Glutamate antagonists: Deadly liaisons with cancer

More on one of those things we can do to improve our outlook.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlere...cgi?artid=33400

Regards,
Al

Dear Al, What are glutamate antagonists?

Glutamate antagonists are certain drugs or chemicals that can block glutamate receptors that are on the surface of every cell. Glutamate receptors are in abundance on the surface of nerves (central nervous system) and in the eye (notably the rods and retina). In the eye, the glutamate receptors will only "bond" with glutamate but in other parts of the body, they will bond with other amino acids (glutamate is an amino acid and amino acids are the building blocks of all proteins and enzymes in the body). The other amino acid that can bind with glutamate receptors is the one amino acid that is structurally the most similar and that is aspartate (a major component of aspartame - "nutrasweet" that is eaten is over abundance).

Perhaps for some people with some cancers, this is why nutrasweet can cause cancer as it over binds and excites glutamate receptors (just my thought and no substantial research or theory of a researcher).

In general, glutamate controls some aspect of cell proliferation and in some cases, the receptors can become excited. Glutamate antagonists block glutamate from the receptors (much like tamoxifen blocks estrogen from the ER receptors in breast cancer).

Hope this helps a bit. Most glutamate antagonists are tested on Parkinson's disease and MS since the nervous system disorders are most involved with glutamate uptake problems.

For the record, my former boss at work had Hodgkins disease 25 years ago when he was 24 yrs old. He is now 49 and 2 years ago was diagnosed with MS (this article does make a light bulb go off).

Warm regards,

Becky

Hi, back to Becky,

Really liked your explanation of the glut antagonists. When I was getting sick back in 97 and long before I knew what was wrong with me, I was trying different things on the market to see if anything made me feel better. As I was feeling much worse the week before my periods and my tumor, which by this time I could feel but was telling myself it was "only a cyst", I tried one product that had aspartate in it that was touted as PMS relief...from the time I started taking it, it seemed like my tumor grew faster and I felt worse and worse, so I stopped taking it, but not before my tumor went from 3cm to 5cm in only a few weeks. Since then, I have avoided aspartate and other sugar substitutes like the plague that they are......hmmmmm...I wish we lived nearby as I am sure if we put our heads together and shared our data we could come up with something. If I get time this weekend, I will e-mail you the one possible link this all has with my unpublished research. Hope your are recovering nicely, Gina

Thanks Becky for bailing me out on this one as it totally slipped by me: appologies to Tricia! Great explanation though.
Thanks,
Al