Again, recommendations from a health guru book and not an actual doctor, that I'm just copying here in case it helps. I have no experience with cancer other than a close relative passing away when I was much younger.
Encouraging them to stop eating seems like it would just accelerate death.
Did it make a difference in effectiveness? I actually have my follow up scans tomorrow to find out. As you can imagine, I really really hope so.
There are studies on fasting with chemo.. and depending on the type of cancer its either effective or ineffective. My comment was specifically about the end stages where cachexia is common (from my link above):
"Cachexia is associated particularly with cancer where the prevalence can reach 50–80% in advanced malignant cancer."
And all of the advice Ive found says fasting is not recommended for patients with cachexia.
It sounds like it was fine in your case though because you were able to regain the weight. Best of luck with your scans.
In the context of chemotherapy, couldn't that be a quantitatively useful benefit?
"Fasting improves therapeutic response in hepatocellular carcinoma through p53-dependent metabolic synergism"
I did upvote you.
All that being said, she pretty much abandoned all of the additional about halfway through her treatments. She had to have half her liver resected, and she had a HIPEC procedure at the same time. When they did the final biopsies on her metastases in her liver, it was 100% dead. She's now been NED (no evidence of disease) for a few years now. I don't have delusions that it will never come back, but I can hope.
I don't know if anything she did helped the chemo do it's job. It's not exactly something you can A/B test. I think it's possible, but I also think her being so young and in good shape to start with made the biggest difference.
I don't know how true is what they claim in the book, but basically it's the following.
All cancer cells obtain their energy from fermentation and not oxidation. They use glucose for that fermentation process and they propose fasting and a ketogenic diet as a treatment.
Antioxidants can actually promote fermentation and inhibition oxidation.
I say chlorides because consistently for many studies, notably zinc but applies to Iron, phytates and tannins bind and inhibit the absorption of these two metals, but leave copper alone. Chloride based metals get into the body very quickly.
I'd also look at the mistakes in some studies, different parts of the world have different theories and its possible if you look at enough to see old theories being quoted and not assertions from more recent studies.
The jury is out on what is a good diet to consume for different types of cancer let along a healthy life, its contradictory at best, zinc is good for tackling some cancers, and bad for others. Copper is good for tackling some cancers and not others, and that just looking at two common metals in the diet.
So if the experts knew, I think they would recommend a diet to go on, but they are so steeped in patient privacy they undermine their own authority I think, not to mention come across in general as quite dictatorial.
I have also been messing with some body building amino acids and I liked histdine which is one of the four amino acids that start with zinc, the other three are glutamic acid (glutamate), aspartic acid and cysteine (N-Acetyl Cysteine). Histidine is precursor for histamine which helps immune cells migrate through tissue. Aspartic acid mediates some cysteine based immune responses.
Its also worth looking at vit D, a Wellcome trust study had reverse engineered the human genome about a decade ago and found that most of the Vit D receptors are concentrated around immune system genes (2776 iirc). But you need zinc and cysteine to build the zinc fingers found on these vit D receptors and vit D will switch on some genes and switch off some genes.
Oncologists have access to the testing and measuring equipment, I see no harm if interested in this stuff to get the data from their tests and check their theories against studies found in google scholar, if you wanted piece of mind.
These experts dont always publish their theories so there isnt the transparency, and they dont ask about diet which can be significant in some cases, so they undermine their expertise imo.
And thats before you get into the debate of hackers tampering with results and other things which seem to question the fragile nature of computer security.
And I'm not recommending anything other than question the experts.