Is Cancer a Metabolic Disease? Is Gene Theory Disproven? [12 Studies] 

*Substrate Level Phosphorylation and Glutamine [Read Below]* *Substrate Level Phosphorylation* I realized too late that I probably should have spent more time on discussing Substrate Level Phosphorylation (SLP), which is just the generation of ATP - typically related to glycolysis (what I mentioned in the video), but has also been proposed, by Dr. Seyfried to occur within the mitochondrion. This second part is something I wish I had mentioned, so I'm mentioning it here. His argument (as I understand it from podcasts and his writing) is that SLP can occur in lieu of OXPHOS (mentioned in the video). Essentially, instead of using the oxidative phosphorylation proteins (OXPHOS) for ATP generation (which is how mitochondria generate most of their energy), the cell has completely destroyed structural integrity of the mitochondrion and therefor can't use OXPHOS (he shows this in microscopy images of mitochondria that look like 'ghost' mitochondria); as a result, the cell, still within the mitochondria, but without the aid of the oxidative phosphorylation proteins, generates ATP through this SLP mechanism. So, mitochondria are defective, but still capable of producing energy, just not through their normal means. I probably should have taken a bit of time to explain that in the video, but time and the complexity of the topic make it difficult. That said, I may make a follow up video going into this with more depth. However, I'd caution that I have seen with my own eyes (through my own laboratory experiments) that adding an oxidative phosphorylation inhibitor to cancer cells leads to their cell death in a high fat environment, which would evidence that cancer cells (at least the ones I use) are highly dependent on oxidative phosphorylation in a high fat environment (devoid of sugar) - this is in complete opposition to Dr. Seyfried's hypothesis. *Glutamine* People will often turn to glutamine as an argument for its use as an energy generator. This is true and something I hope to discuss in the future, as well. Glutamine can undergo glutaminolysis, which allows the amino acid to be used in the mitochondrion through the tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA cycle) and is capable of generating another energy molecule (GTP) that can then be further converted to ATP (our main energy source). It's a backwards and inefficient way of generating energy, but it is feasible. However, even Dr. Seyfried mentions that this cannot be abolished by diet alone and requires pharmaceutical intervention to effectively inhibit. Again, something I will incorporate into a follow up video. This is an overwhelmingly complex issue - if you feel you have a strong grasp on it, I encourage you to reconsider. I may be in the general field, but I have much to learn from cancer biologists and hope to do so as time goes on, which I will then distill for you. Thank you!

I feel like the biggest problems with all discussions of cancer is this idea that "cancer" is a single disease, as opposed to a vast collection of "ways your body's cells can break down and start growing out of control." So its totally possible for both of these things to be exclusively true for a given form of cancer.

hey, just became a subscriber. love your videos as i find them so informative! love your hair too by the way. lol. so, here's my story. my twin brother and i were diagnosed with prostate cancer during the summer of 2016 and we were both told that it was very aggressive and would probable only live for 2-3 years, assuming we had a prostatectomy, radiation, and hormone therapy. we were told we would be offered chemotherapy in the final stages. we weren't surprised by the prognosis because our father and two older brothers died of the same cancer within 2 years of being diagnosed. my brother decided to have all of the above treatments (radiation, chemo, prostatectomy, hormone therapy) and died two and half years from the day he was diagnosed. i decided to just do the prostatectomy which unfortunately was unsuccessful in eradicating the cancer. But here i am 7 years later and still alive...but unfortunately not cancer free. the only things i did differently from my brother was, refuse the standard treatments, except for the prostatectomy, and cut out carbs and sugar and started juicing which i lost 40 lbs. have kept the weight off for over 7 years later by juicing on a regular basis. still don't eat carbs and sugar. and to this very day i still wonder from time to time if i have outlived my twin brother simply because i cut out the sugar and carbs and started juicing (raw vegetables) which was something i couldn't convince my brother to do. OR, am i still alive because i didn't accept the other treatments after i had my prostatectomy. all i know is, the cancer still hasn't spread to any other areas of my body and when i see my oncologists on a yearly basis he just keeps saying, i don't know why you're still alive... but whatever you're doing, keep on doing it because it's obviously working so, see ya next year!

