Metabolic therapy for cancer

This post is mostly for @birdman (if still paying attention to this thread) and @colleenyoung

Background first: My wife has been diagnosed recently with metastatic triple positive breast cancer (MBC). A large unilateral pleural effusion is what prompted seeking care. She had Stage III breast cancer in 2014 (ER+, PR+, HER-), age 47, with some cancer also found in right arm lymph nodes. Mastectomy and chemo. NED for 9+ years. The cancer and treatment kicked in her Type II diabetes (first started as gestational in 1998 then 2002) and early menopause. She's had—and hates!—hot flashes ever since. In 2015 she started Metformin but went off of it in late 2019 or early 2020, because in spring of 2019 she learned enough about diabetes to know she needed to radically alter her diet. Initially very low carb and high healthy fat. Her labs eventually showed her to be non-diabetic (though we understand once there, always there). All other labs have been beautiful. Non-smoker; no alcohol. Over the last year or so she moved more into true Keto and also carnivore, and has also been doing intermittent fasting and 2-4 day fasts for longer than that. She has been that rare exception who has had the discipline to not indulge in sugars, carbs, processed foods (read "poison"). And yet here we are with MBC.

She will not be doing chemo this go-round. We have seen the survival curves and she's just not interested in using her remaining time going through that kind of treatment. But...

She won't be giving up on the diet and we are considering the research and protocols suggested by Dr. Seyfried. Seeing as how you, @birdman, did what I am or was about to do, i.e. research it, will you be able to point me in the right direction to go directly to some understanding about the combination of diet and the drug DON(sp)? As you said:

"As for me, the deeper I dove into it, the *less* likely I think this to be a practical 'cure' for cancer. There are still many good reasons to utilize a Keto diet for health reasons, and that is what I do it for. Any benefit for my melanoma is 'extra'."

It seems we are on the same page, not looking for a "cure" and outright rejecting the obviously kooky stuff, and yet if there is enough to Seyfried's work and trying something along those lines, then living a bit longer without chemo, slowing the progression, it seems my wife is halfway there because of her dietary discipline.

Also, now more for @colleenyoung (or maybe others following this): my wife also has zero interest in leaving her home to chase down treatments. She is comfortable enough with her mortality that we won't be traveling to find a treatment. If she's going to be sick she'd rather be sick at home with her family and friends nearby. As such, how might one go about finding a legit (integrative?) doc in our area (SW Virginia) who would be willing to explore this with us? Does Mayo connect with docs away from their hospitals in such a fashion? My wife's oncologist is clearly standard-of-care oriented, pushing the chemo and other drugs.

Thanks.

I’m treating at Mayo in Phoenix/Scottsdale AZ
I’ll check out the article.
Thank you.

@mddrm, you've articulated your wife's journey concisely and clearly. I appreciate the backgrounder.

Diet, exercise, and healthy living have been proven to reduce the risk of cancer as well as reduce the risk of it returning elsewhere in the body (metastasis). But lifestyle choices or diet regimens are not a prevention guarantee. I wish they were. It is a gut punch when one does all the "right" things and cancer returns anyway. This gets into a dangerous mindset of blaming oneself or having others accuse the patient that they didn't do enough. It can also give birth to charletans who claim to have the curative diet or supplement, etc, making unfounded promises. Not that you or wife are doing that. Sometimes people do.

It's obvious that your and your wife's approach with low-carb, healthy fat and ketogenic diet along with intermittent fasting helped reverse her diabetes and no doubt improved her health. Perhaps it even delayed the return of cancer. Will we ever know? Like you, I choose to believe her dietary discipline gives her a leg up for the journey ahead.

Like your wife, my father choose not to have chemo when his colorectal cancer returned. Our family supported that choice. We were granted twice as long with him than was predicted. Towards the end, diet consisted of anything he wanted 🙂

I strongly encourage you to look into palliative care as well as integrative oncology. I see that Virginia Oncology has recently added integrative cancer to there practice https://blog.virginiacancer.com/integrative-medicine-coming-to-virginia-oncology-associates

Is your wife currently a Mayo Clinic patient?

