Insulin Potentiation Therapy was developed in the 1930s by Dr. Donato Perez Garcia Sr. IPT originated from personal experience; Dr. Perez used insulin on himself. He used it to treat a chronic gastrointestinal condition which had resisted all forms of conventional treatment available to him at that time.
The idea is simple enough: Administer insulin at the same time as chemotherapy. The theory is lower chemo doses are needed because insulin lets more of the drug enter cells.
Dr. Perez – and his son, Dr. Donato Perez Garcia y Bellon – showed that Insulin Potentiation Therapy produced a consistently higher level of clinical success as compared to conventional allopathic medicine.
At the Center for Advanced Medicine in Atlanta, founder Dr. Jonathan Stegall points to the innovative use of insulin as the underpinning of the workings of IPT. (1)
“The key to IPT as a cancer treatment lies in the off-label use of insulin, a hormone made by the body,” he said. “Insulin is responsible for the delivery of glucose from the bloodstream, across cell membranes, and into the cells.
“Cancer cells have up to 20 times more insulin receptors on their surface than normal cells because cancer requires glucose for its energy production.”
In 2008, Dr. Brandon Weeks wrote, “… insulin potentiation therapy can be seen from the present discussion to have evolved into a cogent and scientifically plausible system of interrelated hypotheses.” (2)
While noting that more studies need to be done – both comprehensive in vitro and in vivo experimentation – Dr. Weeks added, “It is our expectation, once these studies have been completed, that insulin potentiation therapy may well come to assume a place amongst the great scientific discoveries in the history of modern medicine.”
‘Significantly improved quality of life’
More than eight decades after Dr. Perez began using Insulin Potentiation Therapy, several researchers set out to determine the effectiveness of IPT. In May 2012, Christo Damyanov, Desislava Gerasimova, Ivan Maslev, and Veselin Gavrilov published their findings. (3) They noted, “This treatment has very low toxicity and our personal experience shows that efficiency is not deferring from the standard chemotherapy.”
Also, no significant side effects were observed (and no fatal cases occurred). The researchers concluded:
“Our present experience with IPTLD [in more than 400 treated patients] with various tumors as well as the practical experience of the growing number of doctors practicing the method gives us a reason to assume that IPTLD method provides a real opportunity for resolving one of the most serious problems of toxicity associated with chemotherapy using maximum tolerated doses. A certain advantage of the method along with its effectiveness is the significantly improved quality of life of the treated patients.
“In spite of the small number of patients treated by us with castrate-resistant prostate tumor, the preliminary results are promising and this gives us hope and expectations for future serious researches on the potential of widespread clinical use of IPTLD.”
IPT responses mirror conventional treatment
Today, Insulin Potentiation Therapy continues to be the go-to option for many cancer patients.
“For the past 10 years, I’ve offered an alternative to traditional cancer treatment, and an alternative to conventional chemotherapy administration,” said Dr. Joseph Shaw Jones of the Gentle Wellness Center in Fairfax, Va. “Following the research and teachings of Drs. Stephen Ayer and Donato Garcia, I have used a procedure called ‘Insulin Potentiation Therapy, low dose’ or IPTLD, in those patients in whom chemotherapy was recommended.”
Insulin Potentiation Therapy, low dose involves administering chemo at a lower dose — 15 to 20 percent of the usual treatment, delivered on a weekly basis. Dr. Jones said, in most cases, IPTLD is better tolerated than full doses administered every 3-4 weeks, while response rates are maintained.
“Patients experience side effects many orders of magnitude lower under our care than when treated conventionally,” Dr. Jones said. “Most are able to maintain their usual daily activities.
“When chemotherapy is the recommendation from your oncologist, there is a way to receive these lifesaving medications that will not make you so sick, and fear can be set aside.”
Granted the clinical evidence is scarce, with only two small clinical trials and four cases published in peer-reviewed journals. Although they reported encouraging preliminary results on tumor growth, effects on patient survival or long-term effects have not been evaluated.
While no therapy should be considered in the absence of demonstrated effectiveness, Dr. Jones noted unpublished accounts at international IPT conferences are commensurate with his experience: IPT responses mirror that seen with conventional treatment.
Citations
(1) Insulin Potentiation Therapy (IPT). Cancer Tutor. https://www.cancertutor.com/ipt/
(2) Dr. Brandon S. Weeks. IPT and Chronic Degenerative Disease. http://weeksmd.com/2008/06/ipt-and-chronic-degenerative-disease/
(3) Christo Damyanov, Desislava Gerasimova, Ivan Maslev, and Veselin Gavrilov. Low-Dose Chemotherapy with Insulin (Insulin Potentiation Therapy) in Combination with Hormone Therapy for Treatment of Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer. doi: 10.5402/2012/140182 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3357525/
(4) What is Insulin Potentiation Therapy, low dose — and how does it compare to conventional treatment. Cancer Tutor. https://www.cancertutor.com/insulin-potentation-therapy-low-dose/