A friend posted this on my FB page last night-Im surprised I've never heard ANYTHING regarding this type of diet. Has anyone had experiences-good or bad-with a low/no carb diet?

There is no way that a diet is going to starve a cancer into remission. The causes of cancer are also very complex cascades of genetic variables, and while eating healthy (not necessarily low carb) is a component to immune system strength, which may improve your chances of continued health, it is not as simple as eating well to avoid cancer.

Thanks. I heard talk about it recently, and there ia a clinical trial going on with the Ketogenic diet. I did a low carb diet way back when, pre-cancer days like Atkins, Protein Power, and others. I did not like how I felt while doing this, although you do loose weight, but any calorie restricted diet does too. Excess protein also puts stress on the organs, like kidneys, which eliminates excess ketones in the urine, which need to be checked during the diet. I can't do it now with diabetes, and kidney disease. In regards to cancer, I have my reservations. I'm interested in stem cells these days for Head and Neck Cancer, which is something different.

http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01716468?term=NCT01716468&rank=1

gbk

If you take a look at the clinical trial that Paul posted a link to you will notice that no oral cancer or head and neck patients need apply.[quote] Patients chosen must be diagnosed with advanced or metastatic cancer of the following tumor types (colorectal, prostate, brain, breast, pancreatic, hepatobiliary, melanoma, sarcoma, non-small cell /small cell lung, genitourinary cancers[/quote]).Typically clinical trials deliberately exclude cancers that the researchers believe will not be helped by the diet/drug/device. To me, excluding our cancer pretty much says it all. Never heard of it helping any of us at all.
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But ketogenic diets are a real blast from the past. Back in the 1920s, when flappers and prohibition were all the rage, the Ketogenic Diet was developed. It became popular again back in the 1990s due to television and movie shows. There is pretty much general agreement that the Ketogenic Diet is an effective diet for children with epilepsy because it reduces or stops their convulsions. It fell out of favor in between these dates because of the development of anti convulsant drugs and medications that mimicked the good effect of the ketones without the bad ones. it's basically a super strict Atkins diet and we all know how that worked out for Dr. Atkins

Still, I understand the desire for a miracle cure. The ketogenci diet is very difficult for adults to follow. One study in Germany enlisted 16 cancer patients and only 5 were able to tolerate it so it has little validity. Their only conclusion was that for the 5 patients who believed in it, it cheered them up, so quality of life improvement was claimed.
But I have to admit, there is a certain attraction of a diet where bacon is a health food.
Charm

Paul, I'd check some of your information. There are several studies showing that Ketogenic diets help kidney function and diabetics.

Here's what I'll say in regards to a high protein and fat diet in regards to cancer as I'm a nutrition nut that's used diet and exercise to rebuild myself after cancer and have spent most of my life studying nutrition.

A diet higher in UNsaturated fats is beneficial for you in several ways metabolically. Omega 3's help insulin resistance, brain function along with numerous other benefits. The higher the percentage of dietary fat in your diet also increases testosterone levels which are crucial in protein synthesis. Lucien is a branched chain amino acid (found in protein) that is responsible for triggering both protein synthesis in the body and is crucial in your bodies immune response.

20% of all cancer patience die of malnutrition not cancer or the treatment of. There are studies that show a direct link between lean muscle mass and cancer survival rates, the higher the muscle percentage the higher the survival rate. There's a reason for this.

When your immune system is activated to fight cancer, and recover from the treatment of, the triggers that activate the immune response also hinder digestion and absorption. As the body is in a hyper-metabolic state the need for nutrients is increased, specifically amino acids (most specifically leucine) to throw at the immune response.

If those amino acids aren't being supplied through the digestive system, the body triggers the catabolic processes of your metabolism to break down it's own lean muscle mass for these amino acids. That's why we lose so much weight going through cancer, the majority of it lean muscle mass. It often leads to cachexia, or cancer related wasting syndrome, and ends up killing the patient.

That's why diet and nutrition are key to maintaining lean muscle mass during treatment. Where I don't believe it will cure cancer it will help you withstand cancer treatment as the only cures for Oral Cancer specifically is surgery or radiation.

Personally I use a ketogenic diet and it's normal for me, it's not for everyone though as it's really difficult for most people to keep to.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/21/news/la-heb-ketogenic-diet-diabetes-kidneys-20110421

This study was done in mice, and most others were in heathy individuals not with chronic or late stage kidney disease, but does sound promising. Ketogenic diet is with adequate protein, high fat, not high protein as I thought, but see some nephrologists are skeptical, and will ask mine on my next visit, but I already inquired about any diet to improve kidney function, and said nothing will help the damage already done, and just continue what I'm doing, and I'm fine with that. Mt Sinai where this study was done is one of my cancer/ENT hospital's, but I go elsewhere for the kidneys.

