and for example white sugar regarding the idea of starving cancer cells of glucose.
Tim
Very sorry to hear about your friends. I am an oncology fellow at Brown and have also lost dear, young friends to cancer.
The relationship between oncogenesis and obesity/sugar intake is a fascinating one. There are high level data to suggest that chronic monosaccharide intake may increase risk of certain cancers (though it’s not entirely clear how the Warburg effect plays into this).
I thought you might like to see this meta-analysis published in the Annals a few years ago. It found a statistically significant increased risk of pancreas cancer with higher levels of fructose intake when combining the data from 10 available cohort studies.
Aune et al. Dietary fructose, carbohydrates, glycemic indices and pancreatic cancer risk: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies.
Ann Oncol. 2012 Oct;23(10):2536-46. Epub 2012 Apr 26. PubMed ID 22539563.
Increasing awareness about the need to pursue overall health and well being will help us continue to tease out the true nature of each type of cancer and what we may be able to do to prevent them, which may be the best solution to eventual eradication.
My mother was diagnosed with a Glioblastoma Multiforme in August 2013. This brain tumour is one of, if not the worst, most aggressive cancer you can get. After surgery to remove the tumour, our oncologist gave her a year to live. The typical prognosis is that radio/chemo will only hold the tumour at bay for a limited time, maybe buying a few months, before ultimately failing.
After we got this news, I threw myself into research mode. Not only have I discovered long term survivors, I’ve also found those who have cured themselves. Most interestingly, I’ve found that the majority have done so by ignoring the advice of their physicians and self medicating with a cocktail of drugs.
Basically, the concept revolves around using a cocktail of “off label” drugs (meaning, they’re used for something other than which they were designed) to inhibit, or shut down the various pathways the tumour would use to grow. You only have to look at the treatment of HIV and AIDS and the improvements in controlling that disease with a cocktail approach, to see this method would be worth further investigation.
The problem is, moving forward with a cocktail treatment for cancer is massively hindered by the politics of the clinical trial system, along with the willingness or lack thereof, from big pharma to actually bankroll these trials. When a lot of these drugs are either off-patent, or ridiculously cheap, you might understand why these trials rarely move forward.
I spent an afternoon with Professor Geoffrey Pilkington at Portsmouth University here in the UK. He’s been studying brain tumours since 1971 and has made some unbelievable discoveries. One of which is the anti-depressant chlomipramine, which has been shown to significantly inhibit tumour growth and even induce tumour cell death, something that chemotherapy itself can only do to the tumours dividing cells (it never penetrates the actual body of the tumour itself).
There’s an very interesting BBC Radio documentary which talks about this, available here…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013xsm1/Treating_Tumours_Old_Drug_New_Tricks/
Among other things, he’s discovered a formulation of boswellic acid (different to that which you’d buy in health shops), which kills significantly more cancer cells, when combined with chemo, than chemo alone.
The problem? In order to take this to clinical trial, he needs £1,000,000+ and no drug company or charity will give him the money. The upshot is, big pharma can’t make big money from off-patent, or cheap drugs. They want something they can charge huge amounts of money for, so any attempt at taking cheap drugs to trial always hits the proverbial brick wall.
In terms of actual treatment, the cocktail approach to cancer treatment is showing huge promise. There are too many survivors of so called ‘terminal’ cancers to ignore it, however that’s exactly what the mainstream medical community is doing. We decided to go ahead and pursue this treatment anyway. When certain death was the only option our physician gave you, we felt like we had to pursue other avenues. In addition to following a ketogenic diet, we currently have my mother taking a mountain of cancer fighting supplements, including…
Curcumin
Milk Thistle
Lycopene
Flax Seed Oil
Resveratrol
Green Tea Extract
Pomegranate Extract
Garlic
Hydroxy Methyl Butyrate
Goldenseal
Soya Isoflavones
Quercetin
Broccoli Sprout Extract
Melatonin
PSK 16
Starflower Oil (contains gamma linolenic acid)
Vitamin D
IP6
…and this off-label drug cocktail…
Chloroquine (an anti-malaria drug)
Verapamil (a calcium channel blocker)
Tamoxifen (usually used with breast cancer patients)
Accutane (an acne drug)
Celebrex (an “NSAID” anti-infammatory)
Disulfiram (used to treat alcoholism)
Metformin (a diabetes drug)
Chlorimipramine (an anti-depressant)
Low Dose Naltrexone (standard dose being used to treat heroin addiction)
Cannabinoids
Moving forward we’re investigating the possibility of adding dichloroacetate (DCA) to the cocktail as well.
At this point, we’re still too early in the game to see if this is actually helping my mother, but we’re doing everything we can to make sure her next scan brings good news.
If anybody is interested in learning more about this approach, I highly recommend these sources…
CUSP9
http://www.disulfiram.eu/Documents/IIAIGC.pdf
SURVIVING TERMINAL CANCER
http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Terminal-Cancer-Treatments-Oncologist/dp/1477496513/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390992864&sr=8-1&keywords=surviving+terminal+cancer
BEYOND THE MAGIC BULLET
http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Magic-Bullet-Anti-Cancer-Cocktail/dp/0757002323/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390992885&sr=8-1&keywords=beyond+the+magic+bullet
Tom,
have you looked into Dr Burzynski – http://www.burzynskiclinic.com.
My wife is an MD and has being learning about Gerson therapy for the last year and trying to understand alternative treatments. Gerson therapy is not really appropriate for brain tumors but Dr Burzynski has had success in that area.
There is a very good documentary about him – Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business. You can find it on YouTube, it is worth a watch. I was amazed to see how he has been treated by the FDA for actually helping people get better.
Good luck to you and you mum on the next scan.
Burzynski has chosen to sell, at vast cost, treatments that neither he nor anyone else can prove to be effective for any type of cancer. So either he is selling a worthless treatment to desperate and vulnerable patients at extortionate cost, or he has a genuine treatment for certain types which he is exploiting for personal profit and not sharing with the world through the medium of published trial data. The former is far more likely (I’m 99.99% sure), but neither makes him look good.
Tom, the work you’re doing for your mom’s health is inspiring. My wife has stage 4 breast cancer (see my comments below for more complete details if interested).
She had started to slide quickly downhill from cachexia (extreme weight loss, extreme weakness, complete loss of appetite). I read some books that gave me strategy ideas. The one that made the most difference is Life Over Cancer by Dr. Keith Block. He’s been involved with cancer treatment and was a very early user of integrative cancer treatment (conventional plus science based nutrition and lifestyle strategies). Many of her symptoms (including about 30 lesions on her lungs) started to reverse after we started using some of Dr. Block’s refcommended strategies. I put together a simple, free WordPress blog on which I posted resources that have been of help to us in our battle (Stage 4 Living). Just Google it if interested. Many brief videos produced by Dr. Michael Greger (who created the nonprofit website nutritionfacts.org and created over 800 brief science based videos) have also been of great help. Dr. Greger (who’s a vegan) scours the over 6,000 nutritional studies done around the world each year and brings the essence to people through his brief videos and blog posts.
Tom,
Life Extension foundation has published an interesting article about the link between CMV and Glioblastoma Multiforme. For those patients who have GM and CMV, taking the CMV drug Valganciclovir extended life considerably:
https://www.lef.org/featured-articles/Brain-Tumor-Treatment-Breakthrough.htm
It’s been a long time since I’ve been waiting a work from you two. It’s so sad that there’s little to no research in the field of carb restriction for cancer starvation, but as you said…hopefully it will start emerging in a year or two.
