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Fasting for
short periods could help combat cancer and boost effectiveness of its
treatments, a new study has claimed.
Researchers at University of Southern California found that fasting
slowed the growth and spread of tumours and cured some cancers when it
was combined with chemotherapy. It’s hoped that the findings will lead
to the development of more effective treatment plans and further
research is now under way, they said.
In experiments on mice, they found tumour cells responded
differently to the stress of fasting compared to normal cells. Instead
of entering a dormant state similar to hibernation, the cells kept
growing and dividing, in the end destroying themselves, they said. “The
cell is, in fact, committing cellular suicide,” lead study author Valter
Longo was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail. “What we are seeing is
that the cancer cell tries to compensate for the lack of all these
things missing in the blood after fasting. It may be trying to replace
them, but it cannot.”
For the study, published in the journal Science Translational
Medicine, Longo and his team looked at the impact fasting had on breast,
urinary tract and ovarian cancers in mice. Fasting without chemotherapy
was shown to slow the growth of breast cancer, melanoma skin cancer,
glioma brain cancer and neuroblastoma — a cancer that forms in the nerve
tissue.
In every case, combining fasting with chemotherapy made the cancer
treatment more effective. But none of the mice survived if they were
treated with chemotherapy alone. According to the researchers, they are
already examining the effects of fasting on human patients, but only a
clinical trial lasting several years will confirm if human cancer
patients really can benefit from calorie restriction.
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