Is 40g of protein a day enough or could I go lower for cancer

[Mooman]

Hi, I've gone on a calorie restriction diet because I've been diagnosed with a tongue cancer, I've been on a calorie restriction diet for 11 days today, and am at around 800 calories a day at the moment. I've read and heard that the lower the protein the better potential to halt cancer progressing. The only problem is that I am only 111lb weight 5ft 9" male and don't want to lose any more weight. I'm on a 2:1 fat to protein (in grams) zero carb ketogenic diet.

It's said that 0.6g protein per kg is the least amount I could eat a day for my weight (that would be 30g), but some sources say that the protein amount is actually calculated for the average healthy weight you should be for your height, so that would mean 30g a day would be far too low?

the charts give my lowest healthy weight at 128lb, so for 0.6g protein per kg this would be = 35g protein as the lowest I could go?

Any thoughts?

[Dean Pomerleau]

Mooman,

Welcome and sorry to hear about your cancer. No one (active) on this forum is a medical doctor as far as I know. I'm not and personally would be very hesitant to give you advice that might contradict the medical professionals who I assume are treating you. While there is some evidence that a diet low in protein can prevent and perhaps even slow the proliferation of cancer, given your extremely low current weight, and the tendency of cancer (especially oral cancers) to make it difficult to get adequate nutrition and to cause wasting, I would be extremely hesitant to cut calories or protein as much as you have already, to say nothing of going still lower.

The Oral Cancer Foundation has a good page on nutrition during treatment, highlighting among other things the dangers of weight loss:

https://oralcancerfoundation.org/nutrition/nutrition-during-treatment/

On a personal note, I lost my son to cancer a few years ago. It was heartbreaking to see him wasting away during the latter stages of the disease due to the treatment, nausea, difficulty swallowing and loss of appetite. We spent the last few months trying to feed him adequately through a g-tube. Over the 10-month course of his illness he lost 50 lbs despite our best efforts to maintain his weight.

Please be careful with a dietary restriction approach to treatment that in the end be unhelpful or even counterproductive. By all means do your own research, but please also listen to your doctors who know you and your condition, and not random folks on an internet diet forum. And most of all, good luck!

--Dean

[Mooman]

Thanks for the info Dean, it's a tricky one where they say the carbohydrates feed the cancer, so it is good to restrict this, but protein can also be turned into carbs, plus the amino acid glutamine in protein is also a cancer feeder, so they say to restrict protein too. I'm going to have an MRI scan and an ultrasound scan this Thursday to see if the cancer has spread at all.

I've read about weight loss with cancer patients, and they say after surgery and during chemotherapy and radiation weight loss can become a big problem. Did your son have the chemo and radiation?

[Dean Pomerleau]

28 minutes ago, Mooman said:

Did your son have the chemo and radiation?

Just radiation therapy. We decided against chemo for quality-of-life reasons. I'm not sure how strong the evidence is that carb restricting can stop cancer (the so called Warburg Effect). Here is a good overview article on calorie restriction and ketogenic diets for the treatment of cancer. It looks to me like the evidence in humans is pretty weak, and only promising as an adjunct to traditional cancer treatment:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7426758/

My biggest concern if I were you would be taking dietary / carbohydrate restriction too far given how thin you are already.

---Dean

[Mooman]

36 minutes ago, Dean Pomerleau said:

I'm not sure how strong the evidence is that carb restricting can stop cancer (the so called Warburg Effect). Here is a good overview article on calorie restriction and ketogenic diets for the treatment of cancer. It looks to me like the evidence in humans is pretty weak, and only promising as an adjunct to traditional cancer treatment:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7426758/

---Dean

There is some evidence is out there, the main thing I can see is to get the amount of food eaten a day low enough, and having enough high quality nutrients in the food, and enough protein to keep (become) super healthy, and to keep exercise and stress levels very low, and get good sleep.

