How 'bout a little pot-stirring? Article: Why You Should Stop Saying “Sugar Feeds Cancer”

That makes me feel better about the pile of empty fun size Butterfingers wrappers sitting in the wastebin by my computer desk here.

The end result of that particular toxic statement is the "therapy" where they put desperate patients into insulin shock then overdose them with chemo--and charge their families their life savings for killing them.

I am of the opinion that the better shape and health we have the better chance we have of healing and fighting. So using the fuel metaphor I don't need 99 octane fuel, which my body will store the excess. I am alcohol-free, nearly caffeine free, don't eat animal products so I need one indulgence occasionally. Life is meant to be enjoyed! Denis

Argggh!!!!!!!!!!

" Baby Liver with Bacon and Onions"

Cannibalism!!!

Did you also have fava beans and a nice chianti?

Almost a 10 said...
I guess the key is moderation in all things.

Amen!

Jim

"Everything we consume is converted into sugars"
Not fat! Only carbs and proteins can be converted to glucose. So, if you want to cut back on sugar, get your calories from fat.

Redwing57 said...
Why You Should Stop Saying “Sugar Feeds Cancer”

We've knocked this around a few times here on the forum, but this is another article about the futility of this concept. I'm sure every single cancer patient hears this. It gives us some sense of control to "do something" like radical diet changes after being diagnosed. But whether or not it really helps? Much trickier.

And sure, go ahead with all the links proving it works. Surely there are lots of prospective randomized controlled trials, conducted by organizations with no pecuniary interest. Not books by some doc with a special plan, with books to sell detailing their special insights.

I like the analogy that all cells burn glucose like cars burn gas. Cancer cells are like cars with the accelerator stuck to the floor. You can't fix that just by letting the car run out of gas.

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting. For some reason this tends to spark an almost religious fervor when it's brought up.

The pot is stirred!

I don't have any "randomized controlled trials" at the moment comparing high sugar vs low sugar and cancer. I do have a clinical trial in another new thread where they compared diabetics/pre-diabetics with either low carb(sugar)/mod protein/High fat to mod carb/low fat/mod protein(? can't remember about the protein exactly, will have to go look) It basically agrees with several other trials that have studied this. In almost every health related parameter they measured, but especially in the diabetes relate parameters, the high fat/low carb(sugar) group measured either superior or equal to(just as good) as the low fat/higher carb group. Mostly superior.

Now, since diabetes is well known to lead to any number of severe health issues, including more of various cancers, I guess draw your own conclusions about sugar.( as in sugar diabetes) It does not appear to increase the risk of PC, but as I posted in a previous thread, that might be more because diabetics who get treated for type 2 diabetes end up lowering their insulin(with drugs like Metformin sp?) and thus their slow growing PC risk. ( IOW, it seems more that the risk is lowered AFTER they are diagnosed with PC which as we know can take a long time to advance)

Somebody said...
Diabetes doubles the risk of liver, pancreas, and endometrial cancer. It increases the risk of colorectal, breast, and bladder cancer by 20% to 50%.........People with diabetes tend to have some known risk factors for cancer: older age, obesity, poor diet, and physical inactivity. And problems common in diabetes -- too-high insulin levels, too-high blood sugar levels, and inflammation -- increase cancer risk.........

/www.webmd.com/diabetes/news/20100616/why-does-diabetes-increase-cancer-risk

I notice this dietician says:

Somebody said...
Every cell in the body requires glucose for fuel, including cancer cells. So sugar does feed cancer. BUT, sugar also feeds the rest of your body and you cannot pick and choose which cells get what nutrients/fuel. For those who are going through treatment, remember that your healthy cells need energy especially during this time. Avoiding sugar completely will not help treatment, but it could leave your healthy cells low on energy..........

She says cutting sugar will not help treatment. I wonder how she knows that? Clinical trials proving so?

She says sugar feeds the rest of our body also and we can't pick and choose where it goes? Is she not aware that we do not need sugar to feed our normal cells, that our body is fully capable of making sugar either via gluconeogenesis and/or producing the miniscule amounts of sugar our body needs(from protein) to adequately function? She is a dietician, surely she knows that? How does she think those Eskimos (before westernization) got by in the winter? Or how Angus Barbieri, who holds the record for water only(except vitamin pills), medically supervised fasting, 382 days, survived pretty well? He managed to live off of his hundreds of pounds of body fat for over a year, with no apparent significant problems. Whatever the results of that, good or not so good, he certainly did not appear to need any sugar. And he already had the fat calories he needed stored on his body, and his body apparently made any small amount of sugar he required: www.sciencealert.com/the-true-story-of-a-man-who-survived-without-any-food-for-382-days

But the question for me is: can most cancer cells survive without sugar? I don't know, some seem to think "no". Or more importantly seems to me, are cancer cells(even including PC cells) way less likely to grow and met if insulin is cut way down, as it is when sugar is cut way down? I think some day - may be a while- insulin will be shown to be a major player in the growth and metastasis of most cancer cells. But of course, that is just my guess/feeling, I obviously don't really know.

Post Edited (BillyBob@388) : 10/23/2017 8:51:40 PM (GMT-6)

If you have forgotten your biology lessons about how the metabolism works.
All types of food and beverages fuels the cancer, there is nothing special with suger.

The food components (fat, carbs and proteins) are all metabolized to a common product, acetyl-CoA, which is then oxidized by the citric acid cycle.
Large organic molecules such as proteins, polysaccharides, or lipids are digested into their smaller components. These smaller molecules are taken up by all cells and converted to yet smaller molecules, acetyl-CoA. Finally, the acetyl group on the CoA is oxidized to water and carbon dioxide in the citric acid cycle

the cell catabolism

We can not fight cancer with food, sorry!

