Got cancer? Want to explore other options? This is all you need to start

By Jerome Burne

The Cancer Revolution: integrative medicine the future of cancer care
By Patricia Peat (Win-win Health Intelligence Ltd) Amazon £18.94

Twelve years ago Robin Daly’s 23-year-old daughter Bryony was dying of cancer when he set up a charity called Yes to Life to provide information about unconventional treatments such as changes in diet, supplements, vitamin C infusions, oxygen therapy and the like. At the time, although popular all such complementary options were sternly rejected as ineffective and possibly dangerous by conventional oncologists.

The major source of information was Dr. Google but the result of putting “cancer” into the search box was that you were deluged with an overwhelming volume of information and opinions. Informed choice was almost impossible.

Today the picture has changed and to celebrate Yes to Life is associated with a new book ‘The Cancer Revolution: integrative medicine – the future of cancer care’. It packages expert information in a clear and easily understandable way on how you can help your system handle cancer more effectively. It offers another option to only relying on ever more sophisticated ways to zap a tumour.

When Yes to Life was launched it was hard for most patients to understand what linked the various complementary options. Why should cutting out all sugar, boosting your oxygen intake and following an alkaline diet all help you to fight cancer? They seemed arbitrary and random and finding an explanation was a hit and miss process.

Rethink on the gene theory of cancer

Today a far more coherent narrative about an alternative approach to cancer, what goes wrong and how to repair it, is emerging. Many of the complementary approaches can now be seen as fitting into an overall picture which forms a background to the book. The official line, that cancer is the result of random mutations that create rogue cells, which grow fast and have to be fought aggressively with surgery, radiation and drugs, is no longer as convincing as it used to be.

The sort of statements that emerge from this new approach could include: ‘Cancer is rather like ageing; we don’t want to beat it or fight it but manage it’ and ‘Cancer is not disease, it’s a condition.’

These are not phrases that come from the introductory leaflet of a clinic dedicated to complementary treatments but the considered opinion of a report published 18 months ago by an internationally recognized scientist known for his readiness to hop over academic boundaries.

Professor Paul Davies, now Principal Investigator at Arizona State University’s Center for Convergence of Physical Science and Cancer Biology was asked by the American National Institutes of Health to take a look at cancer through the eyes of a physicist whose methods and insights differed markedly from those of cancer biologists. The Institutes’ concern was that, despite the billions spent on cancer research, the improvement in survival rates was pitiful. ‘The average increase in life-span is just a few weeks, compared with forty years ago,’ says Davies.

It’s the environment, stupid

The result was a report which he delivered last year to a prestigious audience in a lecture in London organized by the New Scientist magazine entitled; ‘What is cancer and how can we manage it.’  So this new perspective couldn’t be more firmly inside the citadel of serious respectable mainstream scientific thinking. The take away message from Davies’s research was that cancer specialists have been looking in the wrong place.

Research and treatment, especially in the wake of the Human Genome project , has largely focused on the tumour itself, what are the chemicals that will damage it, what are the mutated genes and how can we target them to turn them off. What they have been missing is the health of the surrounding cells. When they are functioning properly cancer is far less likely to develop. Sick and depleted cells create cancer-favourable conditions

To paraphrase: ‘It’s the environment stupid.’ Or to put it another way – if you want to know why a group of kids are in a gang, doing drugs and thieving don’t just concentrate on their personal morality, look at the conditions surrounding them and the resources they have access to. It’s a fascinating approach and I’ve summarised it here.  At the same time I wrote about another highly respected American researcher, Professor Mina Bissell, who had been investigating the cellular environment surrounding a tumour or as she called it, the ‘extra cellular matrix’, several decades before Davies.

Davies’ and Bissell’s work is directly relevant to anyone wanting to try tackling their cancer by putting their whole system back on track and creating a cancer-unfriendly internal environment. This involves getting high levels of oxygen, low levels of glucose and a pH balance that is more alkaline than acid. The opposite conditions make cancer more likely: low oxygen, a large and regular supply of glucose in the blood and a pH balance in the acidic direction.

