Ipt chemotherapy

[Sriyantra]

This has been offered by to me (with additional therapies) by a German clinic.. Klink St George in Brannenburg. Anyojlne have any experience of that?

[FCoffey]

IPT, Insulin Potentiation Therapy, uses significantly reduced doses of chemotherapy drugs in an attempt to target cancer cells and spare healthy cells.

The patient's serum glucose is driven to very low levels with an injection of insulin while under close medical supervision. The glucose levels are so low that many patients are semi-conscious during the procedure.

Many cancers are obligate glucose feeders, and quite a few have much higher than normal levels of glucose receptors on the cell membrane. The low blood glucose levels "starve" the cancer cells. Healthy cells can switch to burning fat - which is one of the reasons the high-fat ketogenic diet is employed by some cancer patients.

Many chemotherapy agents are glucose analogs. In IPT, relatively low doses of these agents are administered while serum glucose is highly depressed. The theory is that the cancer cells with their overexpressed glucose receptors are more likely to take in the drug.

IPT is offered at clinics in the US and Mexico as well as in Germany, so if travel costs are a factor you might check around.

I haven't tried IPT myself but know cancer patients who have tried it. Like regular chemo, it doesn't work for most people. Like regular chemo, it certainly works for some people.

The toxicities associated with chemo are significantly reduced, and many patients report no nausea, hair loss, neuropathy, liver damage, and other common outcomes of conventional chemo. Nothing is guaranteed and some patients I know did experience some toxic effects, despite the dose being less than 10% of a conventional chemo dose. I suspect they would not have tolerated conventional chemo very well.

I'd ask any clinic you are considering to provide references and some sort of summary of their experience treating prostate cancer. Check those references - talk to the patients, talk to the doctors before you make a decision.

Good luck!

[Sriyantra in reply to FCoffey]

Thanks a lot for all that. I read somewhere that most Prostate cancers weren't so glucose dependent... which makes me wonder about the effectiveness of this. Can I ask what you meant by "Like regular chemo, it doesn't work for most people. ".. since Doxetaxel seems to work very well for many people (altho not sure what stage).

[FCoffey in reply to Sriyantra]

It works well for some people. If you give it to enough people then I suppose it could help "many" people. During the Phase III clinical trials used to get approval they used Doxetaxel on about 1000 androgen independent (hormone refractory) prostate cancer patients. Tumor response was about 12%.

web.archive.org/web/2010060...

That dates from 2010, there are probably newer studies available.

Like ADT, most chemo eventually stops working for most people. For some, the extra months of life are worth the many sacrifices. Others can't tolerate it.

[Tall_Allen in reply to Sriyantra]

You are quite right - unlike many other cancers, prostate cancer feeds primarily on fats not glucose (except towards the end). That's why all this dietary advice to limit sugar intake for PCa is pure poppycock. In fact, when they tried insulin-like growth factor blockers for PC, they failed to have an effect. You are also right that docetaxel is one of the most effective drugs in the PCa armamentarium, especially if used earlier. Unfortunately, many people wait too late to take it, when its effects are more limited. But even then, about half the men taking it had their PSA cut in half or more, and their quality of life improved.

[Sriyantra in reply to Tall_Allen]

They feed on fats?! Like even the healthy fats I'm taking in like coconut and olive oil? I waited unfortunately (declined it because I was told that my liver was severely struggling by two alt health practitioners I trust - heavy metal toxicity and mold suspected). So now I'm unsure if the quality of life / cell die off trade-off would be worth it in terms of taking it now. Altho IPT Docetaxel sounds like it wouldn't cause many side effects in low-dose form. But the insulin is the key part in that case, and my situation is late-stage (extensive mets throughout skeleton).

[Tall_Allen in reply to Sriyantra]

Carbs, fats, and proteins are essential nutrients - your body can't survive very long without them.

[BigRich]

I contacted them in 2002. I chose to have a consult with Sloan instead.

Rich