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Their Achilles heel is mtor/igf-1 and the tool we have to keep those from being activated is autophagy.

But no one wants to hear they should scale back protein intake to 0.5/g per kg of body weight or less. (which basically means being mostly vegetarian or vegan, with some exception)

No one wants to hear they should be exercising 5-6 days a week

No one wants to hear that you should be having 20g-150g of net carbs a day and thus doing without bread, pasta, cereals, and reducing starchy veggies.

No one wants to hear that they should fast semi-regularly

No one wants to hear we shouldn't be eating 3 meals a day plus snacks once we're past growing age.

No one wants to be uncomfortable.



This is likely BS, and nobody should believe claims of magic diets without proof that they actually work.

Extreme confidence, and conspiratorial thinking ("nobody wants to hear this secret knowledge I have") should downweight the likelihood of the claims, because given no actual clues to go on, they are indications that the claims are spread by such deceptions.


I presume they are talking about a plant-based keto diet rather than something they just invented.


Without evidence, doesn't make it any less BS.


plant based, yes. I think ketosis is positive, but i don't think it's necessary on a regular basis. that's why i put the 20-150g range of net carbs. Fasting alone will handle the benefits of ketosis. But moreover you just don't want to spike your blood sugar.


I LOVE thinking about how my diet/exercise impacts my body. So don’t take this as discomfort - trying new diet/exercise combos is literally a major hobby of mine.

What on EARTH do you eat to hit those macros? If I eat the minimum healthy calories (1,500) entirely in broccoli, I’d be >50g of protein (~0.6 g/kg at 160lbs). What kind of meal plan gets you low net carbs AND low protein? Are you drinking olive oil or something?


The thing to google is "therapeutic ketogenic diet". It's the super extreme form of keto, used in medical settings to treat things like epilepsy, rather than in casual settings in attempts to lose weight. It's been a while since I did reading on the topic, but IIRC, there is good evidence it's helpfully effective against some forms of cancer (but harmful against others, so research before diving in).

But yes. To answer your question, you do eat a lot of food that is 100% fat or darn close. You will see menus like "2 eggs and 2 tablespoons of butter". The vegetarian version will involve a lot of avocados and coconut oil. You don't have to eat it straight, and most meals involve combining a massive amount of fat with a small amount of protein or fiber or something.


This makes sense. The exact macros differ, I’m sure, but it seems reasonable that extreme medical situations could be helped by diets that otherwise aren’t the best for a healthy person


can't stand those filthy keto casuals /s


To be charitable, I suppose they mean getting your protein from whatever falls out of this high vegetable diet naturally.

You're right though, I think vegetables have more protein than people are led to believe, especially since the health/fitness industry make it seem like you need to be ever vigilant in getting your protein numbers up. Meanwhile, the average American accidentally eats far more than they need and certainly doesn't need to resort to supplementation.


They don't have complete amino acids profiles, so most plant based protein won't stimulate mtor and igf-1 like say... Whey protein, milk or a steak would.


I often hear that some vegetables (for example broccoli) have a lot of proteins but don't really believe it, as a vegan I find it hard to get protein.

Broccoli has only 3 grams of protein per 100g (and 7 of carbs), I don't think it is particularly high, and 1500 calories of broccoli would mean eating more than 4 kg of it.


You're quoting considerably more protein in broccoli than GP, and they certainly weren't suggesting eating it all in broccoli was actually a good idea.


I don't mean to cause personal offense by this, but taking (and by extension, giving) anonymous dietary advice is pointless. A wide array of eating disorders exist in which the the afflicted are in complete denial about their own health. In real life, I would be able to glance over your body and get a quick idea of whether or not your advice was made with a sound mind. Even then, it's hard for me to know how accurately you're actually following your claimed diet. But without even being able to see your body, there is nothing for others to go on. For all I know, you're an anorexic deep in denial, or a binge eater who weighs more than my car. Your anonymous testimony alone tells me virtually nothing. Due to the insidious nature of eating disorders, even if I assume good faith and assume you aren't consciously lying, you still might be deep in denial lying to yourself and I would have no way of knowing it.


You can't diagnose cancer by looking at someone.


I agree. However if somebody is telling me to each much less protein than most doctors and dieticians say I should, then I want to at least see if they've maintained a reasonable muscle mass under the diet they're advocating for. The proof is in the pudding, and anonymously online there is no pudding.


here's the thing

It seems that health span and lifespan are not the same goal. Maintaining muscle mass is good, even great, to a point. Especially for the eldery who need to prevent falls.

But the process that helps us grow muscles (IGF-1/mTor) is also the same pathways that makes us grow cancer.

Low protein intake is both correlated in large population studies with longevity. It's also seen in animal studies as well.

High protein is great for reproductive health, glowing skin, building muscle, hell - probably even mood and cognition.


The fundamental problem here is that since you (and I) are anonymous, there is no real way for us to communicate what we believe a "reasonable" muscle mass is. Even if we try to be specific and talk about specific numbers and mass indexes and how much we can bench, it's still futile. The nature of body disorders is such that somebody can have laughably incorrect beliefs about themselves without consciously meaning to lie. We could tell each other our BMIs but if we both stay anonymous, it's all meaningless.