I've studied it quite a bit and one of the most interesting people I have found is Andrew Scarborough, he had a very nasty cancerous brain tumor, said to be one of the worst to have. he had surgery, chemo and radiation but it was still there and wasn't improving. Being a very scientific person, he did lots of research and saw that zero carb, high fat ketogenic diet was the best option for him. He quit the chemo and rad, then he reduced the amount of food he eat a day and went as low as 295g a day of food at one time (I've read). He has (still has) a diary of everything he's eaten, and how he reacted to the food: blood glucose levels, ketone levels. 

To cut a long story short he actually managed to cure himself which amazed his doctors who's had him written off, but also he had previously suffered a lot of seizures that had caused quite an amount of brain damage, the doctors were also amazed that all of his brain damage had also been cured. He has now been given a job at hospital specializing in ketogenic diets for cancer patients and he does cancer research.

Here is an article from the New Scientist (need to register to read)

"But if the ketogenic approach is promising, why has it been left to people like Scarborough to cobble together a diet without any real idea of whether it will work? Part of the problem is that there is no commercial incentive to pursue it: drug companies can’t afford to conduct trials that cost hundreds of millions of pounds to prove the efficacy of a treatment that anyone can get for themselves at the local supermarket. And there is no accepted way for showing efficacy of a treatment other than trials."

Link: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2078558-ketogenic-diets-reputed-anticancer-credentials-put-to-test/

And here is a video: 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 3, 2021 by Mooman

[mccoy]

Valter Longo has been working with cancer specialists. He says not every cancer is thwarted by a keto diet. His FMD, together with chemo, has some scientific rationale behind the treatment (expose cancer cells to chemical toxicity, while protecting healthy cells by the same chemicals  during a fast-mimicking diet). The obvious impression is that we are still far from understanding how cancer(s) can be prevented and treated.

Edited August 3, 2021 by mccoy

[Mooman]

3 minutes ago, mccoy said:

Valter Longo has been working with cancer specialists. He says not every cancer is thwarted by a keto diet. His FMD, together with chemo, has some scientific rationale behind the treatment (expose cancer cells to chemical toxicity, while protecting healthy cells by the same chemicals  during a fast-mimicking diet). The obvious impression is that we are still far from understanding how cancer(s) can be prevented and treated.

Some cancers can actually thrive on anything, fats, amino acids, not all brain cancer patients do well either,there are the different types. Ketogenic diets that include plant based foods an oils seem to do worse also.

[mccoy]

2 minutes ago, Mooman said:

Some cancers can actually thrive on anything, fats, amino acids, not all brain cancer patients do well either,there are the different types. Ketogenic diets that include plant based foods an oils seem to do worse also.

😩😫

[Dean Pomerleau]

4 hours ago, Mooman said:

the main thing I can see is to get the amount of food eaten a day low enough, and having enough high quality nutrients in the food, and enough protein to keep (become) super healthy, and to keep exercise and stress levels very low, and get good sleep.

That all sounds very sound and rational. But on only 800kcal per day of exclusively fat and a little protein, can you really achieve high quality nutrition?

4 hours ago, Mooman said:

To cut a long story short he actually managed to cure himself which amazed his doctors who's had him written off,

An anecdote is not evidence. There are plenty of anecdotes that intercessionary prayer has the power to heal, but having others pray for you isn't going to cure your cancer. So where is the actual evidence? The New Scientist article you point to is from 2016. It highlights several studies being launched that year to test the effects of a ketogenic diet zgainst cancer:

Some, like Scheck, are investigating its potential anyway. Williams, inspired by the same body of literature of case reports as Scarborough, is designing a trial to offer the ketogenic diet to between 40 and 80 people with brain cancer over the next two years and track their progress... Neither study will be able to confirm whether adhering to the ketogenic diet for the long term will extend life by more than 15 months, but they may offer useful insights. If the initial results are promising, Scheck and Williams are planning larger follow-ups. Scheck says her study is about looking at what people are already doing to themselves, in an attempt to validate methods that seem to work.

