Thursday 29 September 2016

Cancer Cells Are Sugar Addicts

Cancer Cells Are Sugar Addicts

This post reminded me of being told that my nephew before he was diagnosed with Leukemia, kept eating a lot of sweet stuff.  No one thought anything of it until he kept getting colds and infections and finally his mother insisted on a blood test which revealed the dreaded result.  He is in remission but his immune system will take years to be restored.  It proves what the article below states:


In 1924, Otto Warburg, Ph.D., a Nobel Prize winning biochemist, proposed the hypothesis that cancer is a metabolic disease, that affects the way cells use food to make energy.

Warburg believed that cancer cells exhibit a preference for using sugar to fuel themselves, even when the oxygen needed for normal cellular energy processes is available.1,2,3,4 He wrote:
“Cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. But, even for cancer, there is only one prime cause. Summarized in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar.”1

Until recently, Warburg’s hypothesis had been marginalized by the persistent belief in the oncology world that cancer is a genetic disease. However, in his new book, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management, and Prevention of Cancer, Thomas Seyfried, Ph.D., has put Warburg’s work back in the medical limelight.5

1 comment:

Sridhar Chandrasekaran said...

Interesting information. Hope they find some cure to this fatal disease