Stop cancer cells growing by cutting off their food supply

To grow big and strong you need to eat. For a cancer cell to grow big and strong, it also needs to eat.

So what do cancer cells like to eat ?

Pretty much the same thing most of us like to eat – they like SUGAR.

So one way to weaken them, is to put them on a serious diet.

Putting cancer cells on diet

This is what researchers at British Columbia Cancer Research Centre did to some human cancers.

In the study, human tumours were implanted into mice. The mice were then fed different diets and the progress of the tumour carefully monitored.

The mice were either fed

A high carb diet (55 % carbohydrate, 22 % fat, 23 % protein)
A low carb diet (15 % carbohydrate, 26 % fat, 58 % protein)

NOTE : The typical “Western” diet would be considered high carb.

Carbohydrate starved cancer cells struggled to thrive

What the mouse ate impacted on what the cancer ate.

Mice who were fed lots of carbohydrate, effectively provided their tumour cells with a feast but those fed low carbohydrate levels, created a famine for their tumour cells. Carbohydrate starved cancer cells grew far more slowly.

Breast cancer risk also reduced on low carb diet

The researchers decided to see if a low carb diet might prevent the cancer from getting going in the first place.

To do this, they used a very special type of mouse. The mice they used had a collection of “bad” genes, which put them at very high risk of developing breast cancer. They put the special mice on the two diets.

The high carbohydrate mice ended up in BIG TROUBLE. 70 % of them succumbed to the cancer and only one made it to 2 years (a normal life span for a mouse). In comparison, only 30 % of the low carbohydrate mice developed breast cancer, and more than half of these mice, reached or exceeded their normal life span.

Dieting a strategy to beat cancer ?

The fundamental principle of ALL dieting is too restrict calories. Since fat contains lots of calories, conventional dieting advice focuses on restricting fat. Most health gurus and dieticians advocate a low fat / high carbohydrate diet.

This standard diet ends up feeding cancer cells, so to beat cancer requires a different type of diet.

A low carbohydrate diet is an anti-cancer diet

Restricting carbohydrates is actually a better way to empty fat cells of their excess fat and this research shows, that it has the added benefit of draining the life out of cancer cells.

The science behind the low carbohydrate anti-cancer “dieting” effect, is likely to be due to the cancer cell being deprived of both food (sugar) and insulin, which acts as a growth promoter.

So rein in that insulin – it will keep you from packing on the pounds and help stave off the dreaded BIG C.

Based on a press release from American Association for Cancer.

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Small things can make a big difference to your health

You can stop cancer cells growing by cutting off their food supply