To Eat or Not to Eat: With Cancer Therapies, That Is the
Question When we are healthy, we tend to eat what we want, when
we want, and without much thought about how our bodies process
food and anything else we ingest. But what we eat and when we
eat it can affect the way our bodies absorb and react to
medications, sometimes to the extent of altering treatment
outcomes. Food intake, therefore, is an important variable when
determining the optimal treatment for many diseases. And cancer
researchers are now exploring whether manipulating food intake
could help reduce the side effects of some treatments or make
them more effective, as well as more cost-effective. A Double
Challenge to Cancer Cells What we eat and when we eat it can
affect the way the body absorbs and reacts to cancer treatments.
In 2008, the laboratory of Dr. Valter Longo, a professor of
gerontology and biological science at the University of Southern
California (USC), showed that fasting for 2 to 3 days protected
normal cells in culture and mice