Mission Clinic

Insulin potentiation utilizes insulin’s ability to reduce blood sugar as a “Biologic Response Modifier (BRM)”. That is, insulin’s ability to reduce blood sugar enhances the effectiveness of many drugs, including anti-cancer agents. This leads to greater drug efficacy with less side-effects.

Potential mechanisms of insulin-induced hypoglycemia. Cancer cells have, on average, 5-20 times as many GLUT or glucose receptors as normal cells. Therefore, insulin induced hypoglycemia results in cancer cells become extremely “hungry” because there is no sugar to utilize. This “hunger” leads to maximal activation of their GLUT receptors and a large increase in trans-membrane passage/anti-cancer drug uptake by cancer cells.

An additional benefit on insulin induced hypoglycemia in anti-cancer therapy, is that low-blood glucose levels ensure that cancer cells are “awake”, in a state of maximum metabolism/replicating state (S-Phase of the replicative cycle). A huge issue with just giving chemotherapy without regard for the metabolic state of cancer cells is that, if the drugs are administered when the cancer cell is “asleep” the drugs will not be absorbed into the cancer cell but be absorbed primarily into normal cells leading to the well-known adverse effects of chemotherapy (nausea, vomiting, hair loss, gastro-intestinal ulcers, low blood counts, etc.). IPT activates the cancer cells and this along with increased transmembrane passage, leads to much greater anti-cancer drug efficacy.

In addition to the above, insulin induced hypoglycemia results in the following beneficial effects.

1. Increased tissue/blood oxygenation. This may be a relative increase due to the decreased carbohydrate quantity and therefore decreased utilization of carbohydrates.
2. Increased tissue/blood pH (alkalization) via the same mechanism as above.
3. Hypoglycemia leads to elevated body temperature which optimizes white blood cell/immune function.
4. Because of the above mechanisms, most drugs can be given at 10-20% of their normal dose resulting in little-no side-effects.

Note well, the above factors are at play in the treatment of cancer, acute myocardial infarctions, cerebrovascular accidents, perioperative cardiac/vascular patients for cardiac/non-cardiac surgery, etc.