A testimonial by a cancer survivor commenting on his treatments.
RE: Has anyone tried fasting before chemotherapy? (Dr. Valter Longo study)
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chriscrossan on Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:11 PM
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In August 2008 I began limping on my left leg, and my wife suggested I see a doctor. At first they treated my swollen knee as a standard inflammation, but a few months and several tests later we discovered that I had a rare 10 cm bone-based soft-tissue sarcoma emanating from my proximal tibia bone, just below my knee. It was pushing itself against my main artery, so my lower limb could not be salvaged and I underwent an above-the-knee amputation. Doctors were very concerned that the tumor might have metastasized in my lungs, but when they performed a CT scan they didn’t find any - at least nothing 3 mm or larger. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t have micro-metastasis,” they explained, “the sarcoma could show up in your lungs sometime during the next three years.”
To knock out any micro metastasis that might have taken root already, I researched several medical journal articles to learn which chemotherapies might be effective. I discovered that there were four – Doxorubicin, Cisplatin, Ifosfamide and Methotrexate. If I took one of them, my chance of having a five-year remission rate was between 35 – 50%. But if I took all four of them, my chance of staying in remission was about 65%. In other words, the more kinds of chemo drugs I used, my chance of survival went up significantly.
The reason for this phenomenon is because my sarcoma was highly undifferentiated. This means that the cancer cells had morphed into a rainbow of cancers within the sarcoma family. Using a single chemo drug might kill one or two of the types of cancer cells but leave the rest intact, allowing them to resist the drug and multiply in spite of the chemo. Using three or four chemo drugs would attack the cancerous cells with multiple weapons, as it were, and deliver a much higher rate of destruction (necrosis).
At the same time I learned about the value of fasting before and after a chemo infusion. Dr. Valter Longo at USC had just published research on how fasting for a period of time causes the body’s health cells to go into a dormant phase, where the normally porous cell membrane closes itself against the outside world and doesn’t allow anything to come in or out, including chemotherapy poison. The cancer cells do not have this mechanism; their cell walls are always porous and vulnerable to a poison’s entry. Thus whenever a patient fasts before taking a chemo infusion, the patient’s healthy cells do not succumb to the poisonous effects as much, leaving more poison to attack the wide-open cancer cells.
I resolved to spend 36 hours before my infusion drinking only herbal teas without sugar. After my infusion of Cisplatin and Doxorubicin I waited another day before eating any food in order to give my body 24 hours to clear most of the chemo poison. The effects were amazing. Each time I returned to the infusion center for my next infusion, my blood counts were just below normal and remained there during the 12 weeks of chemo. My hair didn’t even fall out. The nurses were pleasantly surprised.
The best new of all was that now, four years later, a CT scan of my lungs reveals no metastasis whatsoever. It appears that the sarcoma was obliterated. When my nurse Agnes gave me my first infusion of Doxorubicin, she referred to the bright red liquid as the ‘red devil’, but the drug - along with the others - turned out to be an angel in disguise. As a result, today I am a cancer survivor, not a victim.
Chris C
