Is keto effective as a cancer diet?
Blood sugar, also known as blood glucose, is the universal fuel for cells throughout our bodies. Our brain burns through a quarter pound of sugar a day, making it the preferred metabolic fuel. While our body can break down proteins and make glucose from scratch, most of it comes from our diet in the form of sugars and starches.
If we stop eating carbohydrates or stop eating altogether, most of our cells switch over to burning fat.
However, fat has difficulty getting through the blood-brain barrier, and our brain has a constant massive need for fuel, accounting for up to half of our energy needs. Without it, the lights go out permanently. To make that much sugar from scratch, our body would need to break down about a half pound of protein a day. That means we would cannibalize ourselves to death within two weeks, but people can fast for months. The answer to the puzzle was discovered in 1967.
What Harvard research found out about cancer diet and fasting
Harvard researchers famously stuck catheters into the brains of obese subjects who had been fasting for over a month and discovered that ketones had replaced glucose as the preferred fuel for the brain. Your liver can turn fat into ketones, which can then breach the blood-brain barrier and sustain your brain if you’re not getting enough carbohydrates. Switching fuels has such an effect on brain activity that it has been used to treat epilepsy since antiquity. The prescription of fasting for the treatment of epileptic seizures dates back to Hippocrates.
In the Bible, Jesus seems to have concurred. To this day, it’s unclear why switching from blood sugar to ketones as a primary fuel source has such a dampening effect on brain overactivity. However, how long can you fast? For some people, fasting for religious purposes can last up to 40 days, like during Lent.
From fasting to keto diet as a cancer diet
To prolong the fasting therapy, a distinguished physician scientist at the Mayo Clinic suggested trying what he called a “ketogenic diet” in 1921. This high-fat diet was designed to be so deficient in carbohydrates that it could effectively mimic the fasting state.
Remarkable improvement was noted the first time it was put to the test, and its efficacy was later confirmed in randomized, controlled trials. Ketogenic diets started to fall out of favor in 1938 with the discovery of the anti-seizure drug Dilantin, which became a popular treatment for drug-refractory epilepsy in children. However, ketogenic diets are still in use today as a third- or fourth-line treatment for this condition. Oddly, the success of ketogenic diets against pediatric epilepsy seems to get conflated by “keto diet” proponents into suggesting that a ketogenic diet is beneficial for everyone.
Keto diet and epilepsy
But you know what else sometimes works for intractable epilepsy? Brain surgery.
Yet, I don’t hear people at the gym clamoring to open their skulls with saws. Since when do medical therapies translate into healthy lifestyle choices? Scrambling brain activity with electroshock therapy can be helpful in some cases of major depression. So what… pass the electrodes? Tests are running about ketogenic diets to see if they can slow the growth of certain brain tumors.
Is comparing keto diet to chemotherapy a valid thing?
Comparing a keto diet to chemotherapy is not valid. Even if it works, you know what else can help slow cancer growth? Chemotherapy. Promoters of ketogenic diets for cancer are often paid for by so-called “ketone technology” companies that will send you salted caramel bone broth powder for a hundred bucks a pound. Or companies that market ketogenic meals report “extraordinary” anecdotal responses in some cancer patients, but more concrete evidence is simply lacking. Even the theoretical underpinnings may be questionable.
A common refrain
You know, a common refrain is that “cancer feeds on sugar.” But then, all cells feed on sugar. Sugar is a vital source of energy for all cells.
What is important when thinking about the keto diet as a cancer diet is that advocating for ketogenic diets for cancer is like saying Hitler breathed air, so let’s boycott oxygen. Cancer can feed on ketones too. Reasearchers have found ketones to fuel human breast cancer growth and drive metastases in an experimental model. Hence more than doubling tumor growth. Some have even speculated that this may be why breast cancer often metastasizes to the liver. The liver, as you know, is the main site of ketone production.
If you drip ketones on breast cancer cells in a petri dish directly, the genes that get turned on and off make for a much more aggressive cancer, associated with a significantly lower five-year survival rate in breast cancer patients. Researchers are even considering designing ketone-blocking drugs to prevent further cancer growth by halting ketone production.
And think about what eating a ketogenic diet might entail. High animal fat intake may increase the mortality risk among breast cancer survivors. Potentially, it can play a role in its development in the first place through oxidative stress, hormone disruption, or inflammation. Men, too, have a strong association between saturated fat intake and prostate cancer progression. Just as anyone can associate gasoline with fueling a car’s progress, one can also associate saturated fat intake with fueling prostate cancer progression. Those in the top third of consumption of these kinds of fat-rich animal foods appeared to triple their risk of dying from prostate cancer.
Prostate cancer and consuming high amounts of fat-rich animal foods
Consuming high amounts of fat-rich animal foods significantly increases the risk of dying from prostate cancer. Saturated fat intake may negatively impact breast cancer survival. Not necessarily fat in general, as there is no difference in breast cancer death rates based on total fat intake, but saturated fat intake may negatively impact breast cancer survival, resulting in a 50 percent increased risk of dying from breast cancer.
The official American Cancer Society and American Society of Clinical Oncology Breast Cancer Survivorship Care Guidelines recommend a dietary pattern for breast cancer patients that is essentially the opposite of a ketogenic diet. This includes diet high in vegetables. Also fruits, whole grains, and legumes (beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils), and low in saturated fats. So far, not a single clinical study has shown a measurable benefit from a ketogenic diet for any human cancer. There are currently at least a dozen trials underway. Hence, the hope is that at least some cancer types will respond. Still, even then, that wouldn’t serve as a basis for recommending ketogenic diets for the general population. At least not any more than recommending everyone go out and get radiation, surgery, and chemo for kicks.
Read More: My experience with high cholesterol, statins, and keto.
