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Old 04-06-2015, 04:52 PM   #8
chay
Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Location: Alaska
Posts: 10
Re: Our Experiment Fasting Around Chemo

2015
Having sold the domain, the website I linked to earlier now is not available.

This is a copy of the referenced post:

19 May 2013

Update: Heidi wrapped up her sixth and last three-week cycle of chemo (Taxotere/Docetaxel, Carboplatin/Paraplatin). She also was taking Herceptin (targeted antibody) on a weekly basis. She'll continue with Herceptin on a three-week cycle until the end of the year. We may try to wrap the Herceptin treatments up a little bit early in order to avoid a third round of $12,000 deductibles that will start again at the beginning of next year. Or not. Not sure, yet.

We are way-happy to put the chemo part behind us, and to do so without having had to endure the nausea, vomiting, neuropathy, fatigue, exhaustion, diarrhea, mouth sores, nail loss, heart trouble, body aches, and all that morbidity we were prepared to expect. Our negative side effects were alopecia (hair loss) and some myelosuppression that contributed to lower platelet counts, which were addressed with Prednisone (a corticosteroid that comes with its own huge shotgun list of possible adverse side effects). We'll start tapering off the Prednisone in a couple of weeks after Heidi has had a chance to pass the Carboplatin she was infused with last week.

As I've written earlier, from the beginning we approached this cancer experience with the aim to do everything we could to minimize adverse impacts and never to have to do it again. Balance? Meditation, guided visualization, positive attitude, daily yoga, morning music, journaling, periodic caring cranial therapy from Heidi's brother-in-law, time for sleep, time for family and friends, continuing work, evidence-based, home-cooked diet of mostly plants, exercise -- and chemo-fasting. Heidi was awesome. Oh. At one point in January, I visited a therapist, too.

Here, I want to write about our chemo-fasting, which we did by bracketing chemo infusions with 80 hours of <100 kcal/day+water fasting. That typically would begin after dinner on a Monday, and end with the most absolutely welcome breakfasts on Friday. That would be for an infusion on a Thursday late morning and early afternoon. Because it is advised to take Prednisone with food, during fast Heidi would take her morning daily Prednisone with half a cup of yogurt, and sometimes as a treat for ourselves on the evenings on day 2 and day 3 we would sip on a cup of vegetable broth. After our first fasts, I experimented also with airborne and virtually no-calorie dill pickles. On the last fast at Heidi's invite, on a Tuesday at the utility board meeting I ate a small soup, salad and bread for lunch and a vegetable 6" subway sandwich for dinner. We did not drink juices.

I found fasting to be a really interesting experience, but here I want to go some way to explain our experience of choosing to try chemo-fasting.
Among the more than 400 cancer-related articles and papers I've downloaded, read, highlighted, tagged, and catalogued since the diagnosis, a good handful relate to experiments with fasting, fasting and cancer, calorie restricted diets and cancer, calorie restriction and longevity, and "starvation-dependent differential stress resistance."

Some titles:

