On Mar 25, 2007, at 6:43 am, Ron Hoggan wrote:

> The ketogenic diet, as developed at Johns Hopkins in the 1930s to  
> treat
> epilepsy, is dominated by fats (70%) and protein (20%) with very small
> amounts of carbohydrates (less than 10%). This changes the function  
> of the
> pancreas so it produces much more glucagon and much less insulin.  
> Nebling &
> Miraldi (1) reported the results of a ketogenic diet in two cases of
> advanced brain tumors in children. In both cases sugar uptake by  
> the tumors
> was reduced measurably. One of these children stayed on the diet  
> for 12
> months during which time the tumor did not grow.

Did they report the ultimate fate of that child?  Did he/she survive  
in the end?  (And if not, why did they abandon the diet?)

> Magee et al. reported that mice with induced mouse melanoma of the  
> lungs
> showed a two-thirds reduction of melanoma resulted from feeding the  
> mice a
> ketogenic diet.
>
> Conyers et. al. reported considerable improvements in a patient  
> with liver
> cancer after 8 days in ketosis.

Seems like it's a pretty general concept then, a bit like calorific  
restriction.

>
> This is no magic cure. It is a darned difficult diet to follow,

I don't know - from a paleo point of view, it's just a normal diet  
with no fruit or root veg.


> and other
> publications report more mixed results. (I don't have access to my  
> files
> just now so I can't cite sources for this.)

Sounds like a pretty important thing to know if you have cancer.  I  
was already aware of the ketogenic treatment for epilepsy.  That  
appears to have fallen out of favour now, presumably because it can't  
be patented and sold in tablet form.  Any idea what the  
pharmaceuticals did to make ketogenic diets so unpopular?


> In these latter reports, some
> patients improved while others did not. Nonetheless, if I was  
> diagnosed with
> almost any kind of cancer I would begin a strict ketogenic diet and  
> I would
> follow it until I became convinced it was doing no good, or until  
> complete
> remission of the cancer.  This is less academic than it may appear, as
> cancer is very common in my family.

I guess you are hoping that eating paleo will prevent the cancer  
occurring in the first place?

Thanks for the info it was one of the most interesting things I've  
heard in a long time!

Ashley