Peter, besides the cancer types you mentioned, do you think that all cancer have the potential to be starved and to be killed if carbohydrates (glucose) is restricted?
In the following article, it appears that applying a compressive force to malignant cells forces them back to “normal,” and staying normal once the compression is removed. Not sure if they had a food source running through that would mimic a blood vessel, but perhaps the compression works from lessening the glucose supply.
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/12/17/malignant-breast-cells-grow-normally-when-compressed/
This blog makes me think of Doug Kaufmann and his work at Know The Cause.com. Is there truly a link between fungus and cancer? Mr. Kaufmann has been advising his audience to starve cancer/fungal cells of glucose for decades.
Check out the work of Dr. Leanna Standish ND, PhD, LAc at Bastyr Integrative Oncology Research Center. She is leading an outcomes-based study of naturopathic treatment (nutrition, IV therapy, counseling, acupuncture, and a few other modalities) in patients with cancer. She’s a big advocate of Turkey Tail mushroom, and is seeing some impressive results.
Dr. Attia writes “To date, no studies in humans are evaluating the therapeutic efficacy of glucose and/or insulin reduction via diet, though I suspect that will change in the coming year or two, pending outcomes of the metformin trials.”
This is exactly what Eugene Fine, Thomas Seyfried and Dominic D’Agostino are doing. After a story aired on the CBN network in Dec 2012 and I started getting tons of emails from cancer patients, I wrote an ebook on how to implement a very low carb, moderate protein, high fat ketogenic diet to treat cancer. It’s based on the research of Dr. Seyfried, with his permission, with Dr. D’Agostino and Dr. Colin Champ’s assistance, among other very smart professionals in the area of dietary therapy.
My view is that in the short term,we may not get funding for the type of research Dr. Attia discusses because of the entrenched view that cancer is a genetic disease, and because of the limits of the standard of care model. Hence, the changes in this area will most likely be driven by the cancer patients themselves, and organizations like NuSI. I’m betting on the cancer patients, since I’ve now sold almost 2000 books in 44 countries in less than 7 months, all by word of mouth and traffic from my website.
The demand for less invasive, less toxic therapies is there, especially in the “wait and see” situations. In addition, the cost of cancer drugs is so high that even hospitals are refusing to use them. The ketogenic diet is effective, not in all cases, but enough to warrant a look at it. And more importantly, the diet helps cancer patients withstand the standard of care treatments more easily, with less side effects and better outcomes. It should be a standard dietary protocol in every cancer treatment program.
To anyone who’s after the video:
http://www.cbn.com/tv/2033189160001
Great article and it is also great to see that medical professionals are starting to note the importance of diet in the prevention and treatment of cancer.
In dentistry, I have a lot of patients on prophylaxis metformin, as per their doctor, and wonder if these doctors are ahead of the curve.
Lastly I have always said that high fructose corn syrup is the “cocaine” for cancer!! Nowhere in the diet should this stuff exist… Everybody, remove HFC syrup from the diet completely!
Brent
Interesting rat study: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pros.20683/abstract
As a biochem major, I don’t know if I could stand reading this whole article, so burnt out on it lol.
A very interesting article.
My understanding is that drugs and chemo can be effective in treating Cancer, although the success rate is pretty poor considering how long we have been developing drugs as a cure. My understanding is that Gerson Therapy is effective and I also have a capacity to appreciate the theory that the route cause of cancer is potentially found in the experience of significant, negative emotional events, and as such, could be treated by resolving the emotional conflicts with timeline therapy and hynosis.
How every you approach it, the mind and body act as one organism, and any cure must surely work with both.
this is great
I look forward to reading the semi- pro in addition to the comments below. A few points that caught my attention,
“caloric restriction is often synonymous with glucose reduction, and it may be the glucose restriction per se that is keeping the cancer at bay.”
EDITOR’S NOTE:Though it might seem premature to some, let’s make this actionable. To reduce glucose, consider following a diet (way of eating, really) such as The Slow-Carb Diet, Paleo, or any diet that induces ketosis. Many of the most influential researchers in the US, in addition to following ketogenic diets, take slow-acting metformin as a preemptive measure. NOTE: This should NOT be done without medical supervision.
Doctors gave Mom three months to live when pancreatic cancer took it’s hold. My RN wife made Pau d’Arco tea for her, and Mom drank that tea for the next 23 months.
Great article Tim. We wonder why cancer has hit recent generations hard. I wonder how much of the cause is the change in our diets to more carbs. Anyway, I really hope we can find an alternative to these radiation/chemo treatments.
Thanks for sharing this.
Thank you for this information.
I think you will be interested in Gerson, if you have not been previously.
http://gerson.org/gerpress/the-gerson-therapy/?wprptest2=2
I’d be curious what Peter Attia thinks of Robb Wolf’s blog and podcast comments in which he has said that with many types of cancer, a ketogenic diet is very helpful, but with other types, it is not (e.g. glioblastoma and astrocytoma very responsive to ketogenic diet) and in some cases ketosis may accelerate tumor cell growth.
Quote:
“Breast, colon, prostate, and certain brain tumors http://robbwolf.com/2007/09/23/cancer-ketosis/ appear to respond very favorably to a ketogenic diet due to limiting glucose for these tissues. Unfortunately not all cancers respond favorably to ketosis, some in fact become more aggressive as the cancer is “stressed” and appears to start shuffling it’s genetics to become more adaptable. Again, an important area of research that hopefully gets more attention. AND I’ll make the point that if we want research in these areas (certainly makes sense), LC proponents might consider not acting like religious zealots, conducting personal attacks, etc.”
The link i’ve provided below is to an extremely interesting article about treating Cancer with holistic techniques. The theory is that stored negative emotions in the body can play a big part in cells getting the wrong ‘programming’ in the bran, and can therefore become cancerous.
Give it a read, and share if you think it’s interesting.
http://www.1mind.ca/Documents/Healing%20Cancer%20with%20NLP%20and%20TimeLine%20Therapy.pdf
Cheers,
Ben
So glad you posted this Tim!
So there’s an elephant in this room… Most (if not all) of the scientific researchers and opinion shapers in ketogenic corner of the cancer world have never a)healed themselves of cancer or b)helped anyone else heal.
Starving cancer cells of glucose with a ketogenic diet (the flavor of the month) does not cure cancer. Seyfried and D’Agostino know this, which is why they added hyperbaric oxygen to their rodent studies… still isn’t working.
Granted, there are a few keto cancer testimonials out there, but I can count them on one hand.
Also the keto cure to cancer theory was brilliantly refuted by Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez last year, a true authority with many success stories in his decades of nutritional cancer treatment. If it worked, he would be using it. He treated my friend Ann Cooper a 13 year pancreatic cancer survivor. (Per your request I will not be sharing a link to either, which are on my site.)
I just celebrated my 10 year “cancerversary” last month.
In 2003 I was diagnosed with stage 3c colon cancer at 26. I had surgery, but refused the recommended 9-12 months of chemotherapy. My oncologist told me I was “INSANE”. But knew instinctively that I could not poison my way back to health. And thanks to some divine intervention I took a very different path.
Hardcore nutrition.
Method: 15-20 servings of anti-angiogenic, cancer fighting carbohydrates (fruits and vegetables) every day. This included 64oz of vegetable juice (lots of carrot juice), giant salads, fruit smoothies, and various nutraceutical supplements. Cancer also demands a radical lifestyle change, which includes eliminating stress and forgiveness.
