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Basics of SPECT and PET Imaging      
  • SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography):
    • Uses gamma-emitting radioisotopes (e.g., Technetium-99m).
    • Detects blood flow, receptor activity, and metabolic function.
    • Often used in brain, heart, and bone imaging.
  • PET (Positron Emission Tomography):
    • Uses positron-emitting tracers like FDG (fluorodeoxyglucose).
    • FDG mimics glucose, highlighting areas of high glycolytic activity—often cancerous tissue.
    • PET is a cornerstone in oncology for staging, monitoring, and recurrence detection.
Insight: These imaging tools reveal cancer’s metabolic fingerprint—its addiction to glucose and glutamine.
Standard of Care vs. Metabolic Targeting
  • Standard of Care:
    • Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy.
    • Often toxic, with long-term side effects and limited efficacy in late-stage cancers.
  • Metabolic Therapy (Seyfried’s Protocol):
    • Eliminate glucose: via ketogenic diet and fasting.
    • Block glutamine: using drugs like DON (6-diazo-5-oxo-L-norleucine), ivermectin, or fenbendazole.
    • Goal:
      • Starve cancer cells of their two essential fuels.
Cancer cells are metabolically inflexible. Normal cells adapt to ketones; cancer cells cannot.
Fermentation Energy Production: Seyfried’s Evidence
  • Warburg Effect: 
    • Cancer cells favor glycolysis even in oxygen-rich environments.
  • Seyfried’s Expansion:
    • Shows that cancer cells also ferment glutamine—a second fuel source.
    • Fermentation occurs inside and outside mitochondria, bypassing oxidative phosphorylation.
    • This dual-fuel fermentation is necessary and sufficient for cancer survival.
Case studies and animal models show tumor regression when both glucose and glutamine are restricted.