Alternative cancer treatment centers are now utilizing a complementary treatment to assist with chemotherapy, called insulin potentiation therapy (IPT).
Cancer cells are very similar to the body’s natural cells, but differ in that they use glucose almost exclusively for energy, whereas the body’s cells use a combination of glucose and fats. Almost all cells, including cancerous ones, require insulin to allow glucose to enter the cell. Because cancer cells require more glucose, they have approximately six to fifteen times more insulin receptors around their membranes as normal cells. This allows them to take up more glucose than a normal body cell, allowing them to thrive.
While this physiological difference has proven useful for cancer cell survival, it gives scientists a means to effectively attack them while doing less damage to the body’s own cells. As well as allowing glucose to enter cells, insulin also makes the cell membrane more permeable, and thereby vulnerable, to chemotherapeutic drugs. Since cancer cells have such a dense quantity of insulin receptors, IPT allows the chemo drugs to enter the cancer cells with much greater effectiveness, and relatively little damage done to normal cells. A study at Georgetown University Medical School concluded that cancer cells treated with insulin accepted methotrexate, a chemotherapeutic drug, at a rate 10,000 times greater than cells not prepared with insulin.
Insulin also encourages cancer cells to divide, at which phase their reproductive systems are most susceptible to chemo treatment. In this way, IPT works by opening the cancer cell membrane to attack and causing the cells to enter a phase where the structures used to reproduce are most vulnerable.
At alternative cancer treatment centers, doctors trained in this field are able to use 5-10% of typical chemotherapy treatments in their patients to achieve cancer cell death. Low-dose chemotherapy exposes the patient to fewer toxins during treatment, allowing their minds and bodies to remain as healthy as possible to fight. Cancers of the colon, breast, pancreas, ovaries, prostate, lymphatic system, and lungs have all been treated using these methods.
It’s important to keep in mind that while IPT cancer treatment remains on the forefront of cancer treatment options, it is still a new science that is not widely accepted. All patients undergoing this course are closely monitored to keep track of the disease’s progression and the effectiveness of the treatment on different types of cancers.
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