I wonder if occasional long term fasts can reduce your cancer risk.
The mechanism seems to be that during periods of fasting, normal cells "hunker down" and restrict the consumption of nutrients and other materials. Cancer cells don't do this though and continue to consume the nutrients, which are actually chemotherapy drugs in the patients.
Fasting therfore increases the absorption of chemo by the cancer cells and reduces the consumption by normal cells keeping the patient healthier.
Fasting also enables the body to more completely rid itself of cancerous cells by consuming them in the absence of alternative sources of nutrition.
Lots of reasons why fasting is a good thing.
I suspect that one thing fasting does is frees up those cells to do other stuff.
Anecdotally, I've seen people comment on HN and Reddit that fasting helped them with some chronic health issue or other. Here's an HN comment that says he was on antibiotics constantly until he tried fasting:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20279338
If you find any such studies, please share. Thanks.
Papers it discusses include: * Starvation-dependent differential stress resistance protects normal but not cancer cells against high-dose chemotherapy – Lizzia Raffaghello, Valter Longo et al. (2008) https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wmq7q6azyzfsubm/AACoCigKOQYxthruL...
* The effects of short-term fasting on tolerance to (neo) adjuvant chemotherapy in HER2-negative breast cancer patients: a randomized pilot study – Stefanie de Groot et al. (2015) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4595051/
* Fasting and cancer treatment in humans: A case series report – Valter Longo et al. (2009) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2815756/
* Fasting-Mimicking Diet Reduces HO-1 to Promote T Cell-Mediated Tumor Cytotoxicity – Di Biase et al. (2016) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27411588
* The effects of short-term fasting on quality of life and tolerance to chemotherapy in patients with breast and ovarian cancer: a randomized cross-over pilot study – Bauersfeld et al (2018) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29699509
Your understanding of how chemotherapy works with cancer and healthy cells seems flawed. Chemo harms all fast-growing cells, healthy or not. That’s why people have terrible tastes, stomach problems, hair and skin problems during chemo; those are all fast-growing cells. They grow fast whether you are fasting or not; but killing them in large numbers (what the chemo does) raises the body’s demand for energy and nutrients just to maintain health. That demand must be met with healthy food and drink.
Edit to add: Fasting by a healthy person may reduce their chances of developing cancer; that seems plausible to me. My point is that people undergoing chemotherapy should follow the directions of the doctors. In my experience, those directions are to eat well while receiving treatment.
> Conclusion
> [Short Term Fasting] during chemotherapy is well tolerated and appears to improve QOL and fatigue during chemotherapy.
https://jeccr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13046-019-...
> Abundant and convincing preclinical evidence shows that STF can decrease toxicity and simultaneously increase efficacy of a wide variety of chemotherapeutic agents.
https://osher.ucsf.edu/patient-care/integrative-medicine-res...
> For general cancer prevention, it may be beneficial to add intermittent or short-term fasts in combination with a plant-based cancer prevention diet
and
>Fasting may also protect patients against the harmful side effects of chemotherapy or radiation therapy.
and
> They concluded that a 3-day fast could help regenerate a strong immune system
> Additional research in both rodents and monkeys have shown that when CR was started by 12 months of age, lifespan was increased and incidence of spontaneous cancers was reduced by 50%.
> Furthermore, it is theorized that cancer cells do not respond to the protective signals generated by fasting, thus leaving them vulnerable to both the immune system and cancer treatment.
I feel like this is sufficient to refute your several oncologists' anecdotal opinions which are not supported by the research.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324169.php
> There is a growing body of evidence supporting the role of fasting in both cancer treatment and prevention.
Lots of links to sources in that article too.
You have to be very careful relying on the advice of oncologists. Think about what their motivations are. What are their biases? I dealt with this very personally for a long time and found oncologists to be ... human and suffer from all the same problems as other humans.
Their patients are ... dying and they don't want to die. It's a very emotional time for all involved.
It's not. Unless you have the appropriate training and experience, you are not capable of making treatment recommendations.
Sorry if that seems harsh, but this is not something you can just Google your way through. This is not one of those things where you can find the hidden truth by reading a few things online and posting citations.
