Saturday Aug 20, 2016 (foodconsumer.org) -- A study published in 2013 in PLOS One suggests that ketogenic diet may be used as a therapy to effectively treat metastatic cancer. The study shows that mice with metastatic cancer fed a ketogenic diet lived much longer (the survival time was extended by 57%) than mice using the normal diet.
The study reported by Poff et al. also shows that hyperbaric oxygen therapy alone, which is known to saturate tumors with oxygen and therefore potentially reverse the cancer promoting effect of tumor hypoxia, was actually not effective in slowing cancer progression. However, when used together, ketogenic diet and hyperbaric oxygen therapy extended the survival time by 78%.
Cancer cells use glucose as the energy source through a process called aerobic glycolysis. For that reason, researchers proposed that ketogenic diet may slow the growth of cancer. Ketogenic diet is high in fats and low in carbohydrates (source of glucose) and it decreases serum glucose and increases blood ketones. This explains why ketogenic diet might slow the cancer growth.
Also, it is known that cancer cells do not grow well in the presence of abundant oxygen. Cancer cells create a micro-environmental condition called hypoxia (oxygen deficiency in a biotic environment), which in turn promotes cancer growth and progression. This is why oxygen therapy may theoretically help fight cancer.
The animal study indicates that ketogenic diet and hyperbaric oxygen therapy may have some synergistic effect against cancer and significantly extend the survival time and these non-toxic therapies may be employed to treat metastatic cancer.
Another possible explanation for the anticancer effect of a ketogenic diet is that the diet reduces the production of insulin, which may otherwise be directly or indirectly involved in promoting cancer growth and progression.
In a small trial reported by Fine et al., five out of nine cancer patients with advanced incurable cancer using a dietary carbohydrate restricted diet (only 5% of total calories and the total calories were reduced by 35%) for 26 days either stabilized their disease or experienced partial remission. (David Liu)
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