New findings show how fasting can help breast-cancer patients

A powerful way to fight cancer that doesn't cost a dime!

he road to cancer survival usually doesn’t go in a straight line. It can be a long journey with discouraging setbacks along the way.

But researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) hope to change that. And not with another new cancer drug that promises the sun, the moon and the stars and costs a king’s ransom.

In fact, their strategy doesn’t cost a dime.

It’s called intermittent fasting, and this new study is just the most recent in a long line of research that shows how patients can get a better shot at survival by subtracting food rather than adding drugs.

Fast track to healing

Could the number of hours you put between dinner and breakfast make a big difference in your overall health — especially when you’re fighting for your life against cancer?

Well, that’s exactly what researchers found in this new UCSD study!

They looked at data collected from more than 2,400 volunteers with early-stage breast cancer who signed on for a long-term women’s health study. The volunteers submitted blood tests and gave detailed reports about their eating habits.

Combing through more than seven years of this data, the UCSD team picked up on an important pattern.

Women who didn’t eat anything for 13 or more hours between dinner and breakfast the next morning were more likely to avoid recurrence of their cancer than women who ate during that time period.

And that’s much easier to accomplish than you might think.

For example: Let’s say you finish dinner at 7, skip the evening snacks, then sit down to breakfast the next morning any time after 8. That would be a 13-hour fast.

The researchers also found that every two-hour increase of fasting overnight resulted in more hours of sleep, and better blood-sugar control.

I don’t have to tell you that keeping a lid on blood sugar and getting enough shuteye are two important keystones of good health. But they’re probably also the reason why women who fasted longer had less chance of seeing their breast cancer return. High blood sugar and poor sleep are known to be breast cancer risks.

Now that’s a key part of this puzzle, but there’s more going on here.

A lot more.

A few years ago I told you about another California researcher named Valter Longo. He’s the director of the University of Southern California Longevity Institute.

Testing different fasting regimens with a variety of chemo drugs on several types of cancer, Longo discovered not only that a 48-hour fast before a session of chemotherapy could reduce the side effects, but also that the chemo did a better job of killing cancer cells.

Longo explained that healthy cells have a shield mode that protects against stressors such as starvation. Fasting triggers a warning that pulls that shield into place, protecting healthy cells.

But it does just the opposite to cancer cells.

In a more recent study of breast cancer and skin cancer patients — reported in the journal BMC Cancer this past summer — Longo showed how brief fasting kicks away the shield that protects cancer cells from the immune system, making chemo more effective.

You may have heard that fasting can be potentially dangerous without careful planning. But a short-term fast — also called FMD, or “fasting mimicking diet” — doesn’t shock your system the way an extreme fast can.

This type of fasting has been shown to be very effective and safe – and it’s definitely something you should be talking to your doctor about.

But don’t be surprised if he’s never heard of it. After all, cancer therapies that don’t rake in the billions are not the medical mainstream’s most talked-about topic.

“Fasting lowers risk of breast cancer recurrence” Sylvia Booth Hubbard, November 15, 2016, Newsmax, newsmax.com