Links Between Metabolism And Cancer

Links Between Metabolism And Cancer

We wanted to spend some time today and focus on the links between metabolism and cancer.

One of the fundamental and essential things we do at An Oasis Of Healing is changing metabolism. There are enough links between metabolism and cancer that show us that cancer is a metabolic disease.

Cancer is not a nuclear disease which means it is not caused by a genetic defect. All gene changes whether they are being turned on or off or being mutated is a downstream consequence of metabolic changes.

All of us run on a glucose metabolism. When we are being breast feed as babies we are living on ketones and there is more fat than sugar. In essence, as infants, we are living on a ketogenic diet.

Energy can be derived from either fat or glucose, however the majority of us are on glucose metabolism. We start seeing certain health conditions development like diabetes, heart disease and a whole host of other conditions when levels of the glucose metabolism go beyond the normal range.

What is happening in scoiety today is not only are people eating the wrong foods, they are also eating too much food. When over eating is occuring, the body defends itself and certain things start to happen like becoming insulin resistant. The body makes less insulin receptors and then you develop what we call diabetes.

Why would diabetics ahve a higher risk of cancer? Cancer changes its whole metabolic process as follows. Inside of all cells including cancer cells are what is called mitochondria. Mitochondria are very efficient energy factories. They take 6 molecules of oxygen and 1 molecule of glucose and produce 36 to 38 ATP’s. ATP’s are the energy molecules.

Keep in mind these mitochondria are very vulunerable to being broken down as they are being hit constantly with mutagens, radiation, carcinogens, free radicals, microwaves, etc.  When they become damaged and the cell can no longer use it, it goes into a default mode of energy production called glycolysis.

Links Between Metabolism And Cancer Explained By Dr. Lodi

Glycolysis is where the process just ferments the sugar because it is unable to use oxygen and this is very inefficient because a lot more sugar or glucose is needed. And this is where the metabolic change occurs as cancer cells are ravenous glucose eaters. Cancer will do anything it can in order to get more sugar. The whole metabolism changes.

The metabolic changes that have occured inside cancers cells give them certain advantages like apoptosis. Apoptosis is programmed cellular death and in cancer cells this doesn’t happen nearly as often as normal cells. In other words, they don’t die which is not a good thing for us.

Metabolic therapies are therapies that challenge cancer cells based on our knowledge of its limitations. We can actually present a metabolic challenge that to a normal healthy cell is absolutely fine and has zero effect but for the cancer cell it’s lethal.

This is a totally different perspective than poisoning the cancer cells with a toxin like chemotherapy or radiation and killing it versus doing it metabolically where the cancer cells go through a normal cell death or apoptotic death.

People have to change their diets, if we don’t change what we eat, it’s the same as not quiting smoking. Most people get it now when it comes to smoking but the majority of people do not get it when it comes to eating.

And as important as eating is, what’s also important is when you don’t eat. We are eating too much as a society. If people eat more nutrient dense foods, they wouldn’t be hungry and cravings more processed carbs. People need to focus on the quality of food and the proper size of portions.

Remember metabolism is the activity of cells. If you change the activity of cells back to when they were healthy cells then there will no longer be cancer cells.