Question: Are you also looking to help malnutrition people who have also suffered muscle depletion?

  1. The good thing about the work I am doing is that it might be able to help anyone with muscle depletion, not just patients with cancer cachexia. The way that muscle breaks down is similar in many conditions, and though there are some differences, many treatments work in more than one condition.

    There are basically two types of malnutrition: either you aren’t eating enough food to get your nutrients, or you are eating lots of food, and should be getting enough nutrients, but your body can’t take them all up. While the treatment I look at might help slow down the muscle people are losing, your body needs enough energy to keep functioning, which if you are malnourished, it might only be able to do by breaking down muscle. That is why we work with a dietician and a doctor, to try to help people get enough nutrients so that their body can stop having to break down their muscles for food.

    So yes, it might help some patients with malnutrition, but we need to make sure that they are getting enough nutrients too if we want it to help.

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