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Could cancer cells’ iron addiction be their Achilles heel?
- nederlander 5y ago
- goldforever 5y ago
- loudtieblahblah 5y agoTheir Achilles heel is mtor/igf-1 and the tool we have to keep those from being activated is autophagy. But no one wants to hear they should scale back protein intake to 0.5/g per kg of body weight or less. (which basically means being mostly vegetarian or vegan, with some exception) No one wants to hear they should be exercising 5-6 days a week No one wants to hear that you should be having 20g-150g of net carbs a day and thus doing without bread, pasta, cereals, and reducing starchy veggies. No one wants to hear that they should fast semi-regularly No one wants to hear we shouldn't be eating 3 meals a day plus snacks once we're past growing age. No one wants to be uncomfortable.
- arvinsim 5y agoAfter going through different diets(some were successful, some not), I just learned to listen to my body. There is really no one diet that will work for all people. People need to learn to customize their diet for their own needs.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Firmwarrior 5y agoSounds like a pretty crappy lifestyle to adopt without any hard evidence it'll do anything useful..
- ipaddr 5y agoI ended up on a diet like this after getting sick. Through trial and error I ended up here. There is plenty of hard evidence but maybe not in a form that has reached the masses. Sometimes you need a profit motive to really get the message out.
- bawolff 5y ago> There is plenty of hard evidence Then you should have no problem linking to it.
- joebob42 5y agoWell this sounds awful. What am I even supposed to eat, just fat?
- pengaru 5y agoVegetables, lots of vegetables.
- joebob42 5y agoIsn't that going to be carbs? I mean they certainly have less carbs per unit of weight but to the extent they have calories it's mostly carbs right? If Im exercising 5-6x a week and I can't eat much protein I need calories from somewhere.
- loudtieblahblah 5y agoMost veggies are high in fiber. You subtract fiber from carbs to get net-carbs. Only things like potatoes are truly high carb.
- curiousllama 5y agoMany vegetables actually have solid protein on a protein/calorie basis. Comparable to milk. Low net carbs is not really possible with low protein, short of chugging crisco.
- loudtieblahblah 5y agoYes it is. You're not going to get the same level of protein from kale as you would from a chicken breast. You'd eat so much kale you'd be sick. Secondly, plant proteins have incomplete amino acid profiles and won't stimulate mtor the say protein from meat and dairy will.
- curiousllama 5y agoNo, seriously, can you name 3 foods that are low net carb and low protein? I’m not saying people find it hard; I literally can’t think of 3 foods that are both low net-carb and low protein-per-calorie. Olive oil & butter are the two I’ve come up with so far. Any others you can think of? ETA: someone else suggested avocados too. Any others?
- ravenstine 5y agoI agree, though I'm curious about your thoughts on protein. My conclusion has been that protein is overall very beneficial, but there are many people claiming we should consume more or less. I'd figure that limiting refined carbs and sugars as well as fasting would counterbalance any possible negatives of protein, but I don't actually know.
- wyre 5y agoThe Huberman Lab podcast recently had Dr. David Sinclair [1] and talked about food causing aging due to it's relation to mTOR. I don't remember the details that well but they covered it very well. My takeaway was if your priority is anti-aging fasting and limiting protein is better, but I personally prefer wellness and that generally means consuming higher levels of protein. [1]https://youtu.be/n9IxomBusuw https://youtu.be/n9IxomBusuw
- burlesona 5y agoI’ve heard similar claims but I haven’t seen compelling research. Do you have links you’d be willing to share?
- elevenoh 5y agoMore accurately: The best of all worlds as far as quality of life is fluctuating between periods of high growths & high autophagy (repair). I agree with all your points other than: >But no one wants to hear they should scale back protein intake to 0.5/g per kg of body weight or less. (which basically means being mostly vegetarian or vegan, with some exception) The healthiest people I've observed anywhere eat high protein diets, but balance it with fasting.
- francisofascii 5y agoDidn’t realize too much protein was bad. So basically a mostly fat diet with fasting and exercise.