I would love to see a discussion between you and Dr Seyfried. There is no better place for Seyfried to discuss his hypothesis than your channel, because you are openminded to listen and also highly qualified to challenge his ideas. PLEASE DO IT

RU-vid is full of shills pushing "this is the Truth, the one Truth, nothing but the Truth", and it can be very hard to figure anything out. So I really appreciate your videos, which take a nuanced view and don't try to tell people "I'm right everything else is wrong". Thank you for that hard work!

I've come across several anecdotal stories of people who have seemingly cured their cancer using prolonged fasting as the primary weapon along with carb restriction. Probably we don't hear about those people for whom this approach didn't work because they died. It would be nice to know which cancers may respond favorably to this approach and which might be made worse.

Thanks for helping delineate this complex topic. Seyfried stimulated my research on cancer a few years ago and the conclusion I came to was that it's not super important to label it either SMT or metabolic, but in terms of actually treating it, there is a clear metabolic element that is neglected. And when the metastatic survival rates are so incredibly low at 5 and 10 years, there should be a different approach.

From a layperson but former RN who just wants to know the analytical, theoretical, evidence-based, and metaphysical truth, you are doing an outstanding job of pulling all the info threads together to present a deeply intricate picture that furthers our ability to help and understand ourselves. Great video!

Very interesting! The Epigenetics of cancer is fascinating to me and I would like to learn more about it. I have watched a few interviews with Dr Seyfried. His therapy includes not only restricting carbs, but also uses a pulsed regimen restricting the amino acid glutamine that cancer cells also use as a fuel source. He didn't describe the mechanism for this therapy in the interviews I saw. I don't recall him mentioning types of cancer cells that use fat though... He doesn't claim that his treatment protocol cures cancer. He said that limiting the fuel to the cancer cells starves them so they aren't able to easily multiply and spread throughout the body. (Perhaps enabling the innate immune cells to keep up with killing the malignant cells?) On a personal note, I used to attend inter-departmental Oncology meetings with Hematology-Oncology, Radiology, Pathology and Medical staff. A particular patient's cancer and treatment would be discussed. The Chief of Oncology would present a list of proposed treatment regimens including various chemo drugs, radiation therapy, surgery options, as well as no treatment. The approximate survival time was also included. The Chief sometimes admitted that the treatments didn't offer much longevity benefit. He didn't talk about the quality of time left. Do you want to spend this time feeling sick from the poison, being shuttled back and forth to the medical center, and incurring huge medical debt? There is a lot of consider. I suspect I would try non-toxic methods and go with grace.

It seems to me that we may need to shift our paradigm from thinking of all cancer as one entity to viewing cancer as a collection of separate diseases. Much like we think about bacterial infections as individual diseases caused by specific bacteria. To me, where we mess up is lumping all cancer into one. If we did that with bacterial infections, we never would have developed the vast array of antibiotics that we currently have, and we would still be scratching our heads as to why penicillin works on ear infections but seems to do nothing to MRSA.

You forget to discuss using glutamine as fuel by Cancer cells and abt fermentation process. Which is the most important aspect to complete the metabolic theory of Dr Thomas Seyfried.

Hi! I’m seizing the opportunity of cancer. Putting the music louder (as it is Stage 4); balancing body, mind and spirit; and among others, learning a lot, particularly thanks to people like you (thanks!). Question: how can one find out if a cancer is primarily fuelled by glucose, glutamine, carbs or by fat? Jane McLelland explains something similar to you, but for regular people like me it seems difficult knowledge to come by but clearly highly important. Particularly in a world of fragmented oncology where most doctors still only know about “eat whatever you want, don’t fast and get as high chemo as you can”.

There are a lot of different type of cancer. Some cancers use fat as fuel but the vast majority of cancer is dependent on glucose fermentation, you can differenciate them with a PET scan which shows the higher rate of glucose utilisation of cancer cells.

Clear as mud, as expected. Such a complex issue, every answer produces 100 more questions. Thanks for providing a little bit of clarity with your well-expressed arguments.

