Cancer Cells Love Sugar!

Here is one more reason to stop indulging your sweet tooth.
Our love for sweets adds to the calorific value of our diet, it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease and now new studies have shown further proof of the damage caused by sugars. Some sweets contain fructose and some others contain glucose.
Now, it seems, that cancerous cells feed off fructose! In fact, they slurp it up and relish it no end.


When cancer cells that are found in the pancreas come across fructose, then these cancer cells divide and proliferate quickly. A team of researchers at the UCLA (University of California Los Angeles) conducted a study in which they fed both, glucose and fructose to tumour cells. They discovered that cancer cells gobbled up the fructose and multiplied faster.

They published the results of their study in the journal "Cancer Research". In it, Dr. Anthony Heaney and his team from Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Centre at UCLA wrote, "These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation... They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth."

Pancreatic Cancer Cells Eat Fructose and Multiply


Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer and according to the results of this study, if cancer patients consume lesser amounts of sugar, it can actually help prevent the cancer from spreading.

This is easier said than done. Several different types of food and beverages contain fructose, for example, it is found in colas and soft drinks, the bread we eat in sandwiches, and so on. In fact, Americans consume a large quantity of fructose corn syrup and this multiplies their risk of pancreatic cancer.

In an alarming study that was published in the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition", it was noted that in the twenty years between 1970 and 1990, American consumption of fructose corn syrup did not double or triple, it went up by a full 1000 percent! Therefore, many politicians, health care experts and doctors have debated about the inclusion of ingredients like fructose corn syrup in the daily diet of Americans, as well as its side effects.

The American Heart Association has also supported this by stating that excess sugar, of any type, leads to strokes, heart attacks and diabetes. "I think this paper has a lot of public health implications. Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets", Heaney said.
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