Cutting cancer’s food supply

None of this was news to complementary therapists but now the approach had heavyweight scientific backing. One promising dietary approach, for instance, is the very low carbohydrate or “ketogenic” diet which drastically reduces the amount of glucose available to feed cancer. There are also other benefits which I’ve described here. The post about Professor Bissell has some more details about the cancer/sugar link.

So this research has two very important implications – neither of which was likely to have been quite what the Academy of Sciences had in mind when they commissioned Davies and which the cancer establishment in the UK has done their best to ignore. It makes the claim, enshrined in the Cancer Act, that nothing other than the official three – chemo, radiation and surgery – can possibly be of any benefit in the treatment of cancer, seem increasingly implausible.

Secondly it provides patients with a coherent framework that indicates what they could try and why it makes sense. None of this suggests that the conventional treatments are irrelevant, but that combined with a whole system approach the results are likely to be better. Hence the term “integrative” in the book’s title. It refers to an increasingly popular approach to chronic disorders in general – using both drugs and natural products.

The usual critique of the non- drug approach is that it lacks an evidence base but as Cancer Revolution makes clear, one is emerging. An exercise programme doubles the benefits of chemotherapy, for instance, while a multivitamin can reduce the chances of death from breast cancer by a third. The lack of research is certainly unsatisfactory but the major reason is  a lack of of interest in any approach that doesn’t promise large commercial benefits. 

Authors include top physicians

One of the most impressive features of the book is that it contains contributions from 38 doctors, clinicians, researchers and practitioners; this is no eccentric view of cancer from a lone maverick.

Associate Member and Attending Physician at Memorial Sloane Kettering Cancer Center in New York , Dr Gary Deng, writes about the growing use of integrative medicine in the USA. A German physician, Dr Friedrich Douwes, describes the non-toxic treatments used to treat around 5000 cancer patients a year at the Klinik St Georg in Bavaria that he heads.

Professor Simon Slavin explains the personalised cancer treatments given to patients at the International Centre for Cell Therapy and Cancer Immunotherapy in Tel Aviv. UK Professor Robert Thomas is a conventional consultant oncologist at Addenbrookes’s hospital who combines regular treatments with advice on lifestyle strategies. He sets out the benefits of physical exercise.

The book is easy to navigate with colour-coded topics and designed to help patients put together their own plan. There is clear and straightforward advice about improving your pH balance or how to shift your system in a more alkaline direction and chapters on nutrition. But many cancer patients come to feel that just concentrating on making physical changes isn’t enough and that their healing should involve paying attention to their emotional and spiritual side. That’s covered in detail too.

I have to declare my own interest as a Trustee of Yes to Life but I had nothing to do with “Revolution”; the first time I saw it was on publication. I was hugely impressed. It’s very sane, reasonable, optimistic, easy to use and has information on pretty well any non- drug cancer topic you are likely to encounter. And if you want to know more there are links to further reading and on-line sites.

If you are involved with cancer, unless you’ve no wish to stray from official protocols, I can’t think of any reason not to get a copy. It will introduce you to new ideas and tell you enough to know if they seem right for you. The dark days of bewilderment and Google overload are over.

For further information see

Jerome Burne

Jerome Burne

Jerome Burne is the editor of HealthInsightUK. He is an award-winning journalist who has been specialising in medicine and health for the last 10 years and now works mainly for the Daily Mail. His most recent book “The Hybrid Diet” was written with nutritionist Patrick Holford, published 2018. Award: 2015: Finalist for 'Blogger of the Year' Medical Journalists' Association.

12 Comments

  • Professor Paul Davies talk is a fascinating insight into fresh thinking on this subject. He estimates that $400 billion has been spent on cancer research in the last forty years – a truly astonishing amount – and with very little progress outside of blood cancers. It’s hard to think we haven’t been barking up the wrong tree.

    I hear stories of cancer researchers becoming disillusioned, but reluctant to say anything that might jeopardise their jobs. I no longer contribute to cancer research because I think it’s become a self perpetuating industry that isn’t interested in anything except the next profitable drug that delivers a marginal benefit.