* "Fasting Cycles Retard Growth of Tumors and Sensitize a Range of Cancer Cell Types to Chemotherapy," (Science Translational Medicine, 2012)
* "Starvation-dependent differential stress resistance protects normal but not cancer cells against high-dose chemotherapy," (2008)
* "Fasting and cancer treatment in humans: A case series report, (2009)
* "Glucose restriction can extend normal cell lifespan and impair precancerous cells through epigenetic control of hTERT and p16 expression," (2009)
* "Short-term calorie and protein restriction provide partial protection from chemotoxicity but do not delay glioma progression," (2013)
* "Caloric Restriction Has a Protective Effect on Chromosomes" (2013)
* "The Way You Eat May Affect Your Risk For Breast Cancer," (2013)
* "Fasting Enhances the Response of Glioma to Chemo and Radiation Therapy," (2012)
* "How Cells Brace Themselves For Starvation," (2012)
* "Caloric Restriction Leads Scientists to Molecular Pathways that Slow Aging, Improve Health," (2010)
* "Link Between Tumor Suppressors and Starvation Survival Suggested," (2013)
* "The Calorie-Restriction Experiment," (NYT, 2009)
* "Less is More When Restraining Calories Boosts Immunity," (2010)
* "Dieting on Radiation Therapy May Improve Outcomes for Breast Cancer Patients," (2013)
* "Fasting and cancer: Starving the beast," (2012)
* "Fasting Might Boost Chemo's Cancer-Busting Properties," (Scientific American, 2012)
* "Starvation, detoxification, and multidrug resistance in cancer therapy," (2012)
* "Turning Back the Clock: Fasting Prolongs Reproductive Lifespan," (2009)
* "Calorie Restricted Diet Prevents Pancreatic Inflammation and Cancer, Study Suggests," (2008)
* "Calorie Restriction and Exercise Show Breast Cancer Prevention Differences in Postmenopausal Women," (2008)
* "Calorie Restriction Limits -- and Obesity Fuels -- Development of Epithelial Cancers," (2008)
* "Dietary Energy Balance Modulates Multistage Epithelial Carcinogenesis in Mouse Skin," (2008)
* "Extending Healthy Life Span -- From Yeast to Humans," (2010)
* "Calorie Restriction Does Not Appear To Induce Bone Loss In Overweight Adults," (2013)
* "When It Comes To Living Longer, It's Better To Go Hungry Than Go Running, Mouse Study Suggests," (2008)
* "Aging and Longevity Tied To Specific Brain Region In Mice," (2010)
* "Controlling Key Enzyme in Brain (Sirt1) Offers Clue for Future Obesity Treatment," (2009)
* "Calorie Intake Linked to Cell Lifespan, Cancer Development," (2009)
* "Fasting May Equal Calorie-Restricted Diets," (Scientific American, 2008)
* "Two New Studies Suggest that Caloric Restriction In Monkeys May Extend Their Life and Health," (1997)
* "Meal Skipping Helps Rodents Resist Diabetes, Brain Damage," (2003)
* "Intermittent Fasting May Help Those With Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease, Study Suggests," (2013)
* "Periodic Dieting May Cut Breast Cancer Risk," (2009)
* "Intermittent fasting" (wikipedia)

The articles and papers referenced above contained information that generally informed or reinforced our decision to try our chemo-fast. Two pieces I encountered, however, gave reason for skepticism:

* "Calorie Restriction Does Not Affect Survival: Study of Monkeys Also Suggests Some Health Benefits," (2012)
* "Eating Less May Not Extend Human Life: Caloric Restriction May Benefit Only Obese Mice," (2009)

For us, the concept and evidence in support of "differential stress resistance," as an explanation for why fasting during chemo might reduce adverse side affects while simultaneously amplifying tumor suppression made sense. That said, evidence at the scale of human studies was weak involving only one population of ten people and a couple of online-forum-level anecdotes. New controlled human trials are just underway:

* "Short-term Fasting: Impact on Toxicity" (Trial recruitment, 2013)
* "Short-term Fasting Before Chemotherapy in Treating Patients With Cancer," (Trial recruitment, 2013)
* "A controlled trial of reduced meal frequency without caloric restriction in healthy, normal-weight, middle-aged adults" (2007)

Before our first round of chemo, we discussed our idea to try chemo-fasting with our oncologist. We recognized that Heidi's ability to regain her weight that she'd lose during fasting would be important. As it turns out, both of us would lose about six pounds during our fasts. Heidi always returned to her baseline weight in relatively short order, although she had to work harder (eat more consciously than me) to do so. Also, she did not gain weight during chemo. Evidence suggests if she had gained weight it would have increased her risk factor. Gaining weight is common among breast cancer patients, and even more common among people on Prednisone, as I understand.

We decided to try once to see how the fasting and post-chemo experiences went, and proceed from there. The fasting was mentally challenging, (once we started, more challenging for me than Heidi), but interesting. As Heidi's adverse side effects after chemo were minimal to non-existent after each round, increasingly we came to think we didn't want to try not fasting. Not even for the experiment's sake.

So we don't really know if chemo-fasting may have helped in cancer suppression as we hope, or if it contributed to her minimal adverse side effects during chemo. In Heidi's case, she is a population of one, and we had no control events to compare with her experience, but it seems so far like it didn't hurt, and who knows? Maybe it gave Heidi another bit of "high performance profile" edge. It was another something we could do in our case with little obvious negative risk and a little more positive possibility. It also gave us focus, and helped us feel more like active participants in Heidi's therapy; and a little less just like dead meat feeding a significantly-predatory insurance-and-health care system.

PostScript:
Another woman received some guidance on fasting, which is recorded on a HER2 support forum.

2015 PostScript: Heidi currently shows no signs of disease.
07-29-2018 PostScript: Heidi still shows no signs of disease.
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