(Per your request I will not be sharing a link to my full protocol, details are on my site.)
What I did is similar to thousands of people who have healed themselves with nutritional methods along the lines of Dr. Max Gerson, Dr. Rudolph Breuss, Dr. William Donald Kelly, Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, etc. Also for the doubters, surgery doesn’t cure colon cancer, especially not what I had (stage 3c). If it did, colon cancer would not be the second leading cause of cancer death in the U.S.
On IGF-1. This is cancer rocket fuel and only present in animal food. The best way to restrict IGF-1 is to stop eating all animal products (meat, dairy, eggs), not with drugs. (I am not vegan)
Also the cure to cancer does not lie in the microenvironment. It is in the macro. You have to heal your whole body and your life. Tweaking a chemical process in the body is not the answer, which is why chemotherapy, interferon, estrogen-blockers, anti-angiogenic drugs and the like have largely failed.
Another friend of mine Kay is having tremendous success healing her stage 4 pancreatic cancer with the Gerson protocol, in fact I just posted an update about her progress yesterday in the natural survivor stories section of my site. (per your request I will not be sharing this link)
We can learn from the experience of others, which is I collect and share other natural survivor stories alongside my own. Want to learn how to be successful in business? Listen to and model successful people. People who have done it, not people who theorize about it. Want to learn how to heal yourself of cancer? Same approach.
People who have healed themselves of cancer can teach us more about healing than any PhD researcher ever can.
Love your books and posts
🙂
-Chris Wark
It’s interesting to me that people are talking about how Dr. Gonzalez “brilliantly refuted” the ketogenic diet “cure “ for cancer. First, nobody is saying that it’s a cure. It’s offered as a metabolic therapy option, not a cure. And as for him refuting the diet, I disagree. I read every post waiting for his evidence based argument but I didn’t find it. In fact, he didn’t really say much of anything. Here’s a breakdown of what he wrote in his 8 part series of posts:
Part 1 – the world of cancer research is littered with discarded theories. He wrote nothing about his protocol and the evidence supporting it, and no evidence on why a ketogenic diet does not work.
Part 2 – he disparages Dr. Seyfried because he’s not a medical doctor but a lowly researcher, and rehashes the Warburg theory, basically writing what we all already know.
Part 3 – He rambles about the history of ketogenic diets, then suggests that he knew Dr. Atkins very well and how Dr. Atkins believed his diet would be an effective treatment for cancer. He notes that Dr. Atkins offered him a job, but he turned it down. It’s also clear from this post that he hasn’t actually looked at the ketogenic diet protocol for cancer patients, as it is somewhat different than the Atkins protocol for weight loss.
Part 4 – Discusses Nathan Pritikin, Weston A Price, how diets vary around the world, how this varied diet thing influenced his thinking, and includes a story about Steve McQueen. He then says he reviewed many of his mentor Dr. Kelley’s case patient charts, and picks some cases in which the patient was put on a very high carb diet to offer as proof for Dr. Kelley’s protocol, while asserting that Dr. Seyfried’s research doesn’t support these outcomes. (I would point out here that putting someone on a vegan diet would really drop their calorie intake and induce ketosis, and that calorie restriction works the same as a ketogenic diet, but that’s my opinion..)
Part 5 – He writes more about more patients who have been put on a high carb, plant based diet and survived, so Seyfried must be wrong. No scientific evidence is offered. Where are his studies and evidence? The PhDs being disparaged actually have those in hand.
Part 6 – Dr. Gonzalez claims, with no evidence or even a name, that a chief IV nurse working with Dr. Atkins was “quietly referring a number of patients to me from the clinic” and that again, the Atkins diet has already been tried for cancer and doesn’t work, but offers no scientific evidence to support this claim. Then he dismisses Dr Seyfried’s and other researcher’s work (apparently forgetting that all have had research supporting the efficacy of a ketogenic diet for cancer therapy published in many distinguished peer reviewed journals). More importantly, this post prompted me to contact some of the people who worked directly with Dr. Atkins to ask about Dr. Gonzalez’ assertions. Seems Dr. Gonzalez is mistaken about what actually happened in Dr. Atkin’s office, as they don’t agree.
Part 7 – In this post, Dr. Gonzalez criticizes Dr. Mercola and others who have jumped on the ketogenic diet bandwagon, how he came to write his book, and then he “challenges” Dr. Seyfried to do what, I can’t figure out, but it has something to do with 7 patient case reports he has mentioned in the series of posts. This seems to be another pot shot at Dr. Seyfried for being a researcher and not a medical doctor, as if only physicians can be the bearer of science.
Part 8- His offers his conclusions, as if he has actually offered evidence for his protocol and has not, instead, spent the last 7 posts trying to tear down Dr. Seyfried’s work. He then goes on to talk about how cancer is more complicated and that has something to do with stem cell behavior. He then finishes this post with a bizarre story about a doctor and his dog dying of cancer because they chose an ozone treatment against his advice.
So, I ask, how are these posts “refuting” the ketogenic diet? He offers no real science based evidence for his ramblings, relying only on patient charts which can’t be corroborated, and uses his time and energy to tear down other people’s science based, published work. I can’t say I have much respect for his approach.
Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez MD is an expert in nutritional cancer therapy. He’s doing it every day in his practice and has a long list of successes under his belt. As I said before, if the keto diet worked for cancer, he would be using it. He has no reason not to. He doesn’t need to refute it scientifically, he refutes it with survivors.
Survivors trump science.
After reading your comment, I wondered would someone would spend so much time attempting to the refute the Gonzalez article against the keto diet for cancer…
And then I scrolled up and read another comment where you mention that you wrote an e-book about the ketogenic diet and cancer. As a survivor who spends the majority of my time sharing information on methods that are actually working/healing/curing people as well as coaching people to health, it’s dismaying to see that you are attempting to capitalize on what you disclaim as “a metabolic therapy option, not a cure”.
Cancer patients aren’t looking for “metabolic therapy options”. Don’t kid yourself. You are taking advantage of people. If they buy your book and follow this method, it is because they are hoping it will cure them, nothing less.
Despite all the “brilliant, fascinating, promising new science” (I’m quoting every one else now), this method has only a few 5-year survivors out there. At my last count it’s two, but maybe I missed someone.
Friends, there is hope, the body can heal, and there are proven nutritional methods with many survivors in tow (like me), the keto diet is not one of them.
Well, that argument might stand if Dr. Gonzalez published data on the number of survivors using his protocol. “Survivors trump science” is a catchy phrase, but doesn’t mean much if you offer no data to support the statement.
I’ll also point out that Dr. Gonzalez doesn’t work for free. My colleagues who have worked with some of his former clients, and I’m aware that he charges around $5000 for an individual protocol.
In contrast, my eBook offers the scientific evidence (which you obviously just refuse to read) for the efficacy of the ketogenic diet as a safe, non-toxic therapy, how nutritional ketosis improves the outcomes of chemo and radiation, and why it works to slow the growth of cancer. It also provides people with all the information they need to utilize the diet, why it works, how to monitor progress, contraindications, food lists, customized diet plans, benefits and everything else I could think of to help people. A person can buy the book and not spend another dime, and have everything they need to start and continue the diet. It took me months to do the research and write it, and its $24.95. How is it again that I’m taking advantage of people?