  • A well-balanced body chemistry
    Is this correct chemical balance lies the secret of health and resistance to disease .
    Alkaline forming foods all vegetables,potatoes,fresh fruit(except plums and cranberries,almonds;milk.
    Acid forming foods proteins such as meat,fish ,eggs,cheese chicken,nut.compatible eating can be definitely more economical,as small correctly combined meals are better digested and thus more satisfying than large orthodox meals.It is not the amount of food that counts,but the amount that is properly digested absorbred and metabolized by the body.
    It is your responsibility
    Above all,don’t forget that however important it is eat the right foods exercise and rest fresh air and sunshine,deep breathing and positive thinking are all essential to health.Take control of your life.Don’t give others the power to control your goals if you don’t have goals make them.
    Love heals
    The message in Dr Bernie Siegel’s love medicine and miracles is that love heals.
    Many young people lost everything back in Cyprus during the war and many of them died from cancer very soon ! what that says to me stress is a major factor?
    Without self-love, it’s hard to fight for one’s life.Why live longer if one does not enjoy living?I think the message needs to be I love you and hope someday you will love yourself Criticizing doesn’t help;Few of us live up to the potential of our own uniqueness.For many of the people you will be reading about,it took their illness to put them on the path to self-realization.Sickness pulls consciousness to ever deeper recesses of self.
    How can you love yourself when there is one self -disappointment after another?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYJI4ubiiZY
    Humanity
    The common assumption that doctors can cure us is frequently false.many medical conditions are chronic and we have to learn to live with them.
    The medical profession is conservative by nature.How they conduct themselves scientific theories,especially those with medical pretensions should perhaps by judged not for what they say but for what they do.
    Statistics shows that except in the case of getting over or needing an emergency caesarean orthodox western medicine not only won’t cure you but may leave you worse off than you were before.These days scientific medicine itself is responsible for a good percentage of disease.With all the fancy chemicals and computerized testing equipment we have asthma ,arthritis diabetes cancer virtually all the chronic degenerative diseases known to mankind are thriving and medicine hasn’t affected their incidence one tiny bit.
    Collusion secrets
    In a society as ours,we refuse to face the hideous imperfections:The diagnostic statistical manual of mental illness disorders is the engine that drives a 330 billion dollar psychiatrist industry .It is 943 pages long and list out 374 mental disorder.Its influence pervades all aspects of modern society ;our governments,our courts ,our schools and our media..But is there a proof behind the DSM Or is it nothing more than an elaborate pseudoscientific sham?What is the difference with cancer? Policies need changing there is no hope for humanity if people are stay ignorant.
    Mastering others is strength.Mastering yourself is true power

  • “…creating a cancer-unfriendly internal environment. This involves getting high levels of oxygen, low levels of glucose and a pH balance that is more alkaline than acid. The opposite conditions make cancer more likely: low oxygen, a large and regular supply of glucose in the blood and a pH balance in the acidic direction.”

    While high levels of oxygen are undoubtedly good for fighting cancer cells, and tumours thrive on glucose, thus making low blood sugars an essential weapon against them, I find it hard to credit the notion that food affects the blood acid/alkaline balance. Blood pH is very tightly regulated by an exquisitely sensitive homeostatic mechanism involving the alkaline bicarbonate buffer, ammonia, and the concentration of acidic carbon dioxide. If it varies very far outside the normal slightly alkaline range of 7.36–7.42 you can get very dead very quickly.

    On the other hand, food whose pH may vary quite widely is chewed up and mixed with saliva, landing in the acid bath of the stomach at a pH of 2—4 which breaks down proteins, but as soon as it passes the pylorus into the duodenum is promptly alkalised again to a pH of around 8. The idea that the small mass of food (typically no more than a kilogram at a time) could affect the pH of a whole 50+ kg body, particularly when the homeostasis is taken into account, seems rather implausible.

