Low calorie diet 'could halt cancer'

[Guest guest]

Seems the anti-cancer effect of CRONing are starting to be noticed.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1410000/1410152.stm

Low calorie diet 'could halt cancer'

 

Low calorie intake could help prevent cancers

 

Eating a low calorie diet could help affect the ability of cancer cells to

reproduce within the body.

Scientists in Israel developed a mathematical model to show how fast-growing

cancer cells need more calories to survive

than healthy ones. However, so far there have been no clinical trials to show

whether this works in humans and

dieticians are urging people with cancer not to starve themselves in a bid to

beat their tumours. We don't know if we

can improve the efficacy of our cancer therapy if we put people on different

dietary regimens. We need to do the studies

 

Cancer risks

 

Obesity and eating an unhealthy diet are thought to raise the risk of developing

cancer. Dr David Eichler, of Ben

Gurion University in Be'er Sheva, Israel, studied whether limiting the amount of

food eaten to only what is necessary

could have a direct effect on the cancer cells. He simulated how cell

populations grow when they have to compete for a

limited supply of energy.

 

Fast-growing cancer cells need more calories to survive than healthy ones. He

found that normal cells multiply more

slowly, but that fast-growing abnormal cells such as those often found in some

cancers died off. Dr Eichler said that

the cells needed a disproportionate amount of energy to reproduce at such high

rates. " Cells with a really strong

energy need have a dilemma. Either they can't grow faster than the rest of the

body - or they'll die by trying to

reproduce faster than the limited energy supply allows them to. " He said that

this suggested that eating minimal, but

adequate amounts of food could help starve tumours.

 

Clinical trials

 

Dr Steven Clinton, a cancer physician and researcher at the Ohio State

University in Columbus, Ohio, told New Scientist

that it was time to test the thesis in clinical trials. " We don't know if we

can improve the efficacy of our cancer

therapy if we put people on different dietary regimens. We need to do the

studies. " He said that he and his colleagues

had done tests on rats with prostate cancer and found that the rats on a

reduced-calorie diet had smaller tumours than

the rats who ate everything they wanted.

 

Dr Clinton said: " It's very clear that diet restriction will inhibit the growth

of the tumour. " But he said that Dr

Eichler's model applied only to cancers in which tumours replicate faster than

normal cells and that this was not always

the case. A spokesman for the Cancer Research Campaign said: " Epidemiological

evidence shows that people in countries

with lower intake of calories have a lower incidence of certain cancers, such as

bowel and breast, than in countries

with high calorific intake. " Obesity has also been identified as a risk factor

for many cancers, so the results of this

theoretical mathematical study seem to fit with established evidence. This

reinforces the balanced diet/healthy body

weight message health professionals have been urging for years. "

 

Catherine Collins, of the British Dietetic Association, warned that although the

study showed some interesting research,

people should not start cutting back their food intake until the work had been

proved in clinical trials.

" This is an interesting study in the test tube, but it would be very hard to

transfer into the body because of the

particular way the body works. But this is certainly adding to the information

that certain nutrients aid tumour

growth. "

 

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Test tube?

 

Here is a very good list of CRONing abstracts and full PDF papers with quite a

few anti-cancer references:

http://o112.ryd.student.liu.se/doc/med/cr/

 

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Good Health & Long Life,

Greg Watson,

http://www.ozemail.com.au/~gowatson

gowatson