In addition, having survived cancer, I’m surprised that you go out of your way to disparage a protocol that is supported by scientific evidence (and has many more success stories then you acknowledge; but then how would you know, you haven’t talked to me or my colleagues about what we know.) You might want to go download the studies from Pubmed, and do some reading, and actually talk to the people who are doing the research and helping cancer patients utilize the diet to improve their quality of life. It helps to be informed about a subject if you want to write with accuracy on it.
As a patient of Dr Gonzalez for over 20 years, and having had metastatic
cancer to the liver when I first saw him, (cured in part with a 60% carb diet) I have three simple points to make:
1. Dr Gonzalez has published extensively on both the theory of his approach to cancer and on the clinical success of this approach. See New Spring Press and dr-gonzalez.com for his books and other publications.
2. I don’t think Dr Gonzalez was attempting to refute the Ketogenic approach to cancer treatment per se, but simply pointing out that it is inconsistent with his clinical experience and theoretical framework. And quite reasonably challenging proponents to show clinical outcomes.
3. Dr Gonzalez spent 10 years of his life working to get this protocol tested through an NIH trial. The trial was fatally compromised by Columbia University and the NIH as exhaustively documented in his book. “What Went Wrong”. To criticize Dr Gonzalez for not showing scientific evidence without acknowledging his heroic efforts to do so is unfair at best.
Hi Chris Wark,
Great observations. Nicely said,
“Also the cure to cancer does not lie in the microenvironment. It is in the macro. You have to heal your whole body and your life..”
Excellent article Tim. A lot to take in so I’ll have to read it again and again but you make that easy and enjoyable. All the best!
Thank you for writing this article Tim. It has given me renewed hope.
My wife Kate was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer on July 1, 2013. She is 38 and we have two children, our daughter who is 5 and our son who just turned 1 in December. Naturally, I have been doing extensive reading on ovarian cancer via the library and internet and I know the survival rates are not good. At best, the statistics show that Kate won’t even get to see our daughter graduate high school.
Despite this, Kate’s attitude has been amazing from day one, while I have had to coax myself into a positive mindset. At the time, every doctor we met with was telling us they would try to get her 5 years. This was devastating to hear, but we decided that at least it gave us time to figure out a way to get her more time. Being a health conscious person, I set about finding ways to help her at home using a combination of diet, exercise and meditation. I wanted her (and me) to feel empowered, and not just rely solely on the doctor’s standard chemotherapy treatment, especially when most of them told us that diet doesn’t matter and to “just eat whatever you feel like.”
I spoke with one of my doctor’s and he said this is a common mistake a lot of people make when faced with cancer. They adopt the attitude that if I’m going to die, I might as well live it up while I can and eat whatever I want. Unfortunately, in our society today this amounts to eating take out and lots of sugar laden foods that only contribute to the spread of their cancer. This experience has amazed me at the poor attitudes and ignorance people have about what is good, healthy food.
It is my hope that our knowledge of and persistence with following a healthy diet will be the difference that helps Kate live well beyond the normal 5 to 10 year survival rates. After more than 6 months of chemo treatment, she is having a CT scan today that will hopefully reveal her body is clear of all cancer. We meet with her doctor tomorrow to review the results.
Thank you again for this post. I am always searching because I never know what information could go a long way to helping her with this fight.
Dear Andrew and Kate – don’t let statistics get in your head. I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when I was 38 years old too. I will be five years cancer-free in July 2014. My CA-125 is holding steady at 7 (It started out at 700). I had a hysterectomy and 6 rounds of chemo (carboplatin & taxol). Simultaneously, I went on a pH lifestyle by reducing sugar, limiting meats & dairy, lots of vegetable juicing, alkalized water. I am certain sugar reduction is key (I was a sugar junkie before my diagnosis). Also, work on happiness. Cut out the toxic people and circumstances of your life as much as possible. I never saw myself as a “cancer survivor”. That’s so limited. I just don’t associate the cancer with me or who I am at all. I’m only sharing it with you now, because ovarian cancer is known as an older woman’s disease and I would have been comforted to know someone my own age who had been through it. Please contact me if you would ever like to talk.
Anybody: Reverse Warburg effect. Shows different view on glucose and cancer..
Not know to many, but read about it, it gives new insight…
Hi Tim,
I live in San Francisco and am familiar with your work. In October I was diagnosed with stage 3B squamous lung cancer at 28 years old. I am being treated at the Mt Zion Medical Center. Soon after blogging about my condition I received eating tips from everyone and their mother all claiming their diets would cure me. I tried several of these things and ended up losing far to much weight and had to discontinue. I am also doing traditional treatments. Anyways if you would like to connect, I would be more than happy to help you in any experimental research you may be conducting that could help others. Let me know.
Sean
If a low glucose diet equals less chance of most cancers, do we see less incidence of cancers among hunter gatherer tribes or other populations which have low-glucose diets?
Ruling out non-glucose cancers, wouldn’t that correlation be a necessary piece of evidence?
Do a Google search for “Rick Simpson Oil” and read the stories of ALL kinds of cancer being healed. This oil is a from of cannabis oil with a very high THC concentration.
Tim, please have a look at this. It’s free and not commercial. Anyone can make it. The recipe is free. I’m going to try it soon.
There is no good evidence an oil would work. If we take into account the IC50 (the concentration of an inhibitor needed to reduce something by half) levels of both THC and CBD in preclinical studies (10-30+ uM) and the oral bioavailability of those in humans (PMID: 16306858) then we can work a few things out. The study shows the half-life is 1 hour and peak plasma (blood) levels are between 0.3-2.6 ng/ml. So a person would need to take 7-54 grams at hour zero (highly variable per person) followed by 3-27 grams every hour after in order to have a modest effect on the growth rate their cancer (assuming it works). A number of factors account for the low oral bioavailability including variable absorption, degradation in the stomach, significant first-pass metabolism to active and inactive metabolites in the liver and so on (PMCID: PMC2689518).
Tim: there are a lot of anecdotes in the raw vegan world about reversing cancer, and I rarely hear about anyone eating such a diet getting cancer. I’m not advocating a raw vegan diet (and don’t follow one myself), and it’s a skewed set of anecdotes, but perhaps interesting in light of a) also being a diet that avoids many of the contemporary foods you (and Peter Attia) recommend avoiding, and b) having many variations that include a huge amount of natural sugar (in fruits, carrots, etc) without many of the metabolic ills that you predict.
Historical and modern diets, their diversity, and their outcomes are an interest of mine – obviously, an observational one. If I had to make a guess, I suspect you’re right about limiting/eliminating highly processed grains, overenthusiastic about meat and protein, too critical of fruit, and not enthusiastic enough about vegetables. Your results clearly showed that vegetables are incredibly helpful, at http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2013/01/22/is-the-4-hour-body-a-scam-tracking-3500-people-to-find-out/ , but you don’t write much about them, and Peter Attia’s “background” article dismisses them as being too high in sugar and carbohydrates.
This is fantastic. One of the most exciting aspects of the Slow Carb / Paleo / Keto diet trend is that it seems to attack the three biggest causes of death: heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. The amount of knowledge we have access to right now is incredible.
Also of interest is the potential for intravenous vitamin C to improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/highdosevitaminc/patient/page2
Great post, Peter & Tim!
I have passed this on to some family members struggling with cancer.
It is curious that I am reminded of the movie Contact. The engineer, S.R. Hadden, states that the low oxygen on Mir is keeping the cancer from killing him quicker. It seems that he may have just been preventing his good cells from using oxygen properly, and not affecting the cancer cells at all.
