SUGAR AND CANCER

[Guest guest]

Dr. Jon J. Brooks, M.D. - Trustee

 

The Alternative Medicine Research Foundation USA

 

It puzzles me why the simple concept " sugar feeds cancer " can be so

dramatically overlooked as part of a comprehensive cancer treatment

plan. Of the 4 million cancer patients being treated in America

today, hardly any are offered any scientifically guided nutrition

therapy beyond being told to " just eat good foods. " Most patients I

work with arrive with a complete lack of nutritional advice. I

believe many cancer patients would have a major improvement in their

outcome if they controlled the supply of cancer's preferred fuel,

glucose. By slowing the cancer's growth, patients allow their immune

systems and medical debulking therapies--chemotherapy, radiation and

surgery to reduce the bulk of the tumour mass--to catch up to the

disease. Controlling one's blood-glucose levels through diet,

supplements, exercise, meditation and prescription drugs when

necessary can be one of the most crucial components to a cancer

recovery program. The sound bite--sugar feeds cancer--is simple. The

explanation is a little more complex.

 

The 1931 Nobel laureate in medicine, German Otto Warburg, Ph.D.,

first discovered that cancer cells have a fundamentally different

energy metabolism compared to healthy cells. The crux of his Nobel

thesis was that malignant tumours frequently exhibit an increase in

anaerobic glycolysis - - a process whereby glucose is used as a fuel

by cancer cells with lactic acid as an anaerobic by-product - -

compared to normal tissues. The large amount of lactic acid produced

by this fermentation of glucose from cancer cells is then transported

to the liver. This conversion of glucose to lactate generates a

lower, more acidic pH in cancerous tissues as well as overall

physical fatigue from lactic acid build-up. Thus, larger tumours tend

to exhibit a more acidic pH.4

 

This inefficient pathway for energy metabolism yields only 2 moles of

adenosine triphosphate (ATP) energy per mole of glucose, compared to

38 moles of ATP in the complete aerobic oxidation of glucose. By

extracting only about 5 percent (2 vs. 38 moles of ATP) of the

available energy in the food supply and the body's calorie stores,

the cancer is " wasting " energy, and the patient becomes tired and

undernourished. This vicious cycle increases body wasting. It is one

reason why 40 percent of cancer patients die from malnutrition, or

cachexia. Hence, cancer therapies should encompass regulating blood-

glucose levels via diet, supplements, non-oral solutions for

cachectic patients who lose their appetite, medication, exercise,

gradual weight loss and stress reduction.

 

Professional guidance and patient self-discipline are crucial at this

point in the cancer process. The quest is not to eliminate sugars or

carbohydrates from the diet but rather to control blood glucose

within a narrow range to help starve the cancer and bolster immune

function. The glycemic index is a measure of how a given food affects

blood-glucose levels, with each food assigned a numbered rating. The

lower the rating, the slower the digestion and absorption process,

which provides a healthier, more gradual infusion of sugars into the

bloodstream. Conversely, a high rating means blood-glucose levels are

increased quickly, which stimulates the pancreas to secrete insulin

to drop blood-sugar levels. This rapid fluctuation of blood-sugar

levels is unhealthy because of the stress it places on the body.

 

Sugar in the Body and Diet

 

Sugar is a generic term used to identify simple carbohydrates, which

includes monosaccharides such as fructose, glucose and galactose; and

disaccharides such as maltose and sucrose (white table sugar). Think

of these sugars as different-shaped bricks in a wall. When fructose

is the primary monosaccharide brick in the wall, the glycemic index

registers as healthier, since this simple sugar is slowly absorbed in

the gut, then converted to glucose in the liver. This makes for " time-

release foods, " which offer a more gradual rise and fall in blood-

glucose levels. If glucose is the primary monosaccharide brick in the

wall, the glycemic index will be higher and less healthy for the

individual. As the brick wall is torn apart in digestion, the glucose

is pumped across the intestinal wall directly into the bloodstream,

rapidly raising blood-glucose levels. In other words, there is

a " window of efficacy " for glucose in the blood: levels too low make

one feel lethargic and can create clinical hypoglycemia; levels too

high start creating the rippling effect of diabetic health problems.

 

The 1997 American Diabetes Association blood-glucose standards

consider 126 mg glucose/dL blood or greater to be diabetic; 111125

mg/dL is impaired glucose tolerance and less than 110 mg/dL is

considered normal. Meanwhile, the Paleolithic diet of our ancestors,

which consisted of lean meats, vegetables and small amounts of whole

grains, nuts, seeds and fruits, is estimated to have generated blood

glucose levels between 60 and 90 mg/dL. Obviously, today's high-sugar

diets are having unhealthy effects as far as blood-sugar is

concerned. Excess blood glucose may initiate yeast overgrowth, blood

vessel deterioration, heart disease and other health conditions.

 

Understanding and using the glycemic index is an important aspect of

diet modification for cancer patients. However, there is also

evidence that sugars may feed cancer more efficiently than starches

(comprised of long chains of simple sugars), making the index

slightly misleading. A study of rats fed diets with equal calories

from sugars and starches, for example, found the animals on the high-

sugar diet developed more cases of breast cancer. The glycemic index

is a useful tool in guiding the cancer patient toward a healthier

diet, but it is not infallible. By using the glycemic index alone,

one could be led to thinking a cup of white sugar is healthier than a

baked potato. This is because the glycemic index rating of a sugary

food may be lower than that of a starchy food. To be safe, I

recommend less fruit, more vegetables, and little to no refined

sugars in the diet of cancer patients.

