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Originally printed by The Alternative Research Foundation
It puzzles me why the simple concept "sugar feeds cancer" can be so dramatically
overlooked as part of a comprehensive cancer treatment plan.
Of the 4 million cancer patients being treated in America today, hardly any are
offered any scientifically guided nutrition therapy beyond being told to "just
eat good foods." Most patients I work with arrive with a complete lack of
nutritional advice.
I believe many cancer patients would have a major improvement in their outcome
if they controlled the supply of cancer's preferred fuel, glucose.
By slowing the cancer's growth, patients allow their immune systems and medical
debulking therapies -- chemotherapy, radiation and surgery to reduce the bulk of
the tumor mass -- to catch up to the disease.
Controlling one's blood-glucose levels through diet, supplements, exercise,
meditation and prescription drugs when necessary can be one of the most crucial
components to a cancer recovery program. The sound bite -- sugar feeds cancer --
is simple. The explanation is a little more complex.
The 1931 Nobel laureate in medicine, German Otto Warburg, Ph.D., first
discovered that cancer cells have a fundamentally different energy metabolism
compared to healthy cells.
The crux of his Nobel thesis was that malignant tumors frequently exhibit an
increase in anaerobic glycolysis -- a process whereby glucose is used as a fuel
by cancer cells with lactic acid as an anaerobic byproduct -- compared to normal
tissues.
The large amount of lactic acid produced by this fermentation of glucose from
cancer cells is then transported to the liver. This conversion of glucose to
lactate generates a lower, more acidic pH in cancerous tissues as well as
overall physical fatigue from lactic acid buildup. Thus, larger tumors tend to
exhibit a more acidic pH.
This inefficient pathway for energy metabolism yields only 2 moles of adenosine
triphosphate (ATP) energy per mole of glucose, compared to 38 moles of ATP in
the complete aerobic oxidation of glucose.
By extracting only about 5 percent (2 vs. 38 moles of ATP) of the available
energy in the food supply and the body's calorie stores, the cancer is "wasting"
energy, and the patient becomes tired and undernourished. This vicious cycle
increases body wasting.
It is one reason why 40 percent of cancer patients die from malnutrition, or
cachexia. Hence, cancer therapies should encompass regulating blood-glucose
levels via diet, supplements, non-oral solutions for cachectic patients who lose
their appetite, medication, exercise, gradual weight loss and stress reduction.
Professional guidance and patient self-discipline are crucial at this point in
the cancer process. The quest is not to eliminate sugars or carbohydrates from
the diet but rather to control blood glucose within a narrow range to help
starve the cancer and bolster immune function.
The glycemic index is a measure of how a given food affects blood-glucose
levels, with each food assigned a numbered rating. The lower the rating, the
slower the digestion and absorption process, which provides a healthier, more
gradual infusion of sugars into the bloodstream.
Conversely, a high rating means blood-glucose levels are increased quickly,
which stimulates the pancreas to secrete insulin to drop blood-sugar levels.
This rapid fluctuation of blood-sugar levels is unhealthy because of the stress
it places on the body
Sugar in the Body and Diet
Sugar is a generic term used to identify simple carbohydrates, which includes
monosaccharides such as fructose, glucose and galactose; and disaccharides such
as maltose and sucrose (white table sugar). Think of these sugars as
different-shaped bricks in a wall.
When fructose is the primary monosaccharide brick in the wall, the glycemic
index registers as healthier, since this simple sugar is slowly absorbed in the
gut, then converted to glucose in the liver. This makes for "time-release
foods," which offer a more gradual rise and fall in blood-glucose levels.
If glucose is the primary monosaccharide brick in the wall, the glycemic index
will be higher and less healthy for the individual. As the brick wall is torn
apart in digestion, the glucose is pumped across the intestinal wall directly
into the bloodstream, rapidly raising blood-glucose levels.
In other words, there is a "window of efficacy" for glucose in the blood: levels
too low make one feel lethargic and can create clinical hypoglycemia; levels too
high start creating the rippling effect of diabetic health problems.
