In this week’s podcast, we discuss cancer. Specifically, we argue that the current treatment methods for cancer are flawed because they revolve around the idea that cancer is a disease of genetic mutations in the nucleus. We both believe that cancer should be categorized as a metabolic disease because the root cause of cancer isn’t started in the nucleus, it’s started in the mitochondria.

When mitochondria are damaged and can no longer function properly, they normally initiate cell suicide, termed apoptosis. However, when a mitochondria is damaged in a way that it can no longer perform apoptosis, it undergoes dedifferentiation and reverts back to using a primitive and ancient form of metabolism, fermentation.

Fermentation is respiration without the use of oxygen. This form of metabolism is very inefficient at producing ATP and gives the cancer cell only two fuel sources, the sugar glucose and the amino acid glutamine. Therefore, we argue that any good cancer therapy should revolve around the elimination of glucose and glutamine. Without these two fuel sources, all cancer cells die.

This is true because cancer cells cannot use ketone bodies or fatty acids for fuel. Both of these fuel sources require healthy and properly working mitochondria in order to metabolize, and the one characteristic shared by all cancer no matter what type it is and where its located, is broken mitochondria. All other horrible effects and ailments of cancer are downstream effects stemming from the mitochondria no longer working properly.