According to Cancer Research UK, cancer patients can have additional treatment using a controlled diet that restricts certain amino acids within the body.
Researchers carried out experiments on mice and found that removing two non-essential amino acids namely serine and glycine from the diet slowed down the development of tumors.
It was also concluded that the restricted diet can help with traditional cancer treatment and increase the effectiveness of the treatment. However, the report strictly warns against people following their own diets as there might be adverse effects associated to it.
The report was published in Nature by Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute and University of Glasgow and received significant acknowledgment within fellow researchers. The report said that in the absence of two non-essential amino acids, development of intestinal cancer and lymphoma was quite ineffective in the tested mice.
Cancer cells were also seen very susceptible to chemicals such as reactive oxygen species. These are the very same chemicals that are boosted in therapies including chemotherapy and radiotherapy and play a vital role in the effective treatment of cancer within patients.
Be Smart yet Effective
Researchers discouraged cutting out proteins from your diet although amino acids make up protein within the human body. Proteins play a vital role in proper sustenance of the body and hence should be taken in the right quantity in your diet.
Prof. Karen Vousden, co-author and Cancer Research UK’s chief scientist proclaimed that our diet is quite complex and protein is an essential nutrient in it. As amino acids are the building blocks of proteins hence it’s quite difficult to design a diet that would cut down on specific non-essential amino acids from the body. Therefore she suggested that this cannot be followed by having a homemade diet.
This restricted diet is a short-term measure and therefore requires precautionary monitoring and control by doctors. After the initial successful experimentation, the next phase is doing clinical tests to prove that the diet is safe for use and to see the effectiveness of it within tumors.
The researchers confessed that devising such a diet without these amino acids can be quite a hectic task and they are looking forward to test its effectiveness on healthy people first. Researchers would be looking for how easy is it to adapt to this sort of a diet, stick to it and the levels of the two non-essential amino acids.
The researchers are also targeting people who will get maximum benefit from this diet as they found the diet to be quite ineffective on pancreatic cancer patients due to an activated Kras gene.
Prof. Karen hopes to supplement the traditional methods of cancer treatment and complement the healing process. She proclaims this to be a safe way to replace drugs within the treatment.
A lot of work and research is being conducted presently to help researchers understand the effectiveness of the diet on cancer patients specifically.
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