The 1997 American Diabetes Association blood-glucose standards consider 126 mg
glucose/dL blood or greater to be diabetic; 111 to 125 mg/dL is impaired glucose
tolerance and less than 110 mg/dL is considered normal.
Meanwhile, the Paleolithic diet of our ancestors, which consisted of lean meats,
vegetables and small amounts of whole grains, nuts, seeds and fruits, is
estimated to have generated blood glucose levels between 60 and 90 mg/dL.
Obviously, today's high-sugar diets are having unhealthy effects as far as
blood-sugar is concerned. Excess blood glucose may initiate yeast overgrowth,
blood vessel deterioration, heart disease and other health conditions.
Understanding and using the glycemic index is an important aspect of diet
modification for cancer patients. However, there is also evidence that sugars
may feed cancer more efficiently than starches (comprised of long chains of
simple sugars), making the index slightly misleading. A study of rats fed diets
with equal calories from sugars and starches, for example, found the animals on
the high-sugar diet developed more cases of breast cancer.
The glycemic index is a useful tool in guiding the cancer patient toward a
healthier diet, but it is not infallible. By using the glycemic index alone, one
could be led to thinking a cup of white sugar is healthier than a baked potato.
This is because the glycemic index rating of a sugary food may be lower than
that of a starchy food. To be safe, I recommend less fruit, more vegetables, and
little to no refined sugars in the diet of cancer patients.
What the Literature Says
A mouse model of human breast cancer demonstrated that tumors are sensitive to
blood-glucose levels. Sixty-eight mice were injected with an aggressive strain
of breast cancer, then fed diets to induce either high blood-sugar
(hyperglycemia), normoglycemia or low blood-sugar (hypoglycemia).
There was a dose-dependent response in which the lower the blood glucose, the
greater the survival rate. After 70 days, 8 of 24 hyperglycemic mice survived
compared to 16 of 24 normoglycemic and 19 of 20 hypoglycemic.
This suggests that regulating sugar intake is key to slowing breast tumor
growth.
In a human study, 10 healthy people were assessed for fasting blood-glucose
levels and the phagocytic index of neutrophils, which measures immune-cell
ability to envelop and destroy invaders such as cancer. Eating 100 g
carbohydrates from glucose, sucrose, honey and orange juice all significantly
decreased the capacity of neutrophils to engulf bacteria. Starch did not have
this effect.
A four-year study at the National Institute of Public Health and Environmental
Protection in the Netherlands compared 111 biliary tract cancer patients with
480 controls. Cancer risk associated with the intake of sugars, independent of
other energy sources, more than doubled for the cancer patients.
Furthermore, an epidemiological study in 21 modern countries that keep track of
morbidity and mortality (Europe, North America, Japan and others) revealed that
sugar intake is a strong risk factor that contributes to higher breast cancer
rates, particularly in older women.
Limiting sugar consumption may not be the only line of defense. In fact, an
interesting botanical extract from the avocado plant (Persea americana) is
showing promise as a new cancer adjunct.
When a purified avocado extract called mannoheptulose was added to a number of
tumor cell lines tested in vitro by researchers in the Department of
Biochemistry at Oxford university in Britain, they found it inhibited tumor cell
glucose uptake by 25 to 75 percent, and it inhibited the enzyme glucokinase
responsible for glycolysis. It also inhibited the growth rate of the cultured
tumor cell lines.
The same researchers gave lab animals a 1.7 mg/g body weight dose of
mannoheptulose for five days; it reduced tumors by 65 to 79 percent. Based on
these studies, there is good reason to believe that avocado extract could help
cancer patients by limiting glucose to the tumor cells.
Since cancer cells derive most of their energy from anaerobic glycolysis, Joseph
Gold, M.D., director of the Syracuse (N.Y.) Cancer Research Institute and former
U.S. Air Force research physician, surmised that a chemical called hydrazine
sulfate, used in rocket fuel, could inhibit the excessive gluconeogenesis
(making sugar from amino acids) that occurs in cachectic cancer patients.
