The IPT Hope: Hard on Cancer. Easy on Patients.

Insulin Potentiation Therapy (IPT) is a time-proven and powerful approach to treating cancer since 1946. In short, IPT is simply an alternative way of giving traditional chemotherapy drugs. But IPT is very different from regular chemotherapy. It selectively targets the chemotherapy drugs directly to the cancer cells, while it bypasses healthy cells. Because of this, IPT is safe, and has little to no side effects. IPT™ Treatment at a Glance

IPT vs. Traditional Chemotherapy Treatment

One outstanding advantage IPT has over traditional treatment is that a much lower dose of chemotherapeutic drugs is required. IPT more selectively targets cancer cells while affecting relatively few normal cells. Therefore, patients do not suffer the severe side effects that commonly occur with conventional chemotherapy, such as hair loss, vomiting, fatigue and depression. Thus, the quality of a patient's life is significantly improved in comparison to that many patients experience when undergoing conventional treatment experience.

A Closer Look at How it Works

IPT exploits the fact that cancer cells, unlike healthy cells, are not able to metabolize fat for energy. They rely completely on glucose (sugar/carbohydrates) for their energy supply. This is a weakness of cancer cells, and we can use this weakness to control them. We use the hormone insulin to do this.

When insulin is injected into a patient, it has the effect of causing the patient’s blood glucose to drop. As the blood glucose drops, the patient’s healthy cells simply shift over to fat metabolism. But the patient’s cancer cells become seriously compromised.

Shutting down the amount of glucose that a cancer cell can have has the same effect as depriving it of oxygen. You know what it’s like to hold your breath. You know you can do it for 1-2 minutes, but much longer than that and you will quickly die. Depriving cancer cells of glucose has the same effect. If it were possible to completely deprive them of glucose, they would die within a matter of minutes. Unfortunately we can’t do that, but IPT can decrease the amount of glucose by at least 60-75%. And this is just enough of a decrease to cause them to go into an emergency mode. It is when they are in this emergency state that they are very vulnerable to chemotherapy drugs.

A One-Two Punch

Cancer cells love glucose. They can’t get enough. The faster they get glucose, the faster they can grow and spread. They depend on glucose so much that unlike normal cells, they actually make and release their own insulin. Insulin is the hormone that allows cells, including cancer cells, to take up glucose. By making their own insulin, cancer cells guarantee that they will always have enough glucose. Not only that but they also have another mechanism helping them get more and more glucose: insulin receptors.

When insulin comes into contact with a cell, it has to interact with an area on the surface of the cell called an insulin receptor. Insulin can’t work to pump glucose into a cell unless it can find an insulin receptor to work through. Cancer cells are smart. Not only do they make their own insulin, they also create hundreds of times more insulin receptors for the insulin to interact with. All this is to insure that they have enough glucose to thrive and grow.

So when the blood glucose levels start falling after the insulin injection, cancer cells start to get worried. And they start to activate and increase the number of insulin receptors. The longer they are deprived of glucose, the more they activate these receptors, and the weaker they get. The cells are hit harder and at a time when they are most vulnerable to the assault, thus maximizing results. In effect, IPT kills cancer cells by using the same mechanisms that cancer cells use to kill people.

What is it Like To Receive IPT

The patient is given a dose of insulin based on their body weight, enough to take his blood glucose level down to the about 35-45 mg/dL. At this level patients will start to feel “fuzzy” or lightheaded. They may also feel weak, hungry, and flushed. The insulin dose is adjusted to keep them in this state for 5-6 minutes. This is enough time to cause every cancer cell in the body to panic, and open all of its glucose flood gates. Then at the ‘therapeutic’ moment, the chemotherapy drugs are delivered, immediately followed by an intravenous infusion of a large amount of glucose.

What happens next is that as the cancer cells, now sufficiently weakened and starved for glucose, take up the glucose that they so desperately need, they also take up the chemotherapy drugs. Just like a Trojan horse, the glucose molecules carry the chemo drugs right into the heart of the cancer cells. It has been calculated that this technique causes about ten times more of the drugs to get into the cancer cells than regular chemotherapy does.

