Power of Fasting to Fight Cancer (Part II)
You must kill cancer before it kills you.
Dr. Kevin Ham
Killing Cancer.
As Jude starts his third round of chemotherapy, he is eating only one meal a day before his chemo and then two meals after his chemo and a regular targeted ketogenic diet thereafter. The chemo has, each time, wiped out his bone marrow, requiring blood and platelet transfusions.
But each of us is always dealing with cells that can become cancerous, and the body's defence mechanisms are continually working to fix or eliminate damaged cells in our bodies before they become a problem.
Two questions for you to ponder deeply:
How do we prevent cancer before it can find a home?
When cancer exists, how do we kill every last cancer cell before it kills the host?
Cancer 1.0
The traditional strategy has been to target cancer with:
Chemo (bomb) targets fast-growing cells, both cancerous and healthy, at typically very toxic doses, leading to severe side effects.
Radiation (burn) targets the site of cancer, but is also a risk factor for future cancer.
Surgery (slash) removes what is visible.
Cancer 2.0
Change the immune and metabolic terrain: Support healthy cells and kill the cancer cells more specifically.
Immune therapy: Targets the cancer cells directly (but it hasn't been the grand slam we were expecting.)
Metabolic diet and lifestyle: nutrinomics, fasting, and detoxification. Cancer cells rely on glucose and glutamine for energy. It is their Achilles heel. They starve when deprived of both. Fasting, ketogenic diets, and insulin suppression create a metabolic wilderness in which the liver produces fat-derived energy called ketones, which the brain, heart, muscles, and other cells can efficiently use for energy. Normal cells conserve energy, slow down metabolically and prepare themselves for a 'starvation' environment, protecting themselves better than the cancer cells that continue to divide rapidly, but without the full energy supply of glucose and glutamine, leaving them much more vulnerable to the chemo bomb.
Early detection: prevent cancer from forming or detect and deal with the first cancer cell at Stage 0 (Stage 1 ~ a billion cancer cells = 0.5 cm detectable mass)
Cancer 3.0
I have a high interest in integrating and leveraging Cancer 1.0 with Cancer 2.0:
Use chemo strategically to kill the mass of cancer.
Use fasting and detox to make chemo more lethal to cancer but safer for the patient against chemo's toxic side effects, especially bone marrow, the home of the immune system.
Use nutrition and nutrinomics to synergistically attack the cancer cells while protecting healthy ones.
Thomas Seyfried - Revival of Warburg
The origin of cancer is not genetic; it is metabolic.
Dr. Thomas Seyfried
Do you recall that last week we learned about Otto Warburg and the Warburg effect? He believed that cancer was a metabolic disease. That cancer started when cells lost their ability to use oxygen efficiently to make energy. Instead of using normal respiration (which occurs in mitochondria), cancer cells switch to a less efficient, more primitive way of generating energy—fermentation—even when oxygen is available.
Almost a century after Warburg, the world had forgotten his metabolic gospel as the answer to cancer. Most of the scientific and medical world shifted its attention to genetics—the idea that cancer is fundamentally a disease caused by mutations in DNA. Warburg's "metabolic" explanation (cancer as an energy-production problem) was mostly forgotten or considered outdated.
But Thomas Seyfried, while studying epilepsy and metabolic disorders, focused on mitochondria and eventually asked, "What if cancer begins, not in the gene, but in the cell's ability to produce energy?"
He poured into the science and philosophy of Warburg, revisiting an ignored and misunderstood truth.
His mission became to recast cancer as a metabolic disease with a primary cause of mitochondrial dysfunction.
"If you can manage the fermentation metabolism, you can manage the disease."
He demonstrated that when:
The nucleus of a cancer cell, where the DNA resides, was put into a healthy cell; its progeny (aka descendants) were healthy cells rather than expected cancer cells.
But when the cytoplasm of a cancer cell was implanted into a healthy cell, its progeny were cancerous. There was something in the cytoplasm that was a 'cause' of cancer.
