What feeds and spreads cancer?

Cancer cells use different foods depending upon their needs at the time and this blog attempts to explain the different stages and foods of cancer progression and how you might restrict the cancer.

 Let's keep this simple. There are two big steps in the cancer process.

1.  Feeding the cancer cells in a primary tumour
    

As cancer cells start the process of grouping and forming a tumour, they rely on glucose as their primary fuel source.  They NEED lots of glucose; much, much more than healthy cells do. This they ferment into lactate, which then drives cancer cell growth in the Primary tumour. Lowered oxygen helps this fermentation process.

There are oncologists in London and elsewhere who have been giving their patients Metformin -  although this is an inconsistent performer, (two Meta Studies show it has no benefit with ovarian cancer, and other studies show it can make TNBC and BRAF cancers worse). The major reason it is used for the majority of cancers, being that it ‘cuts blood sugar and restricts the cancer feeding’ as I was told by one oncologist. We also have a review on the various problems associated with blood sugar and cancer here.

We prefer Berberine, which has a much better and more consistent performance profile, is anti-inflammatory and lowers cancer-driver homocysteine, while metformin increases levels.

However, the cancer cells in the primary tumour can turn to another fuel source if sugar is depleted, for example, where patients are on a Keto diet. That fuel source is glutamate and it largely comes from an amino acid called glutamine. Glutamine is an amino acid bound in protein not just Red meats but all meats and fish and plants. You might try and cut your glutamine By restricting Red meat consumption, for example. It is pretty much impossible because glutamine is a non-essential amino acid - meaning that if there’s any shortfall, you make it! Cancer cells are glutamine-avid - They suck it in!!. But glutamine is not a replacement fuel for sugar.  Glutamine first converts by a fermentation process involving an enzyme called glutaminase, into glutamate, And, this is the fuel. You have two choices. You can lower your glutamate consumption - so don't go near bone broth of any sort; and you could stop the fermentation process by using natural compounds such as lycopene, holy basil, Turmeric and resveratrol - see here for compounds that block glutamate.

2. Restricting cancer spread and metastases
    

When cancer starts to spread, normally five out of every six cells go into the lymph and slowly but surely they switch to burning fat. They need lots of fat for all those new membranes they are going to form elsewhere in the body; they put on a backpack of fat to go off to your lungs or elsewhere; and they use fat as a ‘fishing line’ to pull in passing blood supplies, which they then convert to their own use by a process called angiogenesis. 

So if sugar feeds the cancer cells in the tumour, fat can drive the spread of cancer. Don't have high levels of blood cholesterol or triglycerides! Again, some oncologists in London are prescribing their patients a lipophilic statin such as atorvastatin to lower the blood fats. Like Metformin, this does not work for every cancer, But in  many cancers, it lowers blood fats and should restrict cancer spread. However, it has a notable side-effect; a Lipophilic statin significantly lowers CoQ10 levels in cells. This is a major problem because low CoQ10 is linked to a greater risk of cancer and, if you already have cancer, low CoQ10 is linked to a greater risk of metastasis. You should take both CoQ10 and magnesium - all drugs, including statins, lower your magnesium levels. A small aspirin also helps deliver a better result from your lipophilic statin.

But there is another way that cancer cells can spread. Cancer cells suck in histamines and histamines make the cell swollen and sticky and more aggressive. The cancer cells go off around the body, stick to each other and/or your lungs and form new tumours. The cancer cell can also make histamines for itself. These it uses to restrict the immune attack on it.

Research from Johns Hopkins Medical School and from the Karolinska Institute is quite clear that taking an antihistamine, for example, loratadine, can restrict all this nonsense for at least a year.

Also, Honokiol, a Traditional Chinese Medicine from the magnolia bush, has been shown to powerfully block angiogenesis and restrict the ability of cancer cells to spread by a number of US cancer centres. 

I hope this blog has given you a clearer picture on how cancer cells feed and spread, And what you might do, depending on where your cancer ststus has reached in the body.

Go to: 20 links between sugar and cancer