    In fighting off my œsophageal cancer, I relied heavily on the nourishment provided by lots of meat and dairy, as well as plenty of non-starchy vegetables. My key to recovery without surgery was a strictly ketogenic diet!

    • Editorial

      Yes I am also uncertain about the idea of making the blood more alkaline – it seems plausible but I know conventional view says it is not clinically possible. Yet the mainstream has been show up as believing a variety of mistaken things recently. Any one able to provide an informed description of how it might work?

      • “Yes I am also uncertain about the idea of making the blood more alkaline – it seems plausible but I know conventional view says it is not clinically possible. Yet the mainstream has been show up as believing a variety of mistaken things recently. Any one able to provide an informed description of how it might work?”

        I may be able to assist, Jerome, but I would begin by pointing out that pH is crude way of approaching the topic. Nafsica repeats herself over balance, choice, responsibility, and spirituality, together with the fact these things may represent a pathway to maintaining good health but she has yet to give an account of the mechanisms via which these may actually do good.

        To quickly expound upon why troubled or stressed people may be at greater risk of developing one chronic disease or other than those who live lives that are untroubled and stress probably has to do with biochemistry of the endocrine system; how certain hormones are biosynthesized in our ‘inner soup’ and how they are managed once they are synthesized.

        As I recall there are four principle means of via which antioxidants can detoxify (oxygen) radicals and one is the process of methylation. Methylation is a process via which antioxidants with methyl (CH3) groups to spare give them up so they can pacify certain radicals.

        It is worth wondering if the biosynthesis of certain hormones competes for methyl groups because conversion of norepinephrine to epinephrine does precisely that. If methyl groups are in demand and diet does not supply them in quantities to match then radicals get to linger and do harm. Is there similar competition for other types of antioxidant?

        I think what Nafsica directs about acid and alkali conditions within our ‘inner soup’ and biochemistry is largely correct. Acid conditions associate with degeneration and the etiology of chronic diseases in a way that alkali conditions do not. However we should not get bogged down with pH in discussion. The reason being that a lot of biochemistry, metabolism, and energy pathways depend heavily upon proton gradients. We should not think that pH in the body is universal and invariable. Proton gradients invite us to consider that conditions within our ‘inner soup’ might vary at the level of nano-scales. Archies weakness is in no considering that gradients would make for nano-scale ‘mosaics’ throughout our inner soup and biochemistry.

        The way to better approach the question is to come at it from the viewpoint of oxidative stress. Now oxidative stress is a term that is bandied about like people automatically know what it means. I always to it to mean much the same as oxidation as can be conveyed by radicals. I cease to uphold this entirely though I do not dismiss this interpretation either. Really ‘oxidative stress’ amounts to electron deficiency.

        In the modern world it is a little known fact, and sparsely understood phenomenon, that we are greater risk of electron deficiency (oxidative stress) than we were at any time in our past. In fact oxidative stress is almost unique to humans, and not all humans at that. The reason is simple. We adopted a habit in the modern age and developed world that gives rise to oxidative stress and electron deficiency.

        Electron deficiency has ramification for the resting potentials of cells, whilst in turn variations (decline) of resting potentials that associate with membranes has ramifications for the process of regeneration, which cells must do all the time. In adults cells of the many types as exist about the body (differentiated cells) have a purpose bestowed upon them. Cell types must have specificity of purpose to the job their type is destined to do.

        In order to maintain health what you need is for cells to regenerate in precisely their own likeness. You would want them to be a facsimile of the ‘master copy’ each time they regenerate. If errors begin creeping in with every successive generation of cells then pretty soon the integrity of offspring bear little resemblance to the ‘master’. So it’s like photo-copying a copy, and a copy of a copy, etc., etc.

        Imprecise regeneration is how cells lose their integrity with each successive generation. In turn those cells are the building blocks of tissues and organs, and so those tissues and organs begin to degenerate as the cells do, and as our tissues and organs so do we ‘age’ faster than we ought, or develop the beginnings of chronic disease.