You either have medical training or you don't. If you don't, be very careful about make big medical decisions based on a few things you read online. Plenty of people apply the same heuristic to decide that vaccines are bad, homeopathy works, you can treat cancer with an all-fruit diet, etc.
> You have to be very careful relying on the advice of oncologists. Think about what their motivations are. What are their biases?
Think about what your motivations and biases might be. You're human too.
The research clearly indicates that there is a benefit to fasting, yet you say the research is wrong because of the opinions of several oncologists.
I'm biased because several oncologists told me something that wasn't true.
You have to distinguish between these two statements:
a) There is research that indicates that there is a benefit to fasting
b) The research indicates that there is a benefit to fasting
Statement a) is true; but b) is what you said.
Going from a) to b) is the hard part. It's not enough to know what some research says, you need to place it within the broader context of the field of knowledge before you can make declarative statements of benefit. And cancer is an incredibly complex and fast-moving field of knowledge.
The oncologists I spoke with were aware of research into voluntary fasting, but on balance recommended against it. One reason is that unlike with a healthy person, ending the fast may not be under the patient's control, depending on how they tolerate their chemotherapy. Chemotherapy ends up looking like intermittent fasting for a lot of patients anyway.
Chemotherapy is also cumulative, which means that decisions that appear beneficial in early rounds may end up limiting the total number of sequential rounds that a patient can tolerate.
If someone is not habitually fasting, adding it on top of chemotherapy adds a significant confounding factor to a process that is already hard to predict.
And aside from voluntary fasting, there is a lot of evidence that patients who can eat well and keep their weight up have better outcomes from chemotherapy than those who can't/won't eat and lose weight.
This is what I was told by people who spend their lives studying the treatment of cancer.
You said I was "dangerously wrong" because someone else you talked to said I was wrong, but you have provided no evidence supporting your case, other than hearsay.
I have provided evidence. You concluded with:
> This is what I was told by people who spend their lives studying the treatment of cancer.
Which, again, is appeal to authority. It's a logical fallacy.
How much evidence do I need to provide? https://www.cancertherapyadvisor.com/home/tools/fact-sheets/...
> Current data in humans suggests that IF may be beneficial for chemotherapy outcomes, particularly for reducing toxicities. IF appears to be safe in appropriately selected patients, and the adverse effects associated with fasting appear to all be of low grade.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6530042/
> Growing preclinical evidence shows that short-term fasting (STF) protects from toxicity while enhancing the efficacy of a variety of chemotherapeutic agents in the treatment of various tumour types. STF reinforces stress resistance of healthy cells, while tumor cells become even more sensitive to toxins, perhaps through shortage of nutrients to satisfy their needs in the context of high proliferation rates and/or loss of flexibility to respond to extreme circumstances.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5031958/
> Both chronic calorie restriction (CCR) and intermittent calorie restriction (ICR) have shown anticancer effects.
https://www.cell.com/trends/endocrinology-metabolism/fulltex...
> Fasting and FMDs have the potential for applications in both cancer prevention and treatment.
Do you have any evidence that fasting is deleterious to the health of cancer patients? Except what you said someone said?
Did you ask those oncologists for any evidence supporting their case or did you just take their words at face value?
It sounds like you are saying that the right answer depends on an individual's circumstances. I would agree. Certainly fasting could be harmful for some people depending upon their overall medical situation.
> If someone is not habitually fasting, adding it on top of chemotherapy adds a significant confounding factor to a process that is already hard to predict.
For my situation, the clinical evidence I could find suggested that chemotherapy does not have a statistically significant impact on the probability of disease-free survival. Even the oncologists who are recommending chemotherapy have been reluctant to claim it would necessarily be beneficial. This increased my interest in adding the significant confounding factor of fasting. In fact, you could say that I've been actively seeking significant confounding factors as the default path is rather dark.
As you noted, cancer is an incredibly complex and fast-moving field of knowledge. Given the currently limited research into the impact of fasting, I decided to conclude that maybe it can be helpful (especially since the biological hypotheses made some sense to my primitively educated mind).
Returning to your earlier point, I'm not sure it's currently possible to make a blanket claim of fasting being good or bad with respect to its impact on cancer patients. It seems that it would depend upon the patient's individual situation and priorities.
