Prevent

Cancer

Wasting

PREVENTION OF CANCER WASTING

The early phases of wasting are silent. Once wasting has occurred, it is difficult to reverse.

Mary Romeyn, M.D., UCSF Medical Center, emphasizes, “The most critical issue in this regard (wasting syndrome) is loss of lean body mass . . . Changes in lean body mass not only exceed, but precede weight loss . . .Therefore, prevention of wasting should be a key goal. The best time to stop wasting is before, or at least as soon as, it begins.”

According to researchers at the FDA Center for Drugs, “Wasting, obviously, can occur despite the best nutritional support that is available to patients.”

Investigators at Aston University, U.K. conclude, “. . . a decreased food intake alone is unable to account for the changes in body composition seen in cancer patients, and increasing nutritional intake is unable to reverse the wasting syndrome.”

References: Journal of Nutrition (1999)

Therefore, It is not simply a matter of eating more food or eating the ‘right’ foods or avoiding the wrong foods. And it is not just a matter of providing supplemental nutrients depleted in the body. Nor is it enough to stimulate immune system activity to fight the cancer.

Rather, cancer wasting prevention must target the metabolic dysregulation and associated loss of lean body mass, in terms of how the body’s normal metabolism has been radically switched at the organ level and at the cellular level by: chemotherapy, GI dysfunction, prolonged immune activation, and by the cancer itself.