INSULIN POTENTIATION THERAPY  (IPTor IPTLD)

A diagnosis of cancer is, to say the least, a shock to most patients. At once the patient starts thinking about the challenges it brings along. The most worrying challenges are treatment options, how to cope with the dreadful side effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, expenses, and finally the big question: am I going to live?

Thanks to integrative medicine that things are changing now. With wide variety of options for cancer patients we can help them to make a well informed decision regarding the plan of management.

Your doctor helps you to calculate the life expectancy and the conventional treatment available along with the possible side effects and their severity it may bring along. Complementary and Alternative medicine offers above and beyond what you have been told and this is where IPT (Insulin Potentiation therapy) has a positive role.

As the name suggest IPT is a type of therapy which makes use of Insulin as potentiating drug. Such is this remarkable effect that it has been called as the second discovery of Insulin. The term has been recently changed to IPTLD which stands for Insulin Potentiation Therapy with Low dose of Chemotherapy.

This is what exactly is given in IPTLD; a low dose of slandered chemotherapy combined with insulin to enhance or potentiate its effect.

How does  it happen:

Cancer cells grow very rapidly and to do so they need lot of energy. Glucose is the primary source of energy and Insulin is the vehicle to drive it in to the cells. Every cell in our body has insulin receptors to serve this purpose, however cancer cells have far more number of insulin and insulin like growth factor receptors (IGF) on its cell membrane which help their cancer cells to cope with the ongoing demand for glucose and energy supply. Breast cancer cells, for example, have six times greater number of insulin receptors and ten times more IGF receptors per cell than normal cells. Insulin acts with its own receptors and also with IGF receptors. In this way insulin can affects cancer cell sixteen times more than a normal cell. IPT takes advantage of this behavioral aspect of cancer cells.

        During therapy session, patient is given a calculated dose of insulin to induce hypoglycemia or a very low level of glucose in blood. This is stressful for every cell however cancer cells; due to their greater demand for glucose; become almost at the verge of dying during such hypoglycemic episode. Modern protocols do not allow patient to go into coma or insulin shock as it has been exploited by the opponent of IPT.

        At the peak of this hypoglycemic vulnerability of cancer cells, patient is given high concentration glucose. All the insulin receptors open up to grab every molecule of glucose. A low dose of chemotherapy is also infused at the same time which; piggy backing on to insulin; is delivered in very high concentration right inside the cancer cells. This is lethal to already half dead cancer cells. Normal body cells will not take up same amount of Chemotherapy drugs since they are not equipped with too many insulin receptors. This is how the side effects of chemotherapy are reduced; delivery to cancer cells is increased selectively and frequency of treatments can be increased.

IPT has been criticized for lowering the blood sugar to a dangerous level. However the approach was never more dangerous than high dose of chemotherapy itself. More recently the IPT approach has been modified so as not to drop the patient’s blood glucose level to the point of sending the body into insulin shock. The patients may feel funny for few moments but never looses conciousness. The procedure is carried in doctor’soffice where all the emergency facilities are at hand.

Insulin doesn't act only to expedite glucose delivery it also increases the cell membrane permeability.

Cell membrane has fatty acids as its major constituents. The type of fatty acids determinesthe permeability of cell membrane. Saturated fatty acids are hard in consistency and need to be softened to be permeable. Insulin activates an enzyme called delta -9 destaurase which is present in high concentration in cancer cells. This enzyme convertssaturated fatty acids to unsaturated fatty acids. In unsaturated state the cell membrane is highly permeable. High permeability can enhance delivery of chemotherapy to cancer cells. This effect is particularly important for brain cancers since BloodBrain Barrier is generally the hardest to cross for most of the chemotherapies.

IPT has been around since the 1930s.  It has been criticised because there are no comparative studies and the mechanism of action is not acceptable to mainstream physicians. We certainly need research in this area to supplement the observation which we see every day in our clinic and these observations can be summarized as follows:

1. There are none or fewer side effects of a low dose chemotherapy and that improves the quality of life of patients.
2. Normal cells in the body are not affected by a milder dose of chemotherapy and that maintains the body functions in healthy state.
3. Immune cells are not affected by low dose and they help fight the cancer cells in a normal way.

Amtul Q Farhat