I did a pubmed search on each of these researchers (Scheck and Williams) and couldn't find either of them publishing results of their studies in the five and a half years since the article was published.

What I did find was this 2021 meta-analysis [1] of ketogenic diets as an adjuvant therapy for cancer. To quote the conclusion "There was inadequate evidence to support the beneficial effects of LCKDs on antitumor therapy."

You quote the New Scientist article:

But if the ketogenic approach is promising, why has it been left to people like Scarborough to cobble together a diet without any real idea of  whether it will work? Part  of the problem is that there is no commercial incentive to pursue it: drug companies can’t afford to conduct trials that cost hundreds  of millions of pounds to prove the efficacy of a treatment that anyone can get for thems el ves at the local supermarke t . And there is no accepted way for showing efficacy of a treatment other than trials."

The excuse for lack of evidence for every fringe treatment is that "there is not money in it for Big Pharma." That is a particularly bogus excuse in the case of ketogenic diets for cancer, since the same diet has been tested in clinical trials and shown to  effective in another serious disease that is usually treated with drugs and/or surgery - epilepsy.

Plus, trials that have been conducted (like this one) have explicitly excluded people with low BMI presumably to avoid harm to the subjects and/or confounding the study outcome as a result of malnutrition and/or eating disorders. That clinical trial excluded anyone with a BMI lower than 22. What do you think the researchers would have thought about someone with your BMI of 16.4 wanting to participate? 

Unless you've been extremely meticulous about your diet prior to your diagnosis, it seems likely at a BMI of 16.4 that your body may already be deficient in the vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients critical for fighting your cancer and for repairing the damage to your body that will be done by the cancer and the treatment. And now you want to go on an 800kcal diet of exclusively fat and (animal?!) protein. Forgive me, but that sounds like crazy talk.

Look, I know you are unlikely to change your mind. This is the internet after all, not a place where people come to change their minds based on rational evaluation of the evidence. But unlike brain cancer where very few people survive past two years and so "Hail Mary" treatments with little evidence may be justified as a last resort, the prognosis for someone like you with oral cancer is relatively good based on standard treatment, especially if your cancer hasn't metastisized. If I were you I wouldn't put my chance of a full recovery in jeopardy by pursuing an extreme low-calorie/carb/protein diet that hasn't proven beneficial for any cancer, to say nothing of beneficial for oral cancer and to say nothing of beneficial for cancer patients who are severely underweight to start with.

--Dean

----------------

[1] Nutrients. 2021 Apr 21;13(5):1388. doi: 10.3390/nu13051388.

Efficacy of Low-Carbohydrate Ketogenic Diet as an Adjuvant Cancer Therapy: A 
Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.

Yang YF(1)(2)(3), Mattamel PB(1)(2), Joseph T(1)(2), Huang J(4), Chen Q(1), 
Akinwunmi BO(5), Zhang CJP(6), Ming WK(1)(2).

The role of low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet (LCKD) as an adjuvant therapy in 

antitumor treatment is not well established. This systematic review and 
meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) was conducted to 
investigate the efficacy of LCKD as an adjuvant therapy in antitumor treatment 
compared to non-ketogenic diet in terms of lipid profile, body weight, fasting 
glucose level, insulin, and adverse effects; Methods: In this study, databases 
such as PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, CINAHL, and Cochrane trials were 
searched. Only RCTs that involved cancer participants that were assigned to 
dietary interventions including a LCKD group and a control group (any 
non-ketogenic dietary intervention) were selected. Three reviewers independently 
extracted the data, and the meta-analysis was performed using a fixed effects 
model or random effects model depending on the I2 value or p-value; Results: A 
total of six articles met the inclusion/exclusion criteria. In the overall 
analysis, the post-intervention results = standard mean difference, SMD (95% CI) 
showed total cholesterol (TC) level = 0.25 (-0.17, 0.67), HDL-cholesterol = 
-0.07 (-0.50, 0.35), LDL-cholesterol = 0.21 (-0.21, 0.63), triglyceride (TG) = 
0.09 (-0.33, 0.51), body weight (BW) = -0.34 (-1.33, 0.65), fasting blood 
glucose (FBG) = -0.40 (-1.23, 0.42) and insulin = 0.11 (-1.33, 1.55). There were 
three outcomes showing significant results in those in LCKD group: the tumor 
marker PSA, p = 0.03, the achievement of ketosis p = 0.010, and the level of 
satisfaction, p = 0.005; Conclusions: There was inadequate evidence to support 
the beneficial effects of LCKDs on antitumor therapy. More trials comparing LCKD 
and non-KD with a larger sample size are necessary to give a more conclusive 
result.

