Boston College biology professor Dr. Thomas Seyfried
May 2018 update: The answer to my question at the end of this post is “Yes it seems that you can get into ketosis on a plant-based diet.” Check out Miriam Kalamian and her “Keto for Cancer” book here. Long overnight fasts seem to be a good way to kickstart the process. Lupper, anyone?
For more on the metabolic approach to managing cancer, start with this very short summary of the New York Times’ recent piece. Talk with your oncologist and share Seyfried’s most recent article . Ask your oncologist to contact Seyfried at thomas.seyfried@bc.edu.
Dear Senator,
Meet the Moses of the metabolic movement, Dr. Thomas Seyfried.
He’s leading a tribe of distinguished scientists who are looking at cancer with a new lens. Their anti-cancer approach treats cancer as a metabolic disease.
Cancer cells metabolize, or burn, fuel for energy in a faulty manner. They have a defective engine, their mitochondria, and burn glucose and glutamine, an amino acid, in a way that supports cancer cells’ eternal growth. Their cell messaging systems–the pathways through which cells send messages to multiply and divide and ultimately die, like all normal cells should– have gone kerflouey.
That’s what happens in cancer, say Seyfried and others. And here’s how they suggest treating aggressive tumors, including metastatic cancers and your glioblastoma, to kill off tumor cells and restore your mitochondria to good health:
1/ Get your body into ketosis–the state in which your cells burn fat bodies (ketones) for fuel. While normal cells can survive on fats, ” (t)umor cells have difficulty using ketone bodies and fats for fuel when glucose is reduced,” he says.
2/ Get metabolic health practitioners on board, and add drugs (such as 2 deoxy-D-glucose) and dietary changes to reduce glucose and glutamine. Reach out to
- Dr. Adrienne Scheck, PhD, a brain tumor researcher in Phoenix
- Dr. Craig Thompson, the president and chief executive of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, or his colleague, Dr. Lewis Cantley, director of the Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medical College, or Dr. Chi Van Dang, director of the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania
- Naturopath Dr. Kara Fitzgerald in Newton, CT or naturopath Dr. Natasha Winters
- Dr. Jeanne Wallace, PhD, a nutritional consultant who has been treating patients with brain cancer for two decades. She’s got many success stories. Remember Dr. David Servan-Schreiber, the MD/PhD author of “Anti-Cancer: A New Way of Life” who survived 19 years with a deadly form of brain cancer? Wallace was his guru.
- a calorie-reduced, low carbohydrate, high fat ketogenic diet–in which you eat fats only, and a small amount, or
- intermittent fasting (IF)–such as fasting a few days a week or long, overnight fasts several times weekly (16 hours a day of fasting, to hedge your bets, leaving an 8 hour window for food. )
Eat and Beat Cancer 
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Just use some exogenous ketones such as ketone esters or ketone salts like beta-hydroxybutyrate, this will increase the number of ketones in your blood system regardless of what your diet is.
Obviously, for cancer, you want to reduce your glucose as much as possible, so its best to eat a ketogenic diet, but a vegetarian diet without fruits or starches with exogenous ketos will also provide low glucose – high ketone blood levels.
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Many years ago I cared for a friend who had leukaemia. She had a bone-marrow transplant but unfortunately died about 6 weeks later. I have been studying LCHF way of eating to reverse type 2 diabetes and came across this post. I wish I’d known about fighting cancer with low carb & fasting. I believe she would have recovered if this information had been available for her. Keep up the great work you’re doing. Regards Carol
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