I was privileged to sit down with John Heerdink, Founder & Managing Director of Tribe Public, for a deep dive into the business of Atossa Therapeutics and its ‘pipeline in a product’ strategy in breast cancer.
I had an in-depth discussion with John about Atossa Therapeutics – how it came to be, the background and scientific foundations, our patents & clinical trial successes, the latest developments, our notable financial and capitalization positioning, and the possibility that upwards of 200,000 breast cancer cases per year could be prevented through our ‘pipeline in a product’ strategy.
This is a conversation worth listening to for the latest in Atossa Therapeutics’ innovative therapies to address unmet needs in breast cancer.
About Tribe Public:
Tribe Public’s complimentary worldwide webinars are efficient 30-minute events that seek to provide direct corporate access to leaders of companies in industries that you care about. The events consist of a quick introduction to management a 15-minute presentation, and a brief Q&A session where you may ask the questions you care about too. Tribe events are hosted by Advisor, Investor, Entrepreneur John F. Heerdink, Jr., the Managing Partner of Tribe Public LLC.
Dr. Steven Quay is featured on NewsNation to discuss a new medical breakthrough cancer pill which early research suggests it destroys all solid tumors. Dr. Quay says it’s a “highly significant finding”.
The short answer is yes, it will be very safe. Why? The beach has wind, sun, the salty spray in the air, and people spread out. Let’s consider each of these separately.
Wind.Because the water of the ocean and the adjacent land have very different responses to the warming effect of the sun there is an almost constant wind at the beach. Is that good or bad for spreading SARS-CoV-2? A nice study 1 (not peer-reviewed however) looked at the rate of COVID-19 cases and various weather conditions in four cities in China and five locations in Italy. They then plotted wind speed versus the number of cases (because of the average five day incubation period they correlated cases and weather with a five day interval). In eight of the nine cities the higher the wind speed the lower the rate of cases. The effect was not huge but in the vast majority of the time, the more wind the fewer cases. So given that effect, being at a windy beach versus a still air part of town away from the beach, will have fewer cases.
Sun and temperature. Previous results on the relationship between respiratory-borne infectious diseases and temperature have indicated that both SARS and influenza need to survive under certain temperature conditions, and increasing temperature can reduce their ability to spread. The underlying hypothesis as to why warmer seasons tend to decrease the spread of viruses include: higher vitamin D levels, resulting in better immune responses; increased UV radiation; and no school in the summer (when children are clustered together, transmission rates of flu and measles increase). Reports of UV and respiratory diseases have also been considered, and previous studies have shown that high levels of UV exposure can reduce the spread of SARS-CoV virus.
However, in this study of UV exposure and COVID-192 which had a six-fold difference in UV radiation there was no effect of increasing UV. With respect to temperature, the first study1 showed a positive effect, with each increase in temperature of one degree having a 1% decrease in COVID-19 incidence. The second study, however, saw no temperature effect.
Salty spray. The spray from the ocean, the aerosol, contains water, salt, and lots of ocean microbes.3 Importantly, they also contain a large and diverse collection of fatty acids, those long carbon chain chemicals we all know commonly as soaps. If a human sneeze/cough/breath droplet were to merge with a sea aerosol and then it began to float on the wind two things would happen: as it ‘dried’ in the air the salt concentration would increase, and the fatty acids would attack the membrane of the envelope virus, SARS-CoV-2. Both of these actions would quickly destroy the virus! This will not happen with fresh water lakes, by the way.
Public bathrooms.Even before COVID-19 the public facility situation at the beach is far from ideal. Nothing special for COVID-19 here. Just wash your hands after and if you are really talented, hold your breath if you can!
Get even more tips on staying safe with COVID-19 by following my blogs at ElevatorMedicine or get my new book on Amazon Kindle, Your COVID-19 Survival Manual: A Physician’s Guide to Keep You and Your Family Healthy During the Pandemic and Beyond.
Dr. Quay announces availability of his COVID-19 Survival Manual on June 5th
Seattle, WA. Dr. Steven Quay, MD, PhD, physician-scientist and CEO of Atossa Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATOS) announced today that he and Dr. Martin Lee, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Statistics, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA have published a manuscript entitled, “SARS-CoV-2 was spreading in the United States in late December 2019 and may have killed over 440 patients in California and 980 nationwide by mid-January.”
