People typically go on a new diet to lose weight, but did you know going on the right diet can also reduce your chances of getting cancer and also treat it? Most specifically, according to researchers, the keto diet can slow the growth of breast cancer.

As you'll see in our fat burning book the Body Reboot, when the body is experiencing ketosis, the liver produces ketones. Ketones are energy molecules that come from fatty acids produced by the liver as a side effect of breaking down fat for fuel. The concept is that by depriving a body of carbs, which it typically uses to burn energy, your body implements a method where it burns fat and thus gets rid of reserved fat stores.

In addition to getting rid of fat, according to Thomas Seyfried, who is a professor of biology at Boston College, the ketogenic diet, or what he calls ketogenic metabolic therapy, removes the driving fuels for breast cancer to develop.

Around the time the ketogenic diet was being developed, the work of a German biochemist named Otto Warburg began to uncover a potential application for this diet in the treatment of cancer. Warburg observed that cancer cells typically derive energy from different sources than healthy cells. Poff explains: “In general, most cancers have a higher reliance on glucose than a normal cell, and so the idea was if you use this diet that lowers glucose, it might be helpful” in killing off the cancer by depriving it of its preferred fuel source.

But for Thomas Seyfried, professor of biology at Boston College, the results in animal studies and limited testing in humans aren’t just promising, they’re revolutionary. He’s adamant that treating cancer as a metabolic rather than a genetic disease (meaning to target how the cells fuel themselves rather than genetic mutations within them) will lead to a vast reduction in the number of deaths from cancer. He’s been working to develop a treatment protocol that might one day find its way to a treatment center near you.

“It’s called ketogenic metabolic therapy,” and he says in this context, “the ketogenic diet shouldn’t be considered a diet like green salads or other such stuff. It’s essentially medicine, and the process primarily tries to remove one of the driving fuels for the disease, which is glucose, and transition the whole body over to ketones, which the tumor cells can’t use as a fuel. So it’s very simple,” he says. The approach was outlined in a recent paper that Seyfried believes will serve as the “blueprint for the destruction of cancer” once all the particulars have been worked out.

Even though the approach is still new and has only been tested in particular settings, Seyfried is still working hard to discover which patients are ideal for the treatment and how other methods should be applied for the best results. He's very hopeful, however, that the ketogenic metabolic therapy will alter the way cancer will be treated as time goes by.

Want to learn more about the keto diet? At the time of writing this, there still are a few free copies left of the Body Reboot book. If you're willing to cover the cost of shipping, the book is 100% free (we normally sell it for $29.95). Go over to this page to see if there are any copies left.

For more on this approach to treat breast cancer, visit U.S. News.