DOI: 10.3390/nu13051388
PMCID: PMC8142992
PMID: 33918992 [Indexed for MEDLINE]

Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

[Mooman]

I think this conversation has come to end with you Dean, as soon as I read your latest reply I understood at once that you must be a vegan, and when I did a search I found I was correct. All the trials you have pointed to were made with ketogenic diets that also used plant foods in them, these plant based ketogenic diets will help but are far inferior compared to animal based low calorie ketogenic diets. If you had listened to Andrew Scarborough's video, he mentions that when he was on a low calorie ketogenic diet that included plant based foods and oils, he was not doing that well, when he gave them up and went completely animal based he recovered. 

Try and find the trials that are showing how successful the animal based low carb ketogenic diets have been, you will struggle to find any. guess what? There are many out there, but the scientists who are doing these studies can not get their results published. In the name of science it should be all about truth, not beliefs and convictions, why would people not want to show that ketogenic diets made with grass fed organic animal products are superior? 

Your post to me seemed angry, as if you were annoyed. I thought at once that you must be a vegan, and the fact I had mentioned animal based ketogenic were better, somehow turned off any rational thinking. Tell me dean, how would you feel if you found out that for treating cancer, diabetes, a whole host of autoimmune diseases, heart disease, epilepsy plus lots more, that animal based ketogenic is much better and much healthier? Would you ever be able to accept this being a vegan?

I now also understand why you think that 40g of protein is too low, because with vegetable based protein you need twice as much, which is also the case with all plant nutrients compared to animal nutrients.

At the moment I am going by how I feel eating low carb and if I need to increase the calories I will. My blood work is excellent, I have absolutely no nutritional deficiencies.

Like I say, with my 850 calories a day of high quality extremely nutrient dense animal based ketogenic diet, you would need to eat at least double the calories on a vegan diet to achieve this because plant based nutrients are not as highly digestible (as you must know). There is no point trying to discuss with you any further as no doubt it would only be another condescending aggressive post from you so please don't respond, I didn't expect a calorie restriction site to be like a vegan site.

[Dean Pomerleau]

Mooman,

Sorry if you got the impression I was angry. I was sincerely trying to help you as a newcomer to this forum by sharing the available evidence and my perspective on the question you asked based on a couple hours of searching and reading on the topic to look for new evidence since the last time I did a deep dive into it when my son was diagnosed with cancer in 2013.

While I am an ethical vegan who believes a whole food, plant-based diet to be healthy for most people, I'm happy to acknowledge for certain people in certain circumstances a ketogenic diet makes sense - e.g. for treating epilepsy or for overweight folks who have trouble kicking the habit of eating crappy carbs. I'm not judging your diet based on the fact that it is mostly animals. Heck I didn't even know that fact until your recent post, well into our discussion. And if I thought it would have saved my son from a painful death from cancer, I would have given my own life, to say nothing of the lives of few cows, pigs or chickens. So I wouldn't judge you for making the choice to eat animals if you thought it would save your life.

And if I were a dogmatic vegan, I would have happily given my approval yesterday to a study that appeared to show a low fat vegan diet to be vastly superior to a ketogenic diet for cardiovascular health. Instead I eviscerated it.

What I was calling into question was your choice to eat so few calories and so little protein as a (hopefully adjuvant) therapy for your cancer, particularly given your already very low weight. To my reading the evidence just doesn't seem to be there to support it, despite the fact that this forum is focused on the benefits of CR for health and longevity.