The study identifies a well-accepted epidemiology signal of COVID-19, internet searches for the loss of smell and/or taste, spiking in California the first two weeks of 2020, clearly indicating symptomatic patients in California at that time. The study also identifies about 980 deaths nationwide and 440 deaths in California in early January that were attributed to pneumonia and/or influenza but are likely to have been incorrectly diagnosed and are, with high probability, the first deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S.
“This study arose when I considered the origin of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, China in early December, the rate and ease of human-to-human spread, especially in crowded indoor locations, and the expected annual year-end glut of holiday travel that the world experiences. From the perspective of the virus, there is no difference between spending 13 hours spreading from human to human in a traditional market in Wuhan or spending 13 hours traveling to LAX in California and spreading in Beverly Hills,” stated Dr. Quay. “This pandemic has provided a stark example of the unprecedented perils we have created by our modern world.”
Dr. Quay continued, “My book entitled, COVID-19 Survival Manual: A Physician’s Guide to Keep You and Your Family Healthy During the Pandemic and Beyond, will be published as an Amazon Kindle book on June 5, 2020, and will provide my blueprint for how to move beyond this pandemic safely for you and your family. Before anyone decides to return to life outside the shelter, please read my book. It might save your life!”
COVID-19 Survival Manual: A Physician’s Guide to Keep You and Your Family Healthy during the Pandemic and Beyond
This book is chock-full of lifesaving tips you can’t find anywhere else to help you and your family stay safe while sheltering-in-place, as well as how to get back to life in the coming weeks and months.
Some highlights:
One 2-minute step you can take every time you come home to kill Coronavirus before it enters your lungs
A, quick, free home test for COVID-19 that is as good as the FDA-approved nasal swab
The one exercise you won’t learn in the gym that can save your life
How NOT to die of COVID-19 (Make your lungs younger)
What to do if you have early stage COVID-19 so that you can stay out of the hospital
The #1 most effective way to prevent the spread of coronavirus as we reopen society (Hint: it’s the one thing the CDC said was “NOT effective” when coronavirus hit the U.S.)
Why a vaccine won’t be the solution, and what YOU can do to protect yourself, now and in the future
What to eat and drink (and what to avoid) so you can prevent and beat this coronavirus
The best supplements I have found from clinical trial research for immune health during this pandemic
The coronavirus’ “Diabolic Trait” and how it helped the virus spread so fast
An easy DIY step that takes your face mask from a viral barrier to a virus killer, giving you over 100-times the protection of an untreated mask
The one blood test to ask for if you are hospitalized that can keep you off a ventilator
Three steps to take to thrive during the next epidemic
What is gain-of-function research and why we must ban it to prevent future pandemics
It will be available on Amazon Kindle for $4.99 starting June 5. The proceeds will be shared with Team Rubicon, a non-profit organization that serves communities by mobilizing veterans to continue their service, leveraging their skills and experience to help people prepare, respond, and recover from disasters and humanitarian crises.
About Steven Quay, M.D., PhD.
Steven Quay is the founder, Chairman, and CEO of Seattle-based Atossa Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATOS), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel therapeutics and delivery methods for breast cancer and other breast conditions.
Dr. Quay received his M.D., M.A. and Ph.D. from The University of Michigan, was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT with Nobel Laureate H. Gobind Khorana, a resident at the Harvard-Massachusetts General Hospital, and was on the faculty of Stanford University School of Medicine for almost a decade. He has over 300 published contributions to medicine which have been cited over 9,700 times.
Dr. Quay has founded six pharmaceutical startups, invented seven FDA-approved medicines, and holds 87 U.S. patents. Over 80 million people have benefited from the drugs he has invented. His current passion is the prevention of the two million yearly breast cancer cases worldwide. A TEDx talk he delivered on breast cancer prevention, “How to Be Smart If You’re Dense,” has been viewed over 200,000 times.
Menopause is a stage in the life of every woman. Beginning in her 40s or 50s, it is marked by the end of her menstrual cycles. The average age in the US is 51.
Strictly speaking, a doctor diagnoses it when she has gone 12 months without a period. As the chart shows, it is caused by a reduction in the production of estrogen by the ovaries.
It is a natural biological process. But the physical symptoms, such as hot flashes, and emotional symptoms of menopause may disrupt your sleep, lower your energy or affect emotional health. The chart here depicts symptoms and conditions associated with the change.
