LCHF and Cancer

[Hedonista]

A friend of mine who is recovering from cancer has been recommended the ketogenic diet as an anti-cancer diet. Anyone know of any research to back this up?

 

[zand]

No, sorry. I just know that some cancer cells feed off sugar, so a low carb diet can be helpful in some cases.

 

[Indy51]

There is quite a bit being done in this field. Here's an interesting TedX talk by Dr Dominic D'Agostino on the subject:

 

[Indy51]

A longer talk:

There are a couple of books on the subject as well, in particular Dr Thomas Seyfried's book, 'Cancer as a Metabolic Disease'.

A ketogenic diet seems to be particularly helpful with brain tumours, though it has benefit for other tumours that rely on glucose as a fuel for growth.

 

[Hedonista]

Thanks, I'll watch that and pass it on x

 

[kokhongw]

Yes if you go to pubmed, there's quite a number of research on that. Example
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4215472/

The general idea is that high circulating insulin, insulin resistance and high glucose level creates the environment for tumor growth. So reducing carbs and switching to a ketogenic state would inhibit cancer cells growth.

But there are always opposing views...so the patient have to do their own research and make their own judgement call.

 

[ladybird64]

I was told that cancer cells show up more clearly when an MRI is done, as they absorb sugar quicker. On this basis, I would guess that a diet lower in any type of sugar would be beneficial. I found this link from a respectable website when I was diagnosed.

http://imaging.cancer.gov/patientsandproviders/cancerimaging/nuclearimaging

 

[timerich]

A friend of mine who is recovering from cancer has been recommended the ketogenic diet as an anti-cancer diet. Anyone know of any research to back this up?

I have a book by Dr. Don Colbert and he removes wheat and sugar from the diet of his cancer patients, also dairy, it's a pretty restrictive diet but he's had patients in stage 4 cancer have the cancers shrink and go into remission.
I tried it for eczma and took out dairy, low carbing meant I'd already cut out wheat. It went and has only just flared up since I've been grabbing something on the go while I'm visiting my husband in hospital. So I'm cutting the dairy out again (I also don't have peppers or potatoes) It's worked for me