[Yizahi]

I'm not doubting the results (yet), but I just can't understand how is this possible. Chemotherapy basically damages host cells, with a lot of collateral damage. It already can cause all sorts of digestive tract problems and weight loss among other things. And now they propose to cut energy intake even more. How is this beneficial I can't understand.

[inglor_cz]

Chemotherapy is tuned to kill cells that divide. Cancer cells happen to divide a lot, but sometimes normal healthy cells do too. (Not all of them.) Thus they become collateral damage along the cancerous ones. Hence nausea and other unpleasant effects.

If you can persuade the normal healthy cells to hunker down and stop dividing for a while, the killing effect of the drugs will concentrate on the cancerous cells alone. This is what fasting is expected to achieve. It is not alone in this regard, anything that inhibits mTOR (e.g. rapamycin) should in theory have similar effect.

[Yizahi]

Got it, thanks for explanation

[projektfu]

The idea, as far as I understand it, is that fasting makes cells more quiescent and less likely to undergo mitosis. But cancer cells cannot respond the same way and continue dividing, causing more specific uptake of chemo drugs that damage cells during mitosis. Fewer bystanders get damaged.