This is your best work yet. Nice job. I also loved your wishes that other things could have been covered in the video. Maybe a part 2 is in order. I am also very interested in the "press-pulse" approach Seyfried recommends for dealing with Glutamine. Maybe part 3. Thanks

Thank you for your sanity in a heavily controlled area. I have lost 5 loved ones to 4th stage with heavy chemo. Doctors down played anything they could do for themselves to help chemo

"And why wouldn't they coexist?" Exactly what I was thinking. Both the somatic and metabolic models seem to have truth to them. The hard part is applying it to each cancer! I am guessing we will update both models as time goes on. Like you said, not all cancers are the same, they are very diverse.

I believe I have a case of a 'diffuse astrocytoma'. Going ketogenic has made a huge difference experientially, as well as fasting and/or restricting protein (like a fasting mimicking diet), but I don't know how to verify whether this is affecting the cancerous cells directly, or just reducing my symptoms for the moment. I picture my cancer-affected cells as misbehaving teenagers; they can be just fine when they are not misbehaving, but if the environment is suitable, they can cause a lot of mayhem... And even if I were willing to sacrifice them, I wouldn't want to take out great swaths of healthy cells as collateral damage. So I want to figure out how to get autophagy and such to work effectively!

Keep going because you really make difficult topics understandable and I so appreciate that you cite the actual study.

I wouldn't say the gene theory, more aptly somatic mutation theory, has been disproven, but that it is simply incorrect or incomplete, with a major part missing being the metabolic components and how that applies to treatment. I appreciate the analysis. This is a very complicated topic, and while I believe Seyfried is onto something, I also admit more research is needed in this area. What I'm really interested in is ALL the root causes and mechanisms. Looking forward to your follow-up.

a balanced take on a thorny and strongly sensitive question. Good work 👍

Congratulations on a PhD completion...an admirable accomplishment. I admire your quest to share and learn about science and the nuances of dissecting research to make our lives better.

Great video and great channel. The details are complex and make stop, focus, and take notes. What I appreciate most is the nuance and willingness to include opposing views. True scientists care more about contributing to the corpus of research than in their theories being proven correct. As for cancer, it’s often an issue of life or death and it’d be nice if more researchers put aside their egos for the sake of saving lives. I agree that different cancers may have more metabolic attributes than others. Dr. Don Layman is one who explained benefits fasting for certain cancers, especially before and after chemotherapy. The Moss Report also speaks a bit on the issue. I’ve had several friends and friends of friends get (different types of) cancer the past few years and one unsettling reality is that many times they put blind trust in a doctor who gives opposing prescriptive advice to another friend’s doctor, but neither friend will listen to anything else, even to save their life. Instead of trying to get as much information as possible, they close themselves off to any other source of knowledge. Anecdotally, one friend who refused outside advice (including potentially fasting) miraculously made a complete recovery upon doing 2 months/10 cycles of 3 day fasts (3 days eating followed by 3 days of fasting) after his doctor gave up on chemotherapy and tried a 🏈hail mary in desperation. Maybe it was fasting or maybe God had more work for him to keep doing instead of retiring him from this world.

I’m pretty sure Dr. Seyfried includes glutamate in the mix.. not just fasting and low/no carb.

I think it's Dr. Christopher M Palmer who I first heard talking about cancer as a metabolic disease. Or rather the first person who wasn't primarily a social media personality or an alcoholic lecturer at my university. He's got a laundry list of accolades and titles that made my ears prick up when I saw him interviewed and I just had to hear more from him. His work on psychiatric disorders as metabolic disease really shook up my perception of what the scientific community at large was willing to tolerate in terms of whacky theories spouted by someone with a high degree of influence over the coming generations of top level medical scientists and practitioners in America (as he does).

Thank you! I've been asking for your review of Dr. Seyfried's work for a long time. I'm glad to see this come to fruition. I have a handful of follow-up questions and comments. Basically, the clinical results folks are seeing sound really impressive, which involves three different therapies, only one of which is a low carb diet. They shut down two other energy sources that the mitochondria membrane use to make ATP through anaerobic glycolysis. Also, DS suggests a pathway for the gene mutation as a downstream event in response to mitochondrial damage via ROS that is released. The greater context of this whole discussion is an industry seamingly ignoring this science-- which is a different thread of conversation. I really do appreciate your dutiful analysis. One day, I look forward to your analysis or criticism of the works and important questions raised by Stefan Lanka, Tom Cowan, Andrew Kaufman, Samantha Bailey, and others who have thoughtfully challenged another behemoth medical industry. Maybe invite Dr S on your channel for an interview?

