New research supporting pH control as possible help in cancer treatment

[heblaj01]

I think the medical community most believe acidity is a consequence rather than a cause of cancer. But here is a piece of recent research on the possible influence of pH:
http://biology.plosjournals.org/arch....0050010-S.pdf

Manipulating Cellular pH Suggests Novel Anticancer Therapy

[heblaj01]

The following extract from an article on the recently released research paper on DCA, the potential anticancer drug (http://www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca/) provides another possible explanation on the apparent role of acidity in cancer proliferation (a consequence of glycolysis rather than a cause of cancer initiation):

http://www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca/newscientist.pdf
New Scientist 20Jan 2007
DCA attacks a unique feature of cancer cells: the fact that they make their energy throughout the main body of the cell, rather than in distinct organelles called mitochondria. This process, called glycolysis, is inefficient and uses up vast amounts of sugar. Until now it had been assumed that cancer cells used glycolysis because their mitochondria were irreparably damaged. However, Michelakis's experiments prove this is not the case, because DCA reawakened the mitochondria in cancer cells. The cells then withered and died (Cancer Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j. ccr.2006.10.020).
Michelakis suggests that the switch to glycolysis as an energy source occurs when cells in the middle of an abnormal but benign lump don't get enough oxygen for their mitochondria to work properly (see Diagram). In orderto survive, they switch off their mitochondria and start producing energy through glycolysis.
Crucially, though, mitochondria do another job in cells: they activate apoptosis, the process by which abnormal cells self-destruct. When cells switch mitochondria off, they become "immortal", outliving other cells in the tumour and so becoming dominant. Once reawakened by DCA, mitochondria reactivate apoptosis and order the abnormal cells to die."The results are intriguing because they point to a critical role that mitochondria play: they impart a unique trait to cancer cells that can be exploited for cancer therapy," says Dario Altieri, director of the University of Massachusetts Cancer Center in Worcester.
The phenomenon might also explain how secondary cancers form. Glycolysis generates lactic acid, which can break down the collagen matrix holding cells together. This means abnormal cells can be released and float to other parts of the body, where they seed new tumours.

[fullofbeans]

Thanks for that. It helps as I have been wondering that now that my chemo has finished what else I could do diet wise to help staying in remission. Alkalising your body and alkaline diet seems worth a shot now... Although I have also been thinking that since glycolysis uses sugar I should be trying to maintain a low gi diet to avoid sugar rush and increased insulin and therefore include protein in the diet (fish but that is acid). Some people have also mentioned about "starving off" the cancer, not sure what they mean..

Will miss my carbs and treats..
Best wishes
Karina

[heblaj01]

Karina,
If it was beyond doubt that DCA is safe, it would be the ideal drug to try as an alkalizing agent in fighting cancer since it has been used to treat acidosis. And I dearly hope, whatever the mode of action of DCA is, that the rat experiments at the University of Alberta will be translated into safe human treatments.
But at this time, reading about some of the past preclinical (on dogs) & clinical trials (on patients with acidosis) is rather scary. Permanent neurological damage (including paralysis) & deaths were frequent at doses in the 50mg/kg or more range.
The Alberta tests were done at higher doses, & they do not report side effects as bad as this. So may be they have found a way to minimize them.
Or perhaps the victims of acidosis & dogs are particularly vulnerable to the side effects of DCA. An other possibility is that these past experiments were chronic relatively long term treatments & side effects reflected the cummulative impact. If DCA works quickly in the case of cancer, then side
effects may not reach untolerable levels.

[fullofbeans]

Thanks Hebla, I did not realise that DCA was used to treat acidosis, that is very interesting indeed and I can understand now why you have put these papers (DCA & cell pH) in the same post. I must definitly get more knowledgeable on this.. In the meantime it sounds like alkalising my diet is the way forward..Is it what you do, if I may ask?

[R.B.]

Heblaj01 - another very thought provoking and informative post which I need time to assimilate. Thank you for your work.

Mitochondria have a key relationship with fats which are "burnt" to make energy. If you think of the mitochondria as the boiler room in a steam ship...

Complicated and highly simplistic but maybe if you put the wrong fuel in the burner the exhaust products are more damaging to the "environment" than the average, the "grate" clogs up, mitochonria stop working and the surrounding environement is damaged.

Fats and the mitochonria and the mitochondrial membanes is a fascinating enormous difficult to comprehend topic if you are wandering on the web.

RB

[R.B.]

Karina

If you are looking at risk reduction factors you might like to look at the posts on omega three and six.

Some trials have come up with risk reduction factors as high as seventy percent.

You can search clicking on the search button above and entering search terms omega three, DHA, etc.

There is quite a lot in this link but there is some thought provoking material.

http://www.her2support.org/vbulletin...ght=greek+diet

RB

[heblaj01]

Karina,
To answer your question on what specific & effective steps to fight acidity, I am not able to be very helpfull as I am not yet convinced anything available without prescription is going to be working.
What RB suggests as well as what you are implementing make sense to me.
What is making me still leery about supplementing with pills such as cesium or high dose potassium pushed by many commercial outfits is the lack of proof, the potential side effects & the debunking of supplers claims in sites such as quakwatch:
http://www.quackwatch.org/01Quackery...SH/coral2.html
Acid/Alkaline Theory of Disease Is Nonsense Gabe Mirkin, M.D.

This article by Dr G. Mirkin is not recent. So, in view of the two recent papers posted at the begining of this thread he might change some of his statements.
The full text of these papers are so technical that only those well versed in biology (not my case) can appreciate the validity of their findings & guess what patients might be able to do to help themselves.