I'm not sure you can say this that confidently. "Autophagy can suppress or promote tumors depending on the developmental stage and tumor type." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC6257056/


The point is prevention. It promotes tumors once they already exist. It prevents them before they do.


So you have a clinical study showing cancer prevention on this extreme diet? Over what time span and how many individuals, and across what variety of geographic areas and other life experience?


Most diet tracking nutrition research is not that good, consisting of surveys that ask you what you've eaten for the past year, from memory and then doing correlations. Most people don't remember what they've eaten last week.

I think to do something really accurate nutrition wise would cost way too much money and take too long, so it mostly doesn't get done well.

So unless you do something specific with faith practice communities that are good about their strict diets and fasting, like Buddhist monks, there probably isn't much good research data for that in the first place. And then that has issues with controlling for other things, like meditating a lot, etc.


https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33197913/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6612215/

Its pretty well know mtor/igf-1 stimulates growth. All growth. This is great for youth. Not so much for aging.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AjSl4n_KdOY


Both of those papers are about the treatment of cancer, not about the avoidance. I don't have the internet connection needed to watch a video, but the video appears to be about longevity.


The only support for this point I've found is in a few studies in mice. Is there other studies I'm missing or are you making recommendations based on a few studies in mice?

"Studies on autophagy-deficient mouse models indicate that the basal levels of autophagy can suppress tumor formation at the initiation of tumor development." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC6274804/


Protein intake that low is just insane if you’re doing exercise that much. Your body will accumulate injuries fast, unless you’re defining exercise as lifting 1kg “dumbbells”.

Cutting carbs that much would mean you’re getting virtually all your calories from fat. Most natural sources of fats (nuts, meat, milk) also pack in protein, and you’d quickly be over 0.5g/kg. The only other option is chugging grease.

Not sure how a high exercise, no protein, frequent fasting diet is going to work. It sounds worse than a North Korean laborer’s lifestyle.


> Not sure how a high exercise, no protein, frequent fasting diet is going to work. It sounds worse than a North Korean laborer’s lifestyle.

Can't die of cancer if you die of malnutrition first!


I'd weigh about 40kg in no time. I usually weigh 70kg but it's not easy to maintain my body weight with my existing diet (at 1.4m tall).

Following this Internet persons advice, I would literally end up in the hospital due to malnutrition / low body weight in 6-12 months.


>I usually weigh 70kg but it's not easy to maintain my body weight with my existing diet (at 1.4m tall).

That's a BMI > 35. That's morbidly obese. Why would you want to maintain that?


I switched from ~150g of protein a day and high intensity workouts to mostly vegetarian and ~40g a day with high volume workouts. Any lingering injuries have disappeared and I am definitely rock climbing harder than I have before. I lost 20lbs and pretty much all non-functional muscle over 4 months. I don’t think I would do this forever but a low protein diet is definitely a tool I will be using in the future. It is amazing how much less food I need to feel satiated not carrying a bunch of deadlift and bench press muscles around.


What do you eat for satiety?


Getting your calories from fat virtually reduces your heart disease and diabetes type 2 risk to almost 0%.


> I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30597187


Yes, a gym nut who I guarantee you ate more protein than a grown adult should.


You're throwing a lot of big claims around in this thread.

Could you provide:

1. What you eat in a day to hit those macros.

2. something to support your claims.


I’ve heard similar claims but I haven’t seen compelling research. Do you have links you’d be willing to share?


Does this really explain the very healthy populations of countries like Japan or Spain? They're certainly not vegetarian/vegan nor do they engage in frequent fasting, as far as I know.


IMO the unhealthy countries typically have a diet consisting of sugar + processed seed oil foods which lead to endless cycle of consumption and sickness. Things like cake, donuts, cereal, most american style bread that lack not only fiber but contain high PUFA oils plus unnecessary sugar lead to a constant cycle of insulin release , eventually an endless downward cycle of: inflammation, high blood sugar, insulin release, fat storage, low blood sugar, hunger, snacking on sugar + bad oils (rinse and repeat).

If you can take one of those elements out of the cycle, you break the cycle. Those cultures stop the cycle (or more accurately, don't start it, although that's changing with time as the SAD diet takes over the globe). It's just not that sugar has to be bad, or carbohydrates are always bad, but if you were raised over-eating sugar and have PUFA related inflammation, they aren't going to help you lose weight or feel better.

At the end of the day, some people just think it's all about "calories in and calories out" but it's a rather myopic look on it. At some point we need to look at the type of calories people are consuming (starting a a young age and as they get older) and try to understand that different foods and different impacts to the body and its hormones (like insulin) and that the typical standard American diet loaded with sugar, no fiber and shitty oil (causing inflamation, which causes blood sugar spikes) are causing metabolic issues and putting a ton of people into a broken state ("metabolic syndrome").

