Study shows fasting is an effective treatment for cancer in mice

A research team at the University of Southern California has found that fasting can slow tumor growth and limit its spreading, and can be combined with chemotherapy with even greater success, in five out of eight types of cancer tested in mice. In one example from the study, 20 percent of mice with one type of cancer that had spread throughout their bodies were cured with a combination of fasting and chemotherapy and 40 percent with a more limited spread of the same cancer survived with the same treatment. However, all of the mice treated with only chemotherapy died. “The cell is, in fact, committing cellular suicide. What we’re seeing is that the cancer cell tries to compensate for the lack of all these things missing in the blood after fasting. It may be trying to replace them, but it can’t,” Valter Longo, leader of the study, explained. Clinical studies are currently being conducted to see if fasting would be safe and effective in humans.