There are interesting materials how fasting and methods of modern medicine could be perfectly combined. Especially in the treatment of oncologic diseases.
Doses of poisons used to treat cancer can soon be increased without fear for the future of the whole organism. As it turned out, a short hunger strike significantly reduces the toxic effect of these drugs on healthy cells, not giving such protection to cancer cells. Why – is not yet completely clear. The healing properties of short fasts have been known for a long time. There is even a hypothesis thatstarvationin different religions appeared partly to improve the health of the organism. But not all biological effects of food calorie restriction have been studied. For example, last year several research teams, combining “starvation” with genetic modifications, achieved life extension in yeast, worms and mice. Similar mechanisms of regulation of sugar metabolism allow scientists to believe that the same effect can be achieved for humans – if not even with the total life expectancy, then at least on the number of emerging diseases. This time Italian and American oncologists suggest fasting for therapeutic purposes. They found out that dietary restriction protects normal cells from chemotherapy, while not providing such protection to tumor cells. To be fair, the idea of fasting in oncology is not new: first, alternative medicine and then even some scientists promoted low-calorie diets as a way to fight tumors. Liccia Raffaghello, who led the work, did not specify how they came up with this idea, but it was an elegant combination of classical and unconventional methods.
Chemotherapy remains one of the leading tools of oncology, not only on its own, but also in combination with surgery. The idea of the method is simple: tumor cells grow faster, and therefore they absorb more nutrients, and any other substances. That is, theoretically, it is possible to select such a concentration of the drug in the blood, at which the tumor cells will die, and the toxicity threshold for normal, healthy cells will not be reached. But this is in theory. In practice, the toxic effect of chemotherapy on the body sometimes makes even refuse treatment, despite all the tricks of experts – for example, the introduction of the drug into the artery that directly feeds the tumor, with the clamping of collateral pathways of blood supply and veins, through which the blood leaves the tumor. A rather promising direction in this area is targeted drug delivery, which is carried out with the help of biotechnology, or, as it has recently become fashionable to say, nanobiotechnology. But this is still far from practice. The idea with fasting with the right approach and good contact between doctor and patient can bring excellent results in the near future. To confirm their hypothesis, the authors of the paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science conducted a number of experiments on various models.
Proto-oncogenes
The genetic apparatus of cells has a complex system for controlling cell division, growth and differentiation. Two regulatory systems that have a cardinal influence on the process of cell proliferation have been studied.
They started with the brewer’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Previously, the same authors had shown that a little starvation increases yeast resistance to oxidative stress. This time they studied the effect of reactive oxygen species on starved cells in combination with variations in proto-oncogenes, genes that control cell division and are linked to cancer initiation.
Deprived of the Ras2 or Sch9 proto-oncogenes, the “hungry” yeast were a thousand times more resistant to oxygen than their counterparts with the active form of either gene. The same effect was observed for the proto-oncogene TOR. Scientists attribute this phenomenon to the effect of the insulin regulatory cascade on which Ras systems are tied. For IGFR – receptor to insulin-like growth factor – its direct participation in the regulation of longevity has been proved. However, the detailed mechanism of this effect of fasting remains unclear. Scientists went further and added to the experiments the chemotherapeutic agent cyclophosphamide – a substance that transforms in the human liver into an active drug form. The results were the same: starvation increased the resistance of healthy cells, but reduced such yeast with active forms of proto-oncogenes. After that, the scientists decided to move from mushrooms to mice and humans. In cell cultures was conducted another series of experiments in which both oxidative stress and cyclophosphamide did not kill a line of healthy glial brain cells, but successfully coped with tumor cells, including neuroblastoma and human glioma. It is tumors of the nervous system due to their inaccessibility are the greatest difficulty for oncologists. The experiments on live mice were also successful, both for the scientists and for the mice that had been starved before the experiments.
Metastasis(from Greek “movement”, “transition”) is a secondary pathological focus resulting from the transfer of a pathogenic agent (tumor cells, infectious agent) from the focus. After injecting the rodents with tumor cells, the scientists “assigned” the subjects a high dose of etoposide – a chemotherapeutic agent that damages DNA. In the group, pre-starved, almost all survived, although metastases were registered. The full-fed mice were not so lucky: about 50% died from the toxic effects of the chemotherapy. Toward the end of the work, scientists slightly correct the original hypothesis, noting that starvation still slightly protects and tumor cells, slightly reducing their sensitivity to “chemo”. So the idea is not to starve cancer and thereby increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy, but that starvation may allow to increase the dose of the drug (author’s note: this is what Western thinking means, the emphasis is on the drugs anyway) and thereby the effect on tumor cells without increasing the influence of toxic effects on the body. Partly because of these effects, one should be wary of rash fasting during doctor-prescribed chemotherapy. In addition, one must consider that these were only preliminary studies conducted on a few tumor lines and only two drugs. No clinical confirmations of the effect have yet been made, but it is hardly to be doubted that scientists will be looking for them.
Researchers at the University of Southern California have found that a few days of fasting can protect patients from some of the unpleasant and dangerous side effects of chemotherapy used for cancer.
During experiments on rodents, the researchers noted that after a high dose of chemotherapy, those mice that were fasted before the procedure felt fine, while half of the rodents that were fed before chemotherapy died. The researchers emphasize that on their own, people should not experience starvation before chemotherapy. However, the results of their study may be useful for transforming this procedure so that while it kills cancer cells, it does not affect healthy cells.
Scientists have done some interesting experiments on rats
One batch of rats was irradiated or fed food containing radionucleotides and starved. A group of perfectly healthy animals was starved for comparison. The physiologic period of starvation in rats is 12 days. The control group of healthy animals after this period of time completely died out, and irradiated lived 24 days and looked even better than before, and did not think to die. The researchers had to put them to death and their tissues were carefully analyzed, which revealed that they looked just fine, like young, healthy animals, and did not contain any radioactive damage! Why is this happening? It turns out that starvation during increased biosynthesis requires energy, and the previously unabsorbed radiation is now fully utilized for this. Evil turns into good! Along the way, a number of other mechanisms that protect the body from radiation during starvation have also been revealed.
Another miraculous effect of hunger has been recorded by American scientists.
They studied the effect of fasting on the development of severe forms of cancer. The animals were divided into two groups – experimental and control. The rats of the control group were exposed to radioactive radiation. The dose was selected so as not to cause rapid death of the animals, but in 2-3 weeks after irradiation all of them had blood cancer. Another group – experimental – was luckier. Before irradiation, the animals underwent a course of complete starvation. It would seem that the organism weakened by starvation should react to this negative impact even sharper, the disease should take more severe forms. But the results were just the opposite! In the experimental group compared to the control group, the number of diseased rats decreased by 70%.
In his time, the French surgeon Pochet used therapeutic fasting in surgical practice.
He recommended fasting within a week before and after surgery. On the basis of extensive clinical experience, Pochet concluded that operations under fasting are much easier, anesthesia is more favorable, with less narcotics, etc.
Symbiosis of surgeons, oncologists and doctors of other specialties together with specialists in therapeutic fasting could give a better therapeutic and preventive effect.
