> Nguyen moved to UT Austin to start his own lab in January 2024 but passed away suddenly in November before he could finish the final experiments. The paper, of which he is the first author, is dedicated to him.
That's sad. I hope someone picks up the torch. The research sounds very promising.
The thing is, this is not really new. People have been pushing this metabolic theory of cancer for a long time now and even used it to propose things like cold therapy or ketogenic diets as a treatment option, despite the fact that we have very little evidence that any of this stuff really works. It is still refreshing to see people target cancer from a theory-first standpoint instead of the usual empirical tactics, but the theoretical foundation of cancer science simply isn't that good. Clinicians also aren't slow to adapt or scared to experiment with these new approaches, because everyone would jump immediately on those fancy low-invasive supplement treatments when the alternative is certain death. But you can't game the final survivability statistics, now matter how reasonable your theory sounds or how well founded it is.
The metabolic competition angle is fascinating - it's elegant how this leverages the body's own resource allocation rather than trying to poison cancer cells directly.
A few questions about the mechanism:
1. How selective is this approach? Cancer cells are notoriously heterogeneous - do different cancer types or subtypes respond differently to this metabolic pressure?
2. The cold exposure converting white to beige fat is interesting, but what about the feasibility for actual patients? Sustained cold exposure seems difficult to maintain for someone already dealing with cancer treatment.
3. Has anyone looked at whether this could work synergistically with existing metabolic therapies like metformin or ketogenic diets? The metabolic stress combined with nutrient competition could be powerful.
4. What's the risk of adaptive resistance? Cancer cells are remarkably good at finding alternative metabolic pathways when stressed.
RIP to Nguyen - it's heartbreaking when promising researchers pass before seeing their work come to fruition. Hope the team continues this line of investigation.
However, this article also seems to imply that frequent cold exposure that converts your own white fat cells into beige fat cells could be effective at both treating and preventing cancer.
They state without explanation that cold therapy cannot be done by cancer patients, but I don’t see why not. I take an ice bath every morning as it helps with my mental health, and its really not that shocking or difficult when you’re used to it as the very adaptation they’re talking about here eventually makes it easy to tolerate cold- your body adapts to be able to keep you warm. I can and do still do it when I’m sick, fatigued, or slept poorly.
Moreover, before modern climate controlled environments and low cost warm clothing humans naturally experienced cold a lot more often and were probably already cold adapted, even in warm climates. Could modern heating systems be predisposing us to cancer by making our metabolism work abnormally?
The problem with chronic cold exposure is that it makes one very hungry, a lot hungrier than usual, with the compensatory calorie consumption risking negating the intended benefit.
Hunger, like cold exposure, is an uncomfortable but transient signal. In many cases it peaks and subsides without requiring immediate action, especially once the body adapts.
Anecdotally, my first 72-hour fast was revealing. Around the 48-hour mark my body aggressively signaled hunger, esp. for sugary foods. By the third day, however, hunger largely subsided, and at break I wasn’t hungry at all. For the following week the usual sugary suspects in my life went untouched. Subsequent 72-hour fasts were far more manageable, suggesting at least some component of adaptation.
My understanding is that this ability to adapt exists because intermittent hunger and cold were regular aspects of human life for much of our history, particularly in environments without reliable food access (pre-agrarian) or thermal protection.
I also found that after my first 3 day fast I was able to deal with hunger much better. I used to get irritable when hungry and now I realise I can just tolerate it without any real downside — even years after my last fast.
It’s like my brain has retrained itself to ‘just get over it’. It was quite something
I have similar findings. I fast regularly and take cold showers. Another thing is one meal days are far easier after you do it couple of times. You don’t even think about food which is harder if you have two to three meals per day.
Edit: for those wanting to try this lifestyle, everybody is different. do your own research before jumping into regular fasting or even cold showers. Max time without food I did was 6 days, since then t it he max is 72 hours. Do blood work regularly and if you drink coffee be aware that caffeine withdraws are painful.
Ultimately, regardless of how one feels, you need to (will) maintain calorie balance in the long term, and cold exposure requires a higher calorie intake.
For sure, but my point is that increased hunger doesn’t automatically negate the benefit via overeating; people often adapt through modest adjustment instead.
More generally, it seems inconsistent to assume someone can voluntarily tolerate significant cold discomfort while being unable to manage similar degrees of hunger discomfort.
If white fat converts to beige fat, it is going to be burning a lot more calories, so you ultimately would have to eat more to maintain a stable body weight. It’s not clear to me that this would negate the benefit.
If it does negate the benefit than that would suggest that the entire benefit from the beige fat is from putting the body in a calorie deficit, and you would then expect the exact same effectiveness from calorie restriction. A quick search shows that there does seem to be an anti cancer therapeutic benefit from calorie restriction, so this seems at least plausible.