To be fair to Seyfried you should have mentioned the role of glutamine. Also Seyfried explains that disfunctional mitochondria end up causing mutations in the nucleus (so the correlations between certain mutations in the nucleus and cancer can be explained this way). Another example of correlation not being causal.

What about using evidenced based findings to see if there's any validity to the theory? Use IF, a ketogenic diet and DON and see what happens in a randomized control study. Which cancers prefer to use fat? I'm interested in reading about this.

Very well spoken on such a complex topic in a short amount of time. I myself am a strong believer that when it comes to nutrition a whole food plant based diet which is high in fiber, phytonutrients, and antioxidants, a diet that is abstaining from animal derived products and ultra processed foods, is the closest we can get in order to prevent ourselves from getting most types of cancer, and maintain optimal health. The reason becomes very clear, as these foods cause significantly more oxidative stress in our bodies as these products are often stripped from their protective qualities (antioxidants, phytonutrients, and fiber) rendering them harmful to our bodies, inevitably causing metabolic damage and in the end certain types of cancer. As for animal derived products; heme-iron is highly bioavailable and can lead to oxidation, saturated fats also cause metabolic damage, also the protein has an unfavorable amino-acid profile, being very high in BCAAs causing a spike in growth promoting hormones like IGF-1 which activates mTOR; this accelerates aging as well as promoting cell proliferation, which may increase our chances of getting cancer. These are some of the pathways related to cancer and the Otto Warburg hypothesis, but honestly listing everything is just too much to dump in a youtube comment. I am not saying that a whole food plant based diet is "THE ANSWER" to everything when it comes to health, and I do believe that you can get away living healthfully eating animal based products and ultra processed products in moderation, because moderation is key 🙂 I just choose not to indulge animals because of my moral beliefs, as for ultra-processed foods, I would make the exception on special occasions e.g. eating out or a wedding. I have never felt better before in my life, especially when it comes to recovery after training and mental clarity. The evidence using a wfpb diet as dietary intervention on cancer (especially breast and prostate), heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, alzheimer, kidney disease, arthritis, the list goes on ; The evidence and the results.. it looks very promising, however we simply need more long-term data on this kind of lifestyle before the point can be proven. Dean Ornish has some great results on lifestyle intervention and seems like a very powerful and promising tool when it comes to lengthening our telomeres, which is a marker used to indicate our life expectancy. This has everything to do with how to change your epigenetics in a favorable way, that is why I really like the saying or book title ; Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger. Edit: Totally forgot to ask you the question if you would be willing to review Dr. Dean Ornish, T. Colin Campbell and Walter Willett?

I agree with you that it's a bit naive to think that all cancers are the same and thus can be "treated" the same way. Still, this metabolic theory is very interesting and hopefully will help fight some tumors that heavily rely on aerobic glycolisis. Btw, discovered your content recently, love it. As a PhD student in biotechnology, I would LOVE to see more in depth analysis of scientific papers on RU-vid. I'm sincerely surprised your channel is not more popular. Keep up the good work! 😊

Excellent - as usual. Great insight. I always learn a new word with each of your videos.

Reminds me the argument over germ theory versus terrain theory for illness. My opinion? Functionally? 90% terrain. Cancer’ll probably end up being 60-40 metabolic. I know CG Jung ventured a theory that cancer is actually caused by psychological distress. He didn’t push it too hard. But he did notice some patients coming out of cancer once they had come to grips with their own turmoil. May be something to consider, too. Part of your body splitting off. Part of your psyche splitting off. Has a nice symmetry about it.

I would love to hear more of your research based on the individual types or groups of cancers.

