Dr Peter Attia has begun a series of posts on cancer, opening with an introduction speech by another oncologist on the state of cancer research and treatment over the past 40 years. http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/war-cancer. The entire article is excellent but difficult to copy all the links and graphs. The conclusion gives a good sample of the tone.

I like what Robb Wolff wrote. The researchers are only baffled because their underlying model is not right and things don't fit.

The conclusion almost gets there. Cancer used to be considered a metabolic disease. But then the person calls obesity a cause. Sigh. More "cargo cult science".

Exactly what Seejay said about obesity being a cause. I prefer Gary Taubes' explanation that what causes obesity also causes diabetes, cancer, heart diseases and other metabolic diseases. For now (till we come up with a better/more refined explanation) I'm putting my money on high insulin levels and the resulting inflammation as the cause of all these diseases.

My own theory is that the medical profession doesn't want to cure cancer. Why? Because it is too profitable to treat cancer.

There is a doctor in Texas (Burzynski) who has been curing cases of cancer the medical profession has given up on. What has the FDA done, but attacked him again and again and again and again. I read a book about him. There is a movie, it's a little less informative than the book but will give you a quick overview.

Other promising treatments have been thrown out by the FDA. A neighbor of mine got breast cancer, and went to Germany to get treatment there that is not available in the USA because the FDA doesn't approve it. It worked.

64 countries have banned GMO foods because they believe they cause cancer. The FDA has done everything it can to make sure that GMO foods are not only available in the USA but aren't even marked as GMO so that we can avoid them ourselves.

Cancer treatment is one huge, profitable business. The big business of medicine makes billions of dollars per year on chemo, radiation and surgery. If cancer was cured or prevented tomorrow, these business would fail, the stockholders would lose and the management would be out of work not to mention doctors, nurses, big pharma, and the entire infrastructure of cancer treatment.

Since the FDA represents the medical corporations instead of us, they use everything in their power to block any cancer prevention or cure - including strong-arm tactics, false arrests, search and seizure and so on. Watch the movie. You can rent it from Netflix.

So we are on our own. The FDA and Medical business has a dual role. We need them but they are also the enemy. So we need to take care of ourselves, prevent as much as we can, and when we need them, be an educated consumer and do your homework before you walk into the waiting room.

End of rant.

What happens when the medical profession wants to see where the cancer is? Very often they give you sugar with some kind of tracer and they watch where the sugar goes. It goes right to the cancer cells, because they are hungry for sugar. So applying common sense logic (no medical experience) that tells me that avoiding sugar should have the positive effect of not feeding cancer. Seems logical anyway.

Bob

The trouble is that with all the mystique and reputation surrounding cancer research, you cant actually say anything to the general public. I totally 110% agree with what you've said, but you only have to look at facebook, the media, social groups of all kinds and they're forever doing "fun runs", sponsored "this and thats" for cancer research and anyone who criticises or questions is on a par with the devil!!!!!!

The other angle is that you have two groups, the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry working in perfect financial harmony together and of course our governments cream taxes off the top!

Jo xxx

How about all those sugar-laden food products proudly spouting the cute little pink ribbons supporting breast cancer? Oh, uh, breast cancer awareness, of course! I'm pretty sure not enough people are aware of cancer as a metabolic disease for those junk food manufacturers to suspect their sugary products may actually promote the disease, but I'm glad at least I know to steer clear of their stuff.

An ounce of prevention ... ...

It's something I hope I am doing. We all choose to believe something from the vast amount of information and disinformation out there.

And you can't believe the media. 90% of the US media (included TV, Radio, Newspapers, Magazines) is owned by 6 giant corporations. And the bulk of that 90% is owned by Fox, G.E. and Disney. They do not tell you what is good for you, they tell you what is good for them, and that includes the news and entertainment shows. The news reporters even call themselves "presstitutes".

TV, newspapers, and radio are sales media disguised as information and entertainment media. The sooner you know that, the sooner you will stop believing what they tell you, and the better off you will be.

If I ever get "the C word" I'll go to Texas and see Burzynski. He takes people with terminal cancer that the establishment medicine have told to get their affairs in order and years later they are still cancer free. And the FDA uses the feds to continuously harass, arrest, and shut them down. They even had gov't employees steal their patents. Because Big Hospital, Big Pharma, the AMA and other interests don't want them to steal their cash cow.

OK, I'm on a rant again. Sorry about that. It's a shame, our country has turned from a representative republic to an oligarchy run by a few huge corporations and the international bankers. And they call us a democracy - we never were, and are far from that now.

Rant over.