Paul, this is just one of several studies done on the topic actually and I used the link to the article more to show how extreme some of the ketogenic diets are to follow than for the link to the kidney/diabetic benefits. It's an interesting topic if you follow nutrition science.

Thanks.

Wow-thanks, guys for all the info. I am more surprised to have not heard ANYthing regarding this (no matter how difficult or "pie in the sky") and can agree that while it does seem like looking for the holy grail, I'm genuinely perplexed that there isn't more intelligent (non-hype)information. It seems to me that more than a few times progress has been made by re-looking at "proven unworkable" solutions.

Well of the numerous things that I feel I've learned from Brian and his science nerd ways is that large scale double blind peer reviewed studies are needed to get that type of information. As those studies are not by any means cheap to do (I know I got to see the price tag of one this summer with Brian at the NCI), it's hard to get them done when you are talking about food without having a sellable product afterwards that is going to be profitable enough to both pay for that study and then some, or at least that's how I understand it.

There is just so much we don't know about the human body..even what we think we know is suspect. Take Seasonal Affective Disorder for example. We have a "disorder" and antidepressants to treat it with. From my point of view it's not a disorder it's the bodies natural reaction to less light, which produces Vitamin D, which new studies link to testosterone production (it's a prohormone sterol...name says it all folks) and studies show a direct link between low testosterone and depression. (I played connect the dots a lot as a kid)

It would explain why people indigenous to colder climates are effected less to that disorder though wouldn't it? They tend to have fish as a staple in their diet, fish do not metabolize vitamin D, which is a fat soluble vitamin that is stored by their system, which we consume and metabolize and put to good use.

Most vitamin D supplements however are isolates made from manipulating wool with UV light and I've read where there are questions if we metabolize that very well, as it seems to cause toxicity issues when supplementing vitamin D as opposed to getting it from eating fish.


Can I prove any of that without a study? No. But it's plausible. Welcome to nutrition 101

Nutrition is one thing, curing cancer or "starving cancer" is quite another. Since the OCF forum deals with oral cancer, I think it's important to stress that since so far this diet has worked primarily on brain cancer patients, and some studies found that ovarian and esophageal cancer simply did not respond. Some blogs attribute this to an HPV connection but I've seen no studies on that, just comments so there is Zero correlation with the facebook posting implying that this diet somehow could starve an oral cancer.
In some cases,when there is plausible evidence, scientific diet studies are being done. Why? Because there is in fact money to be made by diet gurus - see Atkins, South Beach, etc. At the least, there are books to be sold touting the diet. Paul B's link to the ketogenic clinical trial shows that serious studies are being done on diet approaches, but as I noted, that trial excludes oral cancer patients which I find very significant.
I wanted to be clear that whatever the merits of ketogenic diet, there is zero evidence that it starves oral cancer.
Although I also confess that a diet which has bacon as a major health food can't be all bad IMO despite what the groups I belong to (PETA and PRM) all say. (that meat causes cancer).
Charm

I'm not sure on the rules of a thread resurrection, and I am not making an opinion either way about the diet.

But I just found that they are starting a clinical trial for both HPV+/- Stage II-IVa HNSCC involving chemo/radiation and a Ketogenic diet. Some may be interested.

http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01975766?term=ketogenic+cancer&rank=2

Brian,

Resurrecting older threads here can be painful to some of the old timers, as is the case on this thread, some of those participating in the discussion are no longer alive.

Nutrition is a subject that Charm and I discussed often, swapped recipes and blender techniques etc, and gratefully I was blessed to be able to break bread with him before he passed. It is with this in mind that I'll weigh in on this subject.

This is not the first clinical trial on Ketogenics, and in the other trials I've read it will generally come down to how the patients tolerate the diet as Keto's can be difficult. Those that do tolerate them and stick to them have had good results, those that didn't..well, didn't.

There are several benefits to a ketogenic nutritional plan during treatment due to the positive effects they have on balancing blood insulin levels and the emphasis on high protein.

Malnutrition accounts for between 25-40% of deaths for cancer patients, not cancer or the treatment of. When our bodies immune system is activated, it has the unfortunate side effect of reducing digestion and absorption, yet the need for amino acids rises dramatically as they are used in the production of macrophages (specifically the amino acid lucien).

As the body is constantly having to rebuild itself, without an ample supply of amino acids (protein), it will begin to rob Peter to pay Paul, by breaking down skeletal muscle to keep vital organs functioning and throw at the immune response.

In the case of advanced disease, the metabolic imbalance is too much and eventually causes organ failure or the immune system can no longer fight off infection (which accounts for another 40% of deaths).

