Insulin Potentiation Therapy (IPT): A Kinder, Gentler Form of Chemotherapy

Full-dose chemotherapy takes a significant toll on the body. Nutritional decline, or cachexia, is common during treatment, affecting an estimated 80% to 85% of patients over the course of their condition and treatment, and can affect a patient's ability to tolerate and complete a full course of care.

A Different Approach to Chemotherapy

Full-dose chemotherapy works by delivering as much of the drug as the body can tolerate at one time.

IPT takes a more targeted approach. Physicians combine a low dose of chemotherapy with insulin, which helps deliver the medication more precisely to cancer cells while aiming to spare more of the surrounding healthy tissue.

Because the dosing is low, side effects are minimized and the treatments can be given more frequently, which gives cancer cells less time to become resistant to the drugs.

What Is Insulin Potentiation Therapy?

Insulin Potentiation Therapy (IPT) is a modality for the administration of low-dose chemotherapy that has been in use since the mid 1930s.

How Does IPT Work?

Cancer cells, unlike other cells in human beings, are anaerobic. That means they cannot use oxygen when they metabolize glucose (burn sugar) for energy.

A healthy, oxygen-burning cell can produce 38 ATPs (energy packets) from one molecule of glucose and one molecule of oxygen. A cancer cell can only produce 2 ATPs from one molecule of glucose in the absence of oxygen.

Obviously, then, cancer cells are very inefficient at producing energy. As a consequence, they need 19 times more sugar (glucose) than non-cancerous cells.

In order for any cell to absorb sugar, insulin is required. Insulin is the "key" that opens the "lock" on the cell to allow sugar to pass through. The "locks" on the cell surface are called insulin receptors.

Cancer cells have developed a very simple but effective strategy which allows them to get more of the available sugar than their neighbors, the non-cancerous cells. They simply have many more insulin receptors than non-cancerous cells!

How IPT Low Dose Chemotherapy Is Used at An Oasis of Healing

At An Oasis of Healing, we use this knowledge to target the cancer cells with cytotoxic (cell-killing) agents (chemotherapy drugs).

By administering small amounts of insulin prior to the person eating that day, we are able to select the cancer cells from amongst all the other cells in the body because they are able to bind to the insulin much more quickly, resulting in what is known as the "therapeutic window" (cancer cells are permeable while the other, normal cells are still hard and impermeable).

There are a multitude of effects upon cells when insulin binds to them and one of these effects is that the cells become more permeable (creating openings) by stimulating an enzyme known as delta-9 desaturase.

Once the cancer cells have been targeted by the insulin to open their doors, we then administer small amounts of the appropriate chemotherapeutic drugs, from 5% to 10% of the standard dose.

Much of what we administer becomes absorbed into the cancer cells rather quickly and not into the normal cells because they are still relatively hard or impermeable. IPT, therefore, is able to take advantage of the powerful cytotoxic effects of standard chemotherapy without having to use high doses.

Because the dosing is low, side effects are minimized and the treatments can be given more frequently. This gives cancer cells less time to become resistant to the drugs and apoptosis occurs in a much shorter time frame.

This is accomplished while sparing the other normal cells in the body from being equally exposed to these toxins; the approach is designed to reduce side effects by using significantly lower doses.

This allows the immune system to protect the body from other cancers that may be "brewing" and it can also continue to defend against any other possible intrusions, such as micro-organisms (which cause infection), chemical poisons, EMFs, radiation and internally derived poisons from accumulated waste.

The Immune System
and the Hippocratic Oath

IPT physicians maintain membership in professional societies, attend conferences, read journals and communicate with colleagues in order to maintain a current knowledge base regarding all new drugs and protocols being used in the conventional treatment of cancer.

This is done so that IPT can continue to be as effective as possible by using the best of standard therapies in a rational manner.

In this regard, the Hippocratic Oath is taken very seriously. "Primum non nocere," or "First, do no harm."

If the immune system is significantly harmed while attempting to destroy the cancer, it would be a great, and perhaps fatal, disservice to the patient.

It is the immune system that keeps us clean, renewed and protected from infections, toxins and cancer.

About Thomas Lodi, MD

Thomas Lodi, MD was trained in internal medicine and practiced conventional medicine for 10 years before he began integrating complementary and alternative therapies into his practice.

In 2005, he sold his integrative oncology practice in New York and moved to Mesa to establish a healing center. In New York Dr. Lodi is licensed as a Medical Doctor and in Arizona he is licensed by the Arizona and Homeopathic Medical Examiners.