        Poor diet can compromise cells abiliti4es to regenerate with precision, low antioxidant supply too, but a big piece in the puzzle that folks have yet to place precisely in the bigger picture is the real nature and origin of ‘oxidative stress’ whose other term could be ‘electron deficiency’. The real nature of oxidative stress and how it arises is incredibly simple but it does challenge a mind to accept and appreciate it. Folks would kick themselves once the penny drops.

        But there are several cognitive gains to be made above realising that electrical charge and electrical potential have a lot in common with acids and alkalis. Alkalis are electro-negative, and acids are electro positive. How they arise is quirk of chemistry that relies upon a quirk of physics whose origins trace to way quantum physics imposes properties upon the atoms of the various elements. Alkalis are alkali because they have a preponderance of negatively charged molecules (usually attributed to the hydroxide ion – OH-) within their bulk.

        In contrast acids have a preponderance of positively charged ions distributed within their bulk. There are usually credited to the hydrogen ion (H+) In reality hydrogen ions are rare as hens-teeth. They are highly radical, and they quickly associate with molecules of H2O to form the hydronium ion (H3O+). Hence if one connects an acid solution to an alkali one with a conductive wire a current will flow. Moreover each fluid would trend to pH neutral as it discharges via the flow of current.

        Injury seems to alter the electrical environment around the injury. This alters the resting potential around cells, and the altered resting potential bears upon the process of regeneration. Certain cells, it seems, lose some of their differentiation and trend back to be primitive (if totipotent types). This all new ground to me so don’t quote me on the details but the electrical environment may then become one in which healing currents than take over. Again this would seem to bear upon the resting potentials of cells in the vicinity and those cells that were blessed with, or regained totipotency then begin trending to the various differentiated cell types needed to repair the injury.

        I think that the outlook that Archie and others have sided with, (scepticism pointed the way of Nafsica’s contribution) is technically correct (possibly) but contextually much less pertinent. What is pertinent is a suggestion reported by author Jerry L Tennant that when the resting potential of cells (normally about 25mV -ve ) reverses and becomes positive then the risk of them turning cancerous greatly increases. I need to independently valid such a proposition but it makes sense to me. How?

        Well I would bet that resting potential of cells when appropriate maintains the rightful coding of the epigenome. The epigenome turns certain genes off, and leaves others switched on. The genome is common to all cells, in that all cells have all genes present, but what would seem a very plausible explanation is the epigenone is coded differently for the many different cell types. In other words that which permits alternate genes to be switched on and alternate genes to be switched off is what accounts for specificity of function given over to specific cell types.

        It is through the emergence of differentiation from a cluster of cells without differentiation that a newly conceived embryo advances to become a foetus , and how that early foetus then develops limb buds and a head etc., grows into an unborn baby, and then emerges into the world. And the process goes on as baby becomes child, and child becomes adult. The amazing thing is that cells within the cluster seem to have some sense of their coordinates within the cluster. Something must inform them, and Robert O Becker effectively proposed (implied) that potential gradients about the cluster, electrical currents and signals both analogue and digital, supply the cell with information about is place in the greater group.

        Gestation is a process whereby totipotency accounts for the possibilities, whereby the time dependent decline of totipotency and the time dependent rise in differentiation, and the great facilitator would appear to be constant alterations to the epigenome that seemed destined to follow particular trajectories to spawn cells of specific type.

        In terms of design and function the embryonic cells of a dog or dolphin are very like our own. They differ in the genes, if not by that much. So study a foetus of each early during the period of gestation and you’d be hard-pressed to discern any difference. Even the various limb-buds as emerge are similar, though how those limb buds then go to develop is what accounts for the notable anatomical differences seen between us and them.

        Really what you need, Jerome, is an article, and not a comment, that casts light upon the nature and origin of oxidative stress, why it blights some peoples more than others, and why it blights one species more than others, and then another article explaining how oxidative stress is an imbalance that impairs normal healthy biochemistry and regeneration. In 1600 words I managed to outline it and, I hope, have it sound plausible.

