How can keto block cancer? In this video, I promise to answer that question based on brand new research, but first, I want to dissect why some people, maybe you, have an adverse reaction to the idea that keto is anti-cancer. So here's my high-level take.
People see keto as an elimination diet, where you just cut the carbs. It's about subtracting something, not adding something. Therefore, the removal of something, presumably a bad something, carbs or sugar, results in something good, anti-cancer.
And because people, well, many people, are emotionally attached to carbs, there's a negative visceral reaction, as if someone, me, is calling carbs evil. But you know me by now, or if you don't, you will. and with me there's always a different frame, a different lens, a different perspective. I do not see keto as a subtraction diet. Rather, keto is the addition of a metabolic state, that of ketosis, where your body is making these ketone molecules which are not only fuel for your body but also hormones and signaling molecules that rewire metabolism.
Yes, I said that. Ketone bodies in particular. the ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate is much, much more than gas for cellular engines. It can be the freaking steering wheel. And I'll prove it to you.
Enter this paper, Ketogenic Diet Reshapes Cancer Metabolism Through Lysine Beta-Hydroxybutyration. Big words, I know, we're gonna break it down. High level. Cancer cells are good at what?
They're good at growing. To do this, they require metabolic reprogramming that upregulates pathways that facilitate growth. And this includes the sugar breakdown pathway of glycolysis, which breaks down sugar, glucose, into smaller carbon molecules, pyruvate and downstream of that, acetyl-CoA.
You don't need to know those terms, just throwing them out there for jargon's sake. Anyway, these can be used as carbon building blocks for growth, provided the cancer cell can divert them as building substrates, which cancer cells are pretty good at doing. And if you want to learn more, Google Warburg effect, but that's beyond the context of this video.
Anyway, we're staying high level. So cancer cells often rely on glycolysis to break down sugar to get energy while also making building blocks for growth. And they're typically good at turning on the master regulator or one of the master regulators of growth too, protein complexes like mTOR, mammalian target of rapamycin. So now that we have this foundation, this is what the paper found. The paper found that the ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate itself strangles cancer by attaching itself to a key enzyme in glycolysis, aldolase B.
that helps break down sugar and in so doing it inhibits aldolase b just like i'd inhibit your ability to run if i jumped on your back isn't that a funny vision and in so doing in inhibiting aldolase b it also inhibits mtor the master regulator of growth providing a one-two punch whereby ketones beta-hydroxybutyrate as a signaling molecule an enzyme modifier reshapes cancer metabolism to impair cancer growth, blocking glycolysis and inhibiting mTOR. And when you look at it this way, as the addition of a metabolic state, ketosis, and the addition of signaling molecules that result, yes, as a function of carbohydrate restriction, things start to make a lot more sense. So, no, carbs are not evil, but Cancer?
It kind of is. And if we have a metabolic state that helps to block cancer, well, you better believe that's excellent news because I certainly want to remain O-Live.