I have enough mysteries with my prostate cancer to decide to go back on the road for additional brains to review where I stand. As in the beginning of this horrible adventure, severe pain and fatigue remain my constant companions. So off to Duke this time. The initial visit for meet and greet did result in some useful information: my current treatment (based on SOC guidelines) is not what I need, my body is deteriorating at too fast a rate-losing teeth is one example-based on where I’m at after 4 years, I’m not going to improve if I follow current treatment course, and it is likely I have some additional significant illness which has not been found. I thought I was dealing with mainly side effects, but maybe it’s more.
Reading through submissions from many of you, diet keeps showing up as a critical issue. My desire for food is pretty low, so I eat what I can to obtain some nutrition. And many of you have identified sugars as really bad things.
Are such beliefs based on valid studies/trials, or is this one of those intuitive things that just has to be correct?
There are many other questions I could ask, but improving one thing at a time is ok with me.
Thanks for your time and knowledge in considering this.
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Twoofus
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I think it's fairly established that sugar does not feed PCa. High-fructose sugar should be avoided for other health issues (obesity, CVD, etc) that may indirectly have an adverse impact on your PCa. Moderate intakes of "healthy" sugar (fruits - not fruit juices, for example) should be ok. Look into glycemic index of foods for selection process:
Eating sugar is not as bad as starving to death. If you're dealing with low appetite and weight loss, using sugar to make food more palatable and increase caloric intake is a valid strategy IMHO.
First, it is a myth for all cancers that switch to glycolysis. The cancer cells do have a greater need for glucose, but they simply take it from the blood, as do other cells that need it. A healthy body keeps circulating glucose within a narrow range. It would be nice if we could starve the cancer, but becoming hypoglycemic wouldn't work because the brain would be starved too. And we'd be falling over in the street.
People say sugar when they should be saying glucose. Many seem confused by the term "sugar", thinking that they need to give up sucrose. In fact, all digestible cabohydrate is turned to glucose - including low-glycemic complex carbs.
Take a look at this post from 5 days back [1]: "Prostate Cancer: Why a Vegetarian Diet Helps". In the video, Mark Scholz says:
"That admonitition to avoid sugar if you have one of those other cancer types is very reasonable."
Another case of a respected doctor being clueless about basic stuff.
Scholz again:
"Interestingly, if you inject radioactive sugar ... the prostate cancer couldn't care less".
As one would expect, he gets that right. Otherwise, we would all have had an 18F fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) PET scan by now.
PCa cells continue to favor palmitic acid for energy & you can't starve them of that either.
There is an exception to the above. Advanced PCa cells may well switch to glycolysis. 18F-FDG PET will pick up tumors that have done so, but it will not pick up the others.
Having said that, IMO the thing to be concerned about is insulin resistance. In the pre-diabetic state the pancreas will be secreting high levels of insulin - a PCa growth factor.
& so, glucose spikes are an issue. They can be avoided by always including fat when you eat carb.
Stopping glucose spikes is important, IMO, but most PCa cells do not use glucose, so are not directly vulnerable to glucose manipulation.
As I mentioned, some PCa can switch to glycolysis at a late stage. A keto diet safely reduces glucose. For instance, the brain can switch from glucose to ketones - which is why a ketogenic diet has long been safely used to control seizures in young children.
How would PCa respond? There needs to be a study on men who have tumors visible via 18F-FDG PET. The tumors might eventually adapt, but there might be a window of opportunity for adding another therapy & getting better results than with either alone.
I view the first 5 responses as being credible. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
I’m only asking about the impact on the prostate cancer. I know I’m not doing myself any favors in other areas, e.g. my mouth and teeth issues, weight(somehow I’ve gone from 255 to 205 @ 6’2” over the past 2 1/2 years), or ENJOYING a great meal with family and friends.
Man I sure do not want to starve to death. Enough of that already in the world.
I can pay better attention to fat and sucrose content.
There are many foods I hope to resume in the future. George is my lead doc at Duke. I was impressed.
My thanks to each of you for sharing this knowledge on a somewhat obscure issue.
Sugar is an evil thing these days and nobody needs to have it added to their cups of tea, coffee. Since 1980, food manufacturers began to push highly processed foods for profits without nutrition and they added gob fulls of fructose to very many foods to make you get hungry all the time and then buy more. Fructose made from corn syrup and is hard to use as energy so its broken down to fat, so obesity and diabetes rates have gone sky high. Sucrose is cane sugar, and is more easy to convert to energy, but ppl have become lazy so that also adds to fatness and ills.
There is dextrose in honey, and lactose in milk, and in moderation these are tolerable.
Pca does not need much sugar of any kind to grow. So if you don't eat any sugars at all, your bloodstream glucose level will go a little lower, but high enough for any cancer to grow well. If you starve yourself, then you die before the cancer dies. Your body will break down stored fat and muscles to maintain glucose levels if you starve.
Sugars are simple carbs, easy to store as fats, and maybe metabolise.
Complex carbs are starches, as found in brown rice and many edibles, and best of them all have high glycaemic index, GI, is far better for you than white rice.
So you can see that you need to read a pile of books about Nutrition.
I eat salads every night + maybe 2 fried eggs, and have a salad sandwich for lunch, and 4 table spoons of dry rolled oats for breakfast cooked in a cup of water.
Its far less calories than most, but I was 85Kg+ in mid winter, but now amp 83Kg, and its hard to lose weight while on enzalutamide for my stage 4 Pca after having chemo and Lu177 in last year. I'm now cycling about 150km weekly, it takes about 8 hours and is serious exercise, and that's what is really needed in addition to a frugal diet nobody I know would eat to shift the weight and get fitter.