What I object to is someone without medical training reading a few articles online and then posting universal declarations that fasting is good for everyone on chemo, and that people shouldn't trust oncologists for some reason. Obviously that's not you.
There's an impressive body of research on this subject already, it's just unfortunate that many (most?) oncologists haven't caught up yet with the science.
A common objection is that chemotherapy causes weight loss, and it's important that patients keep their weight up. Where this argument falls down, is when you look at why chemo patients lose weight - and it's primarily due to the treatment reducing their appetite.
So if you're then able to reduce side effects of chemo (which it appears fasting does), patients are then more easily able to eat and maintain/recover their weight.
Here is one of the articles I'd found in my research: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4494906/
I only found preclinical studies. And anecdotal results from others who have tried it. I've been unable to find any good evidence that the efficacy of the chemotherapy is enhanced, only that side effects can be mitigated.
Two oncologists I've seen are not supportive of my fasting but haven't strenuously objected to my decision either.
FWIW, a third oncologist opposed my undergoing chemotherapy at all. I've found, in general, a lack of consensus as to proper treatment, at least in my situation. I've now consulted with seven specialists (four oncologists and three surgeons) and the recommendations haven't been consistent. And most of them decline to give definitive directions, leaving the major decisions to me. My point being that, at least in some situations, following the directions of doctors isn't necessarily an option.
Edit: Added some details
more completely rid itself of cancerous cells by consuming them
Actual long term fasting (ie, 3-5 day hardcore mode shit) allows the body to maximize autophagy to kill off damaged cells. The western diet of 3 square meals a day and keeping insulin levels alarmingly high (which both frequent and carb-laden diets promote) stops autophagy (for safety reasons; you don't want to accidentally attack cells doing their tasks to absorb and utilize nutrients).
So yeah, given what is known about cancer today, I personally eat keto omad (one meal a day intermittent fasting) within a 4 hour window every day, and periodically fast on top of that.
There are many things to consider, including refeeding syndrome, it is highly advised to seek MD advice prior to undertaking such a diet.
Lastly, there is a ton of research highlighting fasting and its effects on stem cell regenerative properties.
Ketogenesis is arguably the most ideal state for our bodies to operate in, but it is also arguably the hardest one to maintain in our society. It is difficult for most to consistently ignore that big-ass box of krispy kreme donuts your asshole coworker brings in every day. Just one of those per day is probably enough to keep you stuck in glycogenesis for the rest of the morning and into part of the afternoon.
If you look at the push of HFCS and other crappy food options with incidence rates of cancer over the last 3 decades, I am pretty sure you will see some correlation there. Obviously, it is hard to draw a causal link between these, but at a certain point I am going to give up on the academic explanation in favor of a series of practical observations and whatever inferences I can draw from those. I am also acutely aware of the influence of profit seeking in the medical & academic communities. When I see a study come out that says something along the lines of "sugar isn't actually that bad for you" I immediately think big sugar or corn financed this research piece for their own benefit.
I have personally fasted for stretches as long as 5 days, been on one-meal-a-day, and have been on ketogenic diets for months at a time. I have also been a complete waste of a human, eating and binging on all manner of sugary, carb-loaded foods and other unspeakable horrors. I can tell you that 100% of the time, I felt better in the ketogenic state. Sure, you can argue for that very brief feel-good you get from slamming that donut, or the mental fortitude required to force yourself into keto. But, at the end of the day, once you are keto it's easy. It's just the transition phase that sucks. As with most things.
Krispy Kreme donuts are easy to avoid ... Donuts from your local hole in the wall donut shop on the other hand.
OTOH, intuition is sometimes wrong.
It should be a pretty simple study to do. Just make sure to get enough people involved. Then correlate amount of fasting with the incidence of cancer over some period of time. I guess the duration of the study would be the only impediment.
This is what I've read on the topic and longetivity studies on people who go on long term fasts seem to support it.
That's what I've been told/read on the topic, but I'm not an expert by any means.
I always respected the religions that observed some sort of fast, as it was a cool way they encoded health & longevity into their population.
Edit: I don't want to provide sources. Me not providing a source on demand for the HN crowd does not mean this is not true. Do your own research, or don't.