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The Blog of Michael R. Eades, M.D. » Carbohydrates are addictive

You're probably asking, what does carb addiction have to do with cancer?

You think carbohydrates aren’t addictive? You think it’s easy to give them up? You don’t think it possible that people might prefer carbs to life?


Think again.


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In pre-WWII days, a German scientist, Otto Warburg, received a Nobel Prize for his work in sussing out the fact that cancer cells don’t generate energy the same way that normal cells do. Cancer cells get their energy, not like normal cells, from the mitochondrial oxidation of fat, but from glycolysis, the breakdown of glucose withing the cytoplasm (the liquid part of the cell). This different metabolism of cancer cells that sets them apart from normal cells is called the Warburg effect. Warburg thought until his dying day that this difference is what causes cancer, and although it is true that people with elevated levels of insulin and glucose do develop more cancers, most scientists in the field don’t believe that the Warburg effect is the driving force behind the development of cancer.


But it stands to reason that it can be used to treat cancer that is already growing. Since cancers can’t really get nourishment from anything but glucose, it stands to reason that cutting off this supply would, at the very least, slow down tumor growth, especially in aggressive, fast-growing cancers requiring a lot of glucose to fuel their rapid growth.


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Now, given all this, if you had a big cancer eating you alive and you were offered a chance for salvation by doing nothing more than following a low-carb diet, would you take it? I certainly would. But, not everyone does. I was stunned to read the comments of Dr. Melanie Schmidt, one of the researchers, about people dropping out of the study.

[Some] dropped out because they found it hard to stick to the no-sweets diet: “We didn’t expect this to be such a big problem, but a considerable number of patients left the study because they were unable or unwilling to renounce soft drinks, chocolate and so on.”

Let me see if I’ve got this right. A lifesaving therapy is offered to patients who have undergone the misery of radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and surgery, and who are beyond hope, and this therapy requires nothing more than eating a lot of butter, meat, cream, cheese, etc. while avoiding most carbohydrates. And a considerable number” drop out because they can’t give up carbs?