[jcims]

I’m standing right now near the window on the 20th floor of a cancer center, typing this on my phone while my wife sleeps 10 feet from me.

This is high stakes medicine, yet the current environment has the docs on this floor terrified of doing anything that isn’t in the standard of care runbook. My wife has had elevated blood glucose levels for six months, which is not good when you’re fighting cancer, yet i can’t get anyone to treat it because there’s no clinical evidence that managing glucose levels for her specific type of cancer has any benefit.

Guess what. Nobody’s doing that trial any time soon. Meanwhile there are thousands of diabetics managing their blood glucose while fighting cancer and there is endless material available demonstrating that cancer cells thrive in hyperglycemic environments.

So, i don’t know anything about Juno, they could be sociopaths. But i have no issues with high risk attempts as long as the patients are informed and there are ethical standards for transparency. At least they are trying.

[endothrowho333]

I sympathise with your wife's predicament. Good or sub-par treatment, doctors still get paid.

If you're not opposed to eschewing professional recommendations to not complicate treatment, there are two things that may be worth looking into:

1). Metformin: Helps control blood glucose by significantly increasing sensitivity of insulin receptors, i.e more glucose is shuttled out of the blood stream per insulin molecule. Not scheduled and very cheap. Also trials are being done on it for cancer prevention -- exactly because of Warburg's phenomenon (cancer cells and glucose)

2). Ketosis: Hit or miss. By abstaining from carbohydrate consumption, the result should be drastically reduced blood glucose levels. However, in some people (e.g type 2 diabetics) it may elevate blood glucose due to metabolic disfunction. In any case, caloric restriction in general have the effect of both increasing insulin sensitivity and decreasing blood glucose -- regardless of macronutrient profile

[sjg007]

The doctor though should be able to provide access to a clinical dietician to help think plan the diet and think through the implications. I imagine some chemo and targeted drugs could interfere with lipid metabolism and there is also a risk of acidosis. So I would ask the doctor. It will probably be a case of "we don't know" but diet is basically the one variable under your control besides listening to the doctor.

There's one paper on it from a completed clinical trial. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27525031?dopt=Abstract

Also clinical trials using metaformin during cancer treatment. You might consider enrolling in one of these if it is feasible.

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/clinical-trial...

[jcims]

Awesome suggestions thank you. I had to go to Care Oncology to get a metformin prescription which just arrived at the house today.

I tried going the A1C route to justify intervention but anemia and transfusions both push A1C low. I also just got a prescription for a Freestyle Libre to monitor blood glucose.

We’ve never got quite to the level of ketogenic but have tried focusing on fats and proteins for calories and keeping carbs between 50-100/day.