- loudtieblahblah 5y agoevery macro is out to kill you. fat probavly being the least bad as long as you stick to monosaturated, saturated (not in excess) and omega3s.
- DantesKite 5y agoTo play devil's advocate, are there cancers that are the exception to this rule?
- t-writescode 5y ago> But no one wants to hear they should scale back protein intake to 0.5/g per kg of body weight or less. Is there a high incidence of cancer in body builders? Recommended protein intake for people who work out is 150g+ protein per day.
- curiousllama 5y agoI’d imagine the common steroid use would be a bit of a confounding factor
- wyre 5y agoHeart and kidney problems due to steroid (ab)use is the leading cause of early death of bodybuilders. I don't think there is much data about natural bodybuilders at old age.
- curiousllama 5y agoI LOVE thinking about how my diet/exercise impacts my body. So don’t take this as discomfort - trying new diet/exercise combos is literally a major hobby of mine. What on EARTH do you eat to hit those macros? If I eat the minimum healthy calories (1,500) entirely in broccoli, I’d be >50g of protein (~0.6 g/kg at 160lbs). What kind of meal plan gets you low net carbs AND low protein? Are you drinking olive oil or something?
- Dove 5y agoThe thing to google is "therapeutic ketogenic diet". It's the super extreme form of keto, used in medical settings to treat things like epilepsy, rather than in casual settings in attempts to lose weight. It's been a while since I did reading on the topic, but IIRC, there is good evidence it's helpfully effective against some forms of cancer (but harmful against others, so research before diving in). But yes. To answer your question, you do eat a lot of food that is 100% fat or darn close. You will see menus like "2 eggs and 2 tablespoons of butter". The vegetarian version will involve a lot of avocados and coconut oil. You don't have to eat it straight, and most meals involve combining a massive amount of fat with a small amount of protein or fiber or something.
- donkeydoug 5y agocan't stand those filthy keto casuals /s
- curiousllama 5y agoThis makes sense. The exact macros differ, I’m sure, but it seems reasonable that extreme medical situations could be helped by diets that otherwise aren’t the best for a healthy person
- hombre_fatal 5y agoTo be charitable, I suppose they mean getting your protein from whatever falls out of this high vegetable diet naturally. You're right though, I think vegetables have more protein than people are led to believe, especially since the health/fitness industry make it seem like you need to be ever vigilant in getting your protein numbers up. Meanwhile, the average American accidentally eats far more than they need and certainly doesn't need to resort to supplementation.
- bigDinosaur 5y agoDoes this really explain the very healthy populations of countries like Japan or Spain? They're certainly not vegetarian/vegan nor do they engage in frequent fasting, as far as I know.
- ctime 5y agoIMO the unhealthy countries typically have a diet consisting of sugar + processed seed oil foods which lead to endless cycle of consumption and sickness. Things like cake, donuts, cereal, most american style bread that lack not only fiber but contain high PUFA oils plus unnecessary sugar lead to a constant cycle of insulin release , eventually an endless downward cycle of: inflammation, high blood sugar, insulin release, fat storage, low blood sugar, hunger, snacking on sugar + bad oils (rinse and repeat). If you can take one of those elements out of the cycle, you break the cycle. Those cultures stop the cycle (or more accurately, don't start it, although that's changing with time as the SAD diet takes over the globe). It's just not that sugar has to be bad, or carbohydrates are always bad, but if you were raised over-eating sugar and have PUFA related inflammation, they aren't going to help you lose weight or feel better. At the end of the day, some people just think it's all about "calories in and calories out" but it's a rather myopic look on it. At some point we need to look at the type of calories people are consuming (starting a a young age and as they get older) and try to understand that different foods and different impacts to the body and its hormones (like insulin) and that the typical standard American diet loaded with sugar, no fiber and shitty oil (causing inflamation, which causes blood sugar spikes) are causing metabolic issues and putting a ton of people into a broken state ("metabolic syndrome"). [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3821664/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3821664/ [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24555673/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24555673/
- Idiotfucker 5y agoWell I am pretty sure Japan and Spain both have very high seafood consumption which according to the link in the top comment contains high amounts of copper which reduce iron absorption.It's just one factor tho. It doesn't seem to affect a majority of cancers
- dylan604 5y agoIs this something to do to stave off cancer, or something to do to keep cancer from killing you once you have it. If the former, yeah, I'm not paying that much attention to all of that. If it's the latter and it will keep me from dying, yeah, I'll make some changes.
