The Connection Between Cancer and Insulin Resistance

If you are overweight, or have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and/or diabetes, then in all likelihood insulin and leptin resistance is a factor. Insulin and leptin resistance is also a very common factor among cancer patients. From my perspective, a ketogenic diet (with or without intermittent fasting) would be a prudent treatment strategy to resolve that underlying problem. Once you've normalized your insulin and leptin, you don't necessarily need to maintain a ketogenic diet, if you find it too restrictive.

"I agree with you that a ketogenic diet is really appropriate in many cases, probably the significant majority of cases," Dr. LaValley says. "It's been known for probably 80 years or longer that solid tumors, and some of the blood cancers, are sugar-loving. Another term is that they are addicted to sugar.

I use [a] PET scan to demonstrate to patients that here is objective proof that the tumors you have in your body are sugar-avid. They're taking up sugar at a rate much higher than the other regular healthy cells. I want to drive home that message, so that they are motivated to alter their diet to have a low, low carb intake, causing their body to generate additional nutrient supply molecules called ketones...

What that means is that we're trying to provide an anti-cancer antagonistic pressure on the cancer cells by reducing the amount of sugar that's readily available for uptake by reducing the easily available sugar in the diet and compensating for the nutrient reduction and sugar [reduction] by increasing healthy fats."