May the studies continue and even increase, and may we someday finally know! In the mean time, hope springs eternal! ( KD = Ketogenic diet= low carb/high fat more or less- RKD = calorie restricted Ketogenic diet)
/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4274070/

Somebody said...
KD IN HUMANS

The first use of the KD for the treatment of human malignant brain tumors was in 1995 by Nebeling et al. (78). The patients in this study were two female children diagnosed with nonresectable advanced stage brain tumors (anaplastic astrocytoma stage IV and cerebellar astrocytoma stage III), both of which had undergone extensive radiation and chemotherapy. The goal of the study was to determine if dietary induced ketosis could decrease the availability of glucose to disrupt tumor metabolism while maintaining the nutritional status of the patients. Both children responded remarkably well to the KD, showing a reduction in glucose uptake and experiencing long-term tumor management (78).

In 2010, researchers in Italy published a case report on 65-year-old female patient with multicentric GBM that was treated with a RKD during standard radiation and chemotherapy. The patient followed the 4:1 (ratio of fats:carbohydrate plus protein) KD restricted to 600 kcal/day, which resulted in reduced levels of blood glucose and elevated levels of urinary ketones. After 2 months on the diet, the patient’s body weight was reduced by about 20%, however most importantly; no observable brain tumor was detected using either fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) or MRI. Ten weeks after stopping the diet, the tumor recurred and CPT11 (irinotecan) and bevacizumab chemotherapy was initiated (79). The patient succumbed to her disease less than 2 years after diagnosis. Nevertheless, this work demonstrated that the RKD could be tolerated in a brain tumor patient, at least for a short period of time, and it appeared to have some efficacy. In 2011, German researchers evaluated the RKD in 16 subjects with various types of advanced cancers who had exhausted all therapeutic options. Of the 16 subjects, 5 were able to complete the 3 month treatment period and none of these patients experienced further tumor progression while on the diet (80).

More recently, a number of prospective clinical trials have been initiated. A study in Germany is evaluating the efficacy of a RKD and transient fasting during reirradiation for patients with recurrent GBM (NCT01754350). Michigan State University is directing a similar trial evaluating a RKD for the management of recurrent GBM (NCT01535911). A third pilot study is evaluating the KD as adjunctive treatment in refractory/end-stage GBM (NCT01865162). The goals for all of these studies are to obtain data on the safety, efficacy, and tolerability of the KD as an adjunctive therapy for patients with GBM.

The only study using the KD as an up-front concurrent therapy has recently been approved and is now open for enrollment at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center and Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, AZ (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02046187). This trial for patients with primary GBM will evaluate the classic 4:1 KD therapy during radiation treatment and concurrent TMZ followed by the modified Atkins diet (1:1 fat:carbohydrate plus protein) during TMZ treatment.

Everyone is looking for a simple solution, something they feel they can control, while at the same time feeding their own personal guilt over having caused their own disease. Therefore there is a large vocal group telling us that cancer is caused by consuming sugar, dairy and red meat... and furthermore, that we can cure cancer by eliminating them. If only it were that simple.

Purgatory said...
Everyone that drinks water will die.

Love it! Well said.

Actually NKinney there are large numbers of people who feel one can cure cancer by changing diet, largely by eliminating most meat, reducing sugary foods and all processed food. Only eating fresh veggies, fruit, and some fish. Think traditional Japanese diet, or rural Chinese diet. There is a much lower rate of cancer in these populations.

So, RobLee is right. All you have to do is google it.

Personally, I'm on the fence with the issue.

Whether the statement "Sugar feeds cancer" is true depends on what you think it means and what you think it implies. In the 1940s a researcher named Otto Heinrich Warburg observed that while there is a large variance in the biochemistry of different types of cancer, one thing that all cancerous tissues have in common is an extremely high rate of glycolysis (using glucose for energy), especially in hypoxic (low oxygen) environments. This is called the "Warburg Effect" and it is generally accepted and appears to be true.

Warburg went further, claiming that this metabolic difference was the cause of cancer. This is called the "Warburg Hypothesis" and it is not widely believed these days, although there are some researchers who support variations of it. As stated by Warburg

The Warburg Hypothesis said...
Cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. But, even for cancer, there is only one prime cause. Summarized in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar.

But we don't need the largely-discounted Warburg Hypothesis to answer our question, the Warburg Effect suffices. So, does sugar feed cancer? Yes, in a strictly literal sense it does. Cancerous tissues burn through glucose at a rate 40 times greater than normal tissues, and can continue to do so in the absence of oxygen which other tissues mostly can't.

But does this mean that one can kill cancer cells by eliminating the glucose on which they appear to rely? The answer to this question is technically: "Yes, sorta" but practically: "No." There doesn't seem to be any diet that people will put up with long-term that get the job done. If you reduce the amount of glucose available the cancer cells will simply use up all there is and keep on growing while the rest of the body starves. But... There have been several studies that have shown that a Calorie Reduced Ketogenic Diet -- a diet containing no carbs whatsoever and limited to near-starvation caloric content -- does seem to delay progression of some tumors.

So does cutting out sugar cure cancer? No.

Does it prevent cancer. Mostly no.

Does it have potential as a treatment for cancer? Maybe. We'll see.

Some Wikipedia links for those of you who want to brush up on the high school biology necessary to have an opinion:

The Warburg Effect

Glycolysis

Fatty Acid Metabolism