Starving Cancer with a Ketogenic Diet

I have posted this info in response to a couple different posts, but really wanted to get it out there.  If you try this, please, please, please let us know your results.  It is not easy, but it is both doable and sustainable.  I'm 6 months in and feeling fine, but know that no every one may have similar results.  I am a member of a Facebook group called Real World Keto if anyone wants to go there and lurk to learn more, plus a couple resources mentioned below.  Also, if you want to dive in and just go for it I recommend DietDoctor.com as an excellent resource.

I am diagnosed with Stage 4, Triple Negative, Metastatic Breast Cancer.  It began as Invasive Ductal Carcinoma In Situ in 2014, was treated and I appeared to be cancer free -- or they were in denial -- for 4 years, then experienced a recurrence metastatized to my lungs and some various other areas they were watching, liver, adrenal glands, spine....

As luck would have it, I had been playing around with a ketogenic diet for weight loss, but like most diets cheated a lot, when I was rediagnosed.  During some of my research of the Keto Diet and Cancer on the internet, I ran into a couple resources that made me sit up and take notice.  One was the series of Dr. Boz (Dr. Annette Bozworth) videos on YouTube.  She had used the diet to help her mother get through treatment successfully.  The other was Dr. Dominic D'Agostino's TEDx Talk also available on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fM9o72ykww), a Navy Seal doctor and researcher who discovered during the course of his research how to literally starve cancer.

What I learned from my research and these two doctors, then confirmed through other online research into cancer cell metabolism, is that cancer cells THRIVE on glucose -- sugar, carbohydrates -- as do most cells, but they do it in and extreme way and through a different metabolic channel than regular non-cancerous cells.  Eating carbohydrates (sugars) is like pouring gasoline on a fire to cancer cells.  So I decided to double down on my Ketogenic diet and deprive the cancer of this fuel -- go all Keto Nazi on myself and my diet.

Full disclosure -- I am getting chemotherapy from a very good doctor at Vanderbilt.  However, this same doctor, when I asked her a direct question upon my new diagnosis, "What is the prognosis for lifespan for someone with my condition?"  I got a direct, not sugar-coated (pun intended) answer:  "Average lifespan for someone with your condition is 1 1/2 to 2 years."  NOT what I was expecting to hear.  I was really expecting to hear that I could possibly live for many years to come with the right treatment, but like I said, she didn't sugar-coat anything and gave me a direct answer to my direct question, and I thank her for that.

I went on to ask her what she thought about my hypothesis that the Ketogenic Diet could possibly help deprive the cancer cells of the glucose they thrive on and help with treatment.  Her answer was, "It couldn't hurt."  Now that sounded to me like she was giving me a shred of hope that I could try something that wouldn't interfere with her treament protocol or the study I was enrolled in.  Whats more, I went home and immediately started looking into a will, advanced directives and made arrangements at the family cemetary for a plot.

All of this happened starting in October 2018.  Since then I have received 2 rounds of treatment with Carboplatin, once every 3 weeks, with a scan at the end of 9 weeks -- so 2 rounds of scans so far and in my third round of treatment.  At the first scan my tumors -- the ones they could track and measure as there were many scattered throughout my lungs too small to be measurable -- had decreased 40%!  At the second scan they had decreased another 4% and many of the unmeasurable had nearly disappeared altogether.  My doctor and her researchers were  dumbfounded!  That is a 44% reduction from baseline!

Still, in her world she believes that 'cancer tends to find a way around these treatments' and cautions me that it may return.  I am convinced that this diet is a life-long adjunct treatment that may be the only thing that keeps me alive.  There are many resources online for learning how to do it, but your normal cells can live off ketones produced in your liver, while the cancer cells cannot.  I highly encourage you to research it too and try it.  Like my doctor said, "It couldn't hurt".

Doctors will never use this adjunct dietary treatment because there is no money in it.  They cannot charge for the treatment and big pharma will not fund the research because they cannot profit from it.  So to undertake it we are on our own.  Not selling anything, just hoping for the best for myself and others.