This explains the studies that have shown those with higher percentage of lean body mass have higher survival rates, they have more muscle to break down to fuel the immune system and generally have higher protein diets.

Short term, say typically the six to seven weeks of treatment, Ketogenic Diets would work well, but they are tough to stick to. It's hard on digestion, and will often cause indigestion and heartburn, and will lower appetite. That's the thing about KD's eventually you're not taking in a lot of calories so you're going to burn a ton of both adipose and lean tissue causing massive drops in weight.

Ketogenic Diets are often used by athletes to cut weight before competition, and they suck, but you'll shed the pounds so it's a fine line there in my opinion when you are wanting to keep as much weight as possible.

Where I favor a high protein, high fat diet, I also know that to keep muscle long term you need complex carbs.

Anyway, those are my thoughts for what they are worth

E

Eric I appreciate your response. Im truly sorry if seeing Charm as the last comment was painful.

After posting I did watch a 1 hour lecture by Dr Seyfried in his theory about how the mutations to mitochondria are the true drivers to cancer metastases rather than the code altered DNA/RNA in the nucleus.

He had one slide that was so simple:
State of Mitochondria | State of Nucleus | State of cell produced
Healthy Mitocondria + Healthy nucleus = Healthy Cell
Mutated mitochondia + Mutated nuclues = Metastible Cancer
Healthy Mitochondria + Mutated nucleus = never created tumors.
Mutated Mitochondria + Healthy Nucleus = Cell that may turn to cancer or die.

He is positing that nuclear genes and gene suppressions are not the drivers of tumors, rather only cells that have compromised respiratory(mitochondria) damage that can become cancer.

I do a lot of root cause analysis in my job, so often people jump straight from identifying the problem into the solution space. Sometimes these leaps and the near correct/partially flawed solution can be so readily accepted that they seem cannon due to how close they fit the model space. When they are dis-proven especially after considerable time and research has been spent bolstering them, a lot of very influential egos are harmed.

I have read that Seyfrieds a work mainly involves brain tumors that tissue HNSCC may even be able to overcome lack of simple sugars So I am definitley not on some sort of diet change craze...

I get just discouraged when we are told that there is no "cure" there is only treatment that can kill the issue.

It would be nice if for 70 years that we haven't found a cure, its due to a very clever problem that has been masked due to the complexity of a problem yet has a very elegant solution.

If a simple supplement that keeps the mitochondria from being altered or bolsters it's ability to fight mutation from disease is what finally wipes cancer off the map. HPV 16 actually affects the mitochondria.

Its really Occam's Razor for me. Either we have to address every single way a RNA/DNA chain can be mutated, or bolster Mitochondria health which would then essentially just eat the cancer no matter what of the thousands of mutations possible in the nucleus.


I am not suggesting a holistic healing approach or anyone to shift diets, I am simply extremely intrigued when a basic theory which has been overlooked or has been obfuscated in the past seems to have promise.

The unfortunate flip-side is that too many may get the wrong impression think they can cure cancer with a diet change and we get into pseudoscience very fast. I hope my tone and what I am saying here is not construed in that fashion.

Brian,

No need to apologize, it was good to read Charm's thoughts again, and review my own. At the time I wrote my original responses, I was actually on a Ketogenic Diet, cutting weight with a few of the fighters I train leading up to their fights.

Having used Keto for about 6 weeks, while putting my body through extreme conditioning, I can attest to how difficult it can be to stick with and the stress it puts on the body. I don't think I'd want to do that to myself through treatment.

I believe that nutrition holds the answers to many of the questions we have about cancer and certainly is one of the keys to a successful outcome, but I don't believe a diet will be the cure for cancer.

I didn't read that in your tone either, and appreciated reading your post.

While mitochondria are super cells and responsible for a lot of activity, there is no single route in rooting out cancer in the body. Even without the cancer aspect, little is known or used clinically in studying the importance of managing outputs of cellular membrane transfer to is ion channels. Cancer increases production of calcium always and part is due to cellular destruction. Improper management of the calcium is a root cause to muscles not gliding and eventual weakness, cramping and atrophy. Potassium consumption during the destruction is quickly treated. Calcium is a suspected problem only if PTH is elevated and only from the parathyroid function perspective which is totally independent of metabolism.

In addition other hormones are not often looked at during cachexia. ACTH and cortisol have to be monitored regularly and imbalances between sodium and potassium is important as sodium-potassium pump issues are not only fatal but cause you to feel horrible, neuromuscularly. All the above issues can eventually progress to ATP kicking in to high gear and metabolism spiraling out of control.

For the chemical aspects of this, Martin Paul from The University of Washigton focuses on the oxidative stress reaction from things like radiation fibrosis and PTSD. Most of us get some form of the latter from treatment, especially rads.