SO dear frens, despite some early encouraging signs, the Keto diet with fenben and dozens of other supplements and treatments, did not affect my cancer even a little bit according to the scans! Just be aware! The keto diet starved ME but not this aerobic cancer which could metabolize like healthy cells! I lost weight and muscle. I appreciate all the advice given here and tried with all my energy for 5 months of treatment. Every cancer is different, every human body is different. The good news apparently is, it is the slow-growing ones which are still aerobic, so may it be indolent!! ANYWAY I have to live my life and Trust in the Lord.
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We don't seem to be that far off, plus I am very much not an expert, and may have misspoke.
The bioenergetic view does indeed see cancer (and most other diseases) as an energy problem stemming from dysfunctional mitochondria. The big thought is instead of being mutations, cancer is composed of normal cells that have gone bad, and are simply malfunctioning due to lacking energy. To kill them is to kill ourselves. Many can recover if their healthy metabolic pathways are unblocked. The ones that can't be saved are coaxed into apoptosis.
Inside the mitochondria, a cell can burn either glucose or fatty acids through the Krebs Cycle. The sugar burning process is oxidative phosphorylation (OxPhos), and the latter fat burning process is known as beta oxidation. This is what happens to most cells under keto. Something called the Randle Cycle sees to it that a cell does either one or the other, and switches between them according to various signals.
The Randle Cycle is in the cellular cytoplasm, outside the mitochondria. It turns the glucose into pyruvate, and the long chain fatty acids into LCFActal-CoA. As a switch, the Cycle will let one or the other into the mitochondria where both get converted into Actal-CoA, which is metabolized in the Krebs Cycle to eventually send electrons down the electron transport chain to synthesis ATP for cellular energy.
If for whatever reason some threshold of cells get stuck in beta oxidation there will be a buildup of pyruvate outside the mitochondria. To clear this, the cell uses an ancient pathway known as aerobic glycolysis, which can be oxygen-free if need be when fermentation is used. This results in two ATP molecules, far less than the Krebs Cycle, and gives off lactate. Glycolysis is thus, inefficient and produces harmful byproducts that are maybe as harmful as PUFA.
As you say, the cancerous cell cannot create energy from glucose in the normal manner. Without more energy, it can't differentiate into the cell type of the local tissue. Instead, it just consumes sugar, and grows and divides.
I don't know how ketones fit into this picture, nor do I yet understand where the energy produced by beta oxidation goes in the cancer scenario. The picture as drawn does not make a distinction between saturated and unsaturated fats. I imagine both go through beta oxidation, though the Randle Cycle seems to be only concerned with long chained fats.
There are enzymes that convert saturated into unsaturated fats. Brad Marshall at Fire in a Bottle discusses this in come videos. It is complex, and I'm not sure there is much to be done about it. Meat is fine. Georgi never says otherwise. I wonder what happens to the protein? If it's not used directly, it likely gets converted into glucose.
I would agree with that, and go further to say that it is specifically the mitochondria that is malfunctioning, and that is due to something specific (even if we don't know what, specifically).
This is why the cell lacks energy.
To kill the cancer cells is to kill ourselves? I don't follow that logic.
All cells are supposed to kill themselves, via apoptosis. But cancer cells won't/can't do that.
Seems like you're saying that the damaged mitochondria can be "fixed." If so, that would be interesting.
Remember, all dietary protein is broken down into amino acids. So, we are really talking about what happens to those amino acids, not the protein itself.
Most amino acids CAN be converted to glucose ... but to what extent, and what demands it be done?
The body uses amino acid conversion as a last resort, since it takes more energy to convert AA's to glucose than it does to convert fatty acids to glucose.
And can cancer cells, that want glucose, CAUSE that conversion to happen?
I don't know, but I doubt it.
Sadly, most oncologists have no clue about any of this. They are deep into the dogma of chemo, radiation, and surgery. They have no interest in cause-effect or non-medical solutions.
I know. I asked about a dozen some of these types of questions. Only 1 showed some interest in having a discussion. But I realized he was just humoring me to try to get me to see things his way, rather than understand the science behind it.
I would hope that RFK, Jr. will be pushing a more honest discuisson of cancer before his job is done.
Yes, my recent readings support the notion of cancer cells reverting to normal. So killing them as medicine would have us do (and not incidentally, at a large profit) is destroying cells that can take on a proper differentiated role in our body.
I used to be a keto-bro until I started reading and listening to Georgi Dinkov, Jay Feldman, and Mike Fave among others. Despite all I knew about how keto manages to work around all claimed reduced carb limitations, I couldn't put off the power of their arguments. I don't have a good enough handle on all of it yet to convince you, so I will take the honorable way out and bury you in references :-) Not to win an argument, just to make us both reconsider what we think we already know.
All are summaries from Georgi's blog of studies he comes across that support some aspect of his and Ray Peat's bioenergetic point of view.
Acidosis (Warburg Effect) drives cancer through increased fat oxidation (Randle Cycle):
Lactic acidosis arising from glycolysis is a major culprit. The increased acidosis blocks glucose oxidation and increases BOTH fatty acid oxidation (FAO) and fatty acid synthesis (FAS), further inhibiting the oxidation of glucose causing even greater rise of lactic acid. The study shows providing extra glucose can break the vicious circle.
The study also shows that the increased FAS activity seen in cancer is NOT fed by glucose, but by glutamine. And that cancer cells are apparently dependent on FAS for providing them with fuel to oxidize instead of lipids from the diet.
Achilles heel of cancer discovered – its lack of CO2
Study discusses fully stopping cancer growth with a patented CAIX inhibitor. Leaving out that vitamin B1 is a powerful CA inhibitor.
Cancer relies on fat as fuel due to high reductive stress
The study hypothesizes that limiting fat availability to cancer cells may be the best approach to curing it. Besides dietary restrictions, anti-lipolytic agents such as sugar, aspirin, niacinamide, vitamin E, insulin can be used to get down to baseline lipolysis.
Fatty acid oxidation – linking all illness (especially cancer) with stress and diet (fasting / low-carb)
This one is right up the ketogenic alley.
Cancer cells are the result of secondary and downstream effects of a deranged metabolism. Remove the deranging factor and the “cancer” cells likely revert to normal behavior/metabolism.
The study demonstrates that excessive fatty acid oxidation (i.e., β-oxidation) provides both the necessary and sufficient factor for initiation, growth and metastasizing of cancer.
Increased fat oxidation (FAO) sufficient to cause senescence/aging/disease
Addresses the role of reduced glucose oxidation and increased fatty acid oxidation in cancer, among other diseases.
Hope this gives you something to chew on, fren'.