Fasting Slows Some Cancers

How do you stop cancer cells from thriving? Stop feeding them. That’s the suggestion of research conducted with mice at the University of Southern California, where scientists have found that five out of eight cancer types in mice responded to fasting, slowing the growth and spread of tumors. A USC news release reports that the combination of fasting cycles plus chemotherapy was either more or much more effective than chemo alone. Multiple cycles of fasting combined with chemotherapy cured 20 percent of mice with a highly aggressive type of children’s neuroendocrine cancer that had spread throughout the organism and 40 percent of mice with a more limited spread of the same cancer. In mice, the study, published in Science Translational Medicine, found that fasting cycles without chemotherapy could slow the growth of breast cancer, melanoma, glioma and human neuroblastoma. In several cases, the fasting cycles were as effective as chemotherapy. Fasting also extended survival in mice bearing a human ovarian cancer. In the case of melanoma, the cancer cells became resistant to fasting alone after a single round, but the single cycle of fasting was as effective as chemotherapy in reducing the spread of cancer to other organs. For all cancers tested, fasting combined with chemotherapy improved survival, slowed tumor growth and/or limited the spread of tumors. The researchers warn that it is not yet known if fasting will have the same effect on cancer in humans, and that fasting may be unsafe for many cancer sufferers. Read more from USC.