Sugar and Cancer: A Match Made in Hell

If you are lucky, you might have heard somewhere that cancer loves sugar. In this post I will try to explain the complexity of such simplistic and terrifying allegation so you can understand its implications, why you should be alert, and what you can do about it.

It’s hard to paint a picture of what happens in our bodies at a cellular level. Cancer cell biology is a complicated subject. There are so many processes and elements involved that visualizing a simple image can become a gargantuan task. I’ll try my best.

Cell Respiration

Our cells need energy to live and do their essential tasks. They generate energy mainly by metabolizing two elements: oxygen and glucose.

On one hand healthy cells in our bodies get oxygen from hemoglobin (red blood cells) and they burn it, creating energy and also carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide, in turn, is responsible for releasing oxygen from hemoglobin so the cells can use it again, and so the give and take cycle repeats itself again and again. It’s like the breath-in-breath-out type of work our lungs do for us, but at a cellular level.

Thanks to this energy from burning oxygen, healthy cells burn glucose to generate energy as well. Glucose in our blood is carried and taken into our cells thanks to insulin, a hormone released from cells in our pancreas. When sugar levels in our blood ascend, insulin is released in order to “open the doors” of cells throughout our bodies, allowing glucose to enter them. As glucose enters the cells thanks to being unlocked by insulin, the blood sugar levels fall back toward normal and the release of insulin tapers off until the next time sugars enter the bloodstream again. The more sugar we have in our blood, the more insulin will be released to try to stuff it and store it in our cells.

How a Cell Turns Cancerous

When not enough oxygen is available, a cell’s last resort for energy is to change from aerobic to anaerobic respiration (without oxygen). Anaerobic respiration does not produce carbon dioxide which is required to get the oxygen out of the hemoglobin. The oxygen delivery mechanism becomes broken. We effectively witness the change from a healthy cell into a cancerous one.

“Cancer does not cause cells to turn anaerobic, but rather it is stabilized anaerobic respiration that is the single cause (or essential requirement) that turns the normal cells that depend on aerobic respiration into cancer cells”. -Dr. David Gregg

It’s downhill from here. When cells stop breathing, the absence of oxygen causes any glucose inside them to ferment instead of “burn”, turning glucose into lactic acid, which is how cancer cells generate their own energy. With this new glucose fermentation cycle, cancer cells now must work harder. Aerobic respiration creates as many as 36 energy molecules from each glucose molecule, while anaerobic respiration creates only 2. So in order for a cancer cell to obtain the same energy as a normal cell, it must metabolize at least 18 times more glucose. In fact, malignant rapidly-growing tumor cells typically metabolize glucose at rates that are up to 200 times higher than those of their normal tissues of origin

That’s why cancer cells use up a great deal of glucose. Glucose becomes in fact their unique source of energy, to the point that cancerous cells have as much as 10 times more insulin receptors, or doors, on their membranes in order to gain as many gateways to glucose as possible. So when glucose enters the bloodstream and insulin unlocks all cells so they can take it in, cancerous cells will take in 10 times more glucose than healthy cells. On one hand, the more glucose you take, the more you will feed the cancerous cells, on the other hand, because cancer cells require so much glucose, they will virtually steal it away from the body’s normal cells, thus starving them. This is one of the main reasons why cancer patients lose weight as the disease progresses.

The Role of Insulin in Growth

Well, most of us might know that the role of insulin is to simply lower blood sugar. In fact, this is just one of many functions. Insulin controls cellular intake of other substances, like fat as well. The most relevant role in regards to cancer is that insulin increases DNA replication. It is considered in fact an anabolic hormone. It stimulates cell proliferation and cell division. What does it do to cancer? It increases it. Any cancer, but in particular breast and colon cancers. Not only that, it also inhibits cell death.

To make matters worst, cancer cells actually manufacture and secrete their own insulin so they can have unlimited access to glucose. The insulin they secrete is called insulin-like growth-factor, or IGF, and as its name indicates, it provides cancer cells of an unlimited stimulus for growth. Cancer cells also have ten times more of the receptors for insulin-like growth-factor on their cell membranes, just as for the insulin receptors. So the capacity to bind with insulin and take in glucose increases astronomically.