If cancer is anaerobic and survives primarily on glucose what happens if the body has EXCESS amounts of oxygen? I’ve read research on oxygen therapy being a viable tool to both prevention and fighting this vicious disease.
Here are some links on the subject –
http://www.amazon.com/The-Crab-Oxygen-Cancer-Dysox/dp/1879131358/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1391020774&sr=8-6&keywords=majid+ali
Hi Patrick,
Paul Davies the physicist has done research on this and talked about attacking the weakness of cancer by oxygen therapy and a low sugar diet.
See ABC Radio Australia for a radio interview where he talks about it.
Great post, Tim!
I did cancer metabolism research for six years when I was in grad school. Both explanations 1 and 2 play a role in cancer with the initiating event being DNA damage causing a genetic insult (mutation) in a gene (tumor suppressor , oncogene, or cell cycle regulator) that allows the cells to overcome the normal checkpoints that inhibit abnormal cells from undergoing apoptosis (cell death) and replicating their “bad” DNA and proliferating.
These aberrant cells require energy, not in the form of ATP like normal cells do, but for carbon and nitrogen sources, which provide building blocks for macromolecular synthesis. This is because they are continually dividing (since they have overcome the “stop growing” signals) and need carbon and nitrogen sources to synthesize nucleotides (for DNA), fatty acids (for cell membranes), and amino acids (for proteins).
Most normal cells need ATP to function properly because all the proteins inside cells require it to do their job. For example, a DNA repair enzyme is a protein that functions to repair damaged DNA (which prevents mutations), and to perform this function it requires ATP. A cancer cell does not care about DNA repair enzymes functioning properly, or any other normal functions of the cell, it has one goal: propagate.
This is the important part that coincides with the post: It is the aberrant metabolism (Warburg effect) that promotes the cancer cells to survival and proliferate but is not the initiating factor. For example, mature T-cells in our immune system are predominantly glycolytic and do not rely on oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) for energy–but our lymphocytes are not cancer cells and do not have dysfunctional mitochondria. Glycolysis itself does not appear to be a transforming factor (neither is mitochondrial dysfunction–actually many cancer cells have normal mitochondria as Otto Warburg himself pointed out) but rather a promoting factor (allows them to propagate) in cancer. For a cell that has already become transformed (by overcoming “stop growing” signals), glycolysis provides a carbon source that allows them to rapidly (far less steps required compared to OXPHOS) get theses building blocks for macromolecular synthesis at the expense of ATP.
Here’s an interesting, and perhaps slightly contradictory point, however: During my graduate studies I did several nutrient withdrawal experiments with transformed cancer cells and consistently found that removing glutamine from their media killed cancer cells within 24 hours, whereas, removing glucose allowed them to survive (although they divided more slowly) as long as glutamine was present. Glutamine is both a nitrogen source (for DNA and protein synthesis) and a carbon source for other macromolecules. Glucose is only a carbon source. This data is not unique to my experiments and is well known is the scientific literature. Of course, a cancer cell in vitro is different than a cancer cell in vivo.
I think the role of glutamine in cancer cell survival needs to be better understood. I could go on and on but just wanted to add a couple of my thoughts! One of my many projects as a postdoc with Bruce Ames is to understand the mechanism of how a bad diet precipitates cancer, particularly in the obese.
Thanks for bringing this topic to the attention of the general public!
Have you checked out info on Cannabinoids? http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1898208?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false & http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/09/03/shocking-results-woman-replaces-40-medications-with-raw-cannabis-juice/
The only human study that has been published to date was back in 2006. It was a cohort of nine patients all with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme (a rare type of primary brain cancer) http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/v95/n2/full/6603236a.html All had their tumours resected and a catheter was placed in the cavity after surgery. Then every day doctors would directly infuse a very pure THC solution at a high concentration directly into the cavity where the tumour had been, in the hope of killing off any remaining cancer cells. The median survival of the group was just 6 months which is what is generally expected with patients who have rGBM http://www.neurology.org/content/73/15/1200.long http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/1764056 As for the two patients who survived the longest (yet still died), the effects could be attributable to spontaneous (but temporary) regression of the disease http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/fullarticle/265874 which happens, amount of surgical resection http://neuro-oncology.oxfordjournals.org/content/18/4/462.long http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11060-014-1397-2 http://thejns.org/doi/full/10.3171/2012.9.JNS12504 http://thejns.org/doi/full/10.3171/2013.12.JNS13184 or a number of other factors.
What effect would weight training + increased carb consumption have on this.
And is it possible to make significant strength gains without increasing carb consumption following heavy lifting?
Great Question! I bet Tim would say that you don’t need tons of Carbs for Great Results in the Gym. So would Attia, he is a beast and is in constant Ketosis.
http://io9.com/5308691/scientists-use-the-aids-virus-to-cure-cancer
Modified HIV to cure Cancer, There is this one then the one from up worthy:
http://www.upworthy.com/clarification-doctors-treat-a-dying-girl-with-modified-hiv-the-reason-why-will-amaze-you
Hi Tim,
About a month ago I was diagnosed with a chronic form of leukemia. This is a very slow form of cancer that can have a survival rate from a couple of years to decades. I have been on slow carb diet for about 3 years and it kept me very healthy except for this issue… Even though I don’t think this diet will somehow cure me from cancer, I will keep following it because I have to be as strong as possible in case I ever need a transplant and because it is not uncommon to have secondary cancers when you already have one.
For those of you who wants to follow non-traditional treatments (I am repeating Tim’s disclaimer here), please be very careful and research the side-effects. Read this please http://www.cll-nhl.com/search/label/holistic%20care#.UulfBvldVGY
M
Was diagnosed with the same thing (CLL) in 2005 and am still untreated. I eat a similar diet and also work on my gut biome with resistant starch. Also, if treatment is ever on the horizon I will do “Rick Simpson Oil” therapy before any mainstream treatments.
Hi M,
My mother was diagnosed with CLL, breast cancer and MDS. She needed blood transfusions (for the MDS) every 3-4 weeks. She’s been on a ketogenic diet for a few months now and hasn’t needed a transfusion since over 3 months. She’s in excellent health, thankfully.
Of course, we can’t be sure it’s the diet, it might be coincidence or something we’re not aware of (though she’s not taking any other meds for the anaemia). Also, who knows if her improvement will last.
But clearly something has happened – and at least to us it seems very likely that it is this ketogenic diet that is having some kind of effect. FYI: keto is essentially a high fat, moderate amount of protein, very low carb diet.
Good luck,
Jesse
note-website is coming.
I’ve seen people treat skin cancers with a homemade black salve often containing herbs like chaparral. I’m not sure what the exact ingredients are but I’ve seen the stuff work and I’ve heard stories. I’m close to a few people that are prone to skin cancer that are older and had a lot of sun exposure. Sometimes they come into the office with these nasty lesions that look like a full on staff infection or bullet wound~the topical salve somehow draws out the diseased skin tissues. Anyway, this is a natural remedy that works for at least most skin cancers and it can be made from basic herbals. I’ll see if I can track down one of the recipes and post.
Great article Tim, thanks for sharing. Gives me hope!
Have you heard of The Johanna Bugwig protocol? It is using flaxseed oil and cottage cheese together. There also is the use of apricot seeds(kernels) for fighting cancer.
Great article, Tim. Has any of the research looked at the effects of glucose levels and Metformin use on PSA levels for prostate cancer screening? My father is a prostate cancer survivor and I’m keeping an eye on my PSA levels.
