Fat diet will help in the treatment of cancer?
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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A unique combination of radiotherapy and fat diet can be a new method of fighting cancer.
A team of scientists led by Adrianna Shek from the Barrow Neurological Institute of the St. Joseph Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona, USA managed to cure a mouse with malignant glioma (a type of aggressive lethal brain tumor) using a unique combination of radiotherapy and a special diet that involves consuming large amounts fat, while carbohydrates in the diet are limited, and proteins are virtually excluded. This diet causes the body to use fat, and not carbohydrates to produce energy. The researchers argue that this diet can be safely used as an additional method in the treatment of human brain cancer.
Adrienne Shek and her colleagues were the first to conduct such experiments.
"We found that a fat-rich diet significantly increases the antitumor effect of irradiation. This suggests that the diet can be used as an additional method in the modern standard complex treatment of malignant gliomas in humans, "explains Adrienna Shek.
A diet with a high fat content has been used since 1920 in the treatment of epilepsy. Perhaps soon she will also help to fight cancer.
Under normal conditions, the body uses carbohydrates, which are rich in products such as sugar, bread, pasta, for the production of glucose. It is glucose is the main source of energy for the body. With a fat diet due to the restriction of carbohydrate intake, the body can not use glucose, and then the main source of energy for it become fats. This process is known as ketosis.
Having tested a fat diet in sick mice, scientists found that animals, whose diet consisted mainly of fat, lived on average five days longer than their other relatives, with the same treatment. Most mice on a fatty diet survived without signs of tumor recurrence for more than 200 days. While among mice with a normal diet, no one lived longer than 33 days.
Scientists explain this effect of a fatty diet on the development of a tumor by reducing the stimulation of growth hormones. Thus, in combination with radiotherapy, a fatty diet stops tumor growth, and can also reduce inflammation and swelling around the tumor.
The next stage in the study of a team of scientists led by Adrianna Shek should be experiments with people.
Scientists have shown that it is possible to make tablets from the specific fatty acids that the body receives with a fat diet, which will help cure epilepsy and cancer patients without side effects such as constipation, hypoglycemia, growth retardation and bone fragility.
There is evidence that suggests that a high-fat diet with a restriction of carbohydrate and protein intake can have a beneficial effect on brain homeostasis and has the potential to treat not only cancer and epilepsy but also other brain diseases.
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