Damon,

I had a similar question, but mine was related to an alternative treatment called Insulin Potentiated Therapy, IPT for short. Before I settled on PT I stumbled upon IPT. It touts to work in a similar fashion as a PET scan. I will generalize and say that before the scan the patient is injected with a glucose laden radioactive isotope. Since cancer cells absorb glucose at a faster rate than normal cells, a scan which shows ‘radioactive’ hot spots suggests places where cancer may have metastasized. 

IPT ‘borrows’ this concept in order to administer low dose chemo therapy. The patient is given enough insulin to lower the blood sugar level (some practioners lower the blood sugar level to the point of inducing diabetic shock, but from what I could tell, this is not the standard practice today), then deliver a low dose of standard chemo. If you assume that the cancer cell is starved due to the induced low blood glucose, then the cancer cells will absorb the chemo at a higher rate than the normal cell, thus ‘sparing’ healthy cells.  The patients I met, spoke to, and emailed, all reported that there was virtually no side effects (e.g. no hair loss, no nausea, no loss of appetite, no weight loss; in fact the clinic I visited the patients looked quite ‘normal’).

Intrigued, I asked to speak to a prostate cancer oncologist (at MD Anderson) about IPT. He said he was not familiar with it but would look into it.  When I followed up with him he said the concept was interesting, but he did not feel it would work with localized prostate cancer because prostate cells do not metabolize glucose as a energy source, rather, prostate cells metabolize fatty acids in the blood stream. He said that there may be some application for other types of cancer, but not prostate cancer. This is why prostate cancer patients who have low PSA will generally not be given a PET scan. Upon that, I decided IPT was not for me at that time, thus ending my search into alternative therapy.

To make a long story short, I surmise that if the cancer is localized and you don’t consume ‘large’ quantities of sugar there is probably no harm. Nevertheless, the best approach would be to limit or eliminate all sugar, especially processed sugar. This will probably help us maintain heathy weight too. J

Thomas Reed