        Archies contribution set me off writing a reply but that ran to over 2000 words and wasn’t finished! Grom the ashes may rise the basis of an article.

        And despite I wish Nafsica could express herself more lucidly I support her intimation that if find yourself in need of emergency admission and care then modern medicine and medical practitioners can deliver the highest standards of diagnosis, surgery, treatment and care. But on the other had if you modern medicine and medical practitioners to explain what you should do to diminish risks of developing one or more of several chronic diseases whose principle cause lies with oxidative stress you will get gibberish, mostly, and some of that gibberish is actually harmful. Nafsica passes comments that are on the right lines if not always supported by inclusion of all the correct reasons.

        Folks could read:
        Earthing (Ober, Sinatra & Zucker)
        The Body Electric (Robert O Becker)
        Healing is voltage (Jerry L Tenant)
        The Forth Phase of Water (Gerrald Pollack)
        Lights Out (Wiley and Formby)
        and It think it reasonable to think that it could invoke in you a whole new way of looking at things as indeed they have in me.

        • Editorial

          Many thanks Christopher for making that very impressive and detailed response. I have to confess an almost total lack of basic physics and chemistry (blame the exam system many decades ago) which means that quite a lot went over my head.

          I’m certainly interested in what is going on with oxidation and antioxidants. I’m aware that the old idea “oxidation bad so filing yourself up with antioxidants is bound to be a good thing” is not quite as simple as that and that clinical trials have not reported as much benefit as expected. (Lets leave on one side ability of some researchers to do very misleading, not to say really crap, trials of minerals and vitamins). My limited understanding of your post was that there is a whole electromagnetic dimension to oxidation – something that is largely ignored in all medical areas, maybe because of the pharma exclusive concentration on biochemistry – but that didn’t seem to link to basic question: is it worth taking antioxidants?

          I was particularly interested in your foray into foetal development because one of bits of research that lead me to the idea that cancer favoured an acid environment (point in the original post) was by Professor Stephen Davis (Davies?) whose theory about what goes on with cancer involves a genetic program that is basically designed to run during foetal development that when inappropriately switched on leads to cancer – my piece on him posted on HIUK. Totally in the dark about how all the bits fit but, as i said, basic practical insight is that shifting in alkaline direction makes sense. I don’t think you dealt with the question of whether there is much you can do to make that shift.

      • On Pubmed I found more than one research report about increasing Tumor PH with Bicarbonate, one example : Cancer Res. 2009 March 15; 69(6): 2260–2268. doi:10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-07-5575. Bicarbonate Increases Tumor pH and Inhibits Spontaneous Metastases.

  • It’s important to realise we always have a choice …you can call it spirituality is about higher self the divine within us all.It is about expansion and growth in the direction of love light and caring.When it comes to nutrition and eating habits,I think the ideal combination of natural nutrition and exercise can accomplish wonders for a person.
    Side by side with our growing awareness of the paramount important of the immune system in maintaining health in our increasing recognition of the part played by the mind and feelings in both causing and healing illness.
    The strength or weakness of an immune system is in turn affected by what we think feel say and do even as we have seen by what we choose to look at.
    Ask yourself which moments make you feel authentic as if you are doing something you are truly made for?
    A strong sense of purpose will fill you with motivation and enthusiasm.
    http://www.info.trimdownclub.com/introduction1.html?ad=408&gclid=CMuG0v7Yj84CFaMK0wodr8sE2Q

  • Yes, that’s my take also, but I am open to other (convincing) paths.

