The other day, a friend passed on some tricks on how to beat cancer. According to Russian scientists that are largely ignored in the west, fasting is key. The reason is this: When cells are starved, their membrane permeability changes, which protects them from the assault of chemotherapeutic toxins. Cancer cells, which proliferate no matter what, have no such safeguards and receive the full force of chemotherapy (*).
I’m grateful for anything that makes me think about cancer and understand more about it. With what I know already, my friend’s suggestion makes sense in one case only. If a patient suffers from unbearable side effects, protecting healthy cells from carcinocidal toxins is probably quite powerful. The therapy can continue for longer. For patients whose side effects are tolerable, however, fasting is not a good idea. There are two reasons for this.
When outlining what was about to come, before the beginning of chemotherapy, my doctor was adamant that eating was one of the best things I could do. On the one hand, the body uses more energy as it fights cancer. The more I eat, the more I've got to fight the evil. On the other hand, eating too little – whether because of the very common side effect of nausea or because of general un-wellbeing – can take a patient to a state of feebleness that can eventually lead to a premature end of the therapy. This is not something I’d want.
Gaining weight was one of my top priorities right after surgery and up to the first few chemo sessions. It was a stony path with a few setbacks, but I’m now back to where I used to be, never mind the missing half-colon. I am convinced that being physically strong helps me endure chemotherapy better. The weakness of the side effects is probably related to this. Being strong also helps me exercise with force, which boosts my immune system and stimulates it in its fight against cancer. Eating is unambiguously good.
Wholesome home-cooked Christmas dinner.
Christmas is of course the best time for eating. For our big meal, I had prepared duck breast, a dish I had first cooked on the same occasion seven years ago, and finger dumplings made from scratch (potatoes, flour and egg). My mom contributed Brussels sprouts, and I added a pineapple panna cotta that was much softer than my first try but also much sweeter. It was a good dinner. It filled me up and made me happy – and put me in the mood and right mindset to beat this damn cancer into a defunct pulp.
(*) I misunderstood my friend or maybe he misremembered. A documentary on Arte, a French-German TV station, shows how Russian scientists in the 1960s studied fasting but not as a way to treat cancer. They discovered that prolonged fasting has an effect somewhere between beneficial and curative for a large number of ailments, from mental disorders to arthritis. To this day, a clinic near Lake Baikal welcomes patients who fast for two to three weeks. A notable contraindication to fasting is cancer. It’s hard to see how you can fast for three weeks while undergoing chemotherapy. The connection between periodic fasting and a better response to chemotherapy that I’m all excited about was later discovered in Valter Longo’s lab in California.
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