A ketogenic (keto) diet is a very high-fat, low-carbohydrate way of eating. It can help you lose weight by forcing your body to burn fat instead of carbs as its main source of energy.
In recent years, some early evidence has suggested that the ketogenic diet may help treat some types of cancer. One theory is that cancer feeds on the sugar you eat, but a high-fat diet starves the tumors.
So far, no major cancer group recommends keto diets for either prevention or treatment of cancer.
How Keto May Affect Cancer
The standard diet recommendation is to limit fats to no more than 30% of your calories. Carbs should make up half or more of your daily total, with protein filling the rest. But a keto diet flips that formula. You eat as much as 90% of your diet in fats, with little or almost no carbs from foods like pasta, beans, and fruits.
Without enough carbs, your body switches to burning fat for fuel. That process, called ketosis, breaks the fat down into molecules called ketones
But cancer cells are rewired to get most of their energy by quickly breaking down lots of glucose, a form of carbohydrates called simple sugar. A keto diet may shortcut the feeding because some cancers can’t use ketones to grow.
That has led to hopes that a ketogenic diet may help boost the powers of chemotherapy and other cancer treatments.
What the Research Says
Studies have suggested some possible benefits of a very low-carb diet in cancer therapy. Research on mice and small trials on humans show that a keto diet may work in several ways. It may:
- Slow tumor growth
- Protect healthy cells from damage from chemotherapy or radiation treatment
- Help anti-cancer drugs work faster or better
- Ease inflammation, which can encourage cancer growth
- Help prevent weight gain during and after chemotherapy for breast cancer. Extra weight raises the chance that tumors may come back.
There have not been any large studies in humans yet, so we don’t know for sure if and how keto diets work against cancer. Several clinical trials are ongoing.
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