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Monday, June 01, 2015

Fascinating look at one experience with ketogenic diets and brain cancer.

More at the link.  Healing Brain Cancer with a Zero Carb Ketogenic Diet by Andrew Scarborough | Eat Meat. Drink Water.: "Eventually, the doctors determined that I had suffered a brain hemorrhage caused by a highly vascular malignant brain tumor located between the speech and movement areas of my brain. I was misdiagnosed a few times before I received the actual pathology report because there was just so much blood in my brain. Six weeks after my operation on May 15th, I was told I had an Anaplastic Astrocytoma. It was treatable, but not curable. In other words, they could slow the progress, but ultimately it would prove to be terminal. I reluctantly went ahead with the standard radiotherapy and chemotherapy that my doctors recommended, but I felt extremely depressed...


I stopped the chemotherapy and radiation treatments after a few months because they were making me too sick and were not helping to eliminate the cancer. (Sadly, everyone I know who continued with the conventional treatments for this type of cancer is no longer alive.) After all the research I had done, I decided that a ketogenic diet was crucial to slowing the progression of this cancer and was my best hope. Therefore, I adopted a very high fat, very low carbohydrate, ketogenic diet. I included low sugar fruits and vegetables, lots of heavy whipping cream, coconut milk and oil, nuts, cheese, avocados, etc. All the typical keto-friendly foods...

My current diet is 85% fat, 15% protein. I have 70-75g protein per day, and over 200g fat. The only real difference between the recommended Ketogenic diet and what am doing is that I am eat only foods that come from the Animal Kingdom. I do not include any plant foods or the oils derived from them. I am still very careful about my macronutrient ratios (protein/fat), and counting carbohydrates is no longer an issue. The only beverage I drink is water or bone broth. Each day I eat 2-4 eggs, liver, lambs brain (from a local sheep rancher who raises his animals with care) or sardines/mackerel, bone broth, crickets or other insects like wax worms (either whole or as a flour) mixed with eggs, herbs and animal fat cooked in a frying pan or in the oven, and bacon or red meat with cheddar cheese. I rotate in a variety of other organ meats like sweet breads. Sometimes I drink double cream on its own if I’m on holiday because it’s an easy way to get the fat, but it tends to make me sleepy so I don’t do that often! Basically, I’m experimenting with new foods all the time and continually learning and expanding my options...

My most recent brain scans taken earlier this month (May 2015) show no disease and the scar tissue is even healing. I have a new oncologist that I found through a Ketogenic diet conference last year is completely supportive of the approach I am taking to treat my cancer and rebuild my health. He is one of the few oncologists who support metabolic diet therapy for cancer management, and I am blessed to have him on my team. In fact, he is so impressed with my results that he has offered me an opportunity to work and study at Charing Cross Hospital and Imperial College London to push forward the research on this type of metabolic diet therapy."

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