Sept 9, 2016 (foodconsumer.org) -- A study indicated that calorie-restricted ketogenic diet may help treat brain cancer.  But the same study also shows that calorie-restricted ordinary diet can deliver the same benefit - inhibiting the tumor progression.  Together, these findings suggest that the therapeutic effect of the calorie-restricted ketogenic diet does not seem due to the high fat content which is supposed to lead to high ketone bodies (ketosis), but the low calories, which often causes low circulating glucose/insulin/insulin-like growth factor I and low energy.   In other words, ketogenic diet per se does not seem to provide much of an anticancer activity. The old version of ketogenic diet consists of four parts of fat and one part of protein plus carbohydrates.

Another study conducted in two rodent models also demonstrated that glioma-bearing rats eating ketogenic diet ad libitum did not experience any anti-cancer protection.  The study led by researchers at Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging of Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven CT shows that in the animals fed a ketogenic diet, "the ketone body monocarboxylate transporter was upregulated, facilitating uptake and oxidation of ketone bodies in the gliomas."  Dr. Henk M. De Feyter and colleagues concluded "rat gliomas can oxidize ketone bodies and indicate upregulation of ketone body transport when fed a ketogenic diet."

Ketogenic diet has been tested to treat cancers particularly brain cancer.  The theory behind the special diet is that brain cancer can only use glucose, but not fat as its only energy source for its growth and progression.  (It is known that cancer cells use glucose as an energy source but follow the aerobic glycolytic pathway to generate lactic acid, which lowers the body pH and make the cancer patient feel tired.  Nobel Prize winner Otto Warburg first observed this.)   But the study led by De Feyer et al. and some other studies indicated that at least glioma can somehow utilize ketone bodies as an energy source.  This study suggests that ketogenic diet does not provide anti-cancer protection against glioma and maybe some other cancers.

A recent review led by Teresa Cunha-Oliveira and colleagues in Portugal provides more information on ketogenic diet and cancer.  

Keep in mind though that even though ketogenic diet may not be ineffective in treating cancer, but a calorie-restricted diet may help slow the cancer progression.  Many cancer patients who opted to use a vegan diet after diagnosis had good outcomes. The vegan diet is essentially a calorie-restricted diet.  Also when you ingest high amounts of calories, you likely eat a lot of protein, and too much protein intake is known to be bad for cancer patients.  Another extreme way to cut intake of calories is fasting.  Sporadic testimonials indicate that fasting in some way can actually get some cancer patients in regression or even remission.  For instance, the fasting method used by Rudolph Breuss claims that it has benefited thousands of cancer patients.  (David Liu)