Dr Thomas Seyfried claims that a ketogenic diet can prevent and cure cancer. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; let's see if he delivers the goods!
There's certainly evidence that fasting shrinks tumours in low-grade follicular lymphoma (see this case series by Alan Goldhamer) and also that when fasting is combined with conventional therapies, it reduces the side-effects and chemo- and radiotherapy and increases the tumour cell kill rate (Valter Longo has dubbed this 'differential stress sensitization' - e.g. see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36646607/).
"w" certainly out of order, a touch of arrogance/ignorance and a lack of honour? No evidence to support his claims, all heresay. Your response at least gives "W" an opportunity to reflect on his position and offer you an apology
Problem is, because Seyfried is ‘highly educated’ people will believe his nonsense. As far as I am concerned God gave us, or most of us, ample fruit and veg, so why eat animals. It doesn’t make sense. Nature is telling us and clearly showing us what the body needs. Also, it eliminates animal cruelty. Another point, we’re all different. So making a one size fits all prescription is a bit silly. Some people seem to need more protein than others. Some none at all from animal sources. Pet hate- people putting their dogs on a vegan diet. Idiotic.
I have encountered a few people throughout my life who really don't seem to thrive on an all-plant diet, but do just fine if they eat mostly plants, with one or two serves of animal foods per week. One of these people was my mentor when I was young, so that left an impression on me, and made me more open-minded to the idea that there are some differences in dietary requirements between human beings.
I've found that dogs vary considerably in their food preferences too! Our beloved Comet, who's gone to the great field in the sky, hated broccoli with a passion. He would pick it up out of his bowl and drop it on the floor, as if to say 'Get this disgusting green crap away from me!' He would eat banana and mango but wasn't keen on most fruits. But our new four-legged pal Tonka LOVES every fruit, vegetable, grain and bean under the sun. He eats mulberries off our tree and munches snow peas and tomatoes from their vines. I've encountered a few dogs who have allergies to all the major animal proteins so their humans resort to vegan dog food, and they appear to thrive on it.
Nice to know, thanks for the reply. I dare say most dogs need meat but blindly following a vegan diet for dogs without good reason is not a good idea. I guess out in the wild in a free state with abundant food sources a dog would intuitively eat what it knew to be right for itself.
The thing is though, that dogs are not a wild species. The domesticated dog, Canis familiaris, is truly a human creation. There are significant genetic differences between domesticated dogs and their wild ancestors, wolves. One of the most consequential differences with respect to their diet, is that dogs have multiple copies of the gene that codes for a starch-digesting enzyme. Wolves require meat, but dogs don't - although it's certainly the case that most of them relish the smell of it above plant-derived foods.
"Our results indicate that novel adaptations allowing the early ancestors of modern dogs to thrive on a diet rich in starch, relative to the carnivorous diet of wolves, constituted a crucial step in the early domestication of dogs." https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11837. Lay summary of this article at https://archive.md/arB8q
Interesting. Thank you. I have read from holistic vets in America that domesticated dogs, like their wolf ancestors, have enzymes in their stomachs that are meant for breaking down meat and if the dog doesn’t get that meat the enzymes will degrade the stomach lining.
That makes zero sense to me. The stomach is lined by mucin which is largely composed of carbohydrate. So why would a protein-digesting enzyme degrade a carbohydrate-rich substance? Sounds like motivated reasoning to me, much like what Dr Seyfriend engages in.
Did you use prof's research papers as part of your research or contrast them with those you used to support this post? Maybe good to let prof know where he gone wrong. Especially newer research superseded his.
Meterbolic approch to treat cancer (particularly ketogenic diet) seems to gone well, trails n case reports, lately.
