Insulin Potentiation Therapy:IPT

Special Precautions of IPT

Consult your doctor before using any presented information as a form of treatment. Use alternative cancer treatments as a supplement to treatments you receive from your doctor — not as a substitute for medical care. Apply the treatment only under control of an expert.Because people respond differently to similar doses of insulin, blood sugar can drop quickly to dangerous levels during IPT. Low blood sugar can cause weakness, shakiness, confusion, rapid heartbeat, sweating, seizures, brain damage, or even death if it is prolonged.

People who are on pills to lower the blood sugar for treatment of diabetes may react more severely to low blood sugar caused by IPT. In addition, several medicines can affect the body's response to blood sugar changes. For example, beta-blocker medicines such as atenolol (Tenormin) and metoprolol (Lopressor) can mask the symptoms of low blood sugar, so the blood sugar may become dangerously low before it is noticed. Sulfa antibiotics (Bactrim and Septra) can make the blood sugar go even lower, as can excessive amounts of alcohol.

The possible effects of insulin potentiation therapy to treat cancer during pregnancy have not been studied. However, chemotherapy drugs are not generally advised during pregnancy. Use of IPT for cancer during pregnancy may harm the fetus.

A few people have severe allergic reactions to certain types of insulin, with reactions including fast heartbeat, low blood pressure, trouble breathing, itching, or rash. Insulin has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to lower blood sugar to abnormal levels. Even when used as prescribed, it can be dangerous in some: an estimated 2% to 4% of deaths in people with Type I diabetes are due to low blood sugar.

Relying on this type of treatment alone, and avoiding or delaying standard medical care for cancer, may have serious health consequences.

The benefits of IPT are

IPT is an innovation in cancer care using insulin to magnify the powerful cell-killing effects of ordinary chemotherapy drugs, which can then be used in very low doses. Because cancer cells have so many more insulin receptors than normal cells, insulin acts on them much more strongly. The end result here is that the chemotherapy drugs get effectively targeted just on the cancer cells to kill them, with little or no effects on normal tissues. Thus IPT can avoid the dose-related side effects of chemotherapy. One of the clinics using this approach is Contemporary Medicine, run by Dr. Steven Ayers. Several animal studies found that MCP helped reduce the spread of prostate, breast, and skin cancer. Animals with these types of cancer that were fed MCP had a much lower risk of the tumor spreading to the lungs. For example, one study examined the effects of MCP on lung metastases from melanoma cells. Researchers injected mice with melanoma cells. In the mice that were also given MCP, significantly fewer tumors spread to the lungs than in the mice that did not receive the drug. When lung tumors did develop in the mice treated with MCP, the tumors tended to be smaller than those that formed in untreated animals.

These studies appear to show that MCP makes it difficult for cancer cells that break off from the main tumor to join together and grow in other organs. However, in most animal studies, MCP had no effect on the main tumor, suggesting that it may only be useful for preventing or slowing the growth of metastatic tumors in very early stages of development.

Recent laboratory studies of human and animal cells have provided information on how MCP might slow the spread of cancer. MCP appears to attach to galectin-3, a common chemical in many cells. Galectin-3 is present in abnormally high levels in many cancers and plays an important role in the growth, survival, and spread of cancer cells.

Although animal and cell studies are quite encouraging, very little information is available about whether MCP is effective in humans. In one published clinical trial, 10 men with prostate cancer were treated with MCP after standard treatment failed. In 7 of these men, blood tests found prostate-specific antigen (PSA, a marker of prostate cancer growth). Their PSA doubling time (a measure of how fast PSA goes up) improved in comparison with measurements done before taking MCP, indicating that MCP may have a slowing effect on the cancer's growth. This study had no control group (in this case, a group of men who did not take MCP), which limits the strength of its conclusions on MCP's effectiveness. It also did not measure survival or other important endpoints. However, taken with the information gained from animal studies, it suggests that MCP may have a role in reducing the growth and spread of cancer. Randomized controlled trials looking at larger groups of people must be done before any firmer conclusions can be reached.

Medical Disclaimer

This information is not meant to be substituted for medical advice. Always consult a medical professional regarding any medical problems and before undertaking any treatment or dietary changes.