The effect of IPT is two-fold. First, the cancer cells will take up much larger amounts of chemotherapy medications than they ordinarily would without the insulin application. Secondly, since they are in such a weakened and vulnerable state from the lack of sugar, they are much more sensitive to the toxic effects of the drugs. The result is a level of cancer cell death and growth control comparable to or even better than standard chemotherapy. But there is one very big difference. IPT is gentle

Because the IPT technique results in a higher concentration of the chemo-therapeutic drugs in the cancer cells, we are able to use much lower chemotherapy doses than are normally used. In general, we usually use about one tenth of the standard dose. And this has two big advantages.

First, the lower dose means that there are little to no side effects. Our patients typically feel as good as ever – even immediately after the treatments. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, because the doses are so low, IPT treatments can be used as long as they are needed without the concern of long-term toxicity to healthy cells and tissues. Unlike with conventional chemotherapy, with IPT we can keep right on using the treatments for as long as it takes to do the job.

Science on Insulin with Chemotherapy

In 1981, a study conducted at George Washington University showed that the chemotherapy drug, methotrexate, when used with insulin, increased the drug's cell-killing effect by a factor of 10,000!

This study was done in conjunction with the Laboratory of Pathophysiology at NCI which studied the impact of methotrexate on breast cancer with and without insulin. The study concluded that 10-10 methotrexate without insulin was equivalent to 10-6 when combined with insulin. This 1981 study found a specific enhancement of a particular carrier system for methotrexate, but launched additional interest in studying IPT and its broader applications. Additional research found that because insulin recruits resting cancer cells to become active in protein and DNA synthesis, they become more vulnerable to the targeted activity of chemotherapy. As an added advantage, insulin assists debilitated cancer patients appetite and metabolism, helping to resolve the wasting that accompanies the disease and its therapy Alabaster, O. Metabolic modification by insulin enhances methotrexate cytotoxicity in MCF-7 human breast cancer. Europ J Cancer Oncol. 1981; 17:1223-1228.

IPT is Integrative Oncology and Facilitates Comprehensive Cancer Care

Effectively fighting cancer is hard work that involves more than medical treatment alone. It requires a comprehensive approach. Because IPT spares its recipients from the debilitating side effects experienced with conventional treatment, patients are more able and more motivated to pursue the work necessary for their own well being. Conventional chemotherapy treatment can be so taxing that patients won't even consider, let alone take action on, other cancer-fighting measures such as detoxification, immune-boosting, mind/body exercises, diet modification, exercise and meditation.

Again, IPT is exciting because it allows so many of its patients to devote full attention to their wellness, thus increasing their chances of recovery, and improving the quality and duration of their lives.

What Are the Risks?

The side-effect of using insulin is the occurrence of hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar. Patients are closely monitored and provided the appropriate amount of glucose intravenously, to offset the insulin. If distress develops due to hypoglycemia; glucose usually quickly and effectively abolishes these symptoms. Patients will feel very hungry, and it would not be unusual to experience mild and temporary symptoms of hypoglycemia, which can include fatigue, headache, or sweating.

Although highly unlikely, in the case that hypoglycemia is unchecked by glucose administration, it could lead to insulin shock, which could possibly result in anemia, kidney, liver, or heart damage, loss of consciousness or coma. However, as stated before, due to the process itself this is highly unlikely,

Even though the chemotherapeutic dose used will be approximately 1/10th to 1/4 of that used by conventional treatments, chemotherapeutic agents are highly toxic and do have potential side effects even at these lower doses. These side effects are dose dependent and/or are connected to accumulation of the drug with repeated dosing over time. Discontinuing use of the drug can reverse most of these side effects. Some side-effects in individuals that are sensitive can be of longer duration, or permanent. While the risk is reduced due to the lower doses used, such agents normally can cause weight loss, nausea and vomiting, mouth sores, mucosal, hair loss, fatigue, immune deficits, damage to the health of the blood, lungs, heart, liver or other major organs, central nervous system problems, can be debilitating and can cause genetic defects. At reduced dosages, the risk at lower doses most noted using this protocol is nausea.

French
Spanish