I was hearing about a couple of studies today, that I thought were interesting. There is a newly developing area of medical research called immunometabolism, which is researching the possibility of reversing certain autoimmune diseases with diet (particularly avoiding carbs) : ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...
It seems to stem from the Warburg Effect, which found that avoiding sources of glucose could starve cancer cells: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warbu...
I noticed that Warburg passed away in 1983, so wonder why it's taken so long to start hearing about this as a method for helping treat cancer (not to be used instead of standard treatment, but alongside treatment). The theory seems to be that glucose is a very easy source of energy, so these energy hungry tumours will feast on it as a priority. It will still draw energy from other sources, but it has to work harder at it, so it won't grow so fast.
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Cooper27
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Thank-you, that was really interesting. I will definitely have to bear it in mind, just on the off-chance it's useful one day. I will be very curious to see what other diseases the find it helpful for, in addition to epilepsy and cancer.
Having had an aggressive tumour removed a couple of years ago (currently having immunotherapy as a preventative to reoccurrence) I was very interested in this as a theory when I first read about it. At the time I recall I came to the conclusion that it hadn’t been proved, but on the other hand, LCHF was going great for me, so even the offchance that reducing sugar could be starving any further tumours from growing, sounded like another good reason to stick with the plan :))
Thanks coming up to 3 years since previous reoccurrence so now feeling very hopeful. That, plus the huge change LCHF has made over the last 12 months and I don’t think I’ve felt better in years. Touch wood!!
That's great. Simply being healthy must surely be a huge factor in cancer recovery. I was just talking to my mum about this, who was lamenting the woeful state of hospital food (no doubt all "scientifically" designed by nutritionists).
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Interesting stuff, although the article seems to be focused entirely on drug development and coyly avoids any dietary implications. Anyway, it's encouraging that this is now becoming mainstream - or at least mainstream enough for researchers to get grant funding without being called cranks, or without having their experiments dismissed as "unethical".
AFAIK the Warburg Effect is only applicable to certain sorts of cancer; as I understand it, some kinds of cancerous cell are only capable of using glucose for energy and can therefore be "starved" with a low-carb diet. It's not a magic bullet because your body always maintains a certain amount of circulating glucose (synthesized from other things where necessary) but I've heard that it has delivered real results in conjunction with conventional therapy.
>> so wonder why it's taken so long to start hearing about this as a method for helping treat cancer
That's the story of low-carb in a nutshell really
I think it boils down to two things:
1) If you don't eat carbs you will die.
2) Fat causes heart disease.
These memes are so deeply ingrained into current medical thinking that they override every other consideration (including, sometimes, common sense).
Oh the link was just to explain what immunometabolism was about, I hadn't noticed the drug bit. But that explains why it's not gotten coverage until now, now they're developing a drug...
What I find interesting is that they're supposedly applying the principles to other diseases, besides cancer now. I'll be very curious to see what diseases it works for.
>> What I find interesting is that they're supposedly applying the principles to other diseases, besides cancer now.
Yes, I think that's the first time I've seen the link between heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and autoimmune disorders explicitly spelled out (in a drug-company-funded paper!). That article implies that it's now generally accepted that these are all linked to a generalised low-grade state of inflammation, and although the author seems to be deliberately ignoring the big flashing orange neon sign over sugar/processed carbs as a likely culprit, the fact that these are now being treated as related diseases is just yuuge.
I doubt mainstream medicine will ever fully endorse the bad-food-makes-you-ill idea (because there's no money in it), but at the very least, this train of thought must surely put a nail in the cholesterol-causes-heart-disease theory because it's completely incompatible with these ideas about inflammation.
This report from the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition details some of the other medical conditions that may be helped by LCHF diet, from acne to Alzheimer’s.
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The NHS is planning to feed diabetics sugar.
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