Hacker News Reader

Comment by hinkley | Hacker News Reader

There was also a study that showed that chemotherapy efficacy was enhanced by fasting before treatment.

It seems that when calories are scarce, healthy cells turtle up while cancer cells keep consuming, so fasting reduces absorption rates in healthy tissues and thus collateral damage.

View on HN

Healthy cells CAN turtle-up, whereas cancer cells engage in unregulated reproduction. Also, some cancer cells can only consume glucose. Which, in a fasted state, would mean that the majority of energy would be in ketones(if the individual were metabolically healthy), starving the cancer cells to death.

Why wouldn’t a strict keto diet not be a cure for those cancers?

Because the cancers cells adapt! (fast reproduction and high mutation rate of the cancerous cells make that process quicker than antibiotics resistance)

many people try it, but the results are mixed.

the body will actually turn protein into glucose, so the body will never be completely glucose free.

Please don't throw around random "a study that showed" about cancer treatments and chemotherapy. If you really think it needs to be shared, share the study and while you're at it, check in with a good oncologist or knowledgeable friend too. In my ~10 years of enduring chemo and other treatments, the amount of garbage you have to wade through from "well meaning" anecdata like "wheat grass" or "smoke huge bongloads" or "don't eat sugar" makes an already horrible process worse.

And yes I checked this with my onc at MSK. Dietary glucose in particular -- if you cut out enough sugar to starve cancer cells you would be doing lots of damage elsewhere as well.

You’re talking about elimination diets, I’m talking about skipping a meal.

I'm saying that cancer treatments are some of the most scientifically-validated procedures out there, because there's essentially unlimited money to pay for them. They have eliminated or modulated any negative side effect they can, via improved anti-nausea drugs, careful dosing+timing, etc.

Still, you can experience all sorts of discomforts during the tmt. I nearly fainted and got horrible chills when getting oxaliplatin for the first time. You're saying I should have _fasted_ for this?

People eat keto diets all the time. What damage do you think they are doing to themselves?

The damage risked by Keto diets includes nutrient deficiency, liver and kidney problems, constipation, fuzzy thinking and mood swings.

Of these risks it's the potential veering into liver and kidney problems that deserves the closest monitoring.

See: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/should-you-tr...

~ Howard E. LeWine, MD, Chief Medical Editor, Harvard Health Publishing

There is this review that havent found any effects: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/12/2666 Note that they excluded 274 out of 283 studies, considering only 9. It's in mdpi which is not great.So, the jury is still out I guess

The jury is not out -- it's an unconfirmed hunch that, as the study you link notes, risks harming patients who are having trouble keeping down food as it is.

This is just keto and fasting fans pushing their obsession on cancer patients. Same for marijuanauts -- anti-nausea drugs have long outperformed cannibinoids but you still have stoner friends offering you spliffs (ok, save them for later)

There was a study that chemotherapy works best in the _morning_. Derek Lowe had an article about this:

D'oh. Forgot to add the link: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/get-early-start

Did you notice the huge warning at the top of the article? This is garbage science.

No. I read the article when it came out, so I missed the update.

I guess it was too good to be true.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com