  • If we are seeking information in the right direction all you have to do put it into practice YOU DONT HAVE TO BE PERFECT.Find what work for you;It’s not just intelligence It requires a certain amount of perseverance and consciousness to allow any human person to succeed.(My easiest way to put EATING HABITS into practice and achieve health…remind myself,the hope of humanity lies in the prevention of degenerative and mental disease,not in the care of their symptoms).
    Aim for balance
    alkaline-forming foods(vegetable,salads and fresh fruits)and acid forming foods(meat,fish,cheese and grains)what suit me don’t suit everybody in arrange the day’s meals so that animal protein is eaten only once a day ,cereal starches are eaten once a day,and the third meal contains neither,but only of fruit with yogurt.There no point having a degree in Nutrition or medicine if you don’t look after your own health.Nothing is fixed.You don’t have to be perfect?never give up your zest for life.
    It is usually most convenient to take this essential alkaline meal at breakfast,but if a starch breakfast is preferred is up to you .A comprehensive list is included
    http://www.livestrong.com/article/510801-good-carbs-for-lunch/
    http://www.betterbones.com
    healthy body.tv/blog/alkaline.breakfast ideas.
    If you are open to other convincing paths… if I say to if you fail to look after your health you fail in everything else in your life can I convince you!

  • “I don’t think you dealt with the question of whether there is much you can do to make that shift.”

    Yes, I know Jerome, that’s the bit I deliberately omitted.

    The step a person could take to make that shift is actually a very simple one. However the simple explanation is not enough to convince minds of sceptical nature. Hence what that prospective step needs behind it is not just a sound explanation, but a sound explanation crafted in the most optimal way.

    So call it a cliffhanger if you will. Imagine it’s East Enders on TV and a character has just dropped bombshell, then next the theme tune plays – duff, duff, dududduff . . .

    But to return from the dramatic to that which is grounded in science I did not want to half explain something that deserves an optimal explanation. Explaining what the redial step is doesn’t make half as much sense on its own as it could when minds have a better understanding of what it actually remedies.

    The thing that needs remedying is ‘oxidative stress’.

    Some years ago I recall some parties debating heart disease on some broadcast. “Cholesterol does not cause heart disease, oxidative stress does” said one party. Despite this it was left an open and unanswered question what oxidative stress is. So I was left with an opinion that it is ‘oxidation’. Now twenty years later I perceive things a little differently. Oxidative stress and oxidation are not unrelated, but they are not entirely the same thing. Oxidation might be regarded as a corrosive effect, oxidative stress might be regarded as an electrical effect. Oxidative stress amounts to electron stealing and the consequence of this is electron deficiency, while oxidation is a reaction that converts an atom or molecule to an oxide of it’s former self.

    For all that little spoiler, oxidative stress is best described from a particular beginning and it would run to an article rather than a comment. It’s better not to explain at all than to half-explain it or explain it badly. In the above I hinted at its nature but not its origin.

    So it’s back to that cliffhanger, I’m afraid, But be assured if the mind can grasp a simple explanation about the nature and origin of oxidative stress as giving rise to the problem then accepting the grounds for the proposed remedial
    step(s) will so much easier and invoke much less scepticism.

    “I was particularly interested in your foray into foetal development because one of bits of research that lead me to the idea that cancer favoured an acid environment (point in the original post) was by Professor Stephen Davis (Davies?) whose theory about what goes on with cancer involves a genetic program that is basically designed to run during foetal development that when inappropriately switched on leads to cancer.”

    Well yes, I would advocate that oxidative stress could be one of the primary causal factors that give rise to carcinogenic conditions within the body. Oxidative stress = electron deficiency = pH trending to acid. What Professor Steve Davis has to say would be highly pertinent to the line(s) of my own curiosities. In plain English ‘acid conditions’ within the body make for greater risk of concerns taking hold. One word of caution; Archies accustomed way of coming at pH is not the best foot to lead with. pH Is not the best way
    to approach this, regard for electrical disparity is.

    And while I could not advocate this with high degrees of certainty I say with some grounds to this plausible that chronic electron deficiency, aka oxidative stress, bears upon cell regeneration in such a way it raises risks they may trend over time to become cancerous. Now this is not a genetic matter especially.

    The worry is not that cancer promoting genes are there within the genome, the worry is that cancer promoting genes lose the simple tag that would otherwise prevent them from expressing themselves. So in certain ‘adverse conditions certain genes that were once switched off trend to becoming switched on again and that gives rise to the cancerous mutation. But this is a very involved subject, and the devil always resides in the detail. But whenever I hear talk about mutant genes giving rise to a commonplace disease I react with scepticism.