Then, he demonstrated that mitochondria were the primary cause and that defective mitochondria led to mutations and to an inability to produce energy even in the presence of oxygen. This leads to the dependence of cancer cells on glucose and glutamine, because glutamine can be converted to glucose. These pathways make cancer cells inflexible, fragile, dependent and vulnerable.
"Cancer cells are vulnerable because they lack metabolic flexibility."
Patients suddenly had tools: diet, fasting, oxygen, and ketones, as scientifically grounded therapies that change the body's metabolic terrain, weakening cancer cells and fortifying healthy cells. His experiments provided deeper insight into the Warburg Effect in cancer and turned it into something that was applicable and empowered patients.
Dr. Dominic D’Agostino
The origin of cancer is not genetic; it is metabolic.
Dr. Dominic D’Agostino
Dr. D'Agostino worked with the US Navy, endeavouring to answer the question: "How do you keep a diver alive under crushing pressure and low oxygen?"
Under extreme pressure and low oxygen, the divers' brains couldn't properly use glucose for energy anymore. Their brains short-circuited, which triggered seizures and could lead to death.
Instead of glucose, he found ketones, which stabilized neuronal networks, reduced oxidative stress and allowed the brain to operate more efficiently. This is why fasting for four days, leading to high ketone levels in kids who had seizures, led to the arrest of convulsions almost miraculously.
And he found that cancer cells could not adapt to the ketone-rich, glucose-restricted environment.
"Nutritional ketosis can shift our physiology in ways that are profoundly therapeutic."
To enhance the effects of ketones, he experimented with hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). This wasn't simply an additive weapon, but a synergistic force multiplier.
Cancer thrives in low-oxygen, high-glucose, acidic, inflamed environments. HBOT floods the body with 10-20x more oxygen than breathing alone. This oxygen, under high pressure, dissolves directly into the plasma, tissues, lymph and interstitial fluid.
Since cancer cells cannot use oxygen for energy, they rely on the fermentation of glucose.
When you add high amounts of oxygen into the cancer's environment:
Normal cells thrive
Supercharges mitochondrial ATP energy production in normal cells.
They become stronger.
Cancer cells get strangled (they thrive on hypoxia--low oxygen)
Increases tumour oxygenation.
Decreases tumour acidity.
Reduces hypoxia-driven resistance.
Fermentation becomes less efficient.
Reactive oxygen species (ROS) spike inside the tumour, selectively killing cancer cells.
Repairs tissue damage caused by chemo/radiation to bone marrow (red blood cell and platelet formation), skin, nerves, gut, mouth and blood vessels by:
HBOT is FDA-approved for radiation injury.
Stem cell mobilization.
Angiogenesis (new blood vessels).
Tissue oxygenation.
Wound healing.
Collagen production.
And ketosis deprives cancer of glucose and its sole energy source while fortifying normal cells.
This 1-2 punch, double metabolic trap, sets cancer cells up for the chemotherapy and radiation to annihilate them more effectively,
This is not only targeted therapy but also creating an environment where normal cells can thrive and cancer cells cannot.
Dr. Valter Longo - Architect of Longevity
Longevity is programmed. And fasting is the key to unlocking that program..
Dr. Valter Longo
Valter Longo grew up in southern Italy, among centenarians who lived long not because of medicines, but because of the rhythm and rhyme of life: simple, real food, long walks, fasting days, deep relationships and clean living.
His interest in longevity led him to head to USC in 2000, where he became the world's leading researcher on fasting and longevity. He found a profound biological truth:
Fasting kills damaged or diseased cells and organelles. This is called autophagy (self-eating).
Refeeding activates stem cells.
Longevity is nature, with the body's natural rhythm and dancing to it.
He discovered that cycles of fasting initiate autophagy, reduce inflammation, trigger apoptosis (cell death) in damaged cells, lower IGF-1 (which stimulates cancer growth), and, during refeeding, activate stem cell regeneration.