- loudtieblahblah 5y agoIt's to stave it off.
- gusgus01 5y agoI'm not sure you can say this that confidently. "Autophagy can suppress or promote tumors depending on the developmental stage and tumor type." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC6257056/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC6257056/
- loudtieblahblah 5y agoThe point is prevention. It promotes tumors once they already exist. It prevents them before they do.
- gusgus01 5y agoThe only support for this point I've found is in a few studies in mice. Is there other studies I'm missing or are you making recommendations based on a few studies in mice? "Studies on autophagy-deficient mouse models indicate that the basal levels of autophagy can suppress tumor formation at the initiation of tumor development." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC6274804/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC6274804/
- epistasis 5y agoSo you have a clinical study showing cancer prevention on this extreme diet? Over what time span and how many individuals, and across what variety of geographic areas and other life experience?
- novok 5y agoMost diet tracking nutrition research is not that good, consisting of surveys that ask you what you've eaten for the past year, from memory and then doing correlations. Most people don't remember what they've eaten last week. I think to do something really accurate nutrition wise would cost way too much money and take too long, so it mostly doesn't get done well. So unless you do something specific with faith practice communities that are good about their strict diets and fasting, like Buddhist monks, there probably isn't much good research data for that in the first place. And then that has issues with controlling for other things, like meditating a lot, etc.
- EMM_386 5y ago> I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30597187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30597187
- loudtieblahblah 5y agoYes, a gym nut who I guarantee you ate more protein than a grown adult should.
- dvsfish 5y agoYou're throwing a lot of big claims around in this thread. Could you provide: 1. What you eat in a day to hit those macros. 2. something to support your claims.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- friedturkey 5y agoProtein intake that low is just insane if you’re doing exercise that much. Your body will accumulate injuries fast, unless you’re defining exercise as lifting 1kg “dumbbells”. Cutting carbs that much would mean you’re getting virtually all your calories from fat. Most natural sources of fats (nuts, meat, milk) also pack in protein, and you’d quickly be over 0.5g/kg. The only other option is chugging grease. Not sure how a high exercise, no protein, frequent fasting diet is going to work. It sounds worse than a North Korean laborer’s lifestyle.
- metadat 5y agoI'd weigh about 40kg in no time. I usually weigh 70kg but it's not easy to maintain my body weight with my existing diet (at 1.4m tall). Following this Internet persons advice, I would literally end up in the hospital due to malnutrition / low body weight in 6-12 months.
- carlmr 5y ago>I usually weigh 70kg but it's not easy to maintain my body weight with my existing diet (at 1.4m tall). That's a BMI > 35. That's morbidly obese. Why would you want to maintain that?
- ericmcer 5y agoI switched from ~150g of protein a day and high intensity workouts to mostly vegetarian and ~40g a day with high volume workouts. Any lingering injuries have disappeared and I am definitely rock climbing harder than I have before. I lost 20lbs and pretty much all non-functional muscle over 4 months. I don’t think I would do this forever but a low protein diet is definitely a tool I will be using in the future. It is amazing how much less food I need to feel satiated not carrying a bunch of deadlift and bench press muscles around.
- infinite8s 5y agoWhat do you eat for satiety?
- 5y ago
- lake_vincent 5y agoSources?? Would love to learn more
- ryandvm 5y agoCan vouch for this diet. It won't make you live longer, but it will feel like it.
