Skin Deep Cosmetics Database | Environmental Working Group

This is a wonderful database of information about most skin care products and how health or not they are for you.

Skin Deep Cosmetics Database | Environmental Working Group

Visual Of The Importance Of Organic Food

This child's experiment should give us all pause to make organic food choices

One Of The Most Researched Herbs - Curcumin

Curcumin is one of the most important well-researched cancer fighting herbs known.  It is a spice (think curry) and in its extract form a dye.  Plants with remarkable colors generally have potent medicinal properties.  Curcumin is an extract of Tumeric.  For health promotion and disease management it is best to have the highest potency curcumin extract.


A search of Medline reveals more than 1,500 studies describing the various activities of turmeric/curcumin.  What is it about curcumin that has so many scientists excited? The starting point is inflammation  but it is a whole lot more than that.  Inflammation is known to play a major role in the development of most diseases including: Cardiovascular diseases, Cancer, Pulmonary diseases, Neurological diseases (including Alzheimers), Autoimmune diseases, Arthritis and Diabetes.

Curcumin for a cancer patient is safe to take, acts as a chemotherapy and radio sensitizer while protecting normal cells.   It has multiple targets to down-regulate cancer growth pathways across multiple cancer types.  Cucumin has been found to suppress, retard, and even reverse cancer development at each stage of the disease. 

I recommend high potency extracts of curcumin in formulas as part of my base program for nearly all patients with cancer.   Curcumin needs to be taken with a little fat to help it absorb.  It can cause gas and intestinal upset at high doses. 

The following chart shows all the cancer targets that are up and down-regulated by curcumin.  If you think about drugs having usually 1 sometimes a few cancer targets, curcumin looks amazing for its 80 anti-cancer targets.   Curcumin (and herbs in general) are for me a part of the personalization of cancer treatment.   Finding in a particular tumor what is under or over-expressed and using herbs alone or in concert with drugs to treat cancer in a collaborative and intelligent manner.

I found the link to this chart in a 76 page paper called Curcumin: Indian Solid Gold. 

Bharrat Aggarawal is the prolific and innovative superstar in curcumin research.  Read an interview with him here.

For me Curcumin is part of what gives hope to treat and manage cancer.  Don't leave home without it.

Study confirms safety, cancer-targeting ability of nutrient in broccoli

Sulforaphane, a primary phytochemical found in broccoli, cauliflower and other cruciferous vegetables, is an inhibitor of histone deacetylase, or HDAC enzymes. HDAC inhibition is an emerging field of cancer treatment and represents a promising pharmaceutical and dietary approach. Emily Ho, from Oregon State Un (Oregon, USA), and colleagues have investigated the effects of sulforaphane in normal, benign hyperplasia, and cancerous prostate epithelial cells. The team observed that 15 micromoles of sulforaphane caused cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in benign hyperplasia and cancerous prostate epithelial cells; and did not affect normal cells whatsoever.  Sulforaphane also selectively decreased HDAC enzyme activity.  The researchers conclude that: “[Sulforaphane] exerts differential effects on cell proliferation, HDAC activity and downstream targets in normal and cancer cells.”

Continue reading…

 Alex's Notes:

Glossary:  HDAC Inhibitors  - involve the way genes transcribe and express at the epigenetic level.  HDAC inhibitors are involved in tumor supressor gene activation (p21 and p53).  There are pharmaceuticals that act as HDAC inhibitors. 

Brocolli and the extracts of cruciferous vegetables (Broccoraphinin™) have many properties for cancer prevention and treatment.  They help detoxify estrogens and other carcinogens through liver enzyme pathways (cytochrome p450), prevent angiogenesis (blood vessel growth).  They have been shown to induce apoptosis in some cell lines and down regulate Bcl-2 an inhibitor of apoptosis (programmed cell death).  