You can claim the evidence exists but can't get published. But as I said, this seems unlikely since plenty of studies have been published showing the benefits of a ketogenic diet for epilepsy, and given how easy it is to publish studies that say just about anything these days (like the one I beat up on yesterday).

I'm happy to continue the conversation if you care to post evidence from controlled human trials showing the benefits of a calorie-restricted, ketogenic diet for cancer treatment that I've overlooked. Otherwise I sincerely wish you the best of luck beating your cancer using whatever combination of treatments you and your doctors think is right for you.

--Dean

[Mooman]

I'm really sorry to hear about your son, it makes me even more worried to go in for surgery. I'm having MRI and ultrasound Thursday and may find out it's spread to the neck or wherever. I really don't want surgery. When I went for the biopsy, afterwards my tongue swelled really badly and has become worse. I've now found out that having a biopsy can make the cancer worse by disturbing it and can cause it to spread. I was 120lb when I had the biopsy, when I found out I had cancer I went on the low calorie ketogenic diet and most of my weight loss has been stomach and bowel foods, but I am concerned that I don't want to lose too much weight.

Do you think I should raise my protein to maybe 50g a day and up my calories to 1000 or 1100 a day?

The people who have had the most success and have treated many cases of patients who have very bad illnesses are the with the Paleolithic Ketogenic Diet, they have struggled massively to get their work published.

Here is a tweet which has a link all about a case they were trying to get published but kept being rejected.

 

Edited August 3, 2021 by Mooman

[Clinton]

Sorry if this is overly simplistic, however I watched an intriguing TED talk years ago about eating an 'anti-angiogenic' diet to thwart cancer ...

William Li: Can we eat to starve cancer? | TED Talk

It's by William Li.

In short he says that cancer growth requires new blood vessel growth (angiogenesis), and that new blood vessel growth isn't something that normally occurs in a healthy human after development, and that certain foods shut down this new blood vessel growth.

 

[Dean Pomerleau]

36 minutes ago, Mooman said:

I'm really sorry to hear about your son, it makes me even more worried to go in for surgery.

Thanks Mooman. He died at age 18 of glioblastoma by the way, so the subject of whether a ketogenic diet might work as a supplemental treatment for brain cancer is near and dear to my heart.

Cancer is scary and upon being diagnosed it is very understandable to want to take control of the situation through one thing that can be easily modify, namely diet. If there is one thing I learned from my son's experience, it sucks to feel helpless.

36 minutes ago, Mooman said:

I was 120lb when I had the biopsy, when I found out I had cancer I went on the low calorie ketogenic diet and most of my weight loss has been stomach and bowel foods, but I am concerned that I don't want to lose too much weight.

Do you think I should raise my protein to maybe 50g a day and up my calories to 1000 or 1100 a day?

If I were you I'd do two things. Talk to a nutritionist associated with the hospital where you are getting treatment, especially one with experience with cancer nutrition. Bring whatever evidence you have for the benefits of a KD and ask them what they think.

And emphatically yes, if I were you I would increase both my calories and my protein until I stopped losing weight. In fact it seems to me you should target trying to get back at least to your original weight of 120, which would put your BMI at 17.7. One of the things we discuss a lot around here as a downside of serious CR is that you end up really thin. That may help to keep one from getting sick, but it makes one more vulnerable when one does get sick due to much lower metabolic reserves for fighting an illness.

Thankfully, much of your weight loss so far is probably water, but 850kcal/day is not enough to support even your basal metabolic rate, to say nothing of providing adequate nutrition or supporting your daily activities. And you don't want to continue losing weight given what you are facing and given how thin you are to start with.

36 minutes ago, Mooman said:

Here is a tweet which has a link all about a case they were trying to get published but kept being rejected.

