How can insulin be used in the treatment of cancer?

While conventional cancer treatments revolve around chemotherapy, surgical removal of tumors and radiotherapy, there are multiple independent studies conducted every year on unconventional cancer therapies. One of such unconventional treatment methods is advocated by the doctor Constantine Kotsanis in the video linked to the article.

The doctor is one of only 300 physicians around the world who practice insulin therapy along with chemotherapy in cancer patients. He claims that insulin can serve as a very effective gate-opener for chemotherapy drugs to cancer cells.

The first studies of insulin use for cancer patients were conducted back in 1947 by the Mexican military medical doctor Donato Perez Garcia. The idea of the therapy is to lower blood sugar with insulin to the level of 40 while the normal level of blood sugar in fasting individual is 90. At this point, all metabolic processes in healthy cells slow down and the cells become temporary dormant while cancer cells are “awake” and starving. Widely opening its receptors to all substances that penetrate the body at this moment, cancer cells can be then effectively suppressed and destroyed by only 10% of the total chemotherapy drugs prescribed to the patient as a general treatment plan, doctor Kotsanis claims. This therapy allows reducing the dosages of chemotherapy and the length of the treatment course, as well as suppressing cancer cells more effectively without harming healthy cells that do not absorb poisonous chemo drugs while being dormant. Though, as such low blood sugar can be potentially lethal to a patient, it is important to perform the therapy under a supervision of a doctor familiar with the technique. Doctor Kotsanis says that all of the 300 therapists who practice this treatment method gather yearly and report their results and to date, not a single patient have died of complications related to the use of insulin or reduced chemotherapy drug dosages.

Controversy surrounding the therapy

Though the idea of such treatment with reduced levels of poisonous chemo drugs seems ideal and tempting for many patients, to date, no sufficient research and proof that it works have been presented to the scientific society. Lately, two minor studies were conducted that in fact show that the tumor sizes in patients with metastatic breast cancer reduced in sizes greater in patients with insulin-chemo combination therapy than in those for whom standard only-chemo schemes were used. However, the number of participants in those studies is considered insufficient for statistical data on the therapy success. The medical society is still concerned that the use of reduced dosages of chemotherapeutic medications, which is suggested to be 10-25% of the recommended dose in the combination therapy with insulin, can cause cancer cells resistance to the medication. Another concern is that it is believed that in some forms and types of cancer insulin can, on the contrary, promote cancer cells growth and replication and prevent apoptosis (natural death of the cells).