"When you fast, the body kills off broken cells. When you refeed, stem cells rebuild."
His coined term, "Fast-Mimicking-Diet" (FMD), became the world's scientifically validated protocol for activating regeneration without having to stop eating food with a diet that mimicked fasting, in effect a subtype of a ketogenic diet, with low glucose and low glycine, fully leveraging the Warburg Effect, while feeding patients fighting cancer.
"To live long, you must avoid overfeeding the system."
Longo teaches us to align with biology and nature rather than hack and fight against it.
Dr. Azra Raza, the Fierce Humanitarian
We are losing the war on cancer because we are trying to kill the last cell, not the first.
Dr. Azra Raza
When I read the prologue of her book, The First Cell, my heart was deeply inspired, but my face also flooded with tears for her, for her patients, for her compassionate heart and brilliant mind. Azra's mission is deeply human, deeply spiritual and deeply urgent.
When I look at Azra, I don't see just a doctor, an oncology researcher, but I see a general and a soldier in a war against cancer. A warrior forged in grief. A woman who has given her life to saving others, enduring the suffering that comes with this devastating disease. She not only watched the person she loved most, her husband, Harvey, a fellow oncologist dedicated to fighting cancer, be consumed by the very disease that he fought to cure, but was also, at his request, his doctor, until she laid him to rest with no peace in her heart.
Azra had the mission to cure cancer in her heart since she was young, but entered the arena of oncology through heartbreak. From her initial pediatric patients through caring for her husband, she saw that we are detecting and treating cancer far too late.
Her mission became refined to:
Find the first malignant cell.
Intercept and take care of cancer before suffering begins.
Prevent and ease human suffering.
She has been drawing and storing her patients' blood for over 30 years in her cancer cell tissue repository ("The Cancer Bank"), championing human-centred studies rather than mouse studies, molecular fingerprints, early detection and humane oncology that preserves dignity.
We bonded instantly, both academically and professionally, but also on a spiritual level, with a shared sense of mission to help ease the suffering of our fellow humans. Instead of chemo/radiation/surgery, which she aptly calls bomb/burn/slash, find the first cancer cell, which she has discovered how to do and has developed a device that can both detect and kill this first 'giant' cancer cell, the mother of all cancer cells.
"We must intercept cancer at its earliest, most curable stage."
"Patients deserve better than toxic therapies that come too late."
Azra brought the human soul to medicine, along with the blueprint and method for detecting and preventing cancer at the first cell, to end cancer at its beginning rather than fighting it until the last cell.
"Finding and killing the first cancer cell will change everything."
Together we share a mission bigger than either of us alone:
To make cancer a solvable problem in our lifetime.
To build the tools that find the first malignant cell.
To cure cancer, at the beginning.
I've invested in her startup, and I am also helping her create a documentary to tell our story and proclaim her war on cancer at the first cell.
May God help her and those in this common mission against a disease that arises from its host, causing suffering and death.
Reflection
If disease is only fought by poisons, that becomes the ground in which the seed of the very disease it fights to grow again, should we not change our paradigm and strategy?
Dr. Kevin Ham
I'm a problem-solver, and I love thinking in first principles. If cancer is found early, it is much easier to deal with it. Still, the question we must ponder is, what environment and primary cause led to this cancer in the first place, and how can we ensure the metabolic terrain of our body prevents cancer from ever growing?
When the risk of cancer is 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women, how do we reduce this risk from 33%-50% to near 0%?
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Life-Changing Question
What can I do today to reduce my cancer risk by altering my body into a cancer-proof environment?
You are armed with the essential knowledge of the primary cause of cancer and its Achilles heel, but knowledge without action is powerless. Only when that knowledge is discerned and applied to your life does that knowledge become power.
Next week—
Power of Belief.
Why Belief is Essential to Success.
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