Fascinating – thank you Tim and Dr. Attia.
It appears promising that a reduction of glucose and insulin can improve cancer outcomes.
Dr. Attia pointed out the research into caloric restriction (CR) and it’s positive action against cancer. I’d like to throw Intermittent Fasting (IF) into the mix… IF conveys similar insulin reduction / cell autophagy benefits while avoiding a lot of the drawbacks of CR (loss of muscle, etc).
Dr. Eades discusses IF in a prior 4 hour post, taking a critical look at the applicability of animal trials to human health (at least in the realm of weight loss): http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/03/03/real-life-extension-caloric-restriction-or-intermittent-fasting-part-2/
That said, there was a human trial in 2009 with some positive results for IF and improved cancer treatment:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2815756/
Only scratching the surface here… but if everyone scratches, we’ll cover a lot of surface area!
Super Tim: Really like your approach. Suggest the important take-away is determining whether
a. in Explanation 1 – does a cancer really ‘prefer’ or is it a normal, predictable, repeatable outcome to use glucose in the cellular env that exists?
b. in Explanation 2 – are the observed ‘genetic insults’ mentioned the root cause, or a downstream result of the cellular env?
Your linked articles are super – had seen most but not all and appreciate the new ones context greatly. In a nutshell, one seldom considered but big picture appreciation is that genes on their own are passive; yet there is an integral cooperation/dance between the genes and the conditions and physical chemistry of the adjacent cellular env. It is this dance that is the likely culprit; while we CAN’T change our genes, we all CAN change our env (diet/toxins, etc) This concept is even a potential explanation for routinely seeing different genetic expressions within the same tumour mass (such as but not limited to different blood supply to different areas – an angiogenesis aspect)
With the premise noted above, can see some links with many of the readers’ comments which largely recommend/suggest the ‘what’ without articulating the ‘why’. Diets mentioned (Gerson, Gonzalez, Budwig, etc) have worked occasionally in the past, but they are correctly challenged as being a ‘cure’ ; they like conventional treatments actually frequently fail…but there is something about them that deserves more study
Building on the importance of this ‘environment’ connection, in her 20 November 2013 article ‘Reproducibility: The risks of the replication drive’ published in the journal Nature, renowned cancer researcher (and also a past Ted Talks presenter!) Dr Mina Bissell writes, “Many scientists use epithelial cell lines that are exquisitely sensitive. The slightest shift in their microenvironment can alter the results — … Cells in culture are often immortal because they rapidly acquire epigenetic and genetic changes. As such cells divide, any alteration in the media or microenvironment — even if minuscule — can trigger further changes that skew results”
It is at our peril to buy-into/not challenge the pedestal gene mentality…it simply doesn’t make sense!
(Like Tim mentions in his blog, I too would welcome/appreciate any feedback on this concept)
“To date, no studies in humans are evaluating the therapeutic efficacy of glucose and/or insulin reduction via diet…” — I took “The Quickie” option, so this may be covered in the depths of the material presented — but in the Editor’s Note, you mentioned “ketogenic diet.” Alaskan Inuit follow a ketogenic diet and a quick Google search reveals that Inuit experience significantly lower rates of cancer.
Here’s a link (n.b., it’s not “my” link, just the article I reference above): http://www.theiflife.com/the-inuit-paradox-high-fat-lower-heart-disease-and-cancer/
Food for thought. Thanks!
Heard about the Gerson technique via The Beautiful Truth. While I’d recommend the documentary those with more urgent needs may want to check the site directly
http://gerson.org/gerpress/
I am so excited to see a person with a large sphere of influence tackling the cancer issue, and not afraid to think outside the box!
The current options being given to cancer patients are horrendous, some worse than the actual cancer itself!
The 5 year success rate for chemo is about 3% (review of chemo data by Oncology Dept, Royal North Shore Hospital a few years back. They concluded their report by calling for an urgent review on the use of chemo to treat cancer in Australia. Nobody took the slightest bit of notice.) A 3% chance of success in exchange for utter devastation of your entire body, which, if you manage to survive the carnage, will ultimately increase your chances of cancer in the future (leukemia, especially). Who is doing the risk v benefit here?!?!
Three years ago my uncle was diagnosed with Stage 3 prostate cancer. His doctor warned him he would die without surgery and radiation. My uncle ignored him, and proceeded to start measuring his urinary pH levels, and taking bicarbonate soda (highly alkaline) to raise the levels to 8 and maintain that level for 5 days straight, after which he allowed it to drop to a healthy 7.2 Apparently, cancer cannot survive in such an alkaline environment.
Four months after diagnosis, he was given the all-clear. He is still cancer-free and going strong (at age 64). His doctor wasn’t interested in hearing what he did to heal himself. He has since developed a great passion for natural methods of healing, alkaline diet, and freely shares his experiences with others.
Great article Tim,
Few years ago I was diagnosed with diabetes. I was reading a lot and I came to conclusion that nobody tells the true about the insulin – the real killer. Which helps cells to grow and store the fat. So most diabetes are trying to avoid high sugar level instead of high insulin levels. All overweight people with normal glucose level must experience high insulin levels – but when you tell them so they answer they have proper glucose level and doctor sad its fine.
The insulin causes also higher blood pressure by reducing vascular flexibility.
After loosing 20% of my weight and five months of taking insulin now I’m taking metformin only, and trying to convinced everybody around, how good can you feel when you make stable your glucose level.
I’v go the chance to improve my life and wish others to do so before they came to ER (like me with 380mmg/dL)
Hello,
You stated, “To date, no studies in humans are evaluating the therapeutic efficacy of glucose and/or insulin reduction via diet, though I suspect that will change in the coming year or two, pending outcomes of the metformin trials.” What about the decades of research done by the Gerson family and Institute? http://gerson.org/gerpress/
I’m curious, does their treatment and research not count?
Thanks!
Good post. For me even better are the actionable advise contained in the Ted talk which was worth watching a 2nd time. Also some interesting references in the comments that I will read/watch:
Eat, Fast, & Live Longer
More than an Apple a Day
Anti-Cancer – I’ve read this and highly recommend it. Here’s the 1 min version: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-servanschreiber-md-phd/20-new-anticancer-rules_b_450166.html
The link to the article about ‘the observation that people with defective IGF-1 receptors appear immune to cancer.’ is broken.
Great writeup. Dr. Attia is a fascinating person/living experiment.
Dr. Gabriel Cousens about ten years ago created various sugar free diets to starve the cancer cells off sugar ( all based on raw foods) . The questions is: if you don’t supply body with glucose there are many pathways in the body to make the glucose, for instance , from amino acids. Wouldn’t cancer cells be able to utilize these pathways as well?
Tim,
One area I have stumbled upon in my side research is “Tumor Treating Fields” (TTF). It is a “fourth modality” for treating cancer. It is very promising for the hard to treat solid tumors.
Below is the link to the TED talk:
Bill Doyle: Treating Cancer with Electric Fields
The company leading the research is: http://www.novocure.com
Here is another counter intuitive problem of cancer. Glutathione is higher on average in cancer than in healthy cells. But increasing the glutathione precursors causes a reduction of the glutathione in the cancer cells because the production of glutathione is self regulating. Simultaneously the healthy cells have an increase in GSH.
So what is GSH? See my website Glutawhat.info for the definition extracted from the PDR(Physicians Desk Reference).