The chain of events goes like this: the more glucose in the blood, the more insulin used by the body, the more growth and strength of cancer. It’s very simplified, I know, but in general terms that’s what happens.

But that’s not the end of it. With fermentation, the outside of the cell wall becomes coated with a dense layer of protein, which further inhibits whatever remaining oxygen from getting into the cell. The protein coating also inhibits leukocytes (white blood cells) from doing their “job,” namely attacking and destroying foreign elements, including the cancer cells. Combine that with the fact that glucose depresses the immune system. A sugar value of just 120, for example, reduces the strength of leukocytes up to 75 percent.

So cancer cells become invisible, invincible, and totally independent.

What Can You Do?

The good news is that you can directly influence the environment of your cells, and change it. And this environment is going to be determined directly by what you eat, is that simple. Whatever you eat is basically what your cells will end up eating. If you change what you eat, you will change the environment inside your body, which is the only way to reverse the diabolical cancer mechanism. There is no alternative or conventional cancer therapy more effective than a correct diet. So, for heaven’s sake, STOP EATING SUGAR! If you reduce the amount of glucose in your blood you will be starving cancer cells and inhibiting their growth. Cancer cells are very unstable and weak. Healthy cells will still be able to generate energy. Plus, the less insulin you have running around, the less cancer cells will take in glucose, and also the less growth and replication they will have. Plus, the less glucose, the more your immune system will be able to detect and destroy weak cancer cells.

Reverse your inner environment by reversing your outer one.

The bad news is that sugar comes in many forms. Flower, starch, alcohol, juices, and many more. In fact, complex carbohydrates are also a source of glucose. Once carbohydrates are metabolized, the body doesn’t care if they come from a soda or a loaf of whole wheat bread, they will turn into glucose. A complex carbohydrate diet is a glucose diet. So it’s not enough just substituting sugar for maple syrup, or eating brown rice instead of pasta, or drinking pineapple juice instead of soda. Eat raw leafy greens and fruits, a few nuts, and non starchy vegetables. To read how can you manage carbohydrates to defeat your cancer, read my post here.

At the same time, you can help oxygenate you body. For example, the body requires special fats that, among other important functions, make it possible for sufficient oxygen to reach the cells via the cellular membranes. These special fats are highly oxygen-absorbing. Called essential fatty acids, or EFAs, these special fats must be supplied from outside the body every day, from foods and certain oils, because your body can’t manufacture them on its own. Flaxseed oil is a good source of omega-3 essential fatty acids. It will oxygenate your body.

Vitamin C turns into Hydrogen Peroxide in your body, a powerful form of oxygen. Plus vitamin C is needed by white blood cells so that they could phagocytize bacteria, viruses, and cancer cells. White blood cells require a fifty times higher concentration, at least inside the cell as outside, of vitamin C. It’s a good idea to supply your body with above normal vitamin C levels for two reasons: to oxygenate your body, and to strenthen your immune system.

Aerobic and anaerobic training are crucial too. One of the factors that determines insulin sensitivity is how blood can get in your muscles. Just by exercising you are increasing the blood flow to your muscles, oxygenating them and increasing insulin sensitivity. Exercise reduces the need for insulin and also the glucose in your blood. Being more insulin sensitive means that more healthy cells can take up more glucose, and that means less glucose for the cancerous ones. Having cancerous cells and being insulin resistant is a double tragic whammy. It means all your glucose goes to your cancerous cells, because of their numerous insulin receptors,  and none to your healthy ones. You want to make sure you are as insulin sensitive (efficient) as you possibly can. Exercising will help you achieve that.

Diet, supplements, and exercise. When was the last time conventional oncology advised you to do those three to dramatically improve your odds of surviving cancer?

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Suggested Reading:

• How to Manage Carbohydrates to Defeat Cancer