Do they say that the second day is the worst? They should. The second day of fasting is substantially harder than the first. The temptations of food lurk everywhere, especially if you go grocery shopping, which I did to have something to do over lunch. I was very close to breaking the fast on many occasions. The nuts I bought are for tomorrow, but I almost ripped the pack open today. If I can trust the experience of the first fasting session, tomorrow will be easier.
The question of why I am doing this came to my mind many times today. Life is short (shorter for some than for others, but you never know). We should enjoy it as much as we can. Why didn’t I buy an ice cream? Why didn’t I have steak tonight? Why didn’t I nibble constantly during the day, keeping my belly happy and my brain flush with energy? It would have been so easy.
In the newspaper today there was an article about spontaneous recovery from cancer. Two people were profiled who were in desperate situations many years ago and inexplicably survived. They’re cancer just disappeared. This sounds a bit like the beginning of a snake oil sales event, but there’s science behind it. Or rather, science wants to get behind it. Oncologists in Zurich have created a database where they collect such rare cases to understand them better and, the best outcome of all, find aspects, treatments or behaviors that many cases share, and that might improve everyone’s chances.
Some of the behavioral factors correlated with positive outcomes are exercise, healthy nutrition, active involvement in one’s treatment, a positive outlook, and the will to live. This didn’t surprise me. These would be good habits, even if they didn’t help. I think I live all of them (though I could eat more fruits). And it’s the will to live and the active involvement in my treatment that keeps me away from temptation for three days.
At the end of the second day of fasting, I’m a bit more convinced of its usefulness. The review that got me started on this topic states that “the vast majority of tumours proliferate optimally in the presence of excess glucose”, which I take as meaning they won’t proliferate well when starved. This is something to build upon. Some cancers depend on fat as their energy source. The paper that introduced this concept also starts out by saying that “most cancer cells are programmed to increase glucose uptake”. Energy requirements are just a minor aspect of this upregulation. “Glucose in cancer cells tends to be used for ribose production, protein glycosylation and serine synthesis.” For cancers addicted to sugar, fasting must have a therapeutic effect.
The review makes the very sensible suggestion “to study the metabolic preferences of each type of tumour and to complete preclinical evaluation of the outcome of changes in the dietary energy source before adopting any recommendations for patients.” I haven’t been given any dietary recommendations specific to the chemotherapy. I was told to eat as much as possible and as richly as possible after the hemicolectomy but this advice was never updated. Definitely something to talk about tomorrow.
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