Tim Ferris' Tools of Titans has a section from a doctor (not oncologist) who recommends fasting the days before chemo treatment. Supposedly it sensitizes the cancer cells to the chemo. I'm hesitant to give advice to cancer patients on the internet but there's more recommendations (in my book it's pg. 32-33). He also mentions keto diet, exogenous ketones, metformin, dichloroacetic acid, and finally hyperbaric oxygen, rapamycin in "modest, intermittent doses" and finally sequencing the tumor to see if a checkpoint inhibitor could be effective.
Again, recommendations from a health guru book and not an actual doctor, that I'm just copying here in case it helps. I have no experience with cancer other than a close relative passing away when I was much younger.
It sounds like a really bad idea for a Stage IV cancer patient to fast. In later stages they frequently already have substantial weight loss... and in the last few weeks, people actually stop eating entirely as the body starts to shutdown. Death usually occurs when the weight loss reaches 30-40%.
Encouraging them to stop eating seems like it would just accelerate death.
I just went through 6 cycles of 5-day IV chemotherapy (AIM) and I fasted for all of them, for a total of over 35 days of water-only fasting during the last 5 months. I can’t find the PubMed link right now but there were small studies that looked like healthy cells would go into kind of a suspend/preserve mode that lessened side effects, whereas cancer cells still experienced the intended cytotoxicity. I tolerated the treatments quite well, lost hair of course but only vomited twice during the whole time. Lost weight each time but was able to put it back on quickly during the following week for each cycle, though I do want to watch body composition (don’t want to trade muscle for fat).
Did it make a difference in effectiveness? I actually have my follow up scans tomorrow to find out. As you can imagine, I really really hope so.
I'm not a doctor. Ive just spent a lot of time looking into this (as im sure you have) because a close relative died from Stage IV lung cancer.
There are studies on fasting with chemo.. and depending on the type of cancer its either effective or ineffective. My comment was specifically about the end stages where cachexia is common (from my link above):
"Cachexia is associated particularly with cancer where the prevalence can reach 50–80% in advanced malignant cancer."
And all of the advice Ive found says fasting is not recommended for patients with cachexia.
It sounds like it was fine in your case though because you were able to regain the weight. Best of luck with your scans.
Certain hard cancers are known to depend on blood sugar for growth as they can't metabolize anything else. It makes sense that a keto diet, therefore, would slow tumor growth, and I've heard of oncologists recommending it. Keto diets prevent prevent elevated blood sugar naturally. It's not a silver bullet but when it comes to cancer you've got to take every advantage you can get.
Lots of people have responded to this with similar strategies to what we used. Keep in mind, my wife was 35 when she went through this. We had a 1 and a half year old, she was breastfeeding and was in decent shape overall. For the first few treatments, she was able to fast for a couple of days before. She did a fairly strict keto diet for a few treatments as well, with her ketone levels being 1.5 millimolar or higher. She did take metformin for a little while, although she quit taking it after a while because she just forgot and was overwhelmed.
All that being said, she pretty much abandoned all of the additional about halfway through her treatments. She had to have half her liver resected, and she had a HIPEC procedure at the same time. When they did the final biopsies on her metastases in her liver, it was 100% dead. She's now been NED (no evidence of disease) for a few years now. I don't have delusions that it will never come back, but I can hope.
I don't know if anything she did helped the chemo do it's job. It's not exactly something you can A/B test. I think it's possible, but I also think her being so young and in good shape to start with made the biggest difference.
Have a read to the book: Cancer as a metabolic disease.
I don't know how true is what they claim in the book, but basically it's the following.
All cancer cells obtain their energy from fermentation and not oxidation. They use glucose for that fermentation process and they propose fasting and a ketogenic diet as a treatment.
Antioxidants can actually promote fermentation and inhibition oxidation.
IF you do an excess of iron (chloride), it reduces the CD4 cells and increases the cytotoxic CD8 cells.
I say chlorides because consistently for many studies, notably zinc but applies to Iron, phytates and tannins bind and inhibit the absorption of these two metals, but leave copper alone. Chloride based metals get into the body very quickly.
I'd also look at the mistakes in some studies, different parts of the world have different theories and its possible if you look at enough to see old theories being quoted and not assertions from more recent studies.
The jury is out on what is a good diet to consume for different types of cancer let along a healthy life, its contradictory at best, zinc is good for tackling some cancers, and bad for others. Copper is good for tackling some cancers and not others, and that just looking at two common metals in the diet.
So if the experts knew, I think they would recommend a diet to go on, but they are so steeped in patient privacy they undermine their own authority I think, not to mention come across in general as quite dictatorial.
I have also been messing with some body building amino acids and I liked histdine which is one of the four amino acids that start with zinc, the other three are glutamic acid (glutamate), aspartic acid and cysteine (N-Acetyl Cysteine). Histidine is precursor for histamine which helps immune cells migrate through tissue. Aspartic acid mediates some cysteine based immune responses.
Its also worth looking at vit D, a Wellcome trust study had reverse engineered the human genome about a decade ago and found that most of the Vit D receptors are concentrated around immune system genes (2776 iirc). But you need zinc and cysteine to build the zinc fingers found on these vit D receptors and vit D will switch on some genes and switch off some genes.
Oncologists have access to the testing and measuring equipment, I see no harm if interested in this stuff to get the data from their tests and check their theories against studies found in google scholar, if you wanted piece of mind.
These experts dont always publish their theories so there isnt the transparency, and they dont ask about diet which can be significant in some cases, so they undermine their expertise imo.
And thats before you get into the debate of hackers tampering with results and other things which seem to question the fragile nature of computer security.
And I'm not recommending anything other than question the experts.
Again, recommendations from a health guru book and not an actual doctor, that I'm just copying here in case it helps. I have no experience with cancer other than a close relative passing away when I was much younger.