- exolymph 5y agoyeah okay whatever, I'm sure your extreme diet is the real one that solves all problems
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- epistasis 5y agoThis is likely BS, and nobody should believe claims of magic diets without proof that they actually work. Extreme confidence, and conspiratorial thinking ("nobody wants to hear this secret knowledge I have") should downweight the likelihood of the claims, because given no actual clues to go on, they are indications that the claims are spread by such deceptions.
- hombre_fatal 5y agoI presume they are talking about a plant-based keto diet rather than something they just invented.
- bawolff 5y agoWithout evidence, doesn't make it any less BS.
- loudtieblahblah 5y agoplant based, yes. I think ketosis is positive, but i don't think it's necessary on a regular basis. that's why i put the 20-150g range of net carbs. Fasting alone will handle the benefits of ketosis. But moreover you just don't want to spike your blood sugar.
- heavyset_go 5y agoLast time I saw this diet being promoted for cancer prevention and/or treatment, it was based on diets given to primates in captivity. It was promoted by Dr. Axe types, which leads me to believe it isn't exactly good science. I'd genuinely love to be wrong, because if it actually worked, that would be great. I haven't seen evidence to believe it, though. What evidence do you have for the claim that such a diet would work against cancer?
- Something1234 5y agoWho is Dr. Axe?
- heavyset_go 5y agoThis guy: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Josh_Axe https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Josh_Axe
- RobertMiller 5y agoI don't mean to cause personal offense by this, but taking (and by extension, giving) anonymous dietary advice is pointless. A wide array of eating disorders exist in which the the afflicted are in complete denial about their own health. In real life, I would be able to glance over your body and get a quick idea of whether or not your advice was made with a sound mind. Even then, it's hard for me to know how accurately you're actually following your claimed diet. But without even being able to see your body, there is nothing for others to go on. For all I know, you're an anorexic deep in denial, or a binge eater who weighs more than my car. Your anonymous testimony alone tells me virtually nothing. Due to the insidious nature of eating disorders, even if I assume good faith and assume you aren't consciously lying, you still might be deep in denial lying to yourself and I would have no way of knowing it.
- whatshisface 5y agoYou can't diagnose cancer by looking at someone.
- RobertMiller 5y agoI agree. However if somebody is telling me to each much less protein than most doctors and dieticians say I should, then I want to at least see if they've maintained a reasonable muscle mass under the diet they're advocating for. The proof is in the pudding, and anonymously online there is no pudding.
- loudtieblahblah 5y agohere's the thing It seems that health span and lifespan are not the same goal. Maintaining muscle mass is good, even great, to a point. Especially for the eldery who need to prevent falls. But the process that helps us grow muscles (IGF-1/mTor) is also the same pathways that makes us grow cancer. Low protein intake is both correlated in large population studies with longevity. It's also seen in animal studies as well. High protein is great for reproductive health, glowing skin, building muscle, hell - probably even mood and cognition.
- imperialdrive 5y agoThat's pretty close to true. Meat is life, eat all you can handle. 3 days per week is enough for exercise. Bread/Pasta/Cereal, no problem. Fasting is godly - do it! Stay busy, uncomfortable, sure... eat all you want q
- robjan 5y agoWhere I live, Hong Kong, simultaneously has the highest meat consumption in the world and the highest life expectancy.
- bawolff 5y agoAh yes. We choose chemo instead because its the comfortable option. /s
- imtringued 5y agoThere are lots of people who prefer heart surgery over eating food that doesn't try to kill them with heart disease.
- colordrops 5y agoI used to always hear the trope that "cancer isn't one disease, it's 1000, so there will never be a 'cure' for cancer", yet for a while now properties that are shared across a wide variety of cancers are found regularly, increasing hope that we can knock a lot of them out with a single type of treatment. In this case it's 20% of cancers but I recall seeing other findings across a wider swath.
- jonnycomputer 5y agoI'm especially excited about targeted treatments though. It is not just about being shared across cancers, but how specific those properties are to cancers.
