You’ve heard the expression, “sugar feeds cancer” and that’s true. Cancer depends upon sugar to thrive. But what doctors have discovered is that sugar is also cancer’s Achilles Heel. Taking advantage of the cells’ extreme hunger for sugar is the secret behind the success of Insuline Potentiation Therapy in treating cancer.
PET scans are able to detect cancer by observing sugar uptake. When you drink the liquid you are given prior to the scan that contains a radioactive agent mixed with sugar water, the radioactive agent congregates in cancer cells because these cells gobble up much more sugar than normal cells.
In Insuline Potentiation Therapy (IPT), a small amount of the hormone insulin is administered to trigger a drop in the blood sugar level of the patient. It is this hormone that manages the delivery of glucose across cell membranes into all cells. And because cancer cells have 10-20 times more insulin hormone receptors on their surface than do normal cells, they compete for their preferred food (sugar) more efficiently than do normal cells. When blood sugar levels drop, the cancer cells scramble to open all the cell membranes in order to get the sugar they depend upon to thrive and multiply. That leaves the cancer cells vulnerable to the next attack – the chemo drug.
A Spoonful of Sugar
Julie Andrews was onto something when she sang, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” That concept is behind the success of IPT.
IPT (also known as low dose chemotherapy) is a safer way to aggressively treat cancer. It involves administering a small amount of chemotherapy (1/10th the amount of standard chemotherapy), followed by a small amount of glucose (sugar). The cancer cells, always hungry for sugar, react to the glucose and take in the entire dose of chemotherapy drugs at the same time. In this way, the drugs are able to go directly to the cancer cells, with little chemo leftover to damage healthy cells.
It is in stark contrast to standard chemotherapy in which patients are given large doses of drugs in order that enough will be absorbed by the cells to kill the cancer – a shotgun treatment approach. Standard chemotherapy does not target cancer cells like IPT does. Massive dosages of these powerful chemo drugs are absorbed by healthy cells where they cause a violent toxic reaction and the unpleasant side effects that are well known by cancer patients who receive this form of treatment. Patients treated with IPT, however, experience almost none of the nausea, hair loss, and liver damage common in standard chemotherapy because the dose is so low.
Dr. Donato Perez Garcia, Sr., developed the treatment in the 1930s at his clinic in Mexico City. The first cancer patient (breast cancer) to be treated with IPT occurred in 1946 and survived, cancer-free, for another 30 years. Dr. Garcia’s grandson is carrying on the tradition at his clinic in Mexico. Read more about his work at this link: http://www.iptldmd.com/
Dr. Frank George, Medical Director of Euromed Integrative Medicine, was the first osteopathic physician in the U.S. to be trained in IPT. For more information, check out Euromed Integrative Medical Specialists at this link: https://euromedfoundation.com/