By Lorie Johnson, CBN News Medical Reporter
Many people are frustrated with today's cancer treatments.
They are expensive, painful and often just don't work. However, there is a new cancer treatment that
is free, has virtually no side effects, and can be used in conjunction with
other cancer treatments. It involves
cutting out carbohydrates, beginning with the worst carb of all - sugar.
Killing Cancer
Dr. Fred Hatfield is an impressive guy: a power-lifting
champion, author of dozens of books, a millionaire businessman with a beautiful
wife. But he'll tell you his greatest accomplishment is killing his cancer just
in the nick of time. "The doctors
gave me three months to live because of widespread metastatic cancer in my
skeletal structure," he recalled. "Three months, three different
doctors told me that same thing." His
wife Gloria remembers it well. "It's
a horrible, horrible feeling to have someone tell you that the person you love
only has three months to live and you're not going to be with him
anymore," she said. While Hatfield
was preparing to die, he heard about an anti-cancer diet, also known as
metabolic therapy. With nothing to lose, he gave it a try and was shocked when
it actually worked. "The cancer was
gone!" he exclaimed. "Completely. To this day there's no trace of it.
And it's been over a year."
Starving Bad Cells
Although it wasn't easy, Hatfield stopped eating carbohydrates,
which turn into glucose inside your body. Cancer cells love glucose and need it
so badly, that if you stop giving it to them, they die. "It just absolutely amazes me that
medical science is just now finding this out," he said. Hatfield's cancer recovery, however, was not
a surprise to Dr. Dominic D'Agostino, who researches metabolic therapy. When he
and his team of scientists at the University of South Florida removed
carbohydrates from the diets of lab mice, the mice survived highly aggressive
metastatic cancer even better than when they were treated with chemotherapy. "We have dramatically increased survival
with metabolic therapy," he said. "So we think it's important to get
this information out." It's not
just lab mice. Dr. D'Agostino has also seen similar success in people - lots of
them. "I've been in correspondence
with a number of people," he said. "At least a dozen over the last
year-and-a-half to two years, and all of them are still alive, despite the
odds. So this is very encouraging."
The Ketogenic Diet
All cells, including cancer cells, are fueled by glucose.
But if you deprive them of glucose, they switch to the alternate fuel, ketone
bodies. Except cancer cells. A defect
prevents them from making the switch to using ketone bodies as fuel and
therefore, cancer cells can only survive on glucose. All other cells can use
either glucose or ketone bodies. "Your
normal cells have the metabolic flexibility to adapt from using glucose to
using ketone bodies. But cancer cells lack this metabolic flexibility. So we
can exploit that," Dr. D'Agostino explained. People like Hatfield, who want to deprive
their cells of glucose and fuel them with ketone bodies instead, eat what's
known as a ketogenic diet. It consists of almost zero carbohydrates, but lots
of natural proteins and fats. Gloria
said the food on the ketogenic diet is in every grocery store and is pretty
easy to prepare. "You can go online
and there's cook books," she said, "It's clean eating. Just very
clean eating, none of the sugars, the salts, the trash food." "Natural" proteins are ones that
are in their original form. On the other hand, "processed" meats,
like cold cuts and hot dogs, are off-limits because often carbohydrates have
been added to them. Similarly,
"natural" fats are whole foods, like olive oil, avocados, and nuts.
Stay away from "trans" fats, such as shortening or margarine, any oil
that is hydrogenated. Trans fats are man-made.
Safe & Healthy
Sometimes people are afraid to try the ketogenic diet
because they think eating fat like this is bad for your heart. But more doctors
say as long as it's natural, fat is good for you, even saturated fat like
coconut oil and butter. "Is
cholesterol the major cause of heart disease?" cardiologist Dr. Stephen
Sinatra asked. "Absolutely not."
In his book, The Great Cholesterol Myth, Dr. Sinatra said
the real cause of heart disease is inflammation, which comes from eating
too many carbohydrates. "We need to
coach our patients and empower our patients about the dangers of sugar,"
he said. "Unfortunately, they're not hearing that. They're hearing the
converse, the dangers of fat. Fat is healthy for you, as long as you avoid
trans fats." So by cutting back on
carbohydrates and eating natural fats and proteins, you could improve your
heart health and even wipe out cancer.
