Word: fats
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Since early 2007, Dr. Melanie Schmidt and biologist Ulrike Kämmerer, both at the Würzburg hospital, have been enrolling cancer patients in a Phase I clinical study of a most unexpected medication: fat. Their trial puts patients on a so-called ketogenic diet, which eliminates almost all carbohydrates, including sugar, and provides energy only from high-quality plant oils, such as hempseed and linseed oil, and protein from soy and animal products...
...growing and dividing, then take away the sugar and they should stop spreading. Meanwhile, normal body and brain cells should be able to handle the sugar starvation; they can switch to generating energy from fatty molecules called ketone bodies - the body's main source of energy on a fat-rich diet - an ability that some or most fast-growing and invasive cancers seem to lack...
Past studies, however, offer some hope. The first human experiments with the ketogenic diet were conducted in two children with brain cancer by Case Western Reserve oncologist Linda Nebeling, now with the National Cancer Institute. Both children responded well to the high-fat diet. When Nebeling last got in contact with the patients' parents in 2005, a decade after her study, one of the subjects was still alive and still on a high-fat diet. It would be scientifically unsound to draw general conclusions from her study, says Nebeling, but some experts, such as Boston College's Thomas Seyfried...
...renowned old research institution in the German southwest, neuro-oncologist Dr. Johannes Rieger wants to enroll patients with glioblastoma and astrocytoma, aggressive brain cancers for which there are hardly any sustainable therapies. Cell culture and animal experiments suggest that these tumors should respond particularly well to low-carb, high-fat diets. And, usually, these patients are physically sound, since the cancer affects only the brain. "We hope, and we have reason to believe, that it will work," says Rieger...
...could improve blood pressure, triglyceride and cholesterol levels in people with diabetes; however, there was no significant difference in the changes among the groups. Exercising also led to modest weight loss - even though patients were put on diets specifically designed to maintain weight - and a reduction in belly fat. What's more, CT scans of patients' muscles suggested that exercise could improve their internal structure and function. "So, even if you're not losing weight, don't get discouraged just because of that," says Sigal. "There's still additional value [of exercise] independent of weight loss...