Fructose causes metabolic syndrome. It meets the biological and legal definition of proximate or precipitating cause. I cannot say the same thing about fructose and cancer yet, but in a couple or years, we may have enough evidence to prove that relationship. This post comes from a lecture of Dr Lustig, where he makes a very persuasive case that fructose is at best, a cancer facilitator, and at worst, a carcinogen. You can see it here. Dr Lustig is a genius. I am just summarizing his lecture, and using his pictures.
There are three master enzymes that decide wether our cells grow and multiply, or burn energy. During the life cycle of human cells, they have to either "grow or burn" but they cannot do both things at the same time. When human cells get stuck in the growth phase, cancer can be the end results. On the other hand, a cell that is efficient at fully burning substrate, is an efficient and healthy cell. The energy burning state is a state of good health and well being.
These are the 3 master enzymes that regulate growth or burn:
1) AMP Kinase (AMPK): when this enzyme is activated, good things happen. We burn substrate to completion. There is plenty of energy to go around. Cells are happy, human body is happy, good health results.
2) P13K: when this enzyme is activated, glucose uptake goes up. The human cell gorges itself in glucose. This increased uptake of glucose may or may not be a good thing.
3) MTOR: the famous "Mammalian Target of Rapamycin" When MTOR is on, growth happens. MTOR tells tissue to grow, and stops autophagy and repair.
The most important of those enzymes is AMPK by far. It makes sure substrate is burned and it deactivates MTOR, and down regulates P13K. When MTOR is OFF, old cells get destroyed and recycled, tissues get the proper maintenance they need and the organism stays healthy. When MTOR is ON, old and dysfunctional cells accumulate, premature senescence occurs, and of course, malignant degeneration may result.
Otto Warburg discovered in the early portion of last century that cancer cells need insulin and glucose to grow and survive. He also discovered that cancer cells do not burn substrate the way normal mammalian cells do. They don't have mitochondria and they do not need oxygen to live and grow. They survive like anaerobes, fermenting glucose and fructose. And they have a huge appetite for glucose (That is how PET scans work, they find areas of glucose hyper metabolism).
The question is, how can they grow so fast when anaerobic metabolism is so inefficient? The answer is that rapidly growing tissue needs glucose for making cells, not for energy. Fermentation preserves the carbon skeleton of glucose to make DNA, fatty acids for cell membrane, protein etc. Even though there is not a whole lot of ATP generated for the metabolic needs of the cell, the way cancer cells fix that problem is by induction of P13K, increasing inflow of glucose into the cancer cell up to 400 times more that a normal and healthy cell. That is why cancer cells love sugar, they need a lot to grow and multiply.
The first take away from the Warburg metabolic law of cancer is that starving cancer cells of glucose is a fine, very good idea. Without glucose or fructose, cancer cannot grow.
The second point is a little more complex. You may remember from previous posts that fructose has a linear form that is highly reactive and toxic to human proteins through the Maillard reaction.
Well, it so happens that fructose has significant affinity for the working end of AMPK, junking and inactivating it. When AMPK gets damaged, MTOR comes out to play, and P13K is unregulated. The result is a massive inflow of glucose into the cell, which is then used for growth, not for energy.
When AMPK is turned off or damaged by fructose, bad things happen. Cell growth occurs, energy utilization becomes poor. We synthesize bad things, like triglycerides and old defective cells accumulate.
There are eight permutations of those 3 master enzymes. The first 2 are the most important. When AMPK is off, MTOR and P13K will be on, and that is the growth/cancer state. When AMPK is on, MTOR and P13K will be off, we burn substrate to completion, we enter the state of good health and well being. The 3rd state is metabolic syndrome.
Therefore, eating a truckload of carbs is terrible for the cancer patient for these 2 reasons:
1) Cancer cells need glucose to grow
2) Fructose modifies the enzymatic environment so growth can occur.
Knowing these facts, the first step in management of cancer patients should be carbohydrate restriction and keto adaptation. Yet, some hospital systems insist on providing junk like this to cancer patients:
To quote Lustig, Do you think is a good idea to feed a cancer patient this stuff?
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