Fasting Mimicking Diet Improves Chemotherapy Effectiveness and Reduces Side Effects

The fasting mimicking diet emerged from efforts to better define the dose-response curve for beneficial effects resulting from a reduced calorie intake. Fasting is beneficial, calorie restriction is beneficial, but where are the dividing lines? How much food can one eat and still obtain near all of the benefits of fasting? As a result of this work, the fasting mimicking diet has undergone clinical testing in cancer patients. Numerous benefits have been demonstrated, and the paper here is an example of the type. In this human trial, fasting mimicking reduced the negative short term impact of chemotherapy on health, and, further, three to four times as many patients experienced a strongly beneficial response to the chemotherapeutic treatment. Extensive preclinical evidence suggests that short-term fasting and fasting mimicking diets (FMDs) can protect healthy cells against the perils of a wide variety of stressors, including chemotherapy, simultaneously rendering cancer cells more vulnerable to chemotherapy and other therapies. Essentially, fasting causes a switch in healthy cells from a proliferative state towards a maintenance and repair state. Malignant cells, in contrast, seem to be unable to enter this protective state because of oncoprotein activity, and therefore fail to adapt to nutrient scarce conditions. Instead, fasting deprives proliferating cancer cells of nutrients and growth factors, which renders them more sensitive to cancer therapy and increases cell ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs