Tag: cancer

Mar0820188th March 20189th March 20183Commentsby Marika

KETOGENIC DIETS FOR CANCER: FUNG FOCUSES ON MYTH, MAGIC, PARADOX

Posted in Cancer

One of the most exciting areas of cancer research currently takes inspiration from the Warburg Effect. Researchers base that on the work of German physiologist and Nobel laureate Dr Otto Warburg in the 1920s.

Warburg described ‘aerobic glycolysis’ – a defect in mitochondrial glucose metabolism. He showed how it causes fermentation of glucose and diverts glucose from energy production to cell growth. That has given rise to the ketogenic diets as adjuncts to conventional treatment methods for cancer. 

Canadian nephrologist Dr Jason Fung has a special interest in weight management, diabetes and cancer. Not the least because many of his patients are obese diabetics. And research shows that diabetes significantly ups the risk of cancer. 

Fung says that the simplistic notion that a ketogenic diet may ‘starve’ cancer cells of glucose does not hold up to the facts. Indeed, in certain cancers, he says that glutamine is the more important component. Here, he looks at the implications of the ‘paradox’ of the Warburg effect. – MARIKA SBOROS

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Dec12201712th December 201714th December 20175Commentsby fmadmin

CANCER: METABOLIC MODEL A NON-TOXIC PATH TO UP SURVIVAL ODDS?

Posted in Cancer

By Marika Sboros

If cancer has touched you or anyone you’ve ever cared about, this book is for you. Even if you just want to reduce your risk of dread disease, it is for you.

The Metabolic Approach to Cancer (Chelsea Green Publishing) is groundbreaking. The book’s subtitle speaks volumes: Integrating Deep Nutrition, the Ketogenic Diet, and Nontoxic Bio-Individualized Therapies.

Yes, the “k” word (ketogenic) diet is there. Yet many oncologists still consider it a swear word despite the growing evidence base. And they pass that prejudice on to patients who believe ketogenic signals grave danger.

Take, for example, an oncologist’s response to a patient in South Africa last year. The patient said that he had done research and wanted to go on a ketogenic diet before and during chemotherapy. He might as well have said that he wanted to inject laetrile (discredited apricot kernel extract) into his veins.

The doctor’s response was abrupt and angry: “In that case, I’ll cancel your chemotherapy.” The doctor went on to indicate that the patient’s medical aid wouldn’t pay for future treatment. That’s enough to terrify the life out of any cancer patient. After all, orthodox treatment costs can bankrupt patients and their family, even with medical aid.

The response was an example of what experts say is “eminence-based medicine”. It is also the symptom of the terminally ill paternalistic model of medicine. This book effectively sabotages any vestige of foundation for that model. It also undermines one of modern medicine’s “most entrenched paradigms”. 

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Nov18201718th November 201730th November 20177Commentsby Marika

CANCER MYTH: DOCTORS ‘TORTURE’ ANCIENT FACTS TO FIT THEORY?

Posted in Cancer

Cancer is big business globally. Cynics  – or realists, depending on your viewpoint – say it’s an industry ‘too prosperous to allow for a cure’. In 2015, the global market for annual sales of cancer drugs hit $100 billion. Estimates then were that it could reach $147 billion by 2018. It’s probably much more by now.

Yet despite the decades-long ‘war on cancer’ and billions spent on research, a cure is elusive. Of course, there has been progress. However, conventional treatment methods of chemotherapy and radiation have serious limitations, both in safety and efficacy. Even orthodox oncologists these days privately admit that these methods can be life-taking as much as life-saving.

Canadian nephrologist Dr Jason Fung has a special interest in cancer. Many of his patients have diabetes, a condition that significantly increases the risk of cancer. He says that there’s good reason why doctors lost the war. They cut the limbs of the facts to fit a popular – but wrong – theory. And still do. He says it’s time to stop lopping off limbs of inconvenient truths about the dread disease Fung turns to a myth of ancient Greece to explain why. – Marika Sboros

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Oct14201714th October 201714th October 20174Commentsby Marika

WHY WE’RE LOSING WARS ON OBESITY, DIABETES, CANCER

Posted in Food for Thought

Want to know why we are losing the war on obesity, type 2 diabetes and cancer? We don’t admit to problems. And the first step to solving a problem is to admit that one exists, says Canadian nephrologist Dr Jason Fung.

