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