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Comment by dralley | Hacker News Reader

>For example they switched him to a ketogenic diet back when this was just starting to show results for cancer

I'm curious as to how this would have an impact. Is there any research demonstrating that keto slows the development of cancer? Or hypotheses on why that would be the case?

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Though it's incredibly dependent on the type of cancer, it's history, it's environment, and it's genome, it is related to the metabolic pathway that you shut off.

This is known as the Warberg Effect [0]. Essentially, for some reason, some cancers will start eating only via glycolysis and not via oxidative phosphorylation. Glycolysis requires glucose (sugars, like carbohydrates), so if you just stop eating foods that turn into glucose, those types of cancers will starve. Low sugar diets are ketogenic diets.

I'll be clear here, this is super speculative. Cancer isn't something like measles, each one is super specific to the organism and evolves over time. Keto diets may work for a while to harm cancers, but may also select for more 'hearty' cancers over time. It's not very well understood, even still.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_effect_(oncology)

Cancer isn't something like measles, each one is super specific to the organism and evolves over time.

My preferred phrasing of this is "Cancer is a symptom, not a disease".

But if you've been handed a death sentence, why NOT try a keto diet? That's a rhetorical question btw of course the is no reason not to try it.

Each cancer is unique to the organism. Not all cancers are death sentences. Nearly every sunburn you or I have had has been cancerous to some degree; the inflammation and reddening are your body fighting those cancers (among many other issues). Some cancers can be benign, some can be handled quite easily, some can be treated in other ways. Again, each is unique.

The data on Ketogenic diets and cancer are showing a lot of promise, but you should follow the advice of you oncologist/s. They have dedicated some portion of their lives to helping you out with your cancer. You do not want to end up in a situation where you have convinced yourself that kale is better than chemo. Again, each cancer is unique though.

Palliative care is an admission that chemo won't help and pretty much all options have been tried. At that point one can sit back and die, or try something.

Again, it depends on the situation at hand. Though ketogenic diets are showing promise, it depends on the cancer, as such diets may aggravate the cancer. One should follow the advice of the oncologist/s as well as research on their own.

If you google for studies, at this point you'll see an abundance of research on this with positive results, which apparently was just getting started when they dug into it and perhaps not well known to the average doctor. My memory plus a quick look into one [1] suggests it's because brain tumor cells largely feed on glucose, whereas normal brain cells can also metabolise ketone bodies for energy. So you're starving the cancer of resources.

[1] https://nutritionandmetabolism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10...

[1] was a mouse study. Do you have any examples of human studies? I have this picture in my mind of someone showing up to a doctors office with a thumb drive of 30 PDFs of nonclinical studies they found through a Google search and demanding treatment x, diet y, and so on.

And the effect seems mostly due to caloric restriction, not the (C)KetoCal bla bla diet.

Why throwaway?

Provably an affected person.

Another factor is that cancer cells act more aberrantly under stress. Fasting (not sure if this also applies to keto) creates resources competition by which cancer cells neither compete as effectively and make theme-selves more apparent to the body’s immune system. Lot’s of anecdotal information here with some evidence but as a hypothesis with reasonable with reasonable biological justification it makes enough sense to me that I’d be personally comfortable taking some of these risks for my self or my family.

I wouldn't expose my family to my own pet theories. I'd choose to listen to the oncologist. There is a downside to fasting as well. Removing the pleasure and normal lifestyle may isolate the patient from social interactions that involve food. Those social interactions could be really important to personal well being and staving off depression.

Partially related to insulin and blood sugar levels largely.

IGF.

Depends on the cancer though, etc.

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