Hungry Fat Cells Could Someday Starve Cancer
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A groundbreaking study suggests that "hungry fat cells" could be harnessed to starve cancer cells, sparking both excitement and skepticism among commenters. While some, like UniverseHacker, are fascinated by the potential implications, including the possibility that cold exposure could be used to convert white fat cells into cancer-fighting beige fat cells, others, such as sigmoid10, point out that the metabolic theory of cancer is not new and that evidence for its effectiveness in humans is still lacking. The discussion highlights the complexity of the issue, with commenters like bratwurst3000 cautioning that interventions like fasting can have unpredictable effects on cancer, and OutOfHere noting that chronic cold exposure can lead to increased hunger and calorie consumption, potentially negating its benefits. As the conversation unfolds, it becomes clear that this research is reigniting a longstanding debate about the role of metabolism in cancer treatment.
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That's sad. I hope someone picks up the torch. The research sounds very promising.
Both forms of malnutrition would diminish the capacity of synthesizing proteins, which would affect mainly a fast-growing organ, like the tumors. Presumably this slowed down the growth of the tumors, allowing time for the immune system to react and suppress them in their incipient form.
However, this article also seems to imply that frequent cold exposure that converts your own white fat cells into beige fat cells could be effective at both treating and preventing cancer.
They state without explanation that cold therapy cannot be done by cancer patients, but I don’t see why not. I take an ice bath every morning as it helps with my mental health, and its really not that shocking or difficult when you’re used to it as the very adaptation they’re talking about here eventually makes it easy to tolerate cold- your body adapts to be able to keep you warm. I can and do still do it when I’m sick, fatigued, or slept poorly.
If it does negate the benefit than that would suggest that the entire benefit from the beige fat is from putting the body in a calorie deficit, and you would then expect the exact same effectiveness from calorie restriction. A quick search shows that there does seem to be an anti cancer therapeutic benefit from calorie restriction.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cam4.5577
I was only raising questions this research and discussion made me curious about, not making any concrete claims. I am in fact an academic PI whose lab studies metabolism (but not cancer) and have more understanding than I have time to write out in a comment on here.
That was the part that confused me. "If it does negate the benefit than that would suggest that the entire benefit from the beige fat is from putting the body in a calorie deficit, and you would then expect the exact same effectiveness from calorie restriction" As far as I understood the paper its beige fat that can eat away food from cancer and not white fat. And afaik calorie restriction doesnt augment beige fat. My error was thinking you meant calorie restriction while having white fat but you meant with beige fat? And yes this makes sense.
And I thinked autophagy because this is the main "thing" happenkng while fasting which is not burning body fuel
thanks for the answer
Yes, autophagy does ramp up during fasting, but it's just one of a number of different physiological changes that occur during fasting.
In the past it seems the consensus was that since cancer cells need more fuel than regular cells, starving them is beneficial in combating it.
But recently it has been discovered that some cancers can grow better with ketones.
So it seems that some cancers benefit from fasting while others are starved from fasting.
My first 72-hour fast was revealing. Around the 48-hour mark my body was aggressively signaling hunger, particularly for sugary foods. By the third day, however, hunger largely subsided, and when I broke the fast I wasn’t especially hungry at all. For the following week the usual sugary suspects in my life went untouched.
Subsequent 72-hour fasts were far more manageable (note: I do 36 hour fasts in between, every two weeks), suggesting at least some component of adaptation rather than linear escalation.
It's mind-boggling to me that multiple "one meal" days don't incidentally happen to everyone over the course of a year.
I would think most people have those days where they skip breakfast and lunch due to some or other exigency and only get to eat dinner.
By midday I'm on an adventure. Some days, it takes me in a direction where it makes more sense to skip lunch than to stop and have it.
When I'm hungry and it's convenient, I eat. When I'm not, I don't.
It's almost never the case that I'm hungry for a meal three times a day.
The breath thing is unavoidable as far as I know.
What is funny is that, at least for me, the sensation of hunger is strongly conditioned by whether there really exists a possibility to satisfy it.
I eat 2 meals per day and during the time between them I am not hungry, and if I were hungry that would be futile, because I intentionally do not keep in my home any kind of food that can be eaten instantly, but only raw ingredients that I must cook before eating.
After I cook my next meal, I have to be patient and wait some time for the food to cool down. During that time, I become suddenly very hungry and like you say, I find it difficult to continue to work at the computer or at whatever I was doing, as my thought shifts to the food I am waiting to eat.
In the past, when I kept food that could be eaten at any time, without preparation, I became frequently hungry and it was hard to resist to the temptation of having a snack.
It’s like my brain has retrained itself to ‘just get over it’. It was quite something
If you really wanted to fend off the downvotes, I probably would have linked at least a handful of well-designed studies with outcomes supporting your claims.
Also, Occam's Razor would suggest that if it truly worked, surely the very smart people trying to solve this problem would have known about + adopted it.
Please save me from such nonsense. Only naive people believe that. Informed people know that nothing is pursued by big corporations if there isn't big money in it. And there isn't since it's a cheap common product produced around the world.
As an example, mRNA tech was intentionally rejected, ignored, and not developed for decades. Meanwhile, the false beta-amyloid theory of Alzheiemrs was believed for over a decade. People are not as smart as you think they are, not even close.
As for the studies, PMID 27980600 and DOI 10.1016/j.hermed.2024.100875 are a fair start, although the latter is paywalled.
For sources:
Overview of studies, including human:
https://www.xiahepublishing.com/m/2835-6357/FIM-2024-00006
NIH:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21889885/
Most recent I could find:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51617171_Tiliroside...
A few questions about the mechanism:
1. How selective is this approach? Cancer cells are notoriously heterogeneous - do different cancer types or subtypes respond differently to this metabolic pressure?
2. The cold exposure converting white to beige fat is interesting, but what about the feasibility for actual patients? Sustained cold exposure seems difficult to maintain for someone already dealing with cancer treatment.
3. Has anyone looked at whether this could work synergistically with existing metabolic therapies like metformin or ketogenic diets? The metabolic stress combined with nutrient competition could be powerful.
4. What's the risk of adaptive resistance? Cancer cells are remarkably good at finding alternative metabolic pathways when stressed.
RIP to Nguyen - it's heartbreaking when promising researchers pass before seeing their work come to fruition. Hope the team continues this line of investigation.
Also, I think in some cases you can pair it with the Wim Hof Method to make short extreme cold exposure more bearable. I don’t know what the interaction is with norepinephrine though as doing the WHM, one releases a lot of it [4] (I was part of this experiment as a participant so remember the paper quite well). Note, I am not claiming the WHM may help with suppressing cancer, I am simply claiming that it is my experience that performing the WHM makes cold exposure a bit more comfortable. I suspect this is because tons of norepinephrine goes through your body.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05030-3
[2] https://news.ki.se/cool-room-temperature-inhibited-cancer-gr...
[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-022-01284-5
[4] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1322174111