Read the labels. Avoid sugar and high glycemic starch.

Avoid all soy, corn, cottonseed, canola and squash products unless they are certified non-GMO. Avoid milk and cheese unless the farmers don't use rBGH artificial hormone on their cows. 64 countries (including all of Europe and Canada) have banned these because they cause cancer. We haven't because of Monsanto and Big Medicine are part of the oligarchy.

I guess the rant wasn't really over, and perhaps never will be unless we reclaim our country, and I don't see that happening. I wish I knew how to do it, but I have no idea short of electing me dictator and I'd refuse the job because I'd probably be murdered in less than 6 months

Read the labels, investigate the ingredients, don't believe anything you hear or read in the corporate media, and stay healthy.

Bob

Me too. I will add though that I also make the distinction between primary and only. So, if we target insulin signaling through a ketogenic diet (a la Richard Feinman), and it doesn't work as intended, then we must look at secondary causes that act the same way as dietary carbs do.

About prevention. Feinman got it right with using a ketogenic diet to treat cancer. The same therapy can be used to prevent cancer too. Here again though, it's the same problem with primary vs only. So, even though we take care of about 75% of the problem with low-carb we still gotta watch out for the other stuff that can do the same thing carbs do.

The idea just popped up that maybe it's about carb sensitivity. Sure, but couldn't it be possible that carb sensitivity is a function of other things rather than just the carbs? What if we could treat those other things, remove the carb sensitivity? I don't mean that we could then eat more carbs. I mean we could explain why we are so sensitive to a tiny amount of carbs (besides wheat which I think is another problem altogether).

Some of the researchers on cancer and the ketogenic diet suggest that to reach the sorts of reductions in blood glucose and increases in ketones achieved in mouse studies, people would need to go on periodic water fasts. The ketogenic diet for rodents seems to be more aggressive than the one used for epilepsy--the diet for human epilepsy is 90 percent calories from fat, it's often 95 percent calories fat with mice. I don't think we'd do well on that long term--but we could probably do it intermittently.

I was looking at this yesterday (no free text):



Non-genetically modified mice don't generally die of heart disease--so calorie restriction, protein restriction, methionine restriction studies of lifespan tend to have cancer as a major endpoint. So when you say "this intervention increases maximum lifespan" to a certain extent, what you're saying is, this intervention reduces cancer.



Oxidative phosphorylation is how we generate ATP from fat and ketones. An increase in oxidative phosphorylation capacity of mitochondria--even in a diet that isn't actually low in carbohydrate--sort of makes things more similar to the effects of a ketogenic diet. The more a cell is depending on the mitochondria for energy, the less it's depending on glycolysis. It's a slower, but more efficient way of producing ATP.

The decrease in ROS production also happens in a ketogenic diet;



http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20831808

Ketosis might not be absolutely necessary. This study showed that low carb mice with 10% or 20% of calories from carbs benefited as much as the no-carb ketogenic mice.

In this study, there was a difference between the 10% and 15% CHO mice but they were eating ridiculous amounts of protein - about 60%!


I do believe though, that a ketogenic diet would be best at preventing cancer in the first place since it upregulates endogenous anti-oxidant production and reduces the DNA damage that can initiate cancer.


This study supports Teaser's regarding methionine restriction. They are basically on a low carb diet.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20538896

Once medicine gets on a wrong road, it's HECK to get off it.

Look what Pasteur went through to get that crazy "microbe" theory off the ground. Lister was ridiculed for years for promoting his antiseptic surgical methods. Semmelweis was thrown in an asylum and beaten to death because he wouldn't shut up about doctors washing their hands.

Right now, NO chemotherapy drugs are passed on to human trials unless they meet a certain standard against leukemia cells. This might be why blood cancers have such a high success rate... and other cancer treatments... don't.

Yup, ran into those at my local grocery store yesterday...

I now have a visceral revulsion towards those pink ribbons. Something like 80% of donations go right back to organizational salaries.

This take from a woman journalist on her experience was very thought provoking (warning about triggers for treatment issues)

http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/cancerland.htm

I once had a friend who managed a local chapter of a very famous charitable organization -- until he found out that one dollar out of every five donated actually made it to a charity, and when it got there most of that was absorbed in the salaries of the people in the charity.

When I give I give locally and if possible directly.

I'd rather give the homeless person on a corner a buck than to see 80 or more cents of that buck go to someone driving a Benz and wearing a Rolex.

BTW, for political correctness, instead of homeless person, we should call them "urban campers"

Seriously, there are plenty of ways to give locally where the people volunteer and the administrative costs are minimal. It just takes a little research.

Bob