Fung has a special interest in weight management and diabetes. He says that there’s a terminal malaise affecting all of public health. It’s that the “experts” don’t welcome dissenting opinions.

Rather than acknowledge the truth, they pretend that everything is just fine, thank you. No one wants to yell: ‘The emperor has no clothes!’

That’s despite an obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemic that dwarfs anything the world has ever seen. And rising cancer death rates. Here’s what Fung believes doctors and researchers should do – starting with changing dietary advice. – Marika Sboros

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Sep18201718th September 201718th September 20174Commentsby Marika

CANCER: LI COOKS UP REVOLUTIONARY MENU TO BEAT IT

Posted in Cancer

By Marika Sboros

For decades, many doctors dismissed the idea that diet can treat or prevent cancer. For decades, US internal medicine specialist Dr William Li did the exact opposite. He actively embraced the idea.

His compelling research has borne fruit – and vegetables. He shows that there really is such a thing as an anti-cancer diet.

Li is on a stellar list of international speakers at the groundbreaking Rethinking Cancer conference in Paris on September 21, 2017. It’s about a real revolution in cancer treatment: angiogenesis, the natural process by which the body grows new blood vessels.

But perhaps most exciting about the Paris summit is that cancer is not the revolution’s only target. And right diet is only one weapon in its armoury. Speakers say that a variety of methods to harness blood vessel power could be the path to beating heart disease, diabetes, vision loss, declining cognitive function and much more. It’s why Rethinking Cancer holds the promise of longer, healthier life.

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Sep13201713th September 20178th March 20183Commentsby Marika

CANCER: FUNG ON WHY IT’S NOT JUST GENETIC!

Posted in Cancer

By Marika Sboros

Divergent views on cancer treatment make some oncologists green around the gills. It’s as if specialists believe it’s their way or the highway to certain death.

Yet patients still die from complications of conventional treatment. That’s when they aren’t complaining that treatment is worse than the disease. Of course, treatment can be lifesaving. But you have only to read Siddhartha Mukkerjee’s The Emperor of all Maladies to know how hit-and-miss orthodox medicine can be against cancer.

Canadian nephrologist (kidney specialist) Jason Fung says aspects of the genetic model of cancer are as unlikely as humans mutating and gaining the ability to shoot laser beams out of their eyes or to stick to walls like a spider. Yet we accept unlikely feats from cancer cells daily. Here, Fung argues for cancer as not just a genetic but also an endocrine disease.

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Sep0420174th September 201731st January 201813Commentsby Marika

Cancer: pilot’s revolutionary survival ‘secret’ takes wings

Posted in Cancer

By Marika Sboros

Air France captain Jean-Jacques Trochon

Can you eat to starve cancer? What about not eating – in other words, fasting? Ask Air France captain Jean-Jacques Trochon and cancer specialists and scientists globally.

Trochon is the visionary behind Rethinking Cancer. It’s a world-first summit in Paris on September 21, 2017, on new horizons in cancer treatment. Hosts are France’s internationally renowned Gustave Roussy Cancer Institute and Espace Maurice-Tubiana Medical School.

Specialists worldwide have accepted Trochon’s invitation to speak on what he believes is a real “revolution” in cancer treatment.  It is anti-angiogenesis treatments. Angiogenesis is the growth of new blood vessels, including those feeding cancer cells. Angiogenesis is the “hallmark of just about every kind of cancer”, Trochon says.  Diet and fasting are on the conference’s revolutionary anti-cancer menu.

But what does a pilot know about cancer research and treatment? Lots as it turns out. Trochon is a cancer survivor who did his own research. On the strength of it, he “intelligently delayed” having chemo and radiation. That decision may be why he is still around to tell his remarkable tale.

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Aug29201729th August 201729th August 201712Commentsby Marika

Fasting without fasting: key to beat diabetes and cancer?

Posted in Food for Thought

By Marika Sboros

Fasting is as old the hills of ancient Greece. Mention just about any Greek sage you can think of: Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, not forgetting the father of modern medicine, Hippocrates and maths whizzkid Pythagoras. All were dedicated followers of fasting. 

Fasting is not for the faint-hearted. In its classical form of no food or drink – except for water – for an extended period, it takes  commitment and discipline. (I’ve only ever managed to last eight days on water only.)

