Ketogenic Diets for Kids with Cancer - 02.11.15

Guest // Thomas Seyfried, PhD

Host // Toni Bark, MD

Half of men and one-third of women will receive a cancer diagnosis sometime during their lives. Increasingly, more patients are declining conventional treatment. They are interested in a different kind of approach to cancer management and prevention.. one that is more cutting edge and incorporates the latest research.

If we can understand what cancer is, what feeds it, and why metastasis happens, then we can find and apply more effective strategies to shrink (and hopefully eliminate) tumors.

Meet Professor Thomas Seyfried. He is a biochemical geneticist who has been investigating the lipid biochemistry of cancer for thirty years. His pioneering research expands on Otto Warburg’s groundbreaking theory that cancer is a disease of energy metabolism. With this framework, he’s able to explain the relationship between cancer and inflammation, vascularization, cell death, drug resistance, and genomic instability. Discussion topics during today’s show include:

• How does this view differ from the direction in which much of current research and funding is heading? (i.e., genetics)
• Is the controversy largely a matter of cause and effect (i.e., mitochondrial respiration and genetic damage)?
• What has been the response of the scientific community?
• Where is the research heading? (i.e., mouse to man, clinical trials?)
• What is the ketogenic diet and how is it implemented? How does this differ when applied to children?
• What is the Press-Pulse metabolic strategy for cancer management?

If you have questions, be sure to send them before the show or meet up with us on the blog afterwards to discuss.

Thomas Seyfried, PhD focuses on gene environmental interactions related to complex diseases, such as epilepsy, autism, brain cancer, and neurodegenerative (the GM1 and GM2 gangliosidoses) diseases. He investigates many of these diseases from the perspective of, genetics, lipidomics, and energy metabolism. Tom received his Ph.D. in Genetics and Biochemistry from the University of Illinois, Urbana, in 1976. He  was an Assistant Professor in Neurology at Yale University School of Medicine. Tom has received awards from the NIH, The American Society for Neurochemistry, and the Ketogenic Diet Special Interest Group of the American Epilepsy Society. He was Chair, Scientific Advisory Committee for the National Tay-Sachs and Allied Diseases Association and serves on several editorial boards, for Nutrition & Metabolism, Neurochemical Research, the Journal of Lipid Research, and ASN Neuro. Read more about his work here.