[fullofbeans]

Hi there,



Thank R.B yes I have been supplementing my diet with fish oil supplement; i also use probiotic (specially when was on chemo) daily.



Thanks Hebla for the link to quackwatch I had seen it before but I still think that there is something to eating mainly veg product and eating them lives. I know, when I did when I was first diagnosed until my 4th chemo (after which I thought my body was not absorbing anything much anyway). Anyway until after my 2nd chemo I felt and looked, much better.



Many CAM adept claim that this type of food can cure you.. Well off course I do not think that but somewhat there is a lot of sense to go back to a diet we were evolved to eat, meat was rare events. This has changed drastically in the last 50 years. It may just be a coincidence that the healthy stuff tend to leave an alkaline ash, but they did not explain in quackwatch why the variation in ash.



I am convinced that the increase in cancer is mainly/very importantfactor due to diet; how else could we explain that Japonese people have a low rate of BC but the Japonese people born in the west get it at the same rate: it cannot be genetic. Also why would it increase at such a rate.



Love

Karina

[heblaj01]

Karina,
Your remark about the change in cancer incidence in Japanese who emigrate to north America as related to diet, not genetics, is quite right . Even if these emigrants keep their traditional diet they may still be unwillingly prone to cancer due to differences in the quality of some foods.
For instance I already mentioned in an other post a comment by Dr M.J. Folkman in a lecture where he briefly discussed the variations of incidence related to soybean based food consumption.
He said that soybean grown in north America lacks the genetic make up for genestein while soybean grown in Japan includes genestein which is considered as a cancer preventative food.
So epidemiology studies show that those emigrants consumming imported soybeans are better off than those eating the local grown variety.

[fullofbeans]

Dear Hebla and R.B,

As you seem quite knowledgeable I was wondering if you could comment on the follwing statements:

"For two decades Dr. Perez Garcia has been using a treatment he calls Insulin Potentiation Therapy (IPT). It consists of giving a patient a dose of insulin followed by a tiny dose of chemotherapy.
Cancer cells have 15 times more insulin receptors than normal cells. The insulin dose helps to target chemotherapy into cancer cells because they have so many more insulin receptors. "

This could explain why keeping a low GI diet could be v.good in our case,

Still searching..

Best wishes

[heblaj01]

Karina,
Being much less knowledgeable than you think (no background in life sciences) I have to rely on what experts are saying & on common sense deductions from the evidence.
The main arguments against IPT from the standpoint of a layman are:
1. it has been around for a long time &
2. there is still no verifiable response data
3. there has been no research papers in PubMed
4. there has been no clinical trial

If the treatment was very effective at least one of the above negative points should have been answered positively.
Now, for a more scientific discussion of IPT here is the viewpoint of conventional medicine:
http://www.quackwatch.org/01Quackery...ancer/ipt.html
Why You Should Stay Away from Insulin Potentiation Therapy (IPT)
Robert Baratz, M.D., D.D.S., Ph.D.

P.S.
A quick search of PubMed gave me only one answer which seems to remotely relate to IPT:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...=pubmed_docsum
RNAi-mediated silencing of insulin receptor substrate 1 (IRS-1) enhances tamoxifen-induced cell death in MCF-7 breast cancer cells.
I don't fully understand this abstract, but if I read it correctly it, would seem to be somewhat the opposite of IPT.

[fullofbeans]

Hi Hebla,

Thanks for that, both articles came useful as confirming that cancer cells have insuline receptors stimulating growth. I was not suggesting to use IPT but I was interested in the fact that cancer cell have 20 times more insuline receptors than normal cells.

This to me would suggest that a good cancer diet would avoid having high peak of insuline i.e. a low G.I diet and therefore we should avoid sugars in the diet. At least it seems logical, I heard a lot that "sugar feeds cancer" well this seems to be another argument for it.

[heblaj01]

Karina,
I am personaly a believer that sugar is directly or indirectly helping cancer cell growth based on various research papers although most are not specifically devoted to prove the point.
But look at this extract from an article by a Mayo Clinic MD who may well know better:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cancer/HO00033
Debunking cancer myths: An interview with a Mayo Clinic specialist
"People with cancer shouldn't eat sugar, since it can cause cancer to grow faster.

Sugar doesn't make cancer grow faster. All cells, including cancer cells, depend on blood sugar (glucose) for energy. But giving more sugar to cancer cells doesn't speed their growth. Likewise, depriving cancer cells of sugar doesn't slow their growth.

This misconception may be based in part on a misunderstanding of positron emission tomography (PET) scans. Doctors use PET scans to help determine the location of a tumor and see if it has spread.

During a PET scan, your doctor injects a small amount of radioactive tracer — typically a form of glucose — into your body. All tissues in your body absorb some of this tracer. But tissues that are using more energy — exhibiting increased metabolic activity — absorb greater amounts.

Tumors are often more metabolically active than healthy tissues. As a result, they may absorb greater amounts of the tracer. For this reason, some people have concluded that cancer cells grow faster on sugar. But this isn't true."

Here are a few of the articles that imply the opposite view:
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=1582
Glucose metabolism could be used to selectively destroy cancer cells

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q..._uids=11039477
Physiological concentrations of insulin augment pancreatic cancer cell proliferation and glucose utilization by activating MAP kinase, PI3 kinase and enhancing GLUT-1 expression.

http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/r...96/24/1805.pdf
Energy Boost: The Warburg Effect Returns in a New Theory of Cancer

http://www.ihop-net.org/UniPub/iHOP/...?pmid=12379472
Leptin and high glucose stimulate cell proliferation in MCF-7 human breast cancer cells: reciprocal involvement of PKC-alpha and PPAR expression.