Below, a University College London neuroscientist looks at the power of intermittent fasting. Dr Nick Lesica says it’s ‘all the rage’ right now. Don’t even think of dismissing it as a fad. Research suggests it can give you the benefits of fasting without really fasting.

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Feb21201721st February 20178th December 20175Commentsby Marika

Cancer treatment road ahead: tripping over truth

Posted in Cancer

By Marika Sboros

US physician Dr Michael Eades has written an extraordinary review of an extraordinary book on cancer treatment. He says everyone should read it. I couldn’t agree more. It is a revised version of Tripping Over The Truth, by Travis Christofferson. It is a challenge to orthodox medical dogma on the dread disease. Chirstofferson says that cancer research is “way off track”.

Like Eades, I read it when Christofferson first published it in 2014. Eades says that in its revised version, Christofferson has produced “an absolute gem”, as “gripping” as a mystery novel.

He wrote the review while “hurtling through the sky somewhere over the North Atlantic” flying business class on his way back to the US from Germany.  Eades begins it with what can seem like a strange comparison: commercial aviation today compared with when he first flew to Europe in 1969.

What does that have to do with cancer? More than I wish were the case. Eades says that were he to get cancer today,  he would make a nasty discovery. Unlike commercial aviation, cancer treatment mostly wouldn’t be much different or any more effective than in 1969. Or even 1959. That’s “an awful realization”, Eades says. But there’s a lot more to why his review really is so remarkable.

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Dec30201630th December 20161st January 20179Commentsby Marika

CANINE OBESITY: SCHULOF ON SCIENCE TO PROTECT BEST FRIENDS

Posted in BOOKS

Daniel Schulof and Kody

By Marika Sboros

You don’t have to love dogs to appreciate the brilliance of this book on canine obesity, but it helps. It makes it easier to see why Dogs, Dog Food, and Dogma really is a riveting read. One reason is the subtitle: The Silent Epidemic Killing America’s Dogs and the New Science That Could Save Your Best Friend’s Life. 

It reveals the bare bones of the raison d’etre: evidence-based solutions to the epidemic of canine obesity.

Another reason is that this book isn’t just about canine obesity. It’s also about another global epidemic: of human adipose tissue. That’s the medical profession’s euphemism for excess fat. This book looks at why obesity shortens lives, whether canine or human. And why even moderate obesity in dogs is more dangerous for them than smoking is in humans.

But this book’s biggest strength is probably US author Daniel Schulof. He is not a veterinarian, medical doctor or scientist. He makes no bones about that in his author’s note. In fact, he claims to be no expert of any kind. That’s not true, of course. He’s just humble and that’s a nice trait. Here’s his real expertise and the power of this book:

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Oct0120161st October 20161st October 20162Commentsby Marika

Science in crisis: not just sugar souring faith in experts

Posted in Uncategorised

sugar candyIt should be no surprise that there’s a global crisis in science. Scholars of history and philosophy of science predicted it 40 years ago. Yet it is surprising how many scientists are more interested in profit than universal truths.

Revelations that the sugar industry paid top Harvard scientists to downplay sugar’s harms for decades are but one example. US science writer Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise, makes a more important point in the LA Times: sugar only ‘got a pass’ while dietary fat and cholesterol were blamed for heart disease because other industries and, surprisingly, many of the country’s leading scientists colluded.

Here, Andrea Saltelli, a researcher at the European Centre for Governance in Complexity, sheds light on a growing lack of faith in experts, and how best to stem it. – Marika Sboros

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Sep10201610th September 201612th September 20160Commentby Marika

Cancer: doctors have been looking in the wrong place

Posted in BOOKS

sherlock-holmesHere’s a book on cancer that really is a game changer. Or rather, it will be if the medical establishment were to allow it to be. It is The Cancer Revolution: integrative medicine – the future of cancer care by Patricia Peat.

This book  is ‘no eccentric view from a lone maverick’ , says British health writer Jerome Burne. It contains contributions from 38 doctors, clinicians, researchers and practitioners. It doesn’t suggest conventional treatment is irrelevant. It looks at why, despite billions spent on cancer research, improvement in survival rates has been ‘pitiful’: specialists have been looking in the wrong place for better survival outcomes. Here’ a shortened version of Burne’s brilliant review with a link to the full version. – Marika Sboros

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Sep0620166th September 201621st November 20172Commentsby Marika

Cookbook authors dish up scientific ‘cure’ for cancer!

