This fat makes cancer tumors triple in size

This fat makes cancer tumors triple in size

[cmamad id=”3462″ align=”center” tabid=”display-desktop” mobid=”display-desktop” stg=””]

There is this common conception that “cancer eats sugar”, and therefore that high sugar diets encourage the growth of cancer.

This is absolutely untrue.

In fact, cancer cells eat fat even more than sugar.

And there are some fats that increase the chances of getting cancer and make cancer worse.

Linoleic acid is one of the most common PUFAs, fatty acids found in foods.

It is found in

many nuts, fatty seeds (flax seeds, hemp seeds, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, etc.) and their derived vegetable oils; comprising over half (by weight) of poppy seed, safflower, sunflower, corn, and soybean oils. 

It is also quite common in peanut oil, all fried foods, prepared foods and anything with mayonnaise.

Linoleic acid is just one type of PUFA.

In this newsletter, I wanted to explore a major study that shows the effects of PUFAs on cancer

2016-06-20_14-00-43This is one of the most elegant experiments because it’s simple.

The researcher put rats on various diets.

The rats ate diets such as low-fat, no fat, high-fat, high flaxseed oil, and high linoleic acid.

(Flaxseeds are also called linseeds, so the research paper calls flaxseed oil linseed oil.)

He then implants a tumor in all rats.

[cmamad id=”3464″ align=”center” tabid=”display-desktop” mobid=”display-desktop” stg=””]

So all the rats now have a cancerous tumor.

This is a particular type of tumor which will grow readily and all the rats.

After a while, he sacrifices the rats, removes the tumor and measures it.

Here is what he found:

2016-06-20_14-06-10The smallest tumors by far are found in the second column.

Look at the top of the column.

Fat-free diet. 

The rats on the fat-free diet had by far the smallest tumors.

Not only that.

Most of the rats in the normal diet died by the end of the 2nd week after tumor transplantation and the remainder died within 16 days.

Whereas the rats fed the fat-free diet survived longer than 16 days, because of the smaller growth of the tumor tissue.

So they try something else.

They take rats who are fed fat-free and give them a small amount of linoleic acid.

It’s a really small amount, just 25 milligrams of PUFA per day.

And the rats quickly die because their tumors ballooned.

I’d call that a pretty clear result… and dramatic!

What can we learn from this?

High-fat diets are low in carbs.

So under the current presumption that cancer loves sugar, a high-fat diet would be protective against cancer.

However, rats fed on a no-fat diet had far smaller tumors.

In fact, cancer loves PUFAs.

This has been verified and proven again and again in many other studies.

For example in this Salk Institute study:

2016-06-20_14-24-10This is a study of cancer tissue.

When they lowered the amount of PUFAs in the feeding, the cancer became quiet.

Without the PUFAs in the diet to feed it, the cancer stopped reproducing.

Addition of linoleic acid to such quiescent cells leads to reinitiation of DNA synthesis and growth.

It seems that cancer loves PUFAs.

 

 

 


Matt Cook is editor-in-chief of Daily Medical Discoveries. Matt has been a full time health researcher for 26 years. ABC News interviewed Matt on sexual health issues not long ago. Matt is widely quoted on over 1,000,000 websites. He has over 300,000 daily newsletter readers. Daily Medical Discoveries finds hidden, buried or ignored medical studies through the lens of 100 years of proven science. Matt heads up the editorial team of scientists and health researchers. Each discovery is based upon primary studies from peer reviewed science sources following the Daily Medical Discoveries 7 Step Process to ensure accuracy.
Linoleic acid 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linoleic_acid 
The influence of linoleic acid upon the growth of transplanted sarcoma 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13979090 
Control of Growth of a Tumor Cell by Linoleic Acid 
http://www.pnas.org/content/71/10/3976.short