Peter Attia· MD
they don't have to be very metabolically active in order to be horribly lethal so the pancreas is a master protein producing organ and then you may think of insulin is the most famous protein to come out of the pancreas right but the bulk of the pancreas is not you know beta cells that make it insulin that's only five percent of it yeah that's right the exocrine is the real gland and the exocrine pancreas is just making digestive enzymes like crazy it does by far the fastest protein synthesis in the body the cancer turns that protein synthesis way down so it's not hyper metabolic it's just that it has this huge capacity to make stuff that even when it turns it down still has enough biosynthetic capacity to grow and divide and grow and divide because it's turned down its main energy-consuming normal function of protein synthesis it can function with much reduced tca activity reduced atp synthesis rates and so it's amazing it's very efficient then very very efficient so it can turn down all these normal functions and it still has the capacity to reproduce the cells and make these horribly invasive and metastatic cells which are ultimately lethal