New preclinical research from a group at the University of Texas, Dallas recommends that limiting blood glucose levels through the keto diet might avoid cancer.
To come to this conclusion, scientists restricted distributing glucose in mice with lung cancer by feeding them a ketogenic diet plan, which contains hardly any sugar. They also provided the mice a diabetes drug that prevents blood sugar from being reabsorbed into the kidneys.
The ketogenic diet includes high fat foods, foods that contain an adequate quantity of protein, and a very low amount of carbohydrates.
Normally, the human body gets its main source of energy (sugar) from carbs.
Nevertheless, the ketogenic diet denies the body of glucose, inducing a state of "ketosis.".
Throughout ketosis, the body is forced to break down saved fat instead of sugar to produce an alternative source of energy.
The ketogenic, or "keto," diet plan has been around for centuries. Typically, some have utilized it as a treatment for conditions such as diabetes and epilepsy.
More recent studies have begun to take a look at the therapeutic capacity of the keto diet for other conditions, such as cancer, polycystic ovary syndrome, and Alzheimer's illness.
" Both the ketogenic diet plan and the pharmacological constraint of blood glucose on their own inhibited the more development of squamous cell carcinoma tumors in mice with lung cancer," said matching author Dr. Jung-Whan "Jay" Kim, an assistant professor of life sciences at UT Dallas, per the research study published in Cell Reports. "While these interventions did not shrink the tumors, they did keep them from progressing, which suggests this kind of cancer may be susceptible to glucose limitation.".
Many forms of cancer cells are thought to be based on glucose (sugar) for their energy supply. However, as Kim and his colleagues discovered, one particular kind of cancer, squamous cell cancer, is more reliant than others.
" The key finding of our new study in mice is that a ketogenic diet alone does have some tumor-growth inhibitory impact in squamous cell cancer," Kim said. "When we combined this with the diabetes drug and chemotherapy, it was much more effective.".
It must be kept in mind that glucose constraint did not have any effect on non-squamous-cell cancers. "Our results recommend that this method is cancer-cell-type particular. We can not generalize to all kinds of cancer," Kim said.
Kim and his team also analyzed glucose levels in blood samples taken from 192 patients impacted by either lung or esophageal squamous cell cancer, as well as 120 clients with lung adenocarcinoma. These blood samples were classified into those consisting of glucose concentrations greater or lower than 120 mg/L-- one medical measure of diabetes. None of the clients were diagnosed with diabetes.
" Surprisingly, we found a robust correlation in between greater blood-glucose concentration and worse survival amongst clients with squamous cell cancer," Kim stated. "We discovered no such correlation among the lung adenocarcinoma patients. This is an important observation that further implicates the possible effectiveness of glucose limitation in attenuating squamous-cell cancer development.".
Naturally, more clinical research studies are needed to identify if glucose limitation is an effective cancer treatment, however the outcomes he and his team found are still promising.
" Manipulating host glucose levels would be a brand-new method that is various from simply attempting to kill cancer cells straight," Kim said. "I believe this belongs to a paradigm shift from targeting cancer cells themselves. Immunotherapy is a fine example of this, where the human immune system is triggered to pursue cancer cells.".
" Maybe we can control our own biological system a little bit or trigger something we currently have in location in order to more efficiently combat cancer.".