Sweets and cancer

Cancer says eat whatever the hell you like.
We're going through enough.

The emotional impact of all of this is awful & we must reward ourselves with every completed scan, biopsy.... whatever.

Cancer cells feed off glucose (like all other cells in your body, but

1. Everything you eat gets reduced to glucose in your blood.

2. Your pancreas regulates your glucose level: unless you have diabetes, reactive hypoglycemia, or are malnourished, your blood sugar will stay in a normal range.

3. Your brain would shut down before you could lower your blood sugar enough to starve cancer cells.

So it's another example of people getting one single factoid and running with it without understanding the system complexities.

That said, some prostate cancer treatments (like ADT) increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, so going easy on the sweets is a good idea for a different reason. But that doesn't mean you need to avoid refined sugar, or that eating a chocolate bar will in any way affect the risk of cancer progression (as your oncologist no doubt explained).

tl;dr To lover the risk of type 2 diabetes while on ADT, just make sweets a "sometimes" treat.

I read all sorts of things. You can't have sweet food. You can't have spicy food. You can't have coffee. I asked my urologist. He shrugged his shoulders & said "Eat what you like".

Cancer cells have very active metabolism and use glucose in MUCH higher rate than normal cells. Some cancer scans (such as CAT) use radio active glucose to detect cancer cells in a body. Patient ingests glucose and than cancer lights up on a scan like Christmas lights.

That being said , as North mentioned, body produces it's own glucose from other molecules BUT only when starved and when it is absolutely necessary since it takes a LOT more energy for a cell to "digest" fat or protein to the basic molecules and than use special metabolic pathways to produce glucose from those. It is the difference as it would be to just open the fridge and take a scoop of ice cream OR go to store, buy sugar, cream, emulsifiers , vanilla extract, and than drive back home and spend an hour or more MAKING that ice cream ; ). So - is it the same - no ; ).

Second important factor is that excess sugar causes inflammation in our body and that inflammation causes cancer by itself ! What is excess sugar - it is sugar that is readily available in a bloodstream , not used by our cells since it was not needed - it is in excess - free floating and readily available to cancer cells since they ALWAYS need it because they grow and grow and divide and grow.

Third - it is observed that patients who take Metformin have less incidence of aggressive PC . Metformin is very old mediation that effects glucose metabolism and has many promising effects in new studies for PC treatment. You can easily google RT for PC and Metformin, and /or Metformin and ADT for metastatic patients etc etc.

Bottom line - it is advisable to avoid simple sugars , I mean it is advisable in general - no ?

Amen to that@!

Where is jeffmarc when you need him?

My wife loves to bake cookies and cakes. We have a freezer full. I eat one piece of cake (small) Or a couple of cookies every night. I have a dish of strawberries at the same time. I’ve been undetectable for the last 27 months and have survived for 16 years with PC. Overdoing it is not good, Your blood sugar gets messed up and diabetes is just waiting for you. My A1c is below 5.6 every three months when tested. If I eat too many sweets, I am not gonna stay that way and neither will you. It just takes control over your diet.

Some will say to avoid sugars. (Note that carbohydrates are chains of sugar molecules.) Also, some fruits have been bred to be high in sugar - grapes, cherries, and others - to be more palatable. So, if you avoid sugars, that involves a lot of good-tasting food.

That said, I’m not sure that sugars are as much a problem with prostate cancer (which feeds on testosterone) as they are with other types of cancers (like brain, lymphoma, and lung cancers) that feed on glucose.

(Here’s a 2019 PCRI presentation titled “Does Sugar Feed Prostate Cancer? Does Fatty/Adipose Tissue Attract Cancer?” ) —> https://www.youtube.com/watch

@brianjarvis Testosterone is the activator for prostate cancer, I think, not the food. The cells feed on glucose, like all the other cells in your body (cancerous or non-cancerous).

Here's an article from Mayo on sugar:
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/blog/cancer-education-center/newsfeed-post/sugars-role-in-cancer-1/
It opens with this: "Sugar is often a source of anxiety and fear for people with cancer. It’s important for people to know sugar does not cause cancer, and consuming sugar does not make cancer cells grow faster, nor does avoiding sugar slow their growth. Sugar, however, may play an indirect role in developing cancer."

It goes on to mention that weight gain and obesity *are* correlated with some cancers, so if your sugar consumption is a major drive of weight gain, it might _indirectly_ be raising your cancer risk. But there is ZERO direct link between cancer and sugar consumption. If your weight is in a healthy range (or sugar isn't the reason for your weight gain), then eating a piece of cake or a cookie will have no impact at all on your cancer. This isn't even a serious debate in the scholarly community, as far as I know.

Hey jeffmarc send some of those cookies I'll eat them with some home made ice cream "sugar free" of course