I have stage 1 lung cancer and I am following a keto diet (20 gram carbohydrate) after listening to Dr. Thomas Seyfried YouTube videos.

A very low carbohydrate diet (20 grams) needs to be monitored by a physician with testing at home. I purchased the Precision XL glucose and ketone monitor with test strips on Amazon. I have regular labs done through Ultalabs or my doctor.

Dr Eric Westman, Dr Jason Fung and other highly educated physicians prescribe low carbohydrate diets (20 gram) to treat other metabolic diseases like diabetes, obesity, and epilepsy. There are online programs with medical and dietitian supervision for keto diets to treat diabetes, obesity, insulin resistance, and perhaps cancer if you can't find a program locally.

I also highly recommend reading Dr William Li's book " Eat to Beat Disease" which is packed full of foods to include in your diet which naturally contain bioactives to fight cancer. I include foods in my diet each day from the 5 food lists in Dr William Li's book with bioactives to support the body's 5 natural defense systems to fight disease, including cancer.

I developed heart failure, AFib, pulmonary hypertension, valve regurgitation, hypoxia, and chronic kidney disease after Covid and the shots. Radiation therapy and chemotherapy are not treatments I will consider.

Best of luck to everyone on fighting cancer and improving overall health!

Good luck with this. As for me, the deeper I dove into it, the *less* likely I think this to be a practical "cure" for cancer. There are still many good reasons to utilize a Keto diet for health reasons, and that is what I do it for. Any benefit for my melanoma is "extra".

Why do you feel that way? Is it because people can't manage to go into ketosis for 2 weeks to save their life? That is all Seyfried's protocol requires.
I have been eating less than 10 carbs/day for almost a year now and have beaten 2 cancers, 1 was a melanoma, and lost 72lbs.
I am convinced cancer is 90% metabolic and food and environmental factors are responsible for almost all cancer.
What have you got to lose? We have been "at war" with cancer since Nixon in 1971 and have made almost no progress in 53 years of being "At war" with it. The only significant drop in cancer rates have been from smoking cessation.
What Seyfried says makes complete sense. What the rest of the establishment says makes none.
If you read why medicine actually started using radiation as a treatment it will horrify you. Plus oncologists make 65% of their revenue from prescribing chemo. Chew on that for a minute.

@colleenyoung : Thanks for the response and absolutely, we are charlatan-wary, understanding that any treatment is ultimately palliative. We're not looking for a cure. But, I have to say that charlatantry can be found just as much within the medical-industrial complex as without. While never saying "This treatment will cure you," (for fear of lawsuits!) the pitch is placed in either glossy terms or alternately in subtle scare-tactic fashion, such as, "If you *don't* do the chemo you won't live as long," all the while downplaying the side effects, quality-of-life issues, and the possibility that the treatment itself could be the thing which kills you! It's like all those drug commercials with happy people in soft focus, while the narrator rattles off the fine print.

“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” William Goldman, The Princess Bride

I believe your father chose wisely!

No, my wife is not a Mayo patient, and Virginia Oncology has no nearby locations to us. Traveling great distances for treatment is not an option, as I indicated. I also note that the "integrative medicine" there is meant to deal with side effects only while still practicing the standard slash, burn, and poison approach. This seems to me to be wholly different from the research being pursued by folks such as Dr. Seyfried.

And one needs to be careful as well with painting someone as a charlatan if the *only* reason for doing so is because they consider the possibility that the medical-industrial complex might just have it all wrong. No, I am not at all suggesting *you* are doing this! I'm just pointing out that it's oftentimes the outside-the-box thinkers who make the greatest discoveries.

So, all of that to say, yes, we deem the approach we are taking as palliative in nature, and because of my wife's character, discipline, and diet, she may very well be one of those statistical dots down in the far lower right of the survival curve. Or, she may not, but she's good with that.