Interesting saga and interesting case study. Thanks for sharing it. Reading her description of the events surrounding the journal rejection, it sounds like there were other issues involved rather than an outright refusal to consider a ketogenic diet for brain cancer treatment. In fact, the journal in question did publish a (different) case study showing positive outcome with a brain cancer patient on a ketogenic diet and that what she seems to be griping about (perhaps with very good reason). But if nothing else their publishing of the other case study would seem to undermine the theory that journals are refusing to publish such evidence. The author speculates her rejection was either a result of a conflict of interest on the part of one of the reviewers or "Our overwhelming experience is that journals massively sabotage researchers from Eastern-Europe and Russia."

More generally, it may be that a ketogenic diet can be helpful, particularly for brain cancer where anecdotes and case studies appear to hint at positive outcomes. But reading the case study you point to, the patient lost 22 lbs on the diet, going from a BMI of 25.6 to 22.5 over the course of six months. Such a drop in weight from where you are now would be disastrous.

And as you pointed out:

6 hours ago, Mooman said:

 Some cancers can actually thrive on anything, fats, amino acids, not all brain cancer patients do well either,there are the different types.

So even if it does help for brain cancer, that doesn't say very much about whether low calorie ketogenic diet will help treat oral cancer in general, or yours in particular.

I'd be very cautious and listen to the advice of trained medical professionals. If you think keto is the way to go, particularly after talking with them, then give it a try. But it would seem very unwise for you to lose weight while doing it.

Best of luck with your upcoming scans.

--Dean

 

[Ron Put]

9 hours ago, Mooman said:

I think this conversation has come to end with you Dean, as soon as I read your latest reply I understood at once that you must be a vegan, and when I did a search I found I was correct. All the trials you have pointed to were made with ketogenic diets that also used plant foods in them, these plant based ketogenic diets will help but are far inferior compared to animal based low calorie ketogenic diets. If you had listened to Andrew Scarborough's video, he mentions that when he was on a low calorie ketogenic diet that included plant based foods and oils, he was not doing that well, when he gave them up and went completely animal based he recovered. 

Try and find the trials that are showing how successful the animal based low carb ketogenic diets have been, you will struggle to find any. guess what? There are many out there, but the scientists who are doing these studies can not get their results published.

This is absolutely uncalled for. 

And it's silly and largely wrong.
 

[Todd Allen]

Mooman, my goals and approach to diet are very different than Dean's.  I've been eating keto for over 5 years and I believe it has powerful synergies with caloric restriction and fasting.  But the concerns Dean is raising deserve careful consideration.  You are underweight and your current dietary approach is making that worse.  In addition to unsustainable macronutrient deficiencies you probably have significant micronutrient deficiencies.

I've found keto in combination with modest CR and fasting helpful in managing SBMA, my genetic neuromuscular wasting disease.  I've found nothing written on keto or CR for SBMA but I've read many books and papers on applying ketogenic diets and CR or fasting to a wide range of health conditions including cancer.  I believe these are powerful tools that are under employed due to limited understanding of the rewards and risks.  Obesity and metabolic syndrome are common and they contribute to many diseases including cancer by way of hyperglycemia and especially hyperinsulinemia suppressing essential catabolic processes resulting in increasing dysfunction of anabolic processes.  I'd be surprised if these core benefits currently apply significantly to your situation considering you are quite underweight.

Cancer is often a long battle.  It is common for treatments to kill off a lot of a cancer but some fraction of it proves resistant and eventually comes roaring back.  You need to be prepared to add in or switch to other therapies if/when that happens.  Cachexia is a common cause of death for those undergoing cancer treatments.  It also contributes to death by aggravating other morbidities or limiting tolerance for punishing chemo, radiation and surgeries.  At your weight I'd be very concerned of the possibility that further wasting becomes more threatening than the cancer and if you extend your focus on starving out the cancer you may find yourself with insufficient reserves to endure most other therapies.

 

Edited August 4, 2021 by Todd Allen

[Mooman]

2 hours ago, Ron Put said:

This is absolutely uncalled for. 

And it's silly and largely wrong.
 

