This is an approach with an obvious theoretical back ground:
The theory is simple: If most aggressive cancers rely on the fermentation of sugar for growing and dividing, then take away the sugar and they should stop spreading. Meanwhile, normal body and brain cells should be able to handle the sugar starvation; they can switch to generating energy from fatty molecules called ketone bodies — the body's main source of energy on a fat-rich diet — an ability that some or most fast-growing and invasive cancers seem to lack.
But there's a huge problem - it is extremely hard to test the efficacy of this diet with any scientific rigor.
...most people in the study are faring very badly to begin with. All have exhausted traditional treatments, such as surgery, radiation and chemo, and even some alternative ones like hyperthermia and autohemotherapy. Patients in the study have pancreatic tumors and aggressive brain tumors called glioblastomas, among other cancers; participants are recruited primarily because their tumors show high glucose metabolism in PET scans.
But even though the current study is only being tested on folks in the final stages of their disease:
...five patients who were able to endure three months of carb-free eating, the results were positive: the patients stayed alive, their physical condition stabilized or improved and their tumors slowed or stopped growing, or shrunk. These early findings have elicited "very positive reactions and an increased interest from colleagues," Kämmerer says, while cautioning that the results are preliminary and that the study was not designed to test efficacy, but to identify side effects and determine the safety of the diet-based approach. So far, it's impossible to predict whether it will really work. It is already evident that it doesn't always: two patients recently left the study because their tumors kept growing, even though they stuck to the diet.
Similar research is coming, finally:
... study similar to the trial in Würzburg is now under way in Amsterdam, and another, slated to begin in mid-October, is currently awaiting final approval by the ethics committee at the University Hospital in Tübingen, Germany. There, in the renowned old research institution in the German southwest, neuro-oncologist Dr. Johannes Rieger wants to enroll patients with glioblastoma and astrocytoma, aggressive brain cancers for which there are hardly any sustainable therapies
On Jimmy Moore's Living La Vida Low Carb Show, an interesting "prophylactic effect" was proposed - a "seven day therapeutic fast" to "really" deprive possibly budding cancers of their sugar, thus killing them before they reach a true growth stage. This comports with the model of cancer as follows: cancers are primarily cells with mutate in ways that, one, allows them not to self terminate when damaged as normal cells do (apoptosis), and two, gain a growth advantage over competing cells (for example, the ability to fuel rapid growth via higher insulin and/or IGF1 sensitivity (more receptor sites), along with a unique capacity to utilize glucose (fermentation). Thus, even in a culture that is literally soaking itself in sugar day and night, this would make surviving cancer cells a rare event, and one which might be interrupted by a fast. In keeping with the paleolithic model, too, we know that fasting was neither uncommon or particularly bad for paleolithic peoples, who had great bones, great teeth, and long lives in spite of - or because of? - unpredictable fasts.
@dreades tweeted the link above as a response to what was presumably some indication that Steve Jobs is suffering from cancer. I don't know if it would help, but it seems like an altogether harmless suggestion for anyone in a cancer battle, especially if you follow the Perfect Health Diet's approach of a "high carb" (relatively) approach for ketogenic metabolism.
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