Look at Matthew Philips, in NZ, works. He is still doing successful trails. Also, Dominic D'Agostno, in US, also playing in the same fiels. Both still publishing papers, also doing podcasting. 😄
Here's how the scientific method works: First, you make an observation - e.g. 'cancer cells use aerobic glycolysis to generate ATP'. Then you form a hypothesis to explain the observation - e.g. 'cancer cells switch to glycolysis because they have damaged mitochondria'. Then you carry out experiments to test the hypothesis and specifically, you seek to FALSIFY YOUR OWN HYPOTHESIS - e.g. I will look for cancer cells with perfectly well-functioning mitochondria, AND I will look for cancer cells that do not use aerobic glycosis for ATP production. If all the experiments that you design fail to falsify the hypothesis, then you gain increased confidence in it. If other researchers conduct experiments designed to falsify the hypothesis, and all of them fail to falsify it, then your hypothesis becomes a theory. But if your hypothesis is falsified in even one experiment, then you have to modify your hypothesis, and if it's falsified in many different ways in different experiments, you're obliged to reject it - otherwise you're not doing science; you're trying to start a cult.
As for clinical trials, none have demonstrated consistent results (again, see Part 2).
Case reports for all manner of dietary approaches to cancer abound. Chris Wark, Janette Murray-Wakelin and Ruth Heidrich all defeated advanced cancer by using the very opposite dietary approach to Seyfried's i.e. a diet very high in carbohydrates from unprocessed plant foods. Anecdotes are a dime a dozen. They are useful for hypothesis generation and they certainly inspire hope, which patients with cancer desperately need. But they don't prove anything by themselves; that's why we have clinical trials.
As for this research possibly being newer than Seyfried's, as I pointed out in this post, Warburg's hypothesis that all cancer cells switched to aerobic glycolysis was falsified just a few years after Warburg published it. There's no excuse for still believing that all cancer cells manifest the Warburg effect.
Robyn, Cannot thank you enough for providing such careful research and healthful information.
Thanks for taking the time to read it, and I'm so glad it's helpful for you!
Very interesting, thanks again Robyn. Your Substack again proving it’s easily worth a full paid subscription!
What evidence is there, if any, of the benefits of the fast-induced autophagy on cancer?
There's certainly evidence that fasting shrinks tumours in low-grade follicular lymphoma (see this case series by Alan Goldhamer) and also that when fasting is combined with conventional therapies, it reduces the side-effects and chemo- and radiotherapy and increases the tumour cell kill rate (Valter Longo has dubbed this 'differential stress sensitization' - e.g. see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36646607/).
Thanks again Robyn!
"w" certainly out of order, a touch of arrogance/ignorance and a lack of honour? No evidence to support his claims, all heresay. Your response at least gives "W" an opportunity to reflect on his position and offer you an apology
Thank you for fine work
Hi Ray, thank you for your comment which I think belongs on this post: https://robynchuter.substack.com/p/lessons-in-critical-thinking-reader. Sadly, further correspondence from our dear little flower, W., indicates that self-reflection is not his strong suit.
Problem is, because Seyfried is ‘highly educated’ people will believe his nonsense. As far as I am concerned God gave us, or most of us, ample fruit and veg, so why eat animals. It doesn’t make sense. Nature is telling us and clearly showing us what the body needs. Also, it eliminates animal cruelty. Another point, we’re all different. So making a one size fits all prescription is a bit silly. Some people seem to need more protein than others. Some none at all from animal sources. Pet hate- people putting their dogs on a vegan diet. Idiotic.
I have encountered a few people throughout my life who really don't seem to thrive on an all-plant diet, but do just fine if they eat mostly plants, with one or two serves of animal foods per week. One of these people was my mentor when I was young, so that left an impression on me, and made me more open-minded to the idea that there are some differences in dietary requirements between human beings.
I've found that dogs vary considerably in their food preferences too! Our beloved Comet, who's gone to the great field in the sky, hated broccoli with a passion. He would pick it up out of his bowl and drop it on the floor, as if to say 'Get this disgusting green crap away from me!' He would eat banana and mango but wasn't keen on most fruits. But our new four-legged pal Tonka LOVES every fruit, vegetable, grain and bean under the sun. He eats mulberries off our tree and munches snow peas and tomatoes from their vines. I've encountered a few dogs who have allergies to all the major animal proteins so their humans resort to vegan dog food, and they appear to thrive on it.