Not another vegan!!! Do you actually believe that your point of view is unbiased?

[Sibiriak]

Dean and Todd,   great comments.  It's really admirable that you've taken the time to respond in such a thorough,  reasonable and considerate way.

[Mooman]

8 hours ago, Dean Pomerleau said:

Thanks Mooman. He died at age 18 of glioblastoma by the way, so the subject of whether a ketogenic diet might work as a supplemental treatment for brain cancer is near and dear to my heart.

 

Thanks for the advice Dean, I will try and contact the  nutritionist advisor associated with the hospital and I am definitely going to eat more now.

You must still be devastated about your son Dean, and it's a big coincidence it was glioblastoma.

All the best 👍

[Mooman]

10 hours ago, Clinton said:

Sorry if this is overly simplistic, however I watched an intriguing TED talk years ago about eating an 'anti-angiogenic' diet to thwart cancer ...

William Li: Can we eat to starve cancer? | TED Talk

It's by William Li.

In short he says that cancer growth requires new blood vessel growth (angiogenesis), and that new blood vessel growth isn't something that normally occurs in a healthy human after development, and that certain foods shut down this new blood vessel growth.

 

Thanks for that Clinton, it is really interesting 😊

[Mooman]

1 hour ago, Todd Allen said:

Mooman, my goals and approach to diet are very different than Dean's.  I've been eating keto for over 5 years and I believe it has powerful synergies with caloric restriction and fasting.  But the concerns Dean is raising deserve careful consideration.  You are underweight and your current dietary approach is making that worse.  In addition to unsustainable macronutrient deficiencies you probably have significant micronutrient deficiencies.

Thanks for the info Todd, I am quite concerned that I'm not really healthy enough for surgery, it is worrying that the treatment may be more dangerous than the cancer for me. I have been ill for a few years now am concerned about it all.

[Clinton]

Mooman,

On the point of ensuring that you are consuming adequate (RDA levels) of micronutrients, the 'standard' advice here is to make use of the free chronometer app.

It is extremely simple and can help you examine foods and come up with a diet that can fill in any nutrient 'holes' (deficiencies) or 'bumps' (excesses) that you might have with your current eating habits.

[Mooman]

2 hours ago, Clinton said:

Mooman,

On the point of ensuring that you are consuming adequate (RDA levels) of micronutrients, the 'standard' advice here is to make use of the free chronometer app.

It is extremely simple and can help you examine foods and come up with a diet that can fill in any nutrient 'holes' (deficiencies) or 'bumps' (excesses) that you might have with your current eating habits.

👌

[Matt]

Another vegan here...

I don't really have much to say here other than I think your body weight and calorie intake is way too low given your situation. And you're still early in your diagnoses, so it seems a bit extreme. I think an approach like Dr. Valter Longo would be better. Perhaps you'd fast for 2 days prior to chemotherapy and 24 hours after. Then return to normal (healthy) eating habits. This according to animal data can help prevent damage to healthy cells while making cancer cells more susceptible. 

 

Edited August 5, 2021 by Matt

[Ron Put]

On 8/3/2021 at 9:13 PM, Mooman said:

Not another vegan!!! Do you actually believe that your point of view is unbiased?

Yep, I am a vegan, for purely moral reasons: Sentient creatures fear death and feel pain, just like you do.

The animosity toward vegans/vegetarians is a bit unusual, from someone who is supposedly interested in health and frankly, I have certain doubts about all of this.

In any case, Dean tried to answer your questions and offer rather reasonable advice, and backed it up. Take it or leave it. The suggestions about gaining some weight before attempting to starve the cancer are likely sound. Talk to your doctors.

And I'd pay more attention to information from the American Institute for Cancer Research rather than to a Youtube video chockfull of inaccurate or at best unproven information (although keto does alleviate symptoms in some epileptics). If Andrew Scarborough is the kind of information you want, you can find even more videos on the power of prayer in curing cancer.

Or, take a look at this post that mentions D’Agostino.