Written by Rudy Mawer, MSc, CISSN on July 24, 2016

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States (1).

Researchers estimate that 595,690 Americans will die from cancer in 2016. That means about 1,600 deaths per day, on average (1).

Cancer is most commonly treated with a combination of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.

Many different diet strategies have been studied, but none have been particularly effective.

Interestingly, there is some early research suggesting that a very low-carb ketogenic diet may help (2, 3, 4).

Important note: You should never, ever delay or avoid conventional medical treatment of cancer in favor of an alternative treatment like the ketogenic diet. You should discuss all treatment options with your doctor.

A Brief Overview of the Ketogenic Diet

The ketogenic diet is a very low-carb, high-fat diet that shares many similarities with Atkins and other low-carb diets.

It involves drastically reducing your intake of carbs and replacing them with fat. This change leads to the metabolic state called ketosis.

After several days, fat becomes your body's primary energy source.

This causes a significant increase in the levels of compounds called ketones in your blood (5).

In general, a ketogenic diet used for weight loss is about 60-75% of calories as fat, with 15-30% of calories from protein and 5-10% of calories from carbs.

However, when a ketogenic diet is being used therapeutically to treat cancer, the fat content may be significantly higher (up to 90% of calories) and the protein content lower (6).

The Role of Blood Sugar in Cancer
Many cancer therapies are designed to target the biological differences between cancer cells and normal cells.

Nearly all cancer cells share one common trait: they feed off carbs or blood sugar in order to grow and multiply (2, 3, 7).

When you eat a ketogenic diet, some of the standard metabolic processes are altered and your blood sugar levels go way down (2, 3).

Basically, this is claimed to "starve" the cancer cells of fuel.

As in all living cells, the long-term effect of this "starvation" may be that the cancer cells will grow more slowly, decrease in size or possibly even die.

It seems possible that a ketogenic diet could help reduce the progression of cancer because it causes a rapid decrease in blood sugar levels (2, 3, 4).