Therapeutic Hypoglycemia made easy!
Author: Sture Hobro
Did you know that glucose is the primary fuel for most cancers! Reducing glucose in the blood is challenging when the liver produces glucose when glucose levels drop and healthy cells reduces it’s glucose use when levels drop. Therefore, even long-term starvation for weeks can’t reduce glucose below 4 mmol/l, securing a base-fuel for cancer cells that need glucose for proliferation and survival.
But there's hope! Dialysis, can actively reduce glucose from the blood and simultaneously add alternative fuels to ensure enough energy for healthy cells. This makes survival for glucose-dependent cells, such as cancer cells, harder and potentially even impossible especially during treatment with other cancer killing therapies.
To achieve very low glucose levels, such as 1-3 mmol/L or even below 1 mmol/L, it is necessary to clamp gluconeogenesis in the liver. This is a known procedure and is most easily done by adding small amounts of insulin.
Earlier studies in dialysis on kidney patients suggest that patients tolerate very low glucose levels when alternative fuels are increased. To further secure fuels for healthy cells during extreme hypoglycemia, it may be important to ensure a substitute fuel for the healthy cells that typically acts as hybrid cars and can ensure their energy needs from various sources. This ability is far less developed in cancer cells, that needs glucose.
Figure, it will be possible to control the residual glucose levels in the blood and set wanted goal as 1, 2 or 3 mmol and also the levels of alternative fuels can be controlled.