Gold's work demonstrated hydrazine sulfate's ability to slow and reverse
cachexia in advanced cancer patients. A placebo-controlled trial followed 101
cancer patients taking either 6 mg hydrazine sulfate three times/day or placebo.
After one month, 83 percent of hydrazine sulfate patients increased their
weight, compared to 53 percent on placebo.
A similar study by the same principal researchers, partly funded by the National
Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., followed 65 patients. Those who took
hydrazine sulfate and were in good physical condition before the study began
lived an average of 17 weeks longer.
The medical establishment may be missing the connection between sugar and its
role in tumorigenesis. Consider the million-dollar positive emission tomography
device, or PET scan, regarded as one of the ultimate cancer-detection tools. PET
scans use radioactively labeled glucose to detect sugar-hungry tumor cells. PET
scans are used to plot the progress of cancer patients and to assess whether
present protocols are effective.
In Europe, the "sugar feeds cancer" concept is so well accepted that
oncologists, or cancer doctors, use the Systemic Cancer Multistep Therapy (SCMT)
protocol. Conceived by Manfred von Ardenne in Germany in 1965, SCMT entails
injecting patients with glucose to increase blood-glucose concentrations.
This lowers pH values in cancer tissues via lactic acid formation. In turn, this
intensifies the thermal sensitivity of the malignant tumors and also induces
rapid growth of the cancer. Patients are then given whole-body hyperthermia (42
C core temperature) to further stress the cancer cells, followed by chemotherapy
or radiation.
SCMT was tested on 103 patients with metastasized cancer or recurrent primary
tumors in a clinical phase-I study at the Von Ardenne Institute of Applied
Medical Research in Dresden, Germany. Five-year survival rates in SCMT-treated
patients increased by 25 to 50 percent, and the complete rate of tumor
regression increased by 30 to 50 percent.
The protocol induces rapid growth of the cancer, then treats the tumor with
toxic therapies for a dramatic improvement in outcome.
The irrefutable role of glucose in the growth and metastasis of cancer cells can
enhance many therapies. Some of these include diets designed with the glycemic
index in mind to regulate increases in blood glucose, hence selectively starving
the cancer cells; low-glucose TPN solutions; avocado extract to inhibit glucose
uptake in cancer cells; hydrazine sulfate to inhibit gluconeogenesis in cancer
cells; and SCMT.
A female patient in her 50s, with lung cancer, came to our clinic, having been
given a death sentence by her Florida oncologist. She was cooperative and
understood the connection between nutrition and cancer. She changed her diet
considerably, leaving out 90 percent of the sugar she used to eat.
She found that wheat bread and oat cereal now had their own wild sweetness, even
without added sugar.
With appropriately restrained medical therapy -- including high-dose radiation
targeted to tumor sites and fractionated chemotherapy, a technique that
distributes the normal one large weekly chemo dose into a 60-hour infusion
lasting days -- a good attitude and an optimal nutrition program which included
Sam's formula nine times/day, she beat her terminal lung cancer.
I saw her last month, five years later and still disease-free, probably looking
better than the doctor who told her there was no hope.
Dr. Mercola's Comment:
Nearly all of us are addicted to sugar. There is not one single food item that
is generally more damaging to health. The problem is that most of us are
addicted to it. The Hellers in their book, Carbohydrate Addicts, discuss the
evidence supporting this link. I do not agree with their one hour reward meal,
but otherwise the book helps one understand the depth of this problem.
Related Articles:
Dangers of Sugar
Sugar Ruins Health
Cancer/Sugar Connection
http://mercola.com/2000/oct/8/sugar_cancer.htm
Alan
http://www.veloceraptor.free-online.co.uk/science.html
http://veloceraptor.blogspot.com/
http://theoriginalfirebird.blogspot.com/
http://lordcerneabbastoo.blogspot.com/
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/
http://www.700women.org/
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