Posted in BOOKS
Patricia Daly, left, and Domini Kemp, authors of The Ketogenic Kitchen

Patricia Daly, left, and Domini Kemp, authors of The Ketogenic Kitchen

UPDATED

Cancer is big business, a global industry that makes billions for drug companies and doctors. It’s so lucrative, cynics say it’s ‘too prosperous to allow for cure’. Sure, there have been advances, even cases of ‘cures’. Cancer treatment can also be less harsh than in the past. And surgery is also less disfiguring.

But cancer is now pandemic. Cancer Research UK says that’s because we’re ‘growing older’. That’s based on the fatalistic, genetic model of cancer as the result of ‘random errors’ in DNA codes that ‘kick-start a cell’s journey towards becoming cancerous’.

 A remarkable new cookbook, The Ketogenic Kitchen (Gill Books), dishes up a more positive message: the evidence-based ‘metabolic model of cancer’. It draws on an ancient premise: the power of food as medicine rather than ‘the slowest form of poison’ it often is these days. It gives ingredients for as close to cure as modern medicine is currently able to come. By that, they mean absence of symptoms by showing you how not to feed cancer cells. And anyway, who really cares if some doctors don’t consider absence of any symptoms to be a cure in the medically accepted sense? Here, US psychiatrist Dr Georgia Ede looks at why this is no ordinary cookbook, and why even if you don’t have cancer, it should be in your home – Marika Sboros

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Aug13201613th August 201613th November 201624Commentsby Marika

Gary Fettke turns into ‘Australia’s Tim Noakes’!

Posted in LCHF
Dr Gary Fettke

Dr Gary Fettke

By Marika Sboros

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) has banned orthopaedic surgeon Dr Gary Fettke from giving nutrition advice. It has done so after a two-year “investigation” into Fettke’s qualifications.

Overnight they’ve turned him into “Australia’s Tim Noakes”.  Elements of this case mirror the  Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) case against Prof Tim Noakes. Noakes is a world-renowned scientist and medical doctor. Both  cases open up a medical Pandora’s box. Both go to the heart of what it means to be a real “doctor of medicine”. Thus,  these cases are also about who is best qualified to give nutrition advice.

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Jun0820168th June 20168th June 20160Commentby Marika

UK ‘FAT WARS’: MARTIN LUTHER MOMENT FOR MEDICINE?

Posted in LCHF
health

The moment in medicine when sick care becomes health care?

It began with a powerful public statement in May 2016 by leading British doctors, dietitians and scientists demanding that orthodoxy in medicine confronts its terminal weaknesses. In particular, they demand change in official guidelines that are heavily influenced by vested interests in food and drug companies. They say the guidelines are probably the ‘biggest error in the history of modern medicine’, with catastrophic effects on people’s health globally. The backlash was expected – and swift. The ‘rebels’ were denounced. There were resignations from the National Obesity Forum that issued the statement. The rebels remain undeterred. Award-winning British journalist Jerome Burne believes the fat wars herald a much-needed ‘Martin Luther moment’ for medicine. He explains why in a shortened version of his blog on the topic (for a full version, scroll down below). It’s a riveting read. – Marika Sboros

By Jerome Burne*

Last week the front page of The Times carried a story that was an opening shot in a revolution:

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Jun0220162nd June 20164th October 20173Commentsby Marika

Cancer therapy of the future? Already here, says Fettke!

Posted in Cancer
Dr Gary Fettke

Australian surgeon Dr Gary Fettke makes a special study of nutrition for cancer

 The metabolic model of cancer has to be one of the most exciting areas of research these days. Australian orthopaedic surgeon Dr Gary Fettke is making it his life’s work to spread the news. What does an orthopaedic surgeon know about oncology? Lots, as it turns out.  Fettke is also a senior lecturer at the University of Tasmania, and does research into diet to treat diabetes, obesity and cancer. He is also a cancer survivor. Here’s a summary of a fascinating presentation Fettke gave to the low-carb summit in Cape Town in 2015. He titled it:  So you think you need sugar? Your cancer needs it even more! – Marika Sboros

By Gary Fettke

If you have cancer, here’s what you definitely want to avoid:  

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