    In my view commonplace says a lot. It suggests the genes are okay, but something about the environment is at odds with them. The environment can corrupt specific genetic expression by altering their switched state from off to on and from on to off.

    As Prof Davis intimates, the manner in which cells in an embryonic cluster regenerate and trend from basic cells without differentiation to ones that have adequate differentiation to account for the many different cell types needed to build a foetus, is a magical process that requires recoding of genetic expression. But the genes themselves are unchanged. They are the same in every cell. What differentiates cell types, it may seem is which cells are coded ‘on’ and which ones are coded ‘off’.

    The work of Becker suggests the electrical environment surrounding the cell could bear upon the code. If electron deficiency doesn’t have consequence for the electrical environment surround the cell, resting upon the cell membrane, and within the cell, then I would be amazed.

    ” I have to confess an almost total lack of basic physics and chemistry (blame the exam system many decades ago) which means that quite a lot went over my head.”

    Yup, forty years have passed since I was taught these subjects. Grasping some of the pivotal points of this early day hypothesis presented me with challenges too. I think half the reason content went over your head had less to do with the content and more to do with the way the way the content was presented. Actually the physics and chemistry behind this need not be that complicated.

    The books I recommended are not that complicated and do not get too bogged down with physics and chemistry. They are, however, relatively radical in content. I can read each several times over and still gain new insights. But the medical profession has a history of responding to discussion of the bio-electric side to the way our bodies work with denial-ism. Through this they have denied themselves the opportunity to trend to new insights. They do not understand the part oxidative stress may play in the causes of chronic diseases, and there may be only a handful of truly progressive ones whoc could grasp the mechanism via which it works.

    So do not be bemused or disheartened, Jerome, the average GP is no better placed to understand than you are.

  • Peace,Love,and healing
    Our Creator has given us five sense to help us survive threats from the external world,and a six sense our healing system ,to help us survive internal threats.

    How we manage our bodies Optimum nutrition and exercise,isn’t a luxury.It’s necessity
    If you want to stay healthy and happy and keep your mind intact in the 21st century .Even as the health professions increases,and specialist multiply,there is an increasing skepticism of their power.No person can cure you of your ailments and disease.The human body is self -repairing and self-healing .You break a bone the doctor sets the bone and puts it into a cast.The broken bone knits together again;after a number of weeks,the bone is strong again as strong as it was before the break.The internal healing forces that are within every human body.

    If we don’t change in the theory and practice of medicine we cannot move forward.Every generation has always will have its threatening illness.If you find cured for one ,another takes its place.If you find a wonder drug,for one we must search for another wonder drug next.We need therefore to focus not just finding new wonder drug,
    but teaching people how to utilize the naturally occurring wonder drugs that exist within each of us .Scientists predict through genetic engineering ,these internal wonder drugs will be cloned by scientist and used therapeutically.How much better it would be if educate people,stop science from being only mimic and let it teach us to be our own genetic engineers.Most of us did not grow up in an environment with sufficient love and hope.It is time to move beyond that legacy of lovelessness ,Is not the way we start life is the way we finish. The Quality of life peace of mind begin your journey and become your authentic self-say no to cancer never give up hope.Education is power nobody can take away from you .

    That’s the most interesting thing of all.The balance depends on man’s frame of mind.Understand Which means that if he’s cheerful and firm spirit ,there will more sodium in the barrier;and no sickness ,none whatever ,will bring him to his death .But soon as he loose heart the potassium gains the upper hand and he might as well order himself a coffin…
    The physiology of optimism.The idea is sound.Quite sound …
    So I wouldn’t ‘t be surprised …if they discovered some sort of cesium salt in about a hundred years ,one that spread out in the organism if there was a clear conscience and didn’t if there wasn’t .And it will depend on that cesium salt whether the cells of the tumor will grow or whether the tumor will clear up.
    Love yourself

Leave a Reply to Editorial


WP-Backgrounds by InoPlugs Web Design and Juwelier Schönmann