I'm a new subscriber. This video connects with what I've seen about metabolic syndrome (Dr. Robert Lustig). I'm age 21 and did gymnastics for 14 years. I've been extremely lean all my life and extremely muscular from my earliest days in gymnastics. My body fat is stable at about 6-8% given how much I train and eat. But Dr. Lustig said that thin people can also have metabolic syndrome--with all the negative effects. And maybe here--cancer. I didn't grow up eating sugar or fructose that was added to foods. My adoptive mom was into nutrition and knew sugar is bad. I've struggled to eat most of my early life to keep light for gymnastics. I realized about age 12 or 13 that I can add muscle really easily which scared me as a young gymnast. Family situation also caused me to not eat a lot. I've never had a test to see what visceral fat I have in my organs. I'm extremely lean now at almost 5' 10" tall and waist is 29" and I weigh 178 lbs. I assume I'm insulin sensitive and have no fatty liver. I got severely beat up just before my 17th birthday by guys wanting to beat up a shredded gymnast. That got me into wanting to build a lot more lean muscle mass--legs in particular. That meant eating a lot of food and eating all the time. I never got into sugary foods but did start eating a lot of pizza and pasta to fuel my heavy lifting programs. School athletes all but forced me to eat a lot. I hate eating a lot when not hungry. But the lean muscle mass came (legs in particular). For gymnast pride reasons I think I also worked to stay extremely lean. But I wonder if I could have fatty liver and not know it. And of course I now worry about cancer.

I’ve been following Dr Seyfrieds research on cancer and one thing that has made me scratch my head is that those that I know of that died of cancer they literally almost quit eating for months because they had zero appetite and yet their cancer continued to progress and health diminished. It seems if fasting was key then why did they continue to get worse? It is an interesting idea but I doubt the answer is this simple. I wish it was.

I appreciate your videos. I especially appreciate learning which studies to read and download. Thank you!

Hey Nick I think you have missed discussing also the role of substrate level fermentation using GLUTAMINE, not just glucose. I suggest you look into this angle as well.

Brilliant work - as usual. Thank you!💗💗

Love your videos Nick. This one in particular. And yea, cancer is a tough nut to crack. Would like to add some thoughts as a non-scientist but someone who has, by necessity, taken an interest in cancer. From a general perspective we have seen cancer rates increase greatly over the last 100+ years for both humans and domesticated animals with younger and younger people afflicted on the heels of adopting more and more unnatural diets and lifestyles including pharma drugs which would tend to support the notion that the causal effect of cancer is metabolic and not genetic. I have also come to consider that the net effect of this unnatural behavior has altered the micro environment around cells which in turn signal cells to alter their form of metabolism from OXPHOS to glycolysis, taking on an anaerobic disposition. I am also coming to think that initiation of cancer is a natural process when presented with the right environment rather than some unpredictable "genetic mutation". Implementing a backup plan to survive in a hostile environment. I also find it interesting that many "off label" drugs designed to kill other anaerobic organisms (blocking metabolic pathways) work to some degree with cancer cells and leave healthy cells largely unaffected. Once a healthy cell transitions to a cancer cell it seems to take on many of the properties of other infectious pathogens. As for killing cancer irrespective of type, there is some marginalized work using oxidizers like ozone and chlorine dioxide which will overwhelm the already over stressed levels of glutathione in the cancer cell and kill it while leaving healthy cells unaffected - somewhat mimicking some aspects of our own immune system which is often thwarted by cancer.

Subscribed! I am looking forward to your next video on this topic.

So I wonder, do we know if autophagy would target cancerous cells first if the right conditions were met? Or maybe that's part of the problem? I did find it intriguing to learn that fasting improves chemotherapy treatment outcomes in many cases. I also think argument number 3 for the metabolic theory of cancer is a non sequitur. Argument number 5 proves that more focus on the metabolic characteristics of cancer need to be analyzed further to see if there may be a host of factors, including nutrition, that negatively affect mitochondria particularly in cancer cells. I have long been a proponent of finding the cause of cancer over developing treatments for cancer because money spent in that direction will most definitely uncover meaningful therapeutic solutions that work effectively.

The metabolic disease theory does open the door to the question: Are there some ways that we can interfere with cancers beside poison, burn, and cut? Jane McLelland's book, "How to Starve Cancer", sheds some light on this topic. Despite its clickbait title, she delves into methods of attacking cancers while undergoing typical standard of care. She notes that not all cancers are the same. Also, a cancer after radiation may have one vulnerability while after chemo it might have another. She claims to have survived stage 4 ovarian cancer and breast cancer. She has a science background.

I remember an older youTube video I can't seem to find anymore, saying something similar: that cancer cells are not just accidents in more recent times, but they have been within animals, even plants from the beginning almost, as an alternative way of functioning, and the mutations are just a side effect of accumulation from repeat divisions.