So this raises the research question of if increasing calorie intake to keep weight stable completely negates the anti-cancer benefits of increased beige fat or not. I’m curious if that has been investigated yet.
in all respect sorry this is wrong. this is a broad misinformation. It can enhance but also supresse cancer dependig of soo much we dont know yet enough to know if fasting is beneficial or dangerous.
edit:// and the article has imho nothinh to do with autophagy. Its about beige fat cells eating stuff away from cancer not autophagy wich happened in the innercell. And if you go into caloric deficit you could burn away those
beige fat cells that "heal" the cancer.
The paper you posted is just a review on autophagy and cancer that doesn’t contradict anything I stated. It is a mistake to conflate autophagy, calorie restriction, and cold exposure as necessarily biologically identical, which your comment seems to imply.
I was only raising questions this research and discussion made me curious about, not making any concrete claims.
Although the idea of calorie restriction as a cancer treatment is something still actively debated and researched, I personally doubt it is very useful, or likely to be the main mechanism here in the connection between beige fat and cancer, but it is a possibility to at least be ruled out experimentally in the context of the comment I replied to, which is why I mentioned it anyways. One major concern with calorie restriction in humans but not rodents is that it shuts down your metabolism by limiting t3 thyroid hormone production whereas cold exposure ramps up metabolism by uncoupling mitochondria to produce heat. You are correct that the body can shut down processes and systems that might be important for fighting cancer, in response to calorie restriction.
I am a researcher that studies metabolism, and actually think the prominent focus on fasting and calorie restriction as a potential medical cure-all has been mostly a dead end, that people were mistakenly led down largely as a result of these fundamental differences between rodent and human metabolism.
you are right now I better understand what you meant.
That was the part that confused me.
"If it does negate the benefit than that would suggest that the entire benefit from the beige fat is from putting the body in a calorie deficit, and you would then expect the exact same effectiveness from calorie restriction"
As far as I understood the paper its beige fat that can eat away food from cancer and not white fat. And afaik calorie restriction doesnt augment beige fat.
My error was thinking you meant calorie restriction while having white fat but you meant with beige fat? And yes this makes sense.
And I thinked autophagy because this is the main "thing" happenkng while fasting which is not burning body fuel
The comment you quoted was me paraphrasing what I saw as the implied idea that I was reading into the comment I was replying to. It's not what I personally suspect is going on here at all, but I can't dismiss it out of hand.
Yes, autophagy does ramp up during fasting, but it's just one of a number of different physiological changes that occur during fasting.
> Nguyen moved to UT Austin to start his own lab in January 2024 but passed away suddenly in November before he could finish the final experiments. The paper, of which he is the first author, is dedicated to him.
That's sad. I hope someone picks up the torch. The research sounds very promising.
The thing is, this is not really new. People have been pushing this metabolic theory of cancer for a long time now and even used it to propose things like cold therapy or ketogenic diets as a treatment option, despite the fact that we have very little evidence that any of this stuff really works. It is still refreshing to see people target cancer from a theory-first standpoint instead of the usual empirical tactics, but the theoretical foundation of cancer science simply isn't that good. Clinicians also aren't slow to adapt or scared to experiment with these new approaches, because everyone would jump immediately on those fancy low-invasive supplement treatments when the alternative is certain death. But you can't game the final survivability statistics, now matter how reasonable your theory sounds or how well founded it is.
And he was only 35. Rest in peace.
The metabolic competition angle is fascinating - it's elegant how this leverages the body's own resource allocation rather than trying to poison cancer cells directly.
A few questions about the mechanism:
1. How selective is this approach? Cancer cells are notoriously heterogeneous - do different cancer types or subtypes respond differently to this metabolic pressure?
2. The cold exposure converting white to beige fat is interesting, but what about the feasibility for actual patients? Sustained cold exposure seems difficult to maintain for someone already dealing with cancer treatment.
3. Has anyone looked at whether this could work synergistically with existing metabolic therapies like metformin or ketogenic diets? The metabolic stress combined with nutrient competition could be powerful.
4. What's the risk of adaptive resistance? Cancer cells are remarkably good at finding alternative metabolic pathways when stressed.
RIP to Nguyen - it's heartbreaking when promising researchers pass before seeing their work come to fruition. Hope the team continues this line of investigation.
This is fascinating and sounds really promising.
However, this article also seems to imply that frequent cold exposure that converts your own white fat cells into beige fat cells could be effective at both treating and preventing cancer.
They state without explanation that cold therapy cannot be done by cancer patients, but I don’t see why not. I take an ice bath every morning as it helps with my mental health, and its really not that shocking or difficult when you’re used to it as the very adaptation they’re talking about here eventually makes it easy to tolerate cold- your body adapts to be able to keep you warm. I can and do still do it when I’m sick, fatigued, or slept poorly.
Moreover, before modern climate controlled environments and low cost warm clothing humans naturally experienced cold a lot more often and were probably already cold adapted, even in warm climates. Could modern heating systems be predisposing us to cancer by making our metabolism work abnormally?
The problem with chronic cold exposure is that it makes one very hungry, a lot hungrier than usual, with the compensatory calorie consumption risking negating the intended benefit.
