Alternative Cancer Therapies: Part I

When cancer patients come to me seeking alternative therapy I let them know that it does not have to be all or nothing. In other words, they don’t have to decide between chemotherapy and/or radiation, and alternative approaches. There are alternative therapies where the two can be combined. One such therapy is insulin potentiation therapy (IPT).
Chemotherapy drugs are powerful cell-killing agents. In current medical practice, getting these drugs into the inside of cells where they do their work requires that they be administered in doses high enough to force them across the membranes of cancer cells.
A major drawback to this dosing strategy is a serious dose-related side effect profile frequently seen with anticancer drugs. This happens because chemotherapy agents do not discriminate between cancer cells and other normal cells in the patient’s body. They kill both kinds of cells, therefore there are side effects.
Cancer cell membranes have abut sixteen times more insulin receptor than normal cells. When these receptors are stimulated by insulin it increases the cells receptivity to being penetrated by the chemotherapy. Thus by administering insulin with the chemotherapy more of the chemotherapy can enter the cancer cell. This selectivity allows a smaller amount of the chemotherapeutic agent to be used and as a result there are fewer side effects.