Hello again. Welcome back. Today may be one of the most important videos in this series. I will discuss Keto for Cancer.
Only one day after my surgery my brother asked a friend of his we will call him KD to come and speak to us about a special diet he had researched for his father who is a medical doctor with Cancer and it had provided excellent success for them.
KD spoke to us for about two hours. I was only a day out of my brain surgery but we were very motivated to hear anything we could about combating Glioblastoma. After hearing the bleak news that I had a median survival of 14.6 months – median survival means that about half the people will still be alive at 14.6 months and the other half will not have made it that far. I learned a great deal about the potential for the diet and why it seems to work well.
I began to follow the diet the next day. I will share with you that I had a very basic understanding of the diet and in hindsight, I was not following it properly for the first 20 days. I wanted to know more and to learn all I could. I found the book “Keto for Cancer” by Miriam Kalamian and ordered it on Amazon. I recommend you pause the video here and order the book. I have a link below to the book where you can purchase it on Amazon.
I recommend that you and anyone supporting you read this book and determine if it is right for you with your family and your medical team. Your medical team may say that diet doesn’t matter and does not affect the cancer. As Miriam says in her book and I quote “if diet doesn’t matter then they should not have a problem with you adopting a ketogenic diet.”
The book in a nutshell. This is a Calorie Restricted Ketogenic Diet. Each of these words is important. We have a brutal enemy in Glioblastoma so we must counter this with a thoughtful approach. The purpose of this diet is to create a desert wasteland for the cancer.
Some basics that I have learned. Cancer loves sugar. In fact, physicians know this. They use sugar when they conduct a PET Scan to detect cancer. They inject a glucose or sugar-based substance into the body called fluorodeoxyglucose FDG. It is used in the positron emission tomography PET scan. The role of this procedure is to detect metabolically active malignant lesions including many cancers
such as brain cancer. Cancer feeds on sugar so it lights up in the scan allowing doctors to see where the cancer is located.
Why does Cancer love sugar? Without getting too involved in the biology I have learned that the mitochondria, which are the energy factories inside the cells of your body are also inside Cancer cells; but, they do not function properly. They are less efficient and require sugar as fuel. Our body does need sugar as well but not in the quantities we feed it every day on a typical diet. We get sugar from many sources including basic sugars, sugars in fruits and vegetables,
and a large source that we do not usually associate with sugar called carbohydrates, sometimes referred to as carbs. These are everywhere and are generally a large part of people’s diets.
The body takes these sugars and sends them into the bloodstream to feed our cells. Our pancreas sees this sugar and produces insulin. Cancer cells have about ten times the number of insulin receptors on them. This means when they detect the insulin they know it is an
excellent environment to grow – and they do. I will not go into the description of how all of this works in the body; but, it was discovered by Dr. Otto Warburg in the 1920s and it is known as the Warburg effect. Dr. Warburg became a Nobel Laureate and he won the Nobel Prize because he suggested that cancer cells “live in hypoxic, or very low oxygen conditions and that they derive energy from sugars by fermenting them the way yeast does. From this, he theorized
that these low-oxygen conditions caused cancer. We have since learned that this was an excellent start but his theory did not account for glutamine which is another source of energy for cancer. When his theory did not answer all questions about cancer the result has been that research switched away from Dr. Warburg’s research and went down the path of cancer being a genetic disease based in the nucleus of cells. This is where virtually all research goes today.
We will review this in another episode. Dr. Warburg had said cancer was a metabolic disease. In my opinion, it is unfortunate that this path was not researched further until more recently. We will discuss this in an upcoming episode.
Calorie restriction prevents Angiogenesis which is the formation of new blood vessels allowing tumor growth. The nutrient-sensing pathways in our cells detect if the right kinds of nutrients
are available such as glucose because glucose is needed to grow.
When glucose is not really available the cells begin to shut down this abnormal network of blood vessels that have been built to feed the tumor. This is the most likely result of calorie restriction. However, we are not starving the cancer if we are only single-minded about higher glucose being our only concern.
This diet works on restricting glucose, glutamine, the mTOR as well as the IGF pathway which is associated with insulin which signals the tumor to grow. Limiting protein is essential. The mTOR signaling pathway is a critical regulator of growth and cellular growth and spread, as well as mutations that activate mTORC1 compound 1, are linked to cancer. Since protein stimulates mTOR in cancer and mTOR up-regulation leading to more growth. Additionally, a core component of mTORC2, mTOR also promotes the activation of insulin receptors and insulin-like growth factor 1 known as IGF-1. The insulin receptors work for the cancer to determine when glucose is available and we do not need to give any help to cancer in this way. Additionally, IGF-1 is a hormone that is directly involved in growth and we certainly do not want the cancer to receive this hormone. The end result is that in addition to glucose restrict our protein which is why we adjust our diet as listed in Miriam’s book Keto for Cancer.
We add some cardio exercise and resistance training to keep the muscles strong and to use as much of the protein for muscle growth. We must do what we can to eliminate both sugar and glutamine which we will discuss in a later episode. I have done a great deal of research and reading on the matter and have been personally living it.
When you switch to the calorie-restricted Keto for Cancer diet with intermittent fasting you switch from burning sugar as the fuel in your cells to burning Ketones. The good news is that regular cells have no problem burning Ketones; but, Cancer cells cannot do this. The second part of the diet is that it is calorie-restricted. As a result, you do not have significant rises in insulin so the Cancer does not get a signal that it is a good environment to grow and this can limit growth. Finally, the diet involves intermittent fasting which also starves the Cancer and there are other benefits to intermittent fasting for the body as well which are addressed in Miriam’s book.
I felt it was of critical importance for me to get into Ketosis as soon as possible because there was nothing else I could do personally to fight this disease and not only fight it but fight it from within my own body just by changing what I eat. In the next video, I will review some of the
basics of the Keto for Cancer diet to help get you started but for now, I suggest you purchase Miriam’s book Keto for Cancer. If you haven’t done this yet I urge you to do so and I have the link below to make that a snap. Please note that I found Miriam on my own and did not know her before I had Cancer. I have personally met with her on two occasions via video link. I recommend her because I have found it to be incredibly important to me and my fight against Glioblastoma. I am not affiliated in any way with her other than through our private meetings via video and reading her book. I found it to be the most important resource for me to follow with my diet and understanding the details.
The primary importance of this episode is to order the Keto For Cancer book and begin reading it as soon as possible. I also recommend a second book that may give you some additional
encouragement in fighting your cancer. It is called Radical Remission. I have linked this book below as well. The author has researched cancer patients that have survived beyond expectation and what these people all have in common. It is amazing when you read these
stories and I found some real inspiration and it galvanized me to press on with my path to take charge of my fight against glioblastoma.
To help make these videos possible please subscribe to my channel, click on the like button in each video, ask your family and friends to do the same as this is fortunately not a large community of people with GBM. Additionally, any products that I suggest or recommend are linked below to which I may receive some proceeds to help with the costs of these videos. Also, if you feel compelled or if you can help please log onto my Patreon page as seen on-screen. You can pledge an amount that will assist me in making these videos. Please leave any positive or encouraging comments below and remember this is information I have learned, and it is helping me; it may or may not provide benefit to you. God bless you I hope you find these videos are helpful and can make a difference in your life. Please consult your medical team before following any steps I have taken on my journey. I will see you in the next episode.