I had surgery for cancer last year and am in remission. My surgeon and oncologists are researchers at a major university. One of my questions was, "What caused this?" In my case, they were not sure. I don't smoke or drink. My diet was low carb, and I exercised. There are many types of cancers. Genetics, the environment, and the immune system are all factors. When i asked if I should follow a special diet or fast, they advised me to avoid processed foods and red meat.

I would like to see a podcast between you and Dr. Seyfried where the evidence against cancer being metabolic disease will be presented.

I have one remark. I've seen several lectures on this topic from mitochondrial theory of cancer proponents and they say something more and else. Mitochondrium according to them is not solely organelle producing just ATP. It also produces molecues which stear other cellular organellae and processes, including division and proliferation. Fatty acid metabolism in cancerous cells can be easaly blocked by 4 substancnes readily available. And one more remark. It 's been very well known for 20 or so years that some cancers grow on Omega-6 fatty acids like bread on yearst.

Would you meet with Dr. Seyfried and discuss your theories and studies with him? I think we all would love it.

I agree that it is both. I have mucosal melanoma which has very few mutations, but I have one mutation that suggests that I keep glucose and insulin low. That has really helped together with immunotherapy and surgery to keep it at bay. There are several other mucosal melanoma patients I know whose cancer grows dramatically fast and is less responsive to immunotherapy. No cancer type is homogeneous and it does us a disservice to ignore factors that can help such as genetics, epigenetics , tumor micro... It is hubris to think we have a handle on cancer when 1 in 2 people will get it in their lifetime. Unfortunately I see so many people cooking up their own treatments with various anti parasitic drugs and THC, etc. because they think it is a simple disease and big pharma wants to charge mega$$$. They want simple answers, where there currently are limited ones. Metabolic, immune system, genetics, epigenetics, and probably more.

Great analysis. Continue to provide us with them.

I am trying low carb, intermittent with long fasting, I also bought gadgets to measure sugar, ketones, and blood pressure.. I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer last May and it's been a month since I started this mixed diet but mostly fasting (but nurturing on my period) I've lost 7kilograms in 3 weeks and I went to the hospital to check my muscle ratio- it's ok 😊 this week I'm on nurturing stage but still losing weight because I eat no sugar- only once a week in a form of fruit. And If I ever eat carbo- only 100grams and I pair it with 25k steps walk and brisk walk- I'm still losing .5kilograms every 3days.. I drink more or less 2-2.5 liters of water and 500ml of greentea with high quercetin. All my food is anti cancer food.. 😂😂😂 Maybe, I'm doing the extreme but I'm enjoying it. Also, 25minutes of average squats, lifts and streches.. Let's see if my doctor will option out total hysterectomy- my next hospital appointment is july 28th.. I'm a very positive person so I think it's also helping, I'll update if any of the diet will cause me harm in the future.

I wonder if the answer is metabolic flexibility. Setting aside weekends, for example, for low carbs and fasting. Workdays for relatively high carbs and caloric restriction.

I love this video. I think there is a lot to say about the other 'toxins' that are casually put into the human body via fast food (heated seed oils, soy, et al), processed foods (bleach, other cleaning agents, et al), etc. and how they relate to somatic/metabolic theories. As you mention, it's simply too complex to throw into one video. Nonetheless, very well done on this video!

I think you downplayed the potential effect of diet. Some of the other factors you mentioned are much less continuous as our exposure to our diet and you equated them.

Maybe, increased mitophagy during fasting (if I remember correctly) may help with the metabolic related cancers? Very interesting, as usual! Thanks!

You win my subscription with this video. I have been watching this topic for many years. Thanks so much!

Thank you for all the great information and research you do for us. May God continue to bless you with much wisdom and knowledge. You are very much appreciated!

Thank you for making this video. You’ve answered some questions I’ve had and pondered about. I would be interested in hearing what you think about what I’m getting ready to say. I have cancer for the 3rd time now. Prostate cancer the first time with a reoccurrence in a lymph node 2 years later. Now I have a tumor on my kidney. It’s very small type 1 so I’m not overly worried about it but this is my question. I think my cancers started from inflammation. A standard American diet most of my life. I think I was in a state of chronic inflammation for a very long time. I’ve left that lifestyle. I eat Whole Foods now. Stay away from processed foods and heavily sugary foods. Do you think I’m correct in my thoughts or on the right path? I hope I hear back

I think you probably know already, but the science that shows individual cells are able to collaborate and decide on cooperating to function together (for an end they determine) well outside the function they were cultivated from (i.e. kidney cells) is incredibly interesting.

