Friday, December 23, 2011

Sugar, cancer and mitochondria

I've had stuff up here over the years (e.g. here and here)about how cancer cells seem to survive by burning sugar and not fat and so some doctors have tried to starve cancers by using a ketogenic diet, with some success.

Anyway, here is a video outlining new research into this same topic:

The research is reported here and the full article is available here



Drugs or diet, if this knowledge can help find a solution to cancer then that is good.


FeelGoodEating said...

About 4 years ago or so, I stumbled upon an article in Rolling Stone Magazine about Owsley Stanley. I had never heard the name before. He was famous for being the greatest "LSD" maker during the height of the hippy era in San Francisco. A very smart man from a prominent family and basically a self taught mad scientist.

From wikipedia "Stanley believed that the natural human diet is a totally carnivorous one, thus making it a no-carbohydrate diet, and that all vegetables are toxic.[17] He claimed to have eaten almost nothing but meat, eggs, butter and cheese since 1959 and that he believed his body had not aged as much as the bodies of those who eat a more "normal" diet. He was convinced that insulin, released by the pancreas when carbohydrates are ingested, is the cause of much damage to human tissue and that diabetes mellitus is caused by the ingestion of carbohydrates.
Stanley received radiation therapy in 2004 for throat cancer, which he first attributed to passive exposure to cigarette smoke at concerts,[18] but which he later discovered was almost certainly caused by the infection of his tonsil with HPV. He credited his low carb diet with starving the tumor of glucose, slowing its growth and preventing its spread enough that it could be successfully treated despite its advanced state at diagnosis"

the article was full of history of the times but had many more details about his thoughts on sugar. Here's another article from Rolling Stone when he died in a car crash, and there's a link to the original article in the archives.

From everything i've read, cancer is a somewhat natural state of affairs, however our bodies have a tough time dealing with it due to our excessive intake of sugars.

Mt guess is that "science" will figure out a pill to eliminate the uptake of sugar to help us fight cancer.....ofcourse this pill will come with multiple and dangerous side effects.

Wishing you and your loved ones ad Merry Xmas and all the best wishes for a healthy, peaceful and very successful 2012.

Warm regards,

jason @ personal trainer said...

Anything that can help look at the causes of cancer will help but it's like minor illnesses like the cold and majors like ME in that there are no known causes and therefore no known cures.

One day. One day maybe...

George Super BootCamps said...

I think we should remember that whilst there is probably something in the 'starve the cancer of glucose' proposal, it probably isn't to do with keeping insulin super low. Why?

Because, as Lyle MacDonald is keen to remind us, protein also releases insulin! Almost as much as it gets released by carbs. This should remind us that 'slin is not a bad thing, as it's just a generalised storage hormone, but the persistently high levels of glucose causing persistently high levels of insulin are the problem. Take away the high levels of processed carbs and you take away a large part of the problem...

My 2p worth,