On Sept. 10, 2020, Fred Evrard, age 48, was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. The tumor in his body reached about four inches in length.

As a strong, athletic martial arts instructor, such news came as a real surprise. His lifestyle and diet were very healthy.

Overwhelmed by the bad news and excruciating pain, he lay in bed for three days without eating or drinking.

Three days later, Evrard, who was born a fighter, chose to get back on his feet.

He began to read all about cancer and natural treatments for it and found numerous cases of successful treatment and reversal through fasting. These findings prompted him to try fasting to help fight his cancer.

So Evrard embarked on a 21-day fast. His strong desire to survive kept him going.

After 21 days of fasting, his MRI image showed a miracle: The length of the tumor on his colon had shrunk from four inches to less than 2.5 inches, and its diameter had also shrunk significantly.

With his fast over, he adopted a ketogenic diet, or more precisely, a carnivore diet. This was because he couldn’t eat anything with fiber due to severe intestinal inflammation. During that period, he also adopted intermittent fasting and ate only one meal a day.

During his battle with cancer, Evrard underwent three chemotherapy sessions. Fasting helped reduce the side effects of chemotherapy. He hardly experienced any chemotherapy side effects, such as hair loss, nausea, and extreme fatigue, and the immune indicators in his blood were also normal. It is worth mentioning that during the second chemotherapy session, he tried to stop fasting and experienced severe side effects. Therefore, he fasted again during his third chemotherapy session and achieved great results.

From Jan. 2, 2021, he started a five-day fast plus a two-day ketogenic diet on weekends to complete the second round of a 21-day fast.

On Jan. 10, 2021, four months after being diagnosed with cancer, he underwent another MRI scan and blood test. The doctor announced to him with a smile on his face, “Mr. Evrard, you are cancer-free.”

Since the early 1900s, scientists have noticed the positive effects of diet control on the health of organisms. Research at the time had already shown that diet control can slow or even stop tumor growth in laboratory mice, as well as delay cancer recurrence. Scientists have conducted hundreds of studies on different types of organisms, including yeast, nematodes, fruit flies, mice, rhesus monkeys, etc. After animal trials, small-scale human experiments were carried out. Preliminary studies suggest that prolonged fasting is safe for certain cancer patients, and may reduce chemotherapy-related toxicity and inhibit the growth of cancerous tumors.

Fasting and a ketogenic diet can put a person into a state of ketone body metabolism. Cancer cells can only survive by metabolizing glucose and glutamine, and they cannot metabolize ketone bodies. Therefore, such regimens are equivalent to cutting off the food ration of cancer cells.

Fasting and caloric restriction can reduce the production of growth factors, inflammatory cytokines, and anabolic hormones. Then, there will be corresponding changes in the body’s metabolism and hormone levels, such as decreased insulin secretion, increased insulin sensitivity, and decreased testosterone and estrogen secretion.

Besides, fasting and caloric restriction can also reduce oxidative stress and free-radical-induced DNA damage.

In addition, experiments on cells have demonstrated that fasting and caloric restriction can enhance autophagy (a process in which the body recycles “garbage” and removes damaged cell parts) and antioxidant effects, as well as activate various DNA repair processes. Moreover, it can inhibit cell proliferation and slow down cellular aging.

These mechanisms may help the body fight cancer, and many experiments have proven them.

An animal study at the University of Wisconsin showed that monkeys that ate 30 percent fewer calories had a 50 percent reduction in the incidence of sporadic cancer (the most common of which is gastrointestinal adenocarcinoma) compared with monkeys on an unrestricted diet.

A study conducted by Johns Hopkins University with a median follow-up of 11 years found that intensive lifestyle intervention can reduce the risk of obesity-related cancers (including esophageal cancer, colon cancer, rectal cancer, kidney cancer, pancreatic cancer, stomach cancer, liver cancer, gallbladder cancer, thyroid cancer, uterine cancer, ovarian cancer, postmenopausal breast cancer, and multiple myeloma) by 16 percent; the researchers believe that this is due to the lifestyle intervention that led to the weight loss of the subjects.

In addition, a joint study conducted by scientists in the United States and France found that a fasting diet combined with vitamin C can treat certain types of cancer more effectively.

Clinical research on fasting in cancer patients is still in its infancy. However, growing evidence shows that short-term fasting can prevent the toxicity of chemotherapy while enhancing the efficacy of chemotherapeutic agents, thereby improving the quality of life of cancer patients. This is because fasting increases the stress resistance of healthy cells, while tumor cells become more sensitive to chemotherapeutic agents due to a shortage of nutrients.

Animal experiments have shown that the inhibitory effect of fasting on tumors is comparable to that of chemotherapy; the combination of fasting and chemotherapy achieved the best anticancer effect and the most significant reduction in tumor volume. Moreover, such an approach produced the highest level of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes. The experiments demonstrated that fasting also stimulated the production of common lymphoid progenitor cells.

A small-scale clinical trial showed that short-term fasting reduces hematological toxicity in breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy compared to the control group. The red blood cell and platelet counts increased significantly after chemotherapy, while the markers reflecting DNA damage increased relatively little, indicating that fasting may reduce the DNA damage caused by chemotherapy and promote its recovery.

A study involving 20 patients with various tumor types (mainly breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and uterine cancer) showed that compared with patients who fasted for 24 hours before chemotherapy, patients who fasted for longer periods (48 hours and 72 hours) had reduced rates of neutropenia and neuropathy, in addition to fewer increases in markers of DNA damage.

In another trial involving more than 30 gynecologic cancer patients, chemotherapy patients who fasted experienced fewer headaches, weakness, and stomatitis. They also had significantly lower chemotherapy toxicities scores and fewer chemotherapy postponements. Additionally, patients who fasted had improved quality of life and reduced fatigue after chemotherapy compared with those on a normal-calorie diet.