Christina Bridge, a 40-year-old mom of two, is fighting breast cancer with the low-carb, high-fat ketogenic diet.
Bridge, who was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer in September 2014, underwent surgery and chemotherapy to treat her cancer.
In addition to conventional treatment, Christina adopted the ketogenic diet, and believes keto is helping her heal, she told the Register Star.
The ketogenic diet has been touted for stopping epileptic seizures, reversing diabetes and promoting rapid weight loss. More recently, the high-fat, low-carb moderate protein keto diet has gained attention for its capacity to “starve cancer.”
Joe Mancaruso, a 57-year-old fitness club owner, is battling terminal lung cancer without chemotherapy using the low-carb ketogenic diet.
Mancaruso, of Midland, Texas, has been following the ketogenic diet since February 2014 after deciding he was no longer interested in doing chemotherapy to treat his Stage 4 lung cancer, Joe told Examiner.
Joe, who does not smoke, previously overcame testicular cancer in 1985 with four rounds of chemotherapy. In May 2013, Mancaruso was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer and began treating it with the chemotherapy drug Alimta (at the hefty cost of $10,000 per dose every month).
Joe said he suffered seizures and a weakened immune system as a result of chemo, and decided he had enough.
“After three rounds of Alimta, I decided no more chemo,” said Mancaruso. “So I tried several diets, and finally ended up following the ketogenic diet, combined with supplements, exercise, sunshine and heat therapy.”
Joe, a longtime fitness buff, feels great relying solely on his ketogenic diet and rigorous exercise to treat his cancer.
Joe realizes that opting out of chemotherapy is a personal choice, but he likes that diet therapy won’t deplete his retirement savings or destroy his quality of life — which chemotherapy definitely does.
“This will not be the right choice for everyone, but it allows me to train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu four to five times a week, do my kettlebell training and travel,” said Mancaruso.
Keto Diet Starves Cancer Because Cancer Thrives on Sugar
While the idea of using diet therapy for a disease as deadly as cancer might sound shocking, research shows the ketogenic diet can starve cancer cells.
This is because all the cells in our body can use both fat and glucose (a carb), but cancer cells thrive on sugar and cannot survive on ketones. So by limiting carbohydrates — which turns into glucose inside the body — we can inhibit the growth of cancer cells.
Renowned cancer researcher Dr. Thomas Seyfried said the ketogenic diet can replace chemotherapy and radiation for treating most cancers.
Seyfried, the author of Cancer as a Metabolic Disease, said the ketogenic diet beats chemotherapy for most cancers because cancer is a metabolic — not a genetic — disease.
Research shows the ketogenic diet effectively treats advanced cancer in mice. These same anti-cancer properties have also been observed in human cancer patients and reported in published studies.
Elaine Cantin discussed how she used the ketogenic diet to manage her son’s type I diabetes and her own aggressive breast cancer in her book, The Cantin Ketogenic Diet.
“The cancer research community needs to change its view of cancer as a metabolic — not a genetic — disease in order to make meaningful progress,” said Travis Christofferson, author of Tripping Over the Truth: The Metabolic Theory of Cancer.
Today there are about a dozen studies that are investigating the use of the ketogenic diet to manage all kinds of cancer. Those results will determine whether the medical community will adopt metabolic therapy to treat cancer in the future.
“The ketogenic diet is a single metabolic approach to a multitude of different diseases,” said Dr. Seyfried. “The standard of care has been an abysmal failure for cancer. The ketogenic diet may one day replace the standard of care for most cancers.”
Related: Ketogenic diet beats chemotherapy for almost all cancers says Thomas Seyfried