Can Fasting Ease or Eliminate Chemotherapy's Side Effects?

When Thomas Cravy, a 66-year-old ophthalmologist in Santa Maria, California, underwent chemotherapy for prostate cancer, he fasted for eight hours afterward. That seemed to reduce the side-effects of the chemotherapy -- the debilitating nausea and exhaustion. So for his next round of chemo, he fasted for 64 hours beforehand and 24 hours afterward.

That eliminated the side effects altogether, he says in an article in Science magazine. Five days after chemotherapy, he was playing golf -- and he walked the whole course.

The idea that fasting might ease chemo's side-effects comes from the people who have shown -- in animals -- that sharply cutting calories can extend lifespan.

Researchers theorize that when cells are starved they toughen up, becoming more resistant to stress -- including the stress of chemotherapy. An experiment in lab mice showed that fasting could be powerfully effective.

The danger now is that cancer patients might try the experiment on themselves, some doctors say.

But more answers could be coming soon, according to Science. David Quinn and Valter Longo of the University of Southern California are going to test fasting with a dozen or more cancer patients. If that works, they'll expand it to more patients.

Not only could fasting ease the side effects, it might enable patients to tolerate higher doses -- thus increasing their chances of beating cancer.

Comments

[wolfgangmo]

While it would be easy to comment the some researchers are whores for the pharma companies and leave it at that, I could also say that a ton of researchers said that Viox was just hunky dory.

However this little "discovery" has been known in alternative medical circles for several decades. Given that digestion can use up to 70% of the available energy that a body has, it only makes sense that by fasting then more energy would be available to ameliorate the deleterious effects of chemo therapies [none of which have been double blind studied against control neutrals or non chemo agents or therapies for efficacy].

Other options include targeted nutritional supplementation.

I would suggest adding a qualified Naturopathic Doctor with experience with cancer to your team. The national professional organization has a find a doc link on their website naturopathic.org .

If you are facing cancer, good luck.

[mommadona]

I'm going thru this.

Fluids are most important.
VitaWater is excellent.
Also kefir.