Menopause requires no medical treatment. Instead, treatments focus on relieving your signs and symptoms and preventing or managing chronic conditions that may occur with aging. There are many effective treatments available, from lifestyle adjustments to hormone therapy.
Today I want to discuss hormone replacement therapy.
What is hormone replacement therapy?
In simplest terms it is the treatment, not of menopause, but of the symptoms of menopause, caused by dropping estrogen levels. For treatments that are systemic, taken orally or transdermally (that is, a skin patch), they consist of three kinds: estrogen only, a combination of estrogen and progesterone, and, rarely, progesterone only. For treatment of some “local” symptoms, such as vaginal drying, discomfort during intercourse, and some urinary symptoms, a vaginal cream containing estrogen can be effective.
What are the benefits of HRT?
If the dosing is appropriate then the “vasomotor symptoms,” hot flashes and night sweats, will be under control. In addition, because menopause leads to increased cardiovascular disease risk and to bone loss or osteoporosis, treatment can prevent or delay these important diseases and conditions.
What are the risks of HRT?
Unfortunately there is a real increase in the incidence of breast cancer. There have been extensive studies but the most definitive was published in September 2019 by a group from the University of Oxford in England. They found four important findings:
The later in life a woman started HRT the lower her risk of getting future cancer. Starting before age 50 was much worse than starting after age 60.
HRT preparations that had both estrogen-progesterone caused breast cancer significantly more frequently than estrogen preparations alone. Vaginal estrogen was effective for local symptoms and importantly did not increase the risk of breast cancer at all, probably because it didn’t produce much systemic absorption.
The longer a woman took HRT the greater her incidence of breast cancer. So 5 years of therapy was significantly worse than 10 years of treatment. Importantly, treatment of less than one year was NOT associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.
Higher body-mass index (BMI) was associated with an increased risk of breast cancer without HRT and the effects of HRT was to raise the cancer risk in women with low BMI to the same level as women with high BMI.
Are there any natural options to HRT?
Yes! You can reduce the frequency and/or severity of the hot flashes, night sweats, and other symptoms. Here are a few ideas:
Do regular exercise
Regular physical activity can reduce hot flashes and improve sleep. It’s also a good way of boosting your mood if you feel anxious, irritable or depressed. Weight-bearing exercises can help keep your bones strong
Have a healthy diet
A balanced diet can help ensure you do not put on weight and can keep your bones healthy
Stay cool at night
Wear loose clothes and sleep in a cool, well-ventilated room if you experience hot flushes and night sweats
Cut down on caffeine,
alcohol and spicy food, as they have all been known to trigger hot flashes
Try to reduce stress levels
to improve mood swings, make sure you get plenty of rest, as well as getting regular exercise. Activities such as yoga and tai chi may help you relax
Give up smoking
if you smoke – giving up will help reduce hot flushes and your risk of developing serious health conditions, such as heart disease, stroke and cancer
Try vaginal lubricant or moisturiser
if you experience vaginal dryness – several different types are available to buy from shops and pharmacies
And the wrap is…
Menopause is a normal, natural phase of life that all women will go through.
The symptoms can be reduced by cutting caffeine as well as other lifestyle symptoms. Try these first.
If, after lifestyle changes, you still need help consider HRT with your doctor. Here focus on estrogen only preparations. And try one year of therapy and then take a ‘treatment holiday.’
Today I want to talk about a class of foods that might prevent breast cancer.
I am certainly not the first physician to propose that health and disease are related to what we eat. That honor goes to Hippocrates, the Greek physician who wrote over 2500 years ago, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
But the quest to identify foods and beverages that have a major impact on health or a specific impact on a certain disease has been a long journey. I like to imagine the chemist and physician working side-by-side over the centuries in their laboratories. The quest for the chemist, turning lead into gold. The physician grinds his plants into potions, hoping to stave off death.
So if I said I had read or reviewed over 1000 articles on the impact of food on health and specifically, preventing breast cancer, it would be no exaggeration. Many studies are in the laboratory and involve human cancer cells in the test tube or preventing mice from getting cancer. If I had a dollar for every ‘potion’ that prevented breast cancer in these studies I would be a rich man. So I won’t waste your time like some blogs, talking about these lab studies.