So what does the major antioxidant the body produces have to do with cancer? The doctor who came up with the first AIDs tests has the professional opinion that all diseases are progressed through oxidative stress. It is estimated there are 10,000 hits aday on our DNA alone from oxidative stress. So cancer is a result of unchecked oxidative stress. Increase your GSH, the master antioxidant, to help prevent cancer. It can also decrease or eliminate side effects, oxidative stress again, from chemo and even radiation therapies. (Note: I no longer cell the products mentioned on my website)
Here is a good overview of GSH in diseases:
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=X-RBicIhamEC&oi=fnd&pg=PR3&dq=immunocal+effects+on+cancer&ots=hKl7iwYO19&sig=9aXgna4NWDqfX-YaqWXyvUZbYIs
Another interesting point is that cancer is 3-5 degrees cooler than normal cells apparently as a result of there less efficient metabolism. This translate into having a different infared signature slightly. This infared signature is one method cells use to communicate their health. As a result when a unhealthy cell cools the surrounding cells send chemical messages to apostise, to kill them selves. Cancer ignores these messengers of doom and continue to proliferate.
Check out Ceragem.com. Again not a product I am profiting from at present.(mini spas anyone?)
It is a mechanical message bed that realigns the hip and spine. Point above about inared signature: The bed mimics the same signal of healthy cells in its moxibustion effects. Secondly it has a “down side” 😛 You have to flip over on your stomach and it loosens any matter lodged with in your gastronomic tract. Again this is another preventive measure to keep crap from building up. Their favorite trivia was John Wayne’s autopsy shows he had 42 pounds of undigested matter. In the words of one worker “Wiggle, Wiggle.” to loosen up anything stuck.
Another effective preventive and cytokines affective method is ganoderma lucidum. It is the king of herbs. Reishi ??mushrooms anyone? I am currently doing more research into the institutional research going on for this power-up mushroom.(Mario Bros. anyone? Games are for learning folks !) Below is one study I have found. This is my current side business for disclosure. http://www.caferedshroom.com
The anti?tumor effect of Ganoderma Lucidum is mediated by cytokines released from activated macrophages and T lymphocytes
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0215(19970317)70:6%3C699::AID-IJC12%3E3.0.CO;2-5/abstract
Some thoughts:
1) Not everyone thrives on a ketogenic or low carb diet. The deciding factor as to whether one does or does not is their constitutional metabolism. Because fatty acids and glucose produce different degrees of metabolic byproducts in the Krebs Cycle (carbon dioxide production alone is significant) via their oxidation, making significant changes in one’s macronutrient consumption by definition means altering one’s metabolic byproducts, and thus venous blood ph. This has profound ramifications for the organism: sometimes it works wonderfully, and sometimes it’s a disaster. You’ll eventually figure it out (unless you eat according to a dogma, in which case, you might keep getting shitty results while trying harder and harder to cut out every last bit of carbohydrate, never putting 2+2 together), but it helps to have a blood centrifuge and a proper ph meter.
2) This silly idea that “glucose feeds cancer = therefore eat less carbohydrates” is simplistic at best. Healthy cells preferentially use glucose and oxidize it into ATP, H2O and CO2. When cells don’t get glucose the organism goes into substantial stress physiology to get it, raising cortisol to breakdown tissue to produce it. Simply understanding gluconeogenesis goes a long way here.
3) Quoting Otto Warburg without understanding Otto Warburg is in vogue these days but Warburg never advocated low carb dieting, nor suggesting that normal carbohydrate intake caused or – once present – fueled cancer pathology. The issue at hand is the tendency toward anaerobic metabolism itself. As Revici found, the tendency for anaerobic metabolism in the cell often has to do with what’s happening with the lipids in the cell: a buildup of sterols that prevents proper oxidation. Johanna Budwig, who was familiar with Warburg’s work, also touched on this with her flax oil therapy because the highly polyunsaturated linseed oil she used exclusively (cutting out saturates, cholesterol, etc), brought back proper oxygen exchange through cell membranes. Revici also used anti-anaerobic substances like negative valence sulfur and selenium couple with long chain fatty acids to reverse anaerobic cancers. Sure, tumors metabolize glucose for fuel anaerobically producing lactate, but focusing on glucose while ignoring the pathology that leads to mitochondrial dysfunction in the first place, misses the root of the issue entirely, and gets people on fad low-carb diets that can cause other metabolic issues over time.
4) There is no such single entity as “cancer.” Malignancies arise from a myriad of reasons these days, and one-size-fits-all approaches or grand overarching theories simply don’t work. Unfortunately, this is due to the exceptional complexity of modern life and the vast amounts of toxins we are exposed to: ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, pesticides, herbicides, GMOs, EMF, toxic halogens in our water supply, etc. etc. Dietary changes have been very successful for some people, for some cancers, but they run the gamut from ketogenic to high-carb, low fat. Plenty of people have reversed their cancer or lived much longer than expected, for example, by going on a macrobiotic-style diet, and that is a high glucose diet. Likewise, many people have probably not been successful with that diet. Point being, that focusing on one thing like GLUCOSE, as if it is the big bad guy, is just plain stupid. Oh, it’s popular in the paleo and low carb scene, but the cave people forget conveniently that civilization (and the increase in human brain size) has been built on increasing glucose availability and consumption via starches.
Tim, thank you so much for having someone guest post some science/evidence based thoughts on cancer treatment and prevention. I found it very interesting and will reread it for useful ideas.
I hope you’ll allow me to share my family’s experience with cancer in hopes it will be of help to others facing this battle.
My wife was diagnosed with stage 2b metastatic, invasive (ER PR neg. HER2 pos.) Nov. 2009. (One of her oncologists told us that on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most aggressive, her type of cancer ranks about an 8; only triple negative breast cancers are more aggressive.) After six trips from Guam to the Philippines for treatment the cancer went into “remission”. We made the tragic mistake of having my wife return to her high stress job as a pastry cook in a hotel kitchen and the unhealthy food served at her job.
Her cancer returned in November 2011–this time it was stage 4. She was placed on the chemo ladder starting at the oldest, cheapest meds and being bumped up as the cancer adapted to each cocktail of chemo drugs. She reached a level on which one of her prescribed drugs (Tykerb aka Lepatanib) cost $11,000 for a bottle of 120 tablets (for just one month’s supply). Despite this astronomically expensive mix her cancer relentlessly adapted and spread from the site of reoccurence (her chest wall) to her lungs to form about thirty lesions.
She started losing an alarming amount of weight fairly quickly, lost her appetite (plus foods tasted like a chemistry kit due to chemo), and was becoming profoundly weak; she could do one simple task and had to lie down or sit and recover. She had strong pain in her left arm from lymphedema due to two lymph glands being removed and numbness and tingling in her left hand and fingers which, from reading, I believe was the result of neuropathy (i.e. nerve damage due to extended chemo).
I learned from a book by a doctor who was VP of Nutrition for Cancer Centers of America for ten years that of patients that are diagnosed with cancer and die, about 40 percent die not from the disease but from starvation. I knew my wife was starving to death before my eyes.
She was in the local hospital for four days in August 2012 because of flu-like symptoms that I’m sure were related to her illness. Her regular physician reviewed her charts and informed her that it appeared she had suffered a minor heart attack. While I have no proof, I believe this stemmed from extended chemo; one of the drugs she is being administered is proven to weaken the heart muscle with extended use.
I was given the unspoken impression that this is what happens with stage 4 cancers of her type. The only thing we could do is helplessly and passively watch as she went into the hospital more frequently until she expired.