 

What the Literature Says

 

A mouse model of human breast cancer demonstrated that tumors are

sensitive to blood-glucose levels. Sixty-eight mice were injected

with an aggressive strain of breast cancer, then fed diets to induce

either high blood-sugar (hyperglycemia), normoglycemia or low blood-

sugar (hypoglycemia). There was a dose-dependent response in which

the lower the blood glucose, the greater the survival rate. After 70

days, 8 of 24 hyperglycemic mice survived compared to 16 of 24

normoglycemic and 19 of 20 hypoglycemic. This suggests that

regulating sugar intake is key to slowing breast tumour growth. In a

human study, 10 healthy people were assessed for fasting blood-

glucose levels and the phagocytic index of neutrophils, which

measures immune-cell ability to envelop and destroy invaders such as

cancer. Eating 100 g carbohydrates from glucose, sucrose, honey and

orange juice all significantly decreased the capacity of neutrophils

to engulf bacteria. Starch did not have this effect.

 

A four-year study at the National Institute of Public Health and

Environmental Protection in the Netherlands compared 111 biliary

tract cancer patients with 480 controls. Cancer risk associated with

the intake of sugars, independent of other energy sources, more than

doubled for the cancer patients. Furthermore, an epidemiological

study in 21 modern countries that keep track of morbidity and

mortality (Europe, North America, Japan and others) revealed that

sugar intake is a strong risk factor that contributes to higher

breast cancer rates, particularly in older women.

 

Limiting sugar consumption may not be the only line of defence. In

fact, an interesting botanical extract from the avocado plant (Persea

americana) is showing promise as a new cancer adjunct. When a

purified avocado extract called mannoheptulose was added to a number

of tumour cell lines tested in vitro by researchers in the Department

of Biochemistry at Oxford University in Britain, they found it

inhibited tumour cell glucose uptake by 25 to 75 percent, and it

inhibited the enzyme glucokinase responsible for glycolysis. It also

inhibited the growth rate of the cultured tumour cell lines. The same

researchers gave lab animals a 1.7 mg/g body weight dose of

mannoheptulose for five days; it reduced tumours by 65 to 79 percent.

Based on these studies, there is good reason to believe that avocado

extract could help cancer patients by limiting glucose to the tumour

cells.

 

Since cancer cells derive most of their energy from anaerobic

glycolysis, Joseph Gold, M.D., director of the Syracuse (N.Y.) Cancer

Research Institute and former U.S. Air Force research physician,

surmised that a chemical called hydrazine sulphate, used in rocket

fuel, could inhibit the excessive gluconeogenesis (making sugar from

amino acids) that occurs in cachectic cancer patients. Gold's work

demonstrated hydrazine sulphate's ability to slow and reverse

cachexia in advanced cancer patients. A placebo-controlled trial

followed 101 cancer patients taking either 6 mg hydrazine sulphate

three times/day or placebo. After one month, 83 percent of hydrazine

sulphate patients increased their weight, compared to 53 percent on

placebo.15

 

A similar study by the same principal researchers, partly funded by

the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., followed 65 patients.

Those who took hydrazine sulphate and were in good physical condition

before the study began lived an average of 17 weeks longer. The

medical establishment may be missing the connection between sugar and

its role in tumorigenesis. Consider the million-dollar positive

emission tomography device, or PET scan, regarded as one of the

ultimate cancer-detection tools. PET scans use radioactively labelled

glucose to detect sugar-hungry tumour cells. PET scans are used to

plot the progress of cancer patients and to assess whether present

protocols are effective.18 In Europe, the " sugar feeds cancer "

concept is so well accepted that oncologists, or cancer doctors, use

the Systemic Cancer Multistep Therapy (SCMT) protocol.

 

Conceived by Manfred von Ardenne in Germany in 1965, SCMT entails

injecting patients with glucose to increase blood-glucose

concentrations. This lowers pH values in cancer tissues via lactic

acid formation. In turn, this intensifies the thermal sensitivity of

the malignant tumours and also induces rapid growth of the cancer.

Patients are then given whole-body hyperthermia (42 C core

temperature) to further stress the cancer cells, followed by

chemotherapy or radiation.19 SCMT was tested on 103 patients with

metastasised cancer or recurrent primary tumours in a clinical phase-

I study at the Von Ardenne Institute of Applied Medical Research in

Dresden, Germany. Five-year survival rates in SCMT-treated patients

increased by 25 to 50 percent, and the complete rate of tumour

regression increased by 30 to 50 percent.

 

The protocol induces rapid growth of the cancer, then treats the

tumour with toxic therapies for a dramatic improvement in outcome.

The irrefutable role of glucose in the growth and metastasis of

cancer cells can enhance many therapies. Some of these include diets

designed with the glycemic index in mind to regulate increases in

blood glucose, hence selectively starving the cancer cells; low-

glucose TPN solutions; avocado extract to inhibit glucose uptake in

cancer cells; hydrazine sulphate to inhibit gluconeogenesis in cancer

cells; and SCMT.

 

A female patient in her 50s, with lung cancer, came to our clinic,

having been given a death sentence by her Florida oncologist. She was

cooperative and understood the connection between nutrition and

cancer. She changed her diet considerably, leaving out 90 percent of

the sugar she used to eat. She found that wheat bread and oat cereal

now had their own wild sweetness, even without added sugar. With

appropriately restrained medical therapy--including high-dose

radiation targeted to tumour sites and fractionated chemotherapy, a

technique that distributes the normal one large weekly chemo dose

into a 60-hour infusion lasting days--a good attitude and an optimal

nutrition program which included Sam's formula nine times/day, she

beat her terminal lung cancer. I saw her last month, five years later

and still disease-free, probably looking better than the doctor who

told her there was no hope.