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Can fasting YourSelf help combat cancer?
FASTING the body of food for a couple of days could help in the fight against cancer, according to new research.
Scientists have discovered that a 48-hour fast seems to protect the body’s healthy cells against the toxic effects of chemotherapy drugs.
The breakthrough could provide a solution to a problem that has confounded cancer experts for years — how to target chemotherapy so it destroys cancer cells but leaves healthy ones intact.
It seems depriving healthy cells of the food they need for fuel sends them into a kind of survival mode, where they become highly resistant to stress or damage.
Experts describe this behaviour as similar to animals waiting out winter food shortages by hibernating.
But cancer cells do not react in the same way. Instead, they carry on growing and remain just as susceptible to the effects of chemotherapy as they do when the body has a full supply of food.
The result could be that doctors can cure more cancers by using higher doses of chemotherapy drugs to CANCER shrink or destroy tumours.
CANCER affects one in three people in the UK at some point in their lives. Many end up needing a course of chemotherapy to try to control the spread of the disease.
Treatment may involve drugs which block the effects of certain hormones or affect the immune system, but the main group of drugs that are used are called cytotoxics, which mean they poison cells to stop them reproducing.
There are more than 100 different cytotoxic drugs in use for cancer, but none is capable of telling the difference between normal and cancer cells.
Although healthy cells usually recover from the toxic effects of the drugs, they need some time to recuperate.
This means treatment is often given in short bursts, with several weeks’ break in between to allow normal cells cells a chance to recover. But many patients still end up suffering unpleasant side-effects such as hair loss, nausea and extreme tiredness.
If doctors could find a way of protecting healthy cells, they could give patients shorter but more intense bouts of treatment, with fewer adverse effects.
For more than 50 years, there has been evidence that fasting — or limiting calorie intake — can slow the ageing process by switching on some kind of internal protection mechanism in the body.
There is even a Calorie Restriction Society, a U.S.based organisation whose members deliberately limit food intake in an attempt to live longer.
The latest findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that depriving the body of calories in this way could also transform cancer care.
For the study, mice with cancer were fasted for two days before being given a high dose of chemotherapy. Tumour cells were destroyed by the drugs, but the healthy cells survived the treatment intact.
In a separate group of mice that ate 'normally', the treatment killed more than half of them and caused severe weight and energy loss in the survivors.
Laboratory tests suggested fasting had a similarly beneficial effect on human cells. But UK cancer experts have warned patients not to fast themselves until there is more evidence that it works and is safe.
Cancer Research UK science information officer Henry Scowcroft said: ‘This is an interesting result based on solid science and may open up new avenues to improve cancer treatment.
‘But it doesn’t really fit with what we know about chemotherapy, which is that if you are healthy, well-fed and you get enough nutrients you tend to cope with it better.
‘Until these findings are confirmed in human trials, we strongly advise people undergoing cancer treatment to eat a healthy, balanced diet.’
Daily Mail
29 Apr 2008
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