Here's the science of how ketosis can be used to starve cancer. https://t.co/zxWQ0ZnrMb
— Sama Hoole (@SamaHoole) January 17, 2026
His theory that respiratory injury to mitochondria caused cancer became deeply unfashionable as genetic mutations claimed the spotlight. Meanwhile, the ketogenic diet emerged from a completely different direction. In 1921, Dr. Russell Wilder at the Mayo Clinic developed a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet that mimicked fasting for treating epilepsy. It worked brilliantly for seizures, but the advent of pharmaceutical anticonvulsants in the 1950s relegated dietary therapy to medicine’s dusty archives.
The modern renaissance arrived when Linda C. Nebeling published case reports in 1995 showing two pediatric brain cancer patients on ketogenic diets experienced a 21.8% decrease in tumor glucose uptake on PET scans after just eight weeks.
Enter Thomas Seyfried, the Boston College biologist who became the metabolic theory’s most vocal champion. His 2012 book “Cancer as a Metabolic Disease” argued persuasively that cancer is fundamentally a mitochondrial metabolic disease, with genetic mutations being downstream effects rather than primary causes.
from Sama Hoole.