It's that sentence " Cancer arises from a disruption of mitochondria" that I'm stuck on. Then I'm curious about the leap frog onto the " to generate ATP cellular energy, which ultimately leads cancer cells to undergo a shift to glucose metabolism" So does the cancer cells cause the disruption of the mitochondria in order to supply themselves with energy. But the sentence says that the disruption causes the cancer.

I found your video helpful as to how to think scientifically about claims in general and this one in particular. I'm adopted so don't know my birth parents medical history. My adoptive mother's mother had some sort of cancer and died from it. I don't know her so don't have any details. I've not eaten sugars all my life but do eat "real foods" that have fiber with sugar/fructose they may contain, but not even a lot of those. I definitely started eating a lot of meat when I got into hypertrophic weight training but made sure it was grass fed lean beef and chicken breasts. I heard EVO was a good oil so stuck with that (and not seed oils). So I'm confused about fat-driven cancers in this metabolic mix. But the video explained things very well.

Many researchers have released blogs and books on treating cancer and preventing the risk of cancer with diet. I hope you review these one day.

Absolutely love this channel and it's content. I find your explanations very clear and helpful. Your area of research is nothing short of fascinating. Thank you for putting time into this work.

I know I'm late but do love❤ your content. I would additionally love❤ if you did one video "what would I do if I had cancer...." in addition to chemotherapy, surgery and medicine treatment.

Great video, Love the way you made a round trip, detailed argument about cancer being complex in nature. 👍

Wonderful video! I absolutely loved following your logic and how you came to your conclusions - its the process thats important. I wish more scientific rebuttal videos were this well done. You did not set up a straw man, you addressed the real points and were honest about your conclusions. Other scientists could learn a thing or two from you about how to actually do science, process findings, and communicate those findings.

Cancer remains an incurable mystery. Gene mutation and gene changes are both gene errors causing cancer.

Ive always used this heuristic: Consuming more causes more growth whether it be cancerous or not.

Not that my uneducated and very ignorant mind can have any weight in this matter, but by hearing you out I had a thought: What if cancer is actually a signaling/communication malfunction? I say this again, i'm not a biologist, physicist nor a chemist, i just have a knack for looking at problems and trying to solve them. This topic is interesting enough to have actually made me think

Thank you for a great presentation. Looking forward to further analysis.

It is far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has. -Hippocrates Disease [is] not an entity, but a fluctuating condition of the patient's body, a battle between the substance of disease and the natural self-healing tendency of the body. -Hippocrates PS: Really well handled and covered Nic. Thank you.

We in the CFS community believe that something similar is happening with us. Maybe worth a deep dive?

Thank you.

Thanks so much for your work.Waiting for your next one. If possible, please make you tube about cancer and MTORr

This is the best video I seen on this topic so far!

I'm 68 and 2 years on a paleo low carb diet and activity. Weight loss, mental clarity no pain or flexibility limitations. I FEEL BULLETPROOF AND CANCER PROOF! My VA blood work is all nominal. BTW sound 🔊 check, volume too low. 👍💪🙏

From everything i've watched not being a doctor and all, it seems that cause leans towards metabolic and vulnerability leans towards genetic.

One of you best videos. Please do a follow up as you find more clues. 💪

This one went way over my head. It was like listening to an argument by three different people on the species Danaus chrysippus, each person witnessing the species at different life cycle stages, one describing it as a caterpillar, one describing it as a chrysalis, the other describing it as a butterfly, yet none of them realising it was the same species at different stages of life. And the argument that all cancers are a metabolic disease because in some rare cases they don't have mutations is the equivalent of the virologist Rous declaring all cancers are infectious viral diseases, after discovering a tumour-inducing virus in chickens ;) A virologist, an immunologist, and a tumour evolutionary biologist/ bioinformatist walk into a bar & discuss "cancer is a ???? disease :)

I'm really loving your content and today sent me down another rabbit hole, this time about the meaning of the word extirpation.

