Cancer cells adapting to use ketone bodies for fuel?

A response to an interesting study:


The bad news is: 

Cancer is very good at adapting in order to proliferate in challenging environments so this study throws up interesting talking points. 


The good news is: 

1. It will always be effective for all types of epilepsy. - including brain tumour related epilepsy (and related symptoms)

2. There are many different approaches within metabolic therapy that are effective. Central Nervous System cancers are unique in many ways. 

3. We are not rodents and other animals with more spontaneous tumours are continuing to display very encouraging long term results. 

4. Human cancer cells injected into mice have had to adapt to foreign conditions anyway so I would presume this may also be a factor to consider. 

5. The quality and type of ketogenic diet is vitally important and continues to be ignored in rodent studies (and the few human clinical trials out there). Quality of fats used is generally poor in these studies. Some even use vegetable fats!!


The study is very interesting and needs to be researched further but we need to further expand our horizons to get truly relevant data. 

Researchers often have a very narrow focus, these rodents typically aren't even monitored for seizure activity which is a very important consideration. 

I have been asked? Would be interesting to seperate the unique ketosis benefits from the normoglycemia?

Certainly, but we must remember that they are interrelated they and that it remains a fact that if quality fats are included we see that in and around malignant brain tissue we continue to see very low amounts of DHA (which is also cytotoxic to brain cancer cells). Ensuring that quality fats, particularly DHA (which makes up at least 20% of healthy brain tissue, still appears to make perfect sense when we devise an appropriate ketogenic diet. 

Personally I get frustrated at times with these ketogenic diet studies using poor quality ingredients. Im my humble opinion it should be no dairy, less omega 6, more omega 3- especially DHA. This is perhaps even more important than the ketones. I know individuals who have utilised a metabolic approach that is not strict keto and have achieved remission simply following these 'rules' so in a way I agree with the study that it isn't all about ketones. 

If the ketones are powerful metabolic tools long term, which I still believe they can be, we must consider this fact...

All ketones are not created equal. Lifestyle factors are also important and this plays a bigger role in humans, especially vitamin D status.

I've written this in about 2 minutes but when I have time after Christmas I will add all my research to back up the individual points made. It's a great study for discussion and I'm glad it's been brought to my attention. I like to question everything and I am continually adapting my methods to suit new research. 

I'm also really looking forward to Christmas Day so...

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An explorative essay: Can magnesium chloride raise seizure threshold?

Image
Exploiting ionic changes in the epileptic brain to increase seizure threshold with oral supplementation of magnesium chloride Epilepsy is a serious neurological disorder marked by sudden recurrent episodes of sensory disturbance, loss of consciousness, or convulsions, associated with abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Seizures are associated with neuronal ionic changes (Schwartzkroin, 1998) that can be managed with increased efficacy through magnesium chloride supplementation. Magnesium supplementation should be part of an essential component of a management strategy for any type of epilepsy to raise seizure threshold and maintain trace element homeostasis. The form of magnesium that has been used most clinically and has the longest therapeutic use to treat epilepsy in the literature is magnesium sulphate, however this is not practical or convenient for patients with epilepsy. While there needs to be more research into other forms of magnesium to manage epilepsy, there remains ...
Read more

5 crucial facts to be aware of if you're on AEDs

1. ' Anticonvulsants can interfere with calcium and vitamin D metabolism. They cause an increased rate of bone turnover, thus affecting bone density. It is recommended that anybody who is taking anticonvulsant medication should also be taking additional vitamin D.' 'Many doctors, however, are not aware of the association between anticonvulsant medication and bone disease and less than 10 percent of neurologist recommend taking calcium and vitamin D to protect against side effects of these drugs.' From countless studies including: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920121114001661 And http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1059131107002385 2. Switching from branded meds to unbranded does make a difference and can result in breakthrough seizures. The government has recently made branded medications less available to cut costs. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/21521860/ 3. Simply asking your GP for a FREE vitamin D test can definitely help yo...
Read more

Orexin/hypocretic receptor signalling and cancer.

Image
Let's consider Orexin/hypocretin receptor signalling and how we may exploit this system for brain cancer management. As we can see in the diagrams below, orexin neutrons regulate various activities such as wakefulness, feeding, reward and thermogenesis. A ketogenic diet, normalisation of sleep/wake cycles, fasting, stimulation of thermogenic pathways and giving the brain fuels it thrives on could act as key strategies we can adopt to take advantage of the fact that orexin appears to have potential as a novel, highly-specific treatment for various localised and metastatic cancers. This is not quite as simple as it may sound as you can always have too much of a 'good' stressor or thing before it becomes 'bad'- eustress vs distress. We know of course that fat is a very efficient source of energy for the brain and ketone bodies are neuroprotective, the body energy level influences orexin neuronal activity to coordinate arousal and energy homeostasis. Management of chron...
Read more