Ketogenic Diet For Breast Cancer

Following up on the diet related to the breast cancer, I have found many articles and studies. Some of them support a ketogenic diet for treating breast cancer and some do not.

It is advisable to follow with your doctor’s prescription and opinions.

The Keto Diet theory is based on the diet consisting of mainly non-chemical treated meat, coconut oil and cream rich food sources like heavy cream. It may sound easy to adopt this diet. According to different studies targeted on different groups of people, it is difficult to follow this type of diet.

The studies have been conducted many times on some animals as well as humans. Not all of the studies have shown concrete positive health effects. Some studies have also shown that a ketogenic diet can lead to bad and negative health.

Warburg Effect

The promotion of a keto-diet is based on a medical observation that some of the cancer cells use a special type of metabolism called the warburg effect. In this metabolism the glucose is fermented to produce more of the new infected cancer cells rather than a metabolism for producing healthy cells.

The study of the keto-diet for cancer cells is based on the assumption that the ketogencic diet consists of high-fat level food groups. When the body metabolizes this high level fat then it leads to the formation of high level of components called as Ketones in the blood stream which subsequently can reduce or drop the glucose level in the blood.

The cancer cells don’t seem to use these ketones to run the Warburg effect or produce the Warburg metabolism. As a result the cancer cells will not be getting enough of the glucose leading to the glucose starvation state. This will poison the cancer cells by the high concentration of ketones. It will not be able to ferment the glucose and as a result, reduce the growth of the new cancer cells.

The study based on this assumption was to observe the real effects of the keto diet. The main question that comes to mind is that -

Do the tested cancer cells which are exposed to the Ketones really slow down their growth and metabolism?

Do the ketones actually starve or poison the cancer cells and blocks the Warburg effects?

I found a recent study published by a team of scientists who tested if the ketones, at a level that could be compared to what happens in an individual on a pure keto diet, if it stopped the growth and multiplication of the cancerous cells. A short term time period of five days and a long term time period of 14 or 15 days of experiments showed no slow down in the rate of multiplication of these cancerous cells.

Then the observation was made if the ketones had the ability to increase the sensitivity of the cells to chemotherapy or radiation which was a hypothetical advantage of the keto diet. The ketones did not seem to have any increased chemotherapy sensitivity or radiation sensitivity.

Ketones

These findings show ketones have very negligible effects on the cells of breast cancer. However, in some groups, it slowed down the growth rate of the cancer cells. But when tested on the mice it leads to a significant increase of 70% growth in breast cancer cells.

There are other adverse health effects of the keto diet. Another study showed that lesser carbs diets like a keto diet consisting of meat and fat decreased the flexibility and health of the blood vessels. It is important for cardiovascular health. However, Keto diets can help in weight loss. But as this diet is hard to stick to, the sustainable time period for weight loss is hard to predict.

In another recent study found an analysis of numerous international studies conducted by many researchers. It showed lesser carb diets which had less than 40% of carbohydrates and higher carbs diets which had more than 70% carbohydrates raised the deterioration and death rates by about 20% which were over medium carbs diets.

Lesser carbs diets that were predominant in animal protein raised the death rates even more than the normal carbs diets.

Unrefined carbohydrates are different food types than processed carbohydrates. They provide some important biochemical benefits like a very low rise in the level of blood glucose.

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