As I mentioned in earlier post, there is great movement in investigating how
combinations of therapies work - because even though every individual therapy seems to have its rationale, the results are not good enough. Even the Gerson therapy is emphatic that all of its many constituents need to be properly followed, no skimping, ommissions, shortcuts etc.
My friend is 69 yrs old. I passed on to him research by Dr Valter Longo from University of Southern California who has been a lynchpin between various teams researching, with the highest clinical rigour, such combinations of orthodox and complimentary/alternative treatments.
Radio- or chemo- therapy are toxic treatments that gamble on more of the cancer cells being poisoned and killed than the healthy cells. It is still considered the most effective in comparison, but there are many unpleasant effects and success is variable
One of these alternative approaches is fasting - for the reasons given in the previous post vis a viz cancers love blood sugar, acidity etc and the simple action of ketosis in fasting creates opposite conditions that cancer cells have difficulty living with. Normal cells have evolved to deal with times of starvation for over 40 days, cancer cells cannot, they are greatly weakened quite quickly.
Fasting alone as a cancer treatment is shown to improve outcomes a little, chemo is also shown to improve outcomes, but together they are proving to be exponentially more effective, eg childrens' neuroblastoma is a most aggressive cancer, with a very small survival rate, maybe 5%, but using this treatment they are already getting 40%.
If a cancer is diagnosed while the patient still has strength, then using a protocol of fasting along with chemo-therapies multiplies the efficacies of both approaches.
Why? Because when you have fasted for over 48 hrs we enter ketosis and the healthy cells "shut down" aiming to survive the famine, whilst Cancer cells, super avaricious for blood sugar, will absorb whatever is around and the only thing around to eat for them is the methotrexate or similar chemo drug, which kills them off.
Sure fasting is not easy, but chemo is not either. Chemo- usually has nausea associated with it whilst those who fast do not experience nausea.
Another factor is that our immune system kicks in whenever we take in
any foreign matter, and that includes food. So with fasting any immune response is directed purely at the chemo drug and to the cancer cells which are being killed off by it, decomposing and needing excretion. The rationale all makes sense.
My friend's oncologist was very orthodox and advised against fasting, but he had the support of nursing staff and he been in correspondence with Dr Longo so he took control of this part of his treatment, along with bombarding doctors and demanding full explanations of each aspect of their treatment so he would know what
he had to to do, e.g. it took a half dozen questions and my googling to find out simple things they
should have told him, e.g. that after methotrexate therapy he should be drinking water voluminously as it is water soluble ... (just one example).
He eats well and often between fasts, and is very disciplined in other ways as well, resting, doing what exercising he feels capable of etc. He is using a 'gratitude" mantra to keep his mind from trolling through unnecessary speculations. (He says he does 2 or 3 x 108,000 each day!).
His response to this combined fasting+chemo protocol is at
the highest possible level of expectation and everyone is very pleased with the progress. He has had sensations return to his feet which he hasn't felt in over 2 years, lesions in his neck have disappeared and much more.
If you read the literature, it is considered early days for treating human this way "officially" but (Note Well) it is already common practice in veterinary cancer treatments!
Protocol - fast 3 full days (72 hrs) before chemo begins, during and 24 hrs after completed.
If chemo is administered over 4 days that means 8 days' fast. Not
easy maybe, but neither is living with or dying from cancer. Short term displeasure for long term gain. My friend said he felt no effects from the chemo, no nausea etc, just the discomfort of fasting which he could tolerate well enough as he was quite inactive and hospital food was rubbish anyway.
In the link below, Longo explains, among other things, how it can save govt. health budgets billions - through efficacy and it costs nothing to NOT feed people.
The Science ShowLongo Other searches will bring up his published papers