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3821664/

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24555673/


Well I am pretty sure Japan and Spain both have very high seafood consumption which according to the link in the top comment contains high amounts of copper which reduce iron absorption.It's just one factor tho. It doesn't seem to affect a majority of cancers


More accurately:

The best of all worlds as far as quality of life is fluctuating between periods of high growths & high autophagy (repair).

I agree with all your points other than:

>But no one wants to hear they should scale back protein intake to 0.5/g per kg of body weight or less. (which basically means being mostly vegetarian or vegan, with some exception)

The healthiest people I've observed anywhere eat high protein diets, but balance it with fasting.


Can vouch for this diet.

It won't make you live longer, but it will feel like it.


Sounds like a pretty crappy lifestyle to adopt without any hard evidence it'll do anything useful..


I ended up on a diet like this after getting sick. Through trial and error I ended up here. There is plenty of hard evidence but maybe not in a form that has reached the masses. Sometimes you need a profit motive to really get the message out.


> There is plenty of hard evidence

Then you should have no problem linking to it.


> But no one wants to hear they should scale back protein intake to 0.5/g per kg of body weight or less.

Is there a high incidence of cancer in body builders? Recommended protein intake for people who work out is 150g+ protein per day.


I’d imagine the common steroid use would be a bit of a confounding factor


Heart and kidney problems due to steroid (ab)use is the leading cause of early death of bodybuilders. I don't think there is much data about natural bodybuilders at old age.


After going through different diets(some were successful, some not), I just learned to listen to my body.

There is really no one diet that will work for all people. People need to learn to customize their diet for their own needs.


Last time I saw this diet being promoted for cancer prevention and/or treatment, it was based on diets given to primates in captivity. It was promoted by Dr. Axe types, which leads me to believe it isn't exactly good science. I'd genuinely love to be wrong, because if it actually worked, that would be great. I haven't seen evidence to believe it, though.

What evidence do you have for the claim that such a diet would work against cancer?


Who is Dr. Axe?



I agree, though I'm curious about your thoughts on protein. My conclusion has been that protein is overall very beneficial, but there are many people claiming we should consume more or less. I'd figure that limiting refined carbs and sugars as well as fasting would counterbalance any possible negatives of protein, but I don't actually know.


The Huberman Lab podcast recently had Dr. David Sinclair [1] and talked about food causing aging due to it's relation to mTOR. I don't remember the details that well but they covered it very well. My takeaway was if your priority is anti-aging fasting and limiting protein is better, but I personally prefer wellness and that generally means consuming higher levels of protein.

[1]https://youtu.be/n9IxomBusuw


Is this something to do to stave off cancer, or something to do to keep cancer from killing you once you have it.

If the former, yeah, I'm not paying that much attention to all of that.

If it's the latter and it will keep me from dying, yeah, I'll make some changes.


It's to stave it off.


That's pretty close to true. Meat is life, eat all you can handle. 3 days per week is enough for exercise. Bread/Pasta/Cereal, no problem. Fasting is godly - do it! Stay busy, uncomfortable, sure... eat all you want q


To play devil's advocate, are there cancers that are the exception to this rule?


Ah yes. We choose chemo instead because its the comfortable option. /s


There are lots of people who prefer heart surgery over eating food that doesn't try to kill them with heart disease.


Where I live, Hong Kong, simultaneously has the highest meat consumption in the world and the highest life expectancy.


Didn’t realize too much protein was bad. So basically a mostly fat diet with fasting and exercise.


every macro is out to kill you.

fat probavly being the least bad as long as you stick to monosaturated, saturated (not in excess) and omega3s.


yeah okay whatever, I'm sure your extreme diet is the real one that solves all problems


Well this sounds awful. What am I even supposed to eat, just fat?


Vegetables, lots of vegetables.


Isn't that going to be carbs? I mean they certainly have less carbs per unit of weight but to the extent they have calories it's mostly carbs right?

If Im exercising 5-6x a week and I can't eat much protein I need calories from somewhere.


Many vegetables actually have solid protein on a protein/calorie basis. Comparable to milk. Low net carbs is not really possible with low protein, short of chugging crisco.


Yes it is.

You're not going to get the same level of protein from kale as you would from a chicken breast. You'd eat so much kale you'd be sick.

Secondly, plant proteins have incomplete amino acid profiles and won't stimulate mtor the say protein from meat and dairy will.


No, seriously, can you name 3 foods that are low net carb and low protein?

I’m not saying people find it hard; I literally can’t think of 3 foods that are both low net-carb and low protein-per-calorie.

Olive oil & butter are the two I’ve come up with so far. Any others you can think of?

ETA: someone else suggested avocados too. Any others?


Vegetables contain a lot of fiber, the soluble kind in particular tends to lock up sugars in a goop that passes through the small intestine and makes you fart.

You can graze constantly on plain intact produce and you won't get fat.


Most veggies are high in fiber. You subtract fiber from carbs to get net-carbs.

Only things like potatoes are truly high carb.


Do herbivores have lower rates of cancer than other animals?



Sources?? Would love to learn more




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