Timing Trick Supercharges Your Cancer Treatment
Cancer is notoriously difficult to treat.
And sometimes, what works for one person doesn’t work for another.
MANY factors are at play here, but one in particular has flown under the radar… that is, until now.
It’s not about WHAT drug is being administered… but WHEN.
Modern medicine is finally starting to wake up to our circadian rhythm’s role in regulating how your body functions.
More than just impacting your sleep-wake cycle, your circadian rhythm impacts hormones, digestion, body temperature, mood, and more.
Now, scientists say you can use your circadian rhythm to boost the effectiveness of cancer drugs.
You see, just like your organs, your cells follow your circadian rhythm. This means they respond to different influences based on the time of day.
Chemotherapy attacks cancer cells by damaging the genes of cells that are dividing into two new cells. The goal, of course, is to slow or stop the spread of those cancer cells.
In a new study, researchers set out to identify the best time of day to administer chemotherapy based on the circadian rhythm of an individual’s tumor cells.
To do this, they cultured cells from patients with triple-negative breast cancer. This is an aggressive, difficult-to-treat cancer, so finding a way to boost the effectiveness of existing cancer treatments is critical.
Next, the researchers administered the medication and observed how the cells responded at different times of the day. The results showed that the chemotherapy drug 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) was most effective when administered between 8 and 10 a.m.
This confirmed that your core clock genes impact how cancer cells respond to treatment.
Previous research has also shown that the most effective time to administer chemotherapy is when the cells divide.
The ultimate goal is to create individualized treatment plans showing WHEN different types of cancer cells respond BEST to various treatments.
Timing might not be everything, but it’s FAR more important than most doctors and scientists give it credit for.
To a brighter day,
Dr. Richard Gerhauser, M.D.
P.S. Heart disease and cancer kill over 1.3 million in the U.S.A. yearly. This illuminating solution doesn’t cost a dime and has been proven to lower your risk of BOTH major killers.
SOURCE:
Ector, C., Schmal, C., Didier, J., De Landtsheer, S., Finger, A., Schulte, J. H., Sauter, T., Keilholz, U., Herzel, H., Kramer, A., & Granada, A. E. (2024). Time-of-day effects of cancer drugs revealed by high-throughput deep phenotyping. Nature Communications, 15(1), 1-16
