Study in zebrafish examines how tumors alter whole-body metabolism | Hacker News Reader

Study in zebrafish examines how tumors alter whole-body metabolism

source.wustl.edu

52 pointsgmays24 comments

There's also the separate effect on distant tissues from radiation, chemo, and surgery. Gastrointestinal surgery, for example, can have pretty disruptive effects that aren't really related to cancer directly.

This is a poignant reminder of something awful a close relative said to me while she was undergoing cancer treatments. She talked about how she had an aggressive form of cancer, surgery, chemo and radiation. Between the four, she never knew whether something was a symptom of getting worse, a side effect of treatment or just one of the weird things that bodies do. The part I still find troubling is that she said that after a certain point, she realized her doctors weren't sure either.

Why is that troubling? Doctors don't have crystal balls. They have scans, labs, and biopsies.

It’s troubling because I loved her a profound amount. Watching the disease destroy her body was hard enough but watching her fears evolve was actually worse.

I’m trying to be charitable and give you the benefit of the doubt but honestly, that’s a pretty stupid question.

An uncomfortable reminder of mortality and potentially imminent end.

The article seems to be talking about two potentially unrelated effects - up-regulation of gluconeogenesis in the liver and BCAT1. The gluconeogenesis makes sense in the presence of glucose-hungry cells, the body would start making its own to stabilize blood sugar. I wonder what the signal mechanism is for the BCAT1 up-regulation?

talking about glucose and tumors, anybody knows some good reads about benefits of ketogenic or similarly low sugar diets in regards to cancer ?

Not related to cancer, but the general consensus in the medical community seems to be that keto is NOT a healthy diet. Though it can help with weight loss it contributes to poor heart health and just generally mucks up your cardiovascular system (that’s my medical term, not a doctor’s). I gained a few pounds during Covid and my GPs first, unprompted, advice was to avoid keto at all costs. Additional anecdote: my uncle recently lost a good amount of weight on a keto diet (5’8”, was 220 now about 168) and he promptly had a heart-attack. Doctors said he had “diabetic arteries” and that the keto diet was at least a contributing factor.

I think getting any clear results in nutrition is essentially impossible because you can't conduct the studies necessary to get rid of all the confounding factors. Consequently it's probably a bad idea to follow an extreme diet. Of course that doesn't mean that keto (or other dietary interventions) can't be beneficial for certain illnesses like cancer. I'd be interested to hear about studies.

Our modern standard diet is very extreme by default.

I'd guess practically any other diet would be better.

I guess it depends on your culture what the "standard" diet is. I don't think my diet is particularly extreme.

The one that has white flour/rice and sugar as the main staples. You know what I mean; it's cross-cultural now, like tobacco smoking.

The diets in the "Blue Zones" feature those as staples as well. I somehow don't think that they're terribly unhealthy. Grains have been staples for millennia by now.

The bread we eat now and the bread we ate 150 years ago are very different breads.

The modern stuff is refined flour and sugar.

Thanks, it's funny how you can hear just about everything about diets. I just saw a video about a doctors review of someone doing one meal a day / keto saying their internals were in better shape than most young adults.

It's true that tapping in alternative energy path is risky, that's why I ask for others informations before jumping into a sharkpool.

Look into Thomas Seyfried's work, e.g. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2020.00021... and his book "Cancer as a Metabolic Disease".

He's very visible on youtube, which is as good as bad, but I like his thinking approach.

Cool, thanks.

What about benign tumors, did anybody research those?

If you pick your reading based on the answer you want to hear, you're only going to ever get confirmation bias.

I'm not thank you

Intermittent fasting seems to have a net positive effect, and the Mediterranean diet seems anti cancer - you live longer. A search will turn up multiple scholarly references.

I sometimes feel like only eating when very hungry might be the only reason I'm still around. I was no rock star, but had many of the same habits.

I have a gut feeling that eating less food might be better than any other healthy living tips.

(To those fasting. I have know two people, one a Chiropractor, who went on strict fasts. Both ended up in the hospital over their appendix bursting. I will always remember what my grandfather told me. Everything in moderation.)

Caloric restriction is one of the most reliable ways to increase the possibility of extending life. Fasting is also known to be beneficial. IIRC, you don't need very long fasts to get the full benefits.

Yes, extremes aren't good. But variety and light diet seems a fair bet.

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