I strongly felt that there had to be science and evidence based answers and resources on the internet for things we could do to to complement/supplement my wife’s conventional treatment and I began to search. Try Googling phrases similar to “surviving cancer” and you’ll see what a mammoth task this represents to cancer patients. (That phrase, by the way, gets about 39 million results.)
The internet is awash in hucksters, hype and sincerely wrong viewpoints. Sifting out science/evidence based views on treatment options is not so easy.
I ordered several books from Amazon, sifted through websites and began significantly changing our diet and using nutritional shakes (and eventually green smoothies incorporating fruits and vegetables with anticancer properties).
I want to be clear that at stage 4 a “cure” would border on the miraculous. I was searching for things we could proactively do with my wife’s diet and lifestyle that would supplement/complement the conventional treatment we had access to on Guam (unfortunately not cutting edge) and could afford and that would help manage her illness, slow the progression of her disease, give her back a better quality of life and extend her life as long as possible.
As we changed her lifestyle and diet as best we could (my wife isn’t a vegetarian, vegan or “health nut” by any stretch) her weight loss stopped. We are now are worried about her gaining too much weight–she’s over her old weight of 155 at 5’3″), she regained her healthy appetite (although food still somewhat tastes like a chemistry kit) and she regained her strength. The pain in her left arm disappeared to the point where she could discard her compression sleeve. The numbness and tingling in her left hand and fingers went away. Her complexion is excellent not sallow as some people suffer from with extended chemo. Except for some slightly thinning hair (she’s lost her hair twice to Taxol/Taxotere) many people regularly comment that she doesn’t look like she’s battling a very aggressive form of stage 4 breast cancer.
Again, I write the above with the full realization that she has a new lease on life but we don’t know how long that lease is for. But I would rather have her live with a healthy appetite, high energy level and healthy weight up to the end, if that end is in one year or over ten years from now. We are grateful for every bonus day, week, month and year she’s been given.
I recommend a few books and other resources on the simple, free blog I put together to share with others fighting cancer. But If I had advanced cancer and could only be allowed one book (and website resources) I would choose Life Over Cancer by Dr. Keith Block. Dr. Block has dealt with advanced cancers for over 32 years and is considered by many to be the Father of integrative cancer care (i.e. the combining of conventional treatment with science based nutrition and lifestyle strategies). His book contains reviews by 16 medical and cancer professionals including one by Robert Newman, Ph.D. with M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, considered by many professionals to be among the top three cancer centers in the United States.
I believe without Life Over Cancer and a some other resources my wife would have continued her rapid downhill slide and would not be with us today. I owe Dr. Block and others a great debt of gratitude for helping us manage my wife’s illness and helping give us more time with her.
I can’t guarantee what will happen with other cancer patients. Cancer and we are complex. But my wife’s case illustrates what’s possible when we proactively use science based strategies to address the biochemical causes of cancer in our bodies and not just the effects (i.e. tumors).
I hope what I’ve written will be of help and encouragement to some battling this illness.
In India, a yoga teacher and ascetic Swami Ramdev says two hours of pranayama daily for a minimum 10 months–specifically kapalabhati–has helped hundreds of people rid themselves of cancer. He says he has their medical records but obviously cannot carry out studies with control groups of those with cancer. He thinks that the higher amounts of oxygen during kapalabhati may be killing cancer cells (apparently these can’t thrive in oxygen). Worth pursuing this line. I’m told Harvard researchers are also working on this.
Im Physician, and I can tell you something i discovered only recently. All blood test done on hearth are base on normal and abnormal range. Is the main problem of our medicine.
They consider you are normal when you are inside the range. If you look at the origins of this range you will be surprise.
I m working on dynamic multi interpretation of blood test and we are able to see deeply about our risk of diseases..
[Moderator: Email address removed.]
I know a person who has defeated T-cell lymphoma, prostate cancer, and one bout of pelvic bone cancer using a combination of treatments recommended by his oncologist and a raw foods diets and juicing recommended by a naturopath. The pelvic bone cancer has returned but has not progressed as he continues to combine a type of medication/treatments prescribed by oncologist and the raw foods diet. His color becomes robust and his thinking/speech much improved when following the raw foods (mostly vegetables) and juicing program. I hope diet will become a part of the ongoing cancer prevention and/or cure research. I’ve seen such a difference in this person’s life over the past 10 or so years.
Tim,
The glucose depletion approach may have also some problems.
According to a study published January 31 in the journal Cell, glucose-starved tumors can actually get more aggressive, depending whether the cancer cells produce protein called PKC? or not.
The research suggests that glucose depletion therapies might work against tumors as long as the cancer cells are producing PKC?. But tumors can get more aggressive if cancer cells don´t produce this protein.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130131144427.htm
They should look into the entire body, including toxins like heavy metals, other nutrient deficiencies that can be tested for in blood if anyone knows what they are looking for, chelation of toxins, a controlled diet to shut off genes that get turned on by lifestyle, stress hormone influences, and activity levels or exercise. There are many other factors, and trying any one-pronged approach is subject to failure. The approach that must be taken is individual, not universal… and especially not pharmaceutical.
All:
Kanzius Cancer Research Center:
Using radio waves to kill cancer @ MD Anderson…Getting very close to human trials:
http://www.kanziuscancerresearch.org/
Great article. I think you should clarify the editor’s note. The way it reads now, it sounds like you’re advising people not to try Slow Carb without medical supervision, which I assume is not your intent!
Hey! Just wanted to say this link wasn’t working (observation about IGF-1)
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/3/70/10ra13.abstract
good article, like the hat
Is glucose the only thing that feeds them ?
what if you were to replace glucose intake with fructose intake(stuff like fruit and pure honey), than doing loads of excercise to burn off the glucose and replace it with fructose ?
How does the work of Dr. Johanna Budwig relate to this? If I can remember correctly, she believes Oxygen is the death of Cancer…her work is related to the understanding of fats in the diet related to cancer…. I believe it is saturated fats she believes is the culprit…these ‘industrial fats’ which are transformed by modern machinery, chemicals into products that store for a long time, that are made into ‘spreadable foods’, industrial food ‘insults’ like the designer fat one company was researching to put into its processed foods…a ‘fat’ whose, like other designer fats, electrons are stripped away, she and researchers found in the early ’50’s, were not able to be digested properly and like lifeboats adrift with no sea charts, ended up attaching themselves to other body organs/parts, etc…thus plaques in arteries, etc. Anyway, the comment/question is does any of this work current in the articles here take account of Mrs. Budwig’s work?
Great article!
We should also be looking at what we eat when it comes to preventing cancer.
Folic acid for example causes cancer. Folic acid isn’t in our natural foods, but rather folate is. However, folate can perish easily, thus the food and drug companies put folic acid in our food and supplements knowing that the liver converts it to folate. This takes a long time and folic acid itself is bad for our bodies.
In the end, you should eat WHOLE FOODS.
A friend of mine, about ten years ago, was diagnosed with cancer in the throat and given 6 months to live without chemo therapy. So he immediately started. But after a couple months of feeling completely noxious and losing hair, he told the doctors to get lost and went on a strict, juice only diet. The doctors told him he might have only a few months left to live.
Three months later, he went in for a checkup. First he says, the doctors were amazed that he was even alive, let alone had gained back some weight. Second, he put them in complete shock after the checkup showed that the cancer was in remission. A couple months later, he went back in and flabbergasted the doctors who told him the cancer was gone!
Can you share the juice recipe?