14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers have recently announced in a new study that fasting for a little while before beginning cancer treatment could boost the effects of chemotherapy considerably. They say that doing this could protect healthy cells, and make them stronger, while at the same time leaving cancerous cells more vulnerable to the drug cocktail. The investigation is still in its earliest stages, the scientists announce, and is currently underway on animals, and on a small human batch, of only 10 volunteers.
However, if the results turn out to be positive, the study could open the way for augmented chemotherapy practices, which would allow doctors to increase dosages, and also reduce some of the negative side-effects associated with these powerful drugs. “Side effects aren’t just, ‘Will I lose my hair or not?’ It’s, ‘Will I be able to receive a high dose or not'?” says University of Southern California (USC) gerontologist Valter Longo, who was a part of the new study. He has been studying the effects of what is known as caloric restriction (fasting) on human cells for more than 10 years, Wired reports.
The researcher says that his tests on lab animals have confirmed that a 25 percent reduction in calorie intake has been associated directly with healthier and longer lives. Longo believes that this correlation may be promoted by the fact that a lack of supplementary nutrients may be triggering the action of some self-protection abilities in the body, but adds that the exact mechanisms through which this happens are not yet known. The USC team recently published the details of a study they ran on mice, which revealed that 60 percent of fasting rodents survive chemotherapy, whereas none of the normal-diet group did in the particular setup they created.
“I’d never tell patients to keep this in mind, but I’d tell the oncologists. If someone is out of options and suffering terribly, you have to keep in mind things that could make a difference, though there isn’t a clinical trial with 2,000 people finished,” Longo adds. The expert and his group opened a new start-up, L-Nutra, which is oriented towards developing special, chemotherapy-tailored diets for cancer patients. The company will really pick up on its activity when a larger study is concluded, the experts say.