Can low carbohydrate ketogenic diets inhibit cancers?

Strict Keto while taking chemo Summer 2016 and after did stabilize sites, but did not make them disappear. The sites disappeared only after I went full carnivore, i.e., zero carb. The folks in Hungary have success when their patients go on carnivore diets, too. BTW, I mostly eat red meat, thus triggering all the benefits Dr Bikman showed in his insulin / glucagon presentation, including ketogenesis and all the important factors also present in fasting. Has anybody thought of doing a study of red fatty meat carnivory as a (adjuvant) treatment for cancer?

You've raised a number of very interesting questions. First, as to the matter of a ganglioneuroma, I don't know the pathology well enough to even to hazard an educated guess as to how it may respond to a ketogenic diet. Our current experience with how ketogenic diets work in cancers has to do with a) their dependence on glycolysis and b) their generally hypoxic microenvironment (not unrelated to the glycolysis). Cancers generally have these characteristics, but I'm quite a bit less certain about benign tumors including ganglioneuroma. The mechanisms that we believe to be in play that permit ketogenic diets to inhibit cancers include a) inhibition of insulin secretion (since insulin receptors are often membrane bound on cancer membranes, so lowering insulin may help; b) secondarily, that ketosis, from strict insulin inhibition, may have additional inhibitory effects in some cancers. Why don't you email me directly at eugene.fine@einstein.yu.edu.

We already have some results as described in some of the text here but there are several answers as to why they haven't been done before, the main one being that we humans don't always see the obvious and we are subject to our limited experience. What is it about ketone bodies? We learn about it in the context of starvation and untreated type 1 diabetes which doesn't happen much and when it does happen is threatening. But how much of the time were our ancestors hunting and gathering and how much starving or at least on really extended fasts? The idea that the biochemistry of ketone body metabolism was as fundamental to our evolution as glycolysis and the TCA cycle is not something that we think about a lot or, for some of us, is a thing that sits in the back of our mind for years until we suddenly realize it is a really big deal. Took me way longer than some people. There is also the fact that medicine which exerts a major influence in the research is about drugs. The mind set of medicine is that drugs are about science and and diet is about "lifestyle" which is not serious. Thanks for your backing and we think your optimism is justified. It is precisely because we think that it is sure to be fruitful that we are persisting in the face of limited support from the usual sources of funding. We don't know the answer but I always tell students is that the best research project is one where you know you'll get definite results.

Thanks again. We're thrilled. Gene and Richard

Thanks. I will have to read the paper carefully but are you suggesting that the lactate/bicarbonate ratio could give us an experimental handle on the Warburg effect?

We are very grateful to Willeke. Email address would allow us to thank her personally.

Thank you Rose!

Dear Melissa, You've done so much already; just to know that you and others like you are out there and wiling to support our work is so helpful to us, Sincerely, Gene and Richard

Have you had any feedback from those patients who took your advice and went on a ketogenic diet?