Comment by gamblor956

It's a good thing you edited for politeness because you seemed to be basing your understanding of what I said based on stuff you read on Reddit.

A number of studies show that, in humans, the keto diet (the medical keto diet[1] and not the meat heavy Internet version) causes metabolic stress in breast cancer cells and in several other types of cancer, due to their significantly increased metabolic needs. It's like the difference between a normal human and Michael Phelps during Olympic competition. The cancer cells can process ketones, but not efficiently enough to fuel their activity so they starve.

In humans this eventually results in the death or deactivation of the cancerous cells (deactivation being the primary way that tumors "adapt" to a starvation diet). There have been few, if any, reported cases of metastasis in the types of cancers studied in humans. This outcome is statistically significant enough that multiple cancer treatment centers recommend the medical keto diet to human patients as part of a treatment regime.

As mentioned, the recent study from 2024 shows that this type of metabolic stress can, in mice cause the cancerous cells to metastasize in a last-ditch attempt to survive. However, very little of the cancer research conducted on mice has applications to human cancers. For example, chemotherapy has also been shown to cause metastasis in mice, and a number of earlier studies attempting to replicate the keto research in humans shows that the keto diet in mice increases tumor growth, which is the opposite effect it has in humans.

[1] The medical keto diet is basically just fat and vitamins. No carbs, and minimal to no protein because protein can get converted into glucose by gluconeogenesis. It is not a diet anyone would want to be on longer than strictly necessary. One of my friends had stage 4 metastatic lung cancer, which she discovered during a company-sponsored mud run. Surgery was not an option and chemotherapy was not working. With less than 4 months to live, she went on the medical keto diet and the two-punch combo of keto and chemo put the cancer into remission for almost three years. (Note: She only maintained the diet for a few months after ending chemo treatment. Unfortunately not all of the cancer cells had died, some had merely deactivated. Four years after remission the cancer cells reactivated with a vengeance and she died the day after she started showing symptoms.)