I look only for studies in real, live human subjects. I also look at the design of the study: is there something about how it was designed that contains a fatal flaw that makes the data unreliable? A lot of studies don’t pass that hurdle. And then I look at the data. A twenty or thirty percent reduction in breast cancer in a ‘food’ trial can certainly be published and is useful in advancing the field of cancer research. But it’s not good enough for me, and it’s not good enough for an ElevatorMedicineTM blog.
I don’t like wasting your time or mine playing ‘small ball.’
So I am very excited to share a food family that really gets the job done!
Introducing the Allium Family and its star members, garlic and onions
The genus Allium contains about 500 edible species including garlic, onions, leeks, and chives, foods which are commonly consumed worldwide. Onions (Allium cepa) and garlic (Allium sativum) are among the world’s oldest cultivated plants, and are popularly consumed in stews (“guisos”), beans, and rice dishes in Puerto Rican cuisine today.
Garlic forms an important component of the Puerto Rican diet, and is mainly consumed in the cooked form in various sauces and seasonings, the most common being a condiment, “sofrito.”
Sofrito, the Puerto Rican Take on the Allium Plant Family
The study I am discussing was published in July 2019 in the journal Nutrition and Cancer and is entitled, “Onion and Garlic Intake and Breast Cancer, a Case-Control Study in Puerto Rico.” I like case control studies because they set up two groups with very similar demographics but with one difference, and then study the effect of that one difference on outcome. The Atabey Study of Breast Cancer, a population based case-control study named after the Puerto Rican goddess of fertility, was conducted in Puerto Rico between November 2008 and June 2014. In all, 660 women were included with about half having breast cancer (the case group) and the other half without breast cancer (the control group).
The difference between the groups was the frequency of eating Sofrito. The outcome examined was the incidence of breast cancer in the two groups. The eating frequency was divided into those who never ate Sofrito, to those with an increasing frequency; from once per week to more than once per day.
The data and results below couldn’t be clearer:
The women who ate more sofrito had significantly fewer cancers. One ‘tell-tale’ I look for with good data is what I call the dose-response. Here it was absolute; the more sofrito that women ate, the fewer the cancers. The data crunchers said the likelihood of these results happening by chance was 1 in 50.
The implication is that if the 100 women who never ate sofrito had, in fact, eaten it twice a day, 67 of those women would NOT have gotten breast cancer.
The Caveats
Like the kids in the back seat on a road trip, the naive question ‘are we there yet?’ has to be answered in a sober, adult, professional fashion.
So two points:
This is just a single study, and so future results in another study might be different. But in the paper, the authors do look at nine other studies and most showed protection from garlic and/or onions, to differing amounts that increased with a dose. But some studies, without further explanation, showed the opposite effect. So more research is definitely needed.
This ‘retrospective, look back’ case-control study is an excellent design but is not the Gold Standard, ‘prospective, into the future’ study that would nail the results. Probably such a study would use a dietary supplement with the ‘good stuff’ in the Allium family compared to a sugar pill in a ‘blinded’ fashion. Someone should do that study.
But for now, I recommend that you find your favorite sofrito recipe online and enjoy it with the many foods of Puerto Rico that feature this versatile condiment, knowing you’re eating the best food group I have found to prevent breast cancer!
I hope you enjoyed this instalment of ElevatorMedicineTM!
With October ‘Breast Cancer Awareness Month’ comes the usual stories about breast cancer, tips on preventing the disease, and related topics. A perennial question that is asked almost every October is:
Does wearing a bra cause breast cancer?
If you have wondered if wearing a bra can cause breast cancer, you are not alone.
A 2014 study of 748 adults in Cork, Ireland, was conducted to test for knowledge of risk factors for breast cancer. Fully 29% of the participants believed that wearing a tight bra could increase breast cancer risk. A more recent study in February, 2019, of women in Brazil placed the risk of breast cancer from wearing an underwire bra at 58.5%! In this study, the younger you were, the more convinced that breast cancer could be caused by wearing a bra.
So let’s see where this notion came from and what the scientists say is true.
Where did the rumor that bras cause breast cancer come from?
The beginning of this theory was a one-two publication punch in the 90s.
First was a 1991 paper from the Harvard School of Public Health entitled, “Breast size, handedness, and breast cancer risk.” This paper described a study of about 15,000 women in which breast cup size and handedness (whether you wrote with your left or right hand) were related to breast cancer.