Hunger, like cold exposure, is an uncomfortable but transient signal. In many cases it peaks and subsides without requiring immediate action, especially once the body adapts.
Anecdotally, my first 72-hour fast was revealing. Around the 48-hour mark my body aggressively signaled hunger, esp. for sugary foods. By the third day, however, hunger largely subsided, and at break I wasn’t hungry at all. For the following week the usual sugary suspects in my life went untouched. Subsequent 72-hour fasts were far more manageable, suggesting at least some component of adaptation.
My understanding is that this ability to adapt exists because intermittent hunger and cold were regular aspects of human life for much of our history, particularly in environments without reliable food access (pre-agrarian) or thermal protection.
I also found that after my first 3 day fast I was able to deal with hunger much better. I used to get irritable when hungry and now I realise I can just tolerate it without any real downside — even years after my last fast.
It’s like my brain has retrained itself to ‘just get over it’. It was quite something
I have similar findings. I fast regularly and take cold showers. Another thing is one meal days are far easier after you do it couple of times. You don’t even think about food which is harder if you have two to three meals per day.
Edit: for those wanting to try this lifestyle, everybody is different. do your own research before jumping into regular fasting or even cold showers. Max time without food I did was 6 days, since then t it he max is 72 hours. Do blood work regularly and if you drink coffee be aware that caffeine withdraws are painful.
> Another thing is one meal days are far easier after you do it couple of times.
It's mind-boggling to me that multiple "one meal" days don't incidentally happen to everyone over the course of a year.
I would think most people have those days where they skip breakfast and lunch due to some or other exigency and only get to eat dinner.
Ultimately, regardless of how one feels, you need to (will) maintain calorie balance in the long term, and cold exposure requires a higher calorie intake.
For sure, but my point is that increased hunger doesn’t automatically negate the benefit via overeating; people often adapt through modest adjustment instead.
More generally, it seems inconsistent to assume someone can voluntarily tolerate significant cold discomfort while being unable to manage similar degrees of hunger discomfort.
If white fat converts to beige fat, it is going to be burning a lot more calories, so you ultimately would have to eat more to maintain a stable body weight. It’s not clear to me that this would negate the benefit.
If it does negate the benefit than that would suggest that the entire benefit from the beige fat is from putting the body in a calorie deficit, and you would then expect the exact same effectiveness from calorie restriction. A quick search shows that there does seem to be an anti cancer therapeutic benefit from calorie restriction, so this seems at least plausible.
So this raises the research question of if increasing calorie intake to keep weight stable completely negates the anti-cancer benefits of increased beige fat or not. I’m curious if that has been investigated yet.
in all respect sorry this is wrong. this is a broad misinformation. It can enhance but also supresse cancer dependig of soo much we dont know yet enough to know if fasting is beneficial or dangerous.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cam4.5577
edit:// and the article has imho nothinh to do with autophagy. Its about beige fat cells eating stuff away from cancer not autophagy wich happened in the innercell. And if you go into caloric deficit you could burn away those beige fat cells that "heal" the cancer.
The paper you posted is just a review on autophagy and cancer that doesn’t contradict anything I stated. It is a mistake to conflate autophagy, calorie restriction, and cold exposure as necessarily biologically identical, which your comment seems to imply.
I was only raising questions this research and discussion made me curious about, not making any concrete claims.
Although the idea of calorie restriction as a cancer treatment is something still actively debated and researched, I personally doubt it is very useful, or likely to be the main mechanism here in the connection between beige fat and cancer, but it is a possibility to at least be ruled out experimentally in the context of the comment I replied to, which is why I mentioned it anyways. One major concern with calorie restriction in humans but not rodents is that it shuts down your metabolism by limiting t3 thyroid hormone production whereas cold exposure ramps up metabolism by uncoupling mitochondria to produce heat. You are correct that the body can shut down processes and systems that might be important for fighting cancer, in response to calorie restriction.
I am a researcher that studies metabolism, and actually think the prominent focus on fasting and calorie restriction as a potential medical cure-all has been mostly a dead end, that people were mistakenly led down largely as a result of these fundamental differences between rodent and human metabolism.
you are right now I better understand what you meant.
That was the part that confused me.
"If it does negate the benefit than that would suggest that the entire benefit from the beige fat is from putting the body in a calorie deficit, and you would then expect the exact same effectiveness from calorie restriction"
As far as I understood the paper its beige fat that can eat away food from cancer and not white fat. And afaik calorie restriction doesnt augment beige fat. My error was thinking you meant calorie restriction while having white fat but you meant with beige fat? And yes this makes sense.
And I thinked autophagy because this is the main "thing" happenkng while fasting which is not burning body fuel
thanks for the answer
The comment you quoted was me paraphrasing what I saw as the implied idea that I was reading into the comment I was replying to. It's not what I personally suspect is going on here at all, but I can't dismiss it out of hand.
Yes, autophagy does ramp up during fasting, but it's just one of a number of different physiological changes that occur during fasting.
triggering the cold signal artificially might be an approach