Psa is 0.4, so I am OK now but don't know for how long. I have survived since diagnosis in 2009 with Gleason 9 inoperable, probably already spread.
I've been chemically castrated since 2010, I had lots of drugs that suppressed Pca for awhile but they didn't stop it growing slowly.
I lost a molar at 19, and another at about 63, but no more since because I spend $1,000 on an excellent lady dentist who for me seems like an angelic superstar.
I don't eat any red meats or drink alcohol because they make my osteo arthritis ache a bit. I do eat fish and eggs for protein, and there's protein in lite milk that has fat removed.
I'm 72, and hospital doc thinks I am most healthy stage 4 patient he's ever seen; I keep turning up dressed in lycra to talk to him, after cycling 20km from home. and I often keep going after so total ride is 60km.
I have sedentary life when not cycling, apart from occasional house work like clipping hedges and mowing grass.
Patrick I must say you are very knowledgeable person I have met I came through something exciting would like to share with you and everyone please allocate your 15 minutes to go through it foundationformetaboliccance...
Ketogenic diet requires a super strong willpower and who has access to hyperbaric chamber? If I ever thought I needed to go in that direction, I might, but nobody has suggested I should, and since I have no personal experience of this treatment for myself or of anyone I know who did well with Pca, whatever I might say about it could only be a vague opinion, aka bullshit, so on that note I should STFU about keto. But one man in another group said keto diet worked for him well, based on what he said that was cancers in general depend on blood glucose to grow, and they perish id glucose levels reduce. Well, we argued about that because I wanted proof for truth and for Pca, its need of glucose is so low that it will grow very well in a starving man. I also emailed a uni researcher looking into how glucose absorption into cells could be manipulated, and he said it was basically impossible to stop cells taking in glucose, cancer included. If he did find he could stop glucose uptake then he'd cure cancer, and prevent the obesity crisis, you pop a pill, and that delicious meal of junk food all goes down the toilet instead of converting fat and causing diabetes etc. Millions would love a pill like that one, but its not here yet.
Anyway, I'll just have to wait until respectable research backs up claims for keto diet etc before relying on that to kill mu Pca. Lu177 seems to have been successful for at least awhile, and I remain uncertain about what next when Pca flares up and roars at me again like it did last year.
When I was diagnosed 3. 1/2 years ago my nutritionist told me to eat anything I could stand ,because the cancer would find its own source of food. After regaining my appetite I have gained a sweet tooth never had one before. But now I have to eat my pie and ice cream every night. Doctor said just don’t lose weight 😜😜.
Well when I raced in bicycles in 1980s-90s, my race weight was 82Kg, and I was 184.5cm tall, and BMI < 25, and fat % of my weight was twice that of the guys who always beat me up hills, they all looked like broom handles with muscles, and I was the slow coach with GFE genes, ( Get Fat Easily) but shielas said I had a wonderful figure, not too skinny, and certainly not fat. I succeeded to win a few races in B grade vets in club here of 200 bloaks and a few shielas. A graders had always been skinny, and freakish. Such was life at 40.
Well now I am 72, and weight is 83Kg, but its been impossible to stop muscle mass atrophy and fat to increase, even though my BMI remains about the same as it was in say 1989, 30 years ago, when I could average 36kph for an hour on a mainly flat road. Many others who were older managed to average 40kph+, and now, some of these guys are still around and still cycling faster than me and looking even more freakish than ever. Some have lost so much weight that have lost muscle power as well and are much slower than me.
But anyway, in theory, its good for an athlete who ages to get lighter as years roll by because he has less muscle power and muscle weight than years ago, and there's no good reason to have a higher fat to muscle ratio than he did when he was younger, so if muscles reduce by say 10Kg then so should the fat, but instead in many men fat increases, adding weight that is like having lead in your saddle bags. In 2017, on Zytiga, I did manage to get down to 81Kg, but once off this darn drug weight went up. I'm having to eat little to lose some weight over summer while on enzalutamide which is a fattening cancer suppressing drug. But chemo last year knocked my muscle function around and I lost 2kph because of it.
But that's life. I had a nice cycle today, 65km, 21.5kph average, and doing that felt just as difficult as when I cycled the same distance at 40 at 29kph.
But hey, I ain't dead, I ain't in palliative care, most of me works real good, and I am grateful to Nature to be still alive. So for me, losing weight is OK, and bowls of ice cream with apple pie are toxic, I just need a small amount of carbohydrates and enough protein and some olive oil, and plenty of green fresh vegetables and no processed foods. I could easily be 5Kg lighter and be healthier for it. It won't happen, I know myself too well.
I basically have limited athletic abilities, I am but a plodder, but on the bike I feel alive, healthily stressed, and I ain't the only one. I was in a social ride with a group last week, about 20 men who were older and younger, and the healthiest were slimmer than me. I found I could cycle faster than all of them if I wanted to, but not on a *social* ride. There were 3 ladies with us, one was quite heavy, and she needed her bicycle with an electric motor to be able to keep up.
The other two ladies were fairly slow, and seemed to have defied the trend of getting fat when they aged. They seemed so sane and balanced as ppl, there they were, looking good at 70. So there's nothing wrong with having a BMI of say 23 if you find that everything works well.
Stage 4 here, going on 40 months. When I started treatment the nutritionist told me to eat anything I could get down as the cancer would make its own sugar. I eat almost everything not much red meat but have a terrible sweet tooth. Pie and ice cream every evening. PSA is <0.05 since finishing chemo. Fighting the monster 🙏🙏
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