The strongest finding in the study was that, for premenopausal women, there was an association of increased breast size with increased cancer risk.
When the authors looked at whether women who got breast cancer wore a bra more frequently, they found a trend towards more cancer in these women. This trend was not big enough to be “statistically” significant however.
And the authors were careful to point out that the women who were more likely to wear a bra were also the ones with larger breasts and tended to be overweight. They said, “There was a suggestion that, among premenopausal women, those who did not wear a bra had a lower risk of breast cancer. The association, if real, could point to obesity or breast size as the relevant factor.”
This was followed in 1995 by the book, “Dressed to Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras.” Here the authors, Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Grismaijer (a husband and wife medical anthropologist team) claimed that women who wore tight-fitting bras all day, every day, had a much higher risk of developing breast cancer than those who went au naturel. The authors claimed that by inhibiting lymphatic drainage, bras trapped toxins in the breast tissue, which caused cancer.
The problems with their theory are two-fold:
The authors’ observations that cultures where women did not wear bras also had a reduced cancer incidence did not take into account differences between these cultures in known risk factors for breast cancer, such as diet, weight, exercise, the age at which menstruation starts, pregnancies, and breast feeding.
The suggested mechanism is inconsistent with scientific concepts of breast physiology and pathology. The breast lymph system does not drain into the main part of the breast. The lymph system drains out of the breast into the underarm lymph nodes; and bras do not prevent the circulation of blood and lymph from the breast.
The authors’ proposal that bras block the lymphatic system which leads to accumulated toxins and cancer was likewise contradicted by scientific study. The National Institutes of Health examined cancer rates among women who had their underarm lymph nodes removed as part of melanoma treatment. The surgery, which is known to block lymph drainage from breast tissue, did not detectably increase breast cancer rates, the study found, meaning that it is extremely unlikely that wearing a bra, which affects lymph flow minimally if at all, would do so.
A final way to think about it is: well if wearing a bra causes breast cancer, then before the bra was “invented” breast cancer should be rare? Since the bra was patented in 1914 we can ask if breast cancer occurred before then. In fact breast cancer has been reported in every time period going back into the distant past. Princess Atossa was the first woman with a written report of breast cancer and that was in about 500 BC! So breast cancer was occurring long before women began to wear the bra.
What does the best science say?
To settle the question, a team of scientists from the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center, in Seattle, WA, conducted a careful study of the question. In a 2014 study entitled, “Bra wearing not associated with breast cancer risk: a population based case-control study,” about 1500 women, two-thirds with breast cancer and one-third without cancer, were asked about their bra wearing habits. This population-based case-control study found no evidence that any aspect of bra wearing is associated with risk of breast cancer. In particular the risk did not vary by daily duration of wearing a bra, age when women started wearing a bra, bra cup size, or whether women wore a bra with an underwire.
What do the experts say?
The National Cancer Institute (US) states that bras have not been shown to increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer.
The American Cancer Society states, “There are no scientifically valid studies that show wearing bras of any type causes breast cancer.”
The U.S. National Institutes of Health states, “Breast implants, using antiperspirants, and wearing underwire bras do not raise your risk for breast cancer.”
Why does the false theory of bras causing breast cancer persist?
It’s not clear why a theory that bras cause breast cancer, a theory that has been thoroughly disproven, persists. Perhaps it comes from the frustration of not knowing what causes the disease, coupled with a desire that the disease should come from the outside, from something a woman can control.
In any case, let’s stop worrying about breast cancer being caused by wearing a bra!
The topic of diet and breast cancer is an immense field of active research. A simple search of the US National Library of Medicine for articles about the effect of diet on breast cancer finds over 4000 articles. The same search for preventing breast cancer shows over 2400 studies. To do this justice would take a deep dive and a lot of time.
But if I had only a couple of minutes to give my best three tips to prevent breast cancer via diet and eating it would be:
1. A Breakfast of Champions (for Microbes Only) and a multivitamin with methyl-folate
You have probably been told that breakfast is the most important meal to drive your energy and accomplish your day. But did you know it is also the most important meal to get your daily “prevent defense” going to stop breast cancer? Well it is.
