Nov. 17, 2021 –The traditional recommendation to “feed a chilly, starve a fever” has a restricted proof base, however new analysis highlights how feeding fat and sugar to a tumor might gas its development.
Pancreatic tumors in mice develop extra slowly when the animals eat a calorie-restricted weight loss program, findings recommend. The outcomes, published in Nature, don’t imply that anybody with most cancers ought to embark on a particular weight loss program, particularly given that individuals aren’t mice. However extra analysis on this space might determine combos of specifics diets and drug therapies that improve most cancers therapies.
Scientists have lengthy identified that most cancers cells are ravenous, consuming a great deal of glucose as they develop. The query is whether or not ravenous them of glucose would gradual this development with out harming the remainder of the physique. To get a solution, the researchers labored with mice carrying pancreatic tumors. They fed a low-calorie weight loss program to 1 group, a traditional weight loss program to 1 group, and a high-protein, high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic weight loss program to a 3rd group.
Solely tumors in animals consuming the low-calorie weight loss program confirmed slower development, implying that the tumors wanted greater than glucose to continue to grow. Glucose ranges had been decrease with each calorie restriction and the keto weight loss program, however lipids additionally had been decrease with calorie restriction.
All cells, together with most cancers cells, use lipids to construct their protecting outer membranes. The elevated lipid ranges within the keto weight loss program might have given tumors all of the lipids they wanted to construct new cell membranes.
The outcomes recommend that the important thing to slowing most cancers in these mice was to starve tumors of each glucose and lipids, as solely the calorie-restricted weight loss program did. The wholesome tissues of the physique nonetheless want these vitamins, one purpose sufferers with most cancers shouldn’t change their diets with out scientific steerage. However the findings trace that utilizing weight loss program or medicine to limit consumption of some lipids or their use cells could possibly be a path to ravenous a tumor with out ravenous the particular person.