Yes, but what about mitochondrial DNA in "cancerous" versus "noncancerous" mitochondria? What is the difference in the proteins that these two "types" encode?

I believe it could be a combination of gene mutation, metabolic disease and immune condition.

What about the use of medicinal mushrooms for cancer prevention or slowing down of mutated cell division

Brilliant Nicholas, keep up your good work.

This is rapidly becoming my goto health / science channel.

Altered glucose metabolism has implications for malignancies. PET scan uses radiotracers injected into the patient before the scan to visualize the blood flow and metabolic and biochemical activities in diseased and healthy tissues. The tracer tends to accumulate in the tissue with high GLUCOSE demand, like tumors and inflammatory cells. Do they use tracers using fat or proteins to find metastases? There must be some reason the tumors get real active with sugar and not other things.

It’s pretty amazing that people are so willing to call someone like you were full and uneducated when in fact they are always looking for sources of information to assuage your fear and insecurity about their own health and I should think that anything that comes down the line that has a point of view on diseases like cancer and other health issues would be a welcome source of information and of course analyzed with critical thinking, but such is not the case people being what they are

The evidence indicates that ketogenic diet and fasting are best for preventing cancer. But as treatment for already established cancer, it's less clear in that it might depend on the type of cancer. Cancerous cells can be highly adaptable. They often rely on glucose, but some of them apparently can switch to using ketones. For more info, read Travis Christofferson's Tripping Over the Truth and Sam Apple's Ravenous.

I think it is a combination of both. And that DNA changes caused by metabolism can be passed on to offspring.

Dear Nick. Great video... but... Could we distinguish between glucose feeding cancer from fat feeding cancer by... Lets say monitoring glucose/hba1c and/or lipid panel? Or monitoring some other parameter, which would tell us about the cancer menu? What I am leaning towards thinking is, would a glucose hungry one be as such that it would consume more glucose and we would see lower values ? Kinda monitoring if the damn thief steals glucose or fat... from the truck (blood).

I think there's a simple correlation at work. Obese people are much more likely to develop various cancers (this is mostly due to a correlation between body weight and cancer cells: heavier people have more total cells to begin with and are therefore more likely to develop cancer). Meanwhile a low carb diet is correlated with weight loss (due to sugary foods being the most likely to result in weight gain). Therefore a dietary change that results in weight loss (like low carb) would be expected to reduce the likelihood of cancers. I think that explanation is the simplest and the best, and most likely the correct one (until we know otherwise). The next question would be: can weight loss reduce the spread of an existing cancer? Answer: maybe. Lets find out.

A factor I would like you to talk about is epigenetic metabolic inheritance from the pre-natal environment. This might be the missing link explaining metabolic disease in kids.

Enjoy your work. And now the million dollar question (for me at least) Does Melanoma react favorably to fasting or will it worsen it?

Thank you so much for your wonderful work. You are truly helping so many people!!!

i don't know. when we were fighting the losing battle of my son's rare sarcoma, CIC DUX4, the doc explained the reason stopping, in this case, calories, was detrimental to jeffrey. he drew two circles on a paper, one massivemoon-size, another smaller circle, and then a dot. he said these circles represented two organs that required the MOST calories to survive. he asked me to guess which one was the cancer. i chose the larger one. be said no, that was the brain then the liver...and the dot being the cancer. which one would suffer the most from calorie restriction, he said...then answered his own question...the brain. he explained the chemo was going to devastate jeffrey, and for hisbody to survive, he needed food. but then again, this rare cancer, so aggressive, took him after 9 months of horrifying surgeies, chemo treatments and its own devastation to the body. medivial, in my mind. but to this day, my decision to follow the dr's advice haunts me every day.

Thank you so much for sharing your work and effort. (as always).

Excellent as always. Thank you!

Why can't we inject p53 protein to suppress cancer cell division at least in cancer types that show defective p53? Being a human tumour suppressor protein should make it less toxic than chemotherapy and other therapies!

Thank you again for the quality work you put in to your videos! You’ve earned my subscription for sure.

Very interesting balanced analysis and good information to consider. Thanks.

Your videos are very good and educational. You have been doing a great job