Many of those references don’t support the claim or only support it very weakly. For example, one of the articles in the long list of citations is this one, and says:
None of the LI changes observed between and within the three arms of the trial were found to be statistically significant. Thus we failed to prove that glucose consistently stimulates or lipids inhibit tumour proliferation despite a trend in this sense.
So the data isn’t quite that strong. Some of the other bits above are a little weaker than one would hope for:
Ketone bodies can serve as an alternative energy source for those cells with normal mitochondrial function [23], [24], but not for cancer cells [25].
But the reference for 25 is only for brain tumors in certain limited contexts in children.
Overall, this is an interesting area of ongoing work, but it isn’t nearly as universal as you might think. There are also other issues involved: people with late stage cancers often have enough trouble eating as is (a large fraction actually die of starvation), and getting them to eat anything is an accomplishment. So at that level, for a lot of post-metastasis patients, this will be happening naturally anyways.
people with late stage cancers often have enough trouble eating as is (a large fraction actually die of starvation), and getting them to eat anything is an accomplishment. So at that level, for a lot of post-metastasis patients, this will be happening naturally anyways.
Starvation does not equal ketosis. If cancer patients are suffering from nausea and lack of motivation to eat anything, they and their carers may not select high fat low carbohydrate foods that would promote and sustain ketosis and may instead choose simple and easy to digest carbohydrates and sugary treats.
Many of those references don’t support the claim or only support it very weakly. For example, one of the articles in the long list of citations is this one, and says:
So the data isn’t quite that strong. Some of the other bits above are a little weaker than one would hope for:
But the reference for 25 is only for brain tumors in certain limited contexts in children.
Overall, this is an interesting area of ongoing work, but it isn’t nearly as universal as you might think. There are also other issues involved: people with late stage cancers often have enough trouble eating as is (a large fraction actually die of starvation), and getting them to eat anything is an accomplishment. So at that level, for a lot of post-metastasis patients, this will be happening naturally anyways.
Starvation does not equal ketosis. If cancer patients are suffering from nausea and lack of motivation to eat anything, they and their carers may not select high fat low carbohydrate foods that would promote and sustain ketosis and may instead choose simple and easy to digest carbohydrates and sugary treats.
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