- tansey 5y agoPI at a cancer center here. These two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Cancer is indeed not 1 disease but many countless ones. At the same time, cancer diagnoses are based on site of origin and histology (how it looks under a microscope). But often what drives a cell of one tissue toward pathogenesis is the same mutation or other molecular malfunction as a cell of another tissue type. In those cases, we can develop drugs that target that specific component and it may work across both cancer types. Unfortunately, there are countless ways things can go wrong in cells. There are also rarely drugs that truly span a large swath of cancer types effectively. That's because even though two cancers from different sites may have the same driver, how they respond to treatments can differ. The difference in cell state may allow one of the two cancers to adapt to the treatment, such as by activating an alternative growth pathway, whereas the other cancer type's cell of origin may not have such an easy road to therapeutic escape.
- PKop 5y agoThis makes me think of Ray Peat's ideas on iron, that an excess of iron leads to all sorts of diseases and weakening of the immune system, and aging leads to accumulation of iron in cells. In modern times since iron is added to a lot of cereals and processed foods it has exacerbated this problem. Good discussion here: https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/iron-dangers.shtml https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/iron-dangers.shtml
- novok 5y agoI've heard similar things like that too. And the solution is relatively simple, good cause thing to do too, just donate blood one to 3 times a year. It's just too bad that inside the agreements for blood donation for the red cross and vitalant they give themselves no-recourse, no-notice and no-further-consent needed dna testing, research rights and data storage rights to that blood. Which has stopped me from donating blood. And I can't find any other whole blood donation providers in my area other than those two. Super sketchy.
- williamscales 5y agoAlso, homophobic policies.
- voz_ 5y agoSorry, how?
- elevaet 5y agoIn many jurisdictions homosexual men are barred from donating blood.
- VoidWhisperer 5y agoI think they mean the policy that many blood donation places adhere to that there is a waiting period after the last time a male/male relationship has sex (I think for red cross it is like 3 months) before specifically men who have sex with men can donate. Personally I understand from a medical perspective why this could be a concern and I dont think it is inherently meant to be homophobic
- jansen555 5y agoA lot of cancers have origin in virus infections. HPVs have been proven to do so. And we have finally conquer those cancers coming from HPV with HPV vaccines. Recently, MS has also been proven to originate from Epstein-Barr virus. If we wish to bring cancer under control, research into roles of virus and perhaps bacteria (e.g.stomache ulcers) will yield better results. We already have tools to tackle these vectors very effectively. The problem now is everyone is more excited to look at the cancer growth and no the tiny microorganism that cause it.
- deesep 5y agoIs it possible that females have higher life expectancy than men because they menstruate?
- zupa-hu 5y agoWe (me & partner) have been playing with that idea for a while. It's like taking out the trash. Would love to find any info on that. (Like past experiments, or find data on average life-span for regular blood-donors.)
- inglor_cz 5y agoPeople who donate blood regularly also seem to be healthier. A lot of confounding factors in this, though. It is not easy to tease out causality from a spaghetti of correlations.
- deesep 5y agoThe 'ancient' practice of bloodletting may have been discredited as a cure for most ailments, but perhaps more research will indicate that it does have some benefits. And I do think that blood donation is beneficial for both the giver and receiver.
- carlmr 5y agoPeople who donate blood regularly are screened for disease, so people who continue doing so have less disease by definition. And if they do have disease it's often identified earlier. People doing some high risk activities are barred from donating blood completely, which again would have a positive effect on life-expectancy of those that donate. It would be really hard to tease out causality here.
- bawolff 5y agoSo people were on to something with leaches...
- willcipriano 5y agoIt's going to be a lot of factors. Men are also a large majority of murder victims, are more likely to be homeless or in prison, represent a huge percentage of combat deaths, and are far more likely to be killed on the job. That's not to mention the higher likelyhood of substance abuse or involvement in automobile related fatalities. If we had a totally egalitarian society I wonder how wide the gap between men and women would be.
- nederlander 5y ago
- nederlander 5y ago