The two key foods in that plan are fiber and yogurt. Both have as their primary role to build a strong, healthy microbiome. The microbiome is the collection of bacteria that make up your GI tract. Did you know they out number all the “human cells” in your body by 10 to 1. So eating to take care of them, so they can take care of you, makes sense. So the one-two punch for a healthy microbiome is fiber plus a fermented food, like yogurt. Let’s discuss them separately.
Dietary fiber or roughage is the portion of plant-derived food that cannot be completely broken down by human digestive enzyme. Grains, cereals, etc. are all good fiber sources. There is a portion that is “soluble” and a portion that is “insoluble.”
A 2016 Harvard study of over 90,000 women who had different dietary fiber patterns and were followed for 20 years showed that women who had high fiber diets (28 grams/day) compared to low fiber diets (14 grams/day) had a 25% reduced risk of breast cancer. The research showed it was especially important to start good habits in the adolescent years. A good high fiber cereal can give you 50% of your needs in one bowl.
What about yogurt? A 2017 study from the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, in New York, showed a 39% reduction in breast cancer among women with high intake of yogurt. Why? We are not sure but one interesting theory is they can break down the estrogen in the gut as it circulates back to the liver to be reused. This would lower blood levels of estrogen, which we know is related to a reduction of breast cancer. The benefit here is with yogurt with live bacteria; either homemade or commercial live or active yogurt. Pasteurized yogurt has all the good microbes killed.
A multivitamin. There are definitely some folks who question the need for an oral multivitamin with the American diet but my philosophy is: it’s cheap insurance. Since several of the vitamins, especially the B-series, are helpers that are involved in DNA repair and DNA repair is needed to correct the many common mistakes that can lead to cancer, it’s important to be sure you have enough. Key detail: most multivitamins have either folic acid or folate as the form of B9 but this is not the one you want. What you need is methyl-folate (full chemical name is 5-methyltetrahydrofolate (5-MTHF)), which is made in the body from folate, but up to 30% of women don’t have the right genetics to do the conversion well. So be certain you have the sure-proof version, methyl-folate. In a 2014 review of the literature, there was about a 10% reduction in breast cancer with vitamin supplementation. In women with BRCA1 genes, which prevent DNA repair, a 55-61% reduction in breast cancer was observed with folate supplementation.
2. Lunch & Dinner: A Rainbow of Veggies, Green, Yellow, Red, Orange, the More the Better
First let’s get the “800-pound gorilla in the room” out of the way. Namely, fresh, red meat and processed meat raise your risk of breast cancer about 10-20% and there is no way around it. So if you love red meat, eat it like they do in Asia, as a “condiment-like” portion to a largely vegetable meal.
With respect to vegetables, an interesting 1999 study from the University of Colorado compared DNA damage in women on diets with fruits and vegetables from a few botanical groups (the usual American diet) and diets with fruits and vegetables from 17 different botanical families defined by their biological diversity. The latter diet showed a significant reduction in all markers of DNA damage, exactly what you would want to prevent breast cancer.
In a similar vein, a 2015 clinical study compared the Mediterranean Diet with extra-virgin olive oil (MD+) to a control diet (advice to reduce dietary fat) in 4282 women for the incidence of breast cancer over a 4.8 year period. There was a 68% reduction in breast cancer with the MD+ diet compared to the control diet. That is quite dramatic!
3. Time Restricted Eating/Intermittent Fasting: The 13/16 Rule
Fasting, whether defined as a reduction of normal calories by about 60% at meals taken at the normal times over the course of the day or time restricted fasting, in which a normal calorie (or slightly reduced) diet is taken over a short period of the day, yielding a period of 13 to 16 hours of fasting with no food, may be the most significant single thing you can do to improve your overall health, including preventing breast cancer.
The reasons are complex and many are not well understood. One thing that is understood is that cancer stem cells are stressed by fasting in a way that normal cells are not. It can also serve to quiet the immune system. Finally, it does wonders to your glucose control and pre-diabetic tendencies, which are known to work against cancer initiation.
In one study of 2413 women with breast cancer, those women who fasted less than 13 hours a day had a 36% increase in recurrence and a 21% increase in mortality. Every 2-hour increase in fasting improved biomarkers of diabetes, which are themselves related to breast cancer risk.
Many researchers believe stretching from 13 hours of fasting a day to 16 is the optimal pattern.