Nice to know, thanks for the reply. I dare say most dogs need meat but blindly following a vegan diet for dogs without good reason is not a good idea. I guess out in the wild in a free state with abundant food sources a dog would intuitively eat what it knew to be right for itself.
The thing is though, that dogs are not a wild species. The domesticated dog, Canis familiaris, is truly a human creation. There are significant genetic differences between domesticated dogs and their wild ancestors, wolves. One of the most consequential differences with respect to their diet, is that dogs have multiple copies of the gene that codes for a starch-digesting enzyme. Wolves require meat, but dogs don't - although it's certainly the case that most of them relish the smell of it above plant-derived foods.
"Our results indicate that novel adaptations allowing the early ancestors of modern dogs to thrive on a diet rich in starch, relative to the carnivorous diet of wolves, constituted a crucial step in the early domestication of dogs." https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11837. Lay summary of this article at https://archive.md/arB8q
Interesting. Thank you. I have read from holistic vets in America that domesticated dogs, like their wolf ancestors, have enzymes in their stomachs that are meant for breaking down meat and if the dog doesn’t get that meat the enzymes will degrade the stomach lining.
That makes zero sense to me. The stomach is lined by mucin which is largely composed of carbohydrate. So why would a protein-digesting enzyme degrade a carbohydrate-rich substance? Sounds like motivated reasoning to me, much like what Dr Seyfriend engages in.
Im questioning your post :)
Did you use prof's research papers as part of your research or contrast them with those you used to support this post? Maybe good to let prof know where he gone wrong. Especially newer research superseded his.
Meterbolic approch to treat cancer (particularly ketogenic diet) seems to gone well, trails n case reports, lately.
Look at Matthew Philips, in NZ, works. He is still doing successful trails. Also, Dominic D'Agostno, in US, also playing in the same fiels. Both still publishing papers, also doing podcasting. 😄
Here's how the scientific method works: First, you make an observation - e.g. 'cancer cells use aerobic glycolysis to generate ATP'. Then you form a hypothesis to explain the observation - e.g. 'cancer cells switch to glycolysis because they have damaged mitochondria'. Then you carry out experiments to test the hypothesis and specifically, you seek to FALSIFY YOUR OWN HYPOTHESIS - e.g. I will look for cancer cells with perfectly well-functioning mitochondria, AND I will look for cancer cells that do not use aerobic glycosis for ATP production. If all the experiments that you design fail to falsify the hypothesis, then you gain increased confidence in it. If other researchers conduct experiments designed to falsify the hypothesis, and all of them fail to falsify it, then your hypothesis becomes a theory. But if your hypothesis is falsified in even one experiment, then you have to modify your hypothesis, and if it's falsified in many different ways in different experiments, you're obliged to reject it - otherwise you're not doing science; you're trying to start a cult.
Seyfried's hypothesis has been falsified in multiple ways, as I detailed in this post and in Part 2 (https://robynchuter.substack.com/p/unpacking-the-ketogenic-diet-cures-6dd).
As for clinical trials, none have demonstrated consistent results (again, see Part 2).
Case reports for all manner of dietary approaches to cancer abound. Chris Wark, Janette Murray-Wakelin and Ruth Heidrich all defeated advanced cancer by using the very opposite dietary approach to Seyfried's i.e. a diet very high in carbohydrates from unprocessed plant foods. Anecdotes are a dime a dozen. They are useful for hypothesis generation and they certainly inspire hope, which patients with cancer desperately need. But they don't prove anything by themselves; that's why we have clinical trials.
As for this research possibly being newer than Seyfried's, as I pointed out in this post, Warburg's hypothesis that all cancer cells switched to aerobic glycolysis was falsified just a few years after Warburg published it. There's no excuse for still believing that all cancer cells manifest the Warburg effect.