Travis Christofferson

It was clear that the intertumoral heterogenity, or the variability in mutations from sample to sample, was the most poignant feature of the disease. Each person’s tumor was almost as unique as a fingerprint, as a snowflake.

‘Can you imagine coming out of chemotherapy healthier than you came in? That’s the way it should be! The process should be restoration!’ Seyfried said.

PET scanning revolutionized cancer diagnostics. To this day, no imaging technology is able to differentiate living, actively metabolizing cancer with the accuracy of a PET scan. ‘CT scans can image a spot, but they can’t tell you if the cancer is alive or dead. PET scans are the only way to detect actively metabolizing tumors,’ Pederson said.

It seemed that in every scenario, entering ketosis enhanced other therapies while keeping toxic shrapnel from damaging healthy tissues. The diet appeared to slow cancer growth, but that alone did not appear to be R-KD’s strong suit. The way it prepares the therapeutic landscape make it unique. It was like primer to a painter or fertilizer to a gardener. It conditions the environment in which the cancer exists, enhancing other therapies while attenuating side effects.

If Warburg was right and cancer originates from injured respiration, therapeutic strategy and drug design have to be completely reconfigured. Rather than attacking a hazy, moving target that by its nature cannot be directly hit, researchers will be presented with a single target that permeates the spectrum of disease. This scenario implies that cancer cells are not mutated versions of cells with superpowers programmed by an omniscient supervillain. They are damaged cells trying to survive in their own misguided way. They can be corralled, guided, manipulated and killed.

It takes eighteen times more glucose to extract the same amount of energy from fermentation than from aerobic respiration. If the two pathways, aerobic and anaerobic, were represented by cars—the only difference being the motor—the aerobic model would get 38 miles per gallon, and the anaerobic model would get 2 miles per gallon.

This year, almost six hundred thousand Americans will die from cancer. One in two men and one in three women will be diagnosed in their lifetimes. Despite embellished announcements from government actuaries, the real death rates from cancer are the same today as they were in the 1950s.