癌症是代谢性疾病吗?

Is cancer a metabolic disease?

We know that cancer patients often feel fatigued easily. This is because they experience a process called fermentation. Early studies have shown that fermentation is common in cancer cells. As a result of fermentation, lactic acid is produced and the pH of bodily fluid like saliva  is lowered. So, if you suspect you get cancer, test your saliva or urine pH. Low pH can be one sign of cancer.

Fermentation means anaerobic oxidation of glucose. In cancer cells, glucose is converted into lactic acid and produce energy or ATP less efficiently than the normal glucose metabolism or TCA cycle. Because this process is not efficient for energy production, cancer cells use a lot of energy source glucose for survival and growth.  And they have the capability of completing with normal cells for more glucose.

New studies show that cancer occurs because the normal respiration machine or mitochondria become dysfunctional. In cancer cells, the cellular DNA can become healthy when the sick mitochondria are replaced with healthy ones. On the other hand, the cellular DNA from cancer cells does not cause new cancer cells after they are moved to a cell with healthy mitochondria.  Only when sick mitochondria are present, oncogenes are activated.  In a word, the cancer problem is dysfunctional mitochondria.




The evidence suggests that if you can shut off  the glucose supply, cancer cells could starve to death.  In fact, when starving, cancer cells are easy to get killed by chemotherapy and alternative means.

One way to cut the supply is fasting.  But fasting can last too long.  So a diet called ketogenic diet may be used to provide energy for healthy cells, but limit energy sources for cancer cells.   Ketogenic diet consists of large amounts of fat and some protein and carbohydrate.   Preliminary experiments indicate that ketogenic diet can slow or stop the growth of cancer.

We will discuss more on this issue in the future.

Updated on July 18, 2017

Ketogenic diet more effective than chemotherapy, radiation at treating glioma

A new review study conducted by researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital concludes that ketogenic metabolic therapy is safer and potentially a more effective therapy to treat patients with malignant gliomas than conventional treatments like chemotherapy and radiation.

At this time, the efficacy of the conventional treatments is very limited and extremely toxic.   Sebastian F. Winter, B.Sc. and Jorg Dietrich, M.D., Ph.D. two authors of the report, indicate that more effective therapies are urgently needed to treat glioma.

Ketogenic metabolic therapy is essentially use of a ketogenic diet which consists of high fat, low carbohydrates and low protein.  The diet is calorie-restricted and patients using the diet also practice intermittent fasting.  Patients may use other protocols to boost the overall efficacy against glioma.

The diet is designed to limit the availability of sugar or glucose to the cancer cells.  Glioma cancer cells  like other cancer cells use glucose faster than healthy cells as their energy source. So theoretically, shutting off the energy source can starve the cancer cells and force them to die.