There are five unique and important properties shared by both cancer and fungal cells.

1. Both cancer cells and certain fungi can metabolize nutrients in the absence of oxygen.
2. Both cancer cells and fungi must have sugar in order to survive.
3. Both produce lactic acid as a bi-product.
4. Both respond to antifungal medications---some cancers have gone into remission or have reduced in size when an antifungal medication was used to treat a co-existing fungal infection.
5. Both will die in the absence of sugar.

Cancer therapies - by way of their immune-suppressing effects - can hasten an established fungal infection. The “secondary” fungal infection that has developed during the course of chemotherapy might not have been secondary at all. Rather, the chemotherapy may have simply allowed the primary, fungal problem to come to the surface.

Back to Cancer Support Program Information

Nutrition and Cancer Articles

• Cancer Society In the Dark
• The Cancer-Fungus Link
• The "Anti-Cancer Diet"