It has been known for 90 years that sugar feeds cancer. Today, experts in nutrition and naturopathy propose a new diet to starve the cancer. In the case of sugar, nothing has been confirmed, and whole grain bread and brown rice certainly can’t be bad, the patient considered recently.
The truth is, they are dangerous foods for cancer patients. The discontinuation recommendation has clear biochemical and physiological grounds.
The human body is made up of organs, each of which has specific functions. Cells work in a similar way. They are made up of many smaller, single organelles with specific functions, such as mitochondria.
All cells contain thousands of mitochondria. They are unique because they contain oxygen. The rest of the cell and all other organelles function anaerobically.
It is the mitochondria that contain the materials and mechanisms necessary to release the energy hidden in the food you eat. It is there that the burning of fats, proteins and most carbohydrates supplied to the body takes place. They allow cells to use the energy obtained in this way.
The cause of cancer is no longer a mystery. It is known that it grows when 60% of a cell fails to meet its oxygen needs. Cancer, unlike all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. Glucose can force Proto-oncogenes to do mutation to form onchogenes which leads to cancer. If you want to know what are Proto-oncogenes then you can search on Google.
This increased appetite for glucose may be due to the fact that the cells of the most malignant tumors have defective or insufficient mitochondria. These organelles are cellular power plants that produce energy.
The fact that cancer cells are mitochondrial impaired means that they cannot obtain energy from fats or proteins, and therefore they desperately need carbohydrates in the form of glucose to feed them. They have been shown to take 3-5 times more of it than the healthy ones.
In fact, their need in this respect is so desperate that they have many more receptors for this compound – according to various estimates; their number is over 6 times more than in the case of properly functioning cells.
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Ketogenic diet
Since glucose is the fuel of metabolism for all cancer cells, scientists are investigating ketogenic diets as the one of the best cancer diets to treat cancer. For nearly 100 years, they have been effective in controlling seizures in children. In the 1960s, they were widely recognized as one of the most popular treatments for obesity and related diseases.
The basis of the ketogenic diet of cancer patients is the strict limitation of carbohydrate consumption (to 2-4% of the total caloric intake) in order to minimize their impact on blood glucose levels. These nutrients are replaced with large amounts of fats (75-80%), such as coconut oil, avocados and oily fish, and with appropriate amounts of vegetable and animal proteins (12-20%). However, patients must monitor their protein intake as excess protein can raise blood glucose levels through a process called gluconeogenesis (making this sugar from components other than carbohydrates).
A ketogenic diet puts the body into a state of ketosis. When blood glucose is low, the liver produces ketone bodies by breaking down fats. Data show that, unlike normal cells, these cancerous cells cannot efficiently produce energy from ketone bodies, but are highly dependent on glucose for this purpose and because it is their energy source, a ketogenic diet could fight cancer simply by restricting its supply.
Since cancer cells do not appear to have the metabolic flexibility to use ketones as an energy source, a ketogenic diet may destabilize the DNA of tumor tissue and limit tumor growth, and thus increase the survival rate of cancer patients. It also makes sense to assume that reducing glucose intake will weaken the tumor’s ability to repair damaged cells.
Nutrition rules
A low-carbohydrate diet is one of many nutritional and lifestyle interventions that can be used to treat cancer. However, it is certainly very promising.
The ketogenic diet, however, has its drawbacks: it requires strict adherence and careful monitoring by a professional dietitian who is familiar with the required metabolic tests, health and pharmacological contraindications.
So how should a cancer patient plan his diet?
First, eliminate all sugars, grains, beans, and other starchy foods from your diet. Sugars come in many different forms, including dextrose, maltodextrin, and corn and agave syrup, so be aware of this and learn how to read the labels. If these limitations go too far, you can give up all sugars at first, then refined grains, and then completely eliminate this group of foods.
If the patient still wants to leave legumes in the diet, he can eat the sprouts. In the process of germination, the starch will turn into cellulose and other indigestible carbohydrates that will not break down in the digestive tract and therefore will not increase the glucose supply.
Of course, you cannot be on a completely glucose-free diet. However, by focusing on overground vegetables, good quality proteins, nuts and berries, you can avoid the high tides from eating sugars (all kinds), grains and other starchy foods.