This is a brocolli soup recipe  without cream that is easy to prepare and tastes great 

I recommend supplements that have brocoli and wasabi isolates as part of a comprehensive cancer prevention program.  However if you have a low-thyroid be careful with eating excessive amounts of cruciferous vegetables and certainly do not take extracts of cruciferous vegetables that come in pill form.  See Dr. Weil's comment about the relationship between thyroid and cruciferous vegetables here.

Alex Berks Recording of Integrative Oncology Talk

 Please follow the link to here a talk by Alex Berks on Integrative Oncology to the West Los Angeles Cancer Support Community on June 7, 2011.




Click here to download the Powerpoint slides.  This can be found under the HTTP link on the left

How Chronic Stress Reprograms Immune Cells to Facilitate Cancer Progression

(HealthNewsDigest.com) - Chronic stress acts as a sort of fertilizer that feeds breast cancer progression, significantly accelerating the spread of disease in animal models, researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have found.

Researchers discovered that stress is biologically reprogramming the immune cells that are trying to fight the cancer, transforming them instead from soldiers protecting the body against disease into aiders and abettors. The study found a 30-fold increase in cancer spread throughout the bodies of stressed mice compared to those that were not stressed.

It’s long been thought that stress fuels cancer growth in humans. This study provides a model that not only demonstrates that stress can speed up cancer progression, but also details the pathway used to change the biology of immune cells that inadvertently promote the spread of cancer to distant organs, where it is much harder to treat.

The study appears in the Sept. 15, 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Cancer Research.

“What we showed for the first time is that chronic stress causes cancer cells to escape from the primary tumor and colonize distant organs,” said Erica Sloan, a Jonsson Cancer Center scientist, first author of the study and a researcher with the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology. “We not only showed that this happens, but we showed how stress talks to the tumor and helps it to spread.”

In addition to documenting the effects of stress on cancer metastasis, the researchers were also able to block those effects by treating stressed animals with drugs that block the nervous system’s reprogramming of the metastasis-promoting immune cells, called macrophages.

Beta blockers, used in this study to shut down the stress pathways in the mice, are currently being examined in several large breast cancer databases for their role in potential prevention of recurrence and cancer spread, said Dr. Patricia Ganz, director of cancer prevention and control research at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. If preliminary findings indicate benefit, early phase clinical trials are being considered at the Jonsson Cancer Center testing beta blockers as a means of preventing breast cancer recurrence. Other healthy lifestyle behaviors may also influence the biological pathways described in the study, such as exercise and stress reduction techniques.

“We’re going to be focusing on younger women, because they may have a multitude of things weighing on them when they’re diagnosed with breast cancer. Younger women have more significant life demands and typically are under more stress,” Ganz said.

Ganz said her proposed research will focus on “host factors,” or things affecting the patient, that may be aiding the cancer progression and could help explain why a group of patients with the same type and stage of disease have varying rates of recurrence and cancer spread.

“This study provides evidence for a biological relationship between stress and cancer progression and identifies targets for intervention in the host environment,” Ganz said. “Because of this study, we may be able to say to a patient in the future that if you follow this exercise regimen, meditative practice or take this pill every day it will help prevent recurrence of your cancer. We can now test these potential interventions in the animal model and move those that are effective into the clinic.”

In Sloan’s study, mice with breast cancer were divided into two groups. One group of mice was confined in a small area for a short period of time every day for two weeks, while the other group was not. The breast cancer cells were genetically engineered to include the luciferase gene, which is the molecule that makes a firefly glow. The growth and spread of the cancer in the mice was monitored using sensitive cameras that can pick up the luciferase signal and allowed Sloan and her team to observe both the development of primary tumors and the spread of metastases throughout the body, said Steven Cole, an associate professor of hematology/oncology, a Jonsson Cancer Center researcher and senior author of the study.

What was interesting, Cole said, was that the primary tumors did not seem to be affected by stress and grew similarly in both groups of mice. However, the stressed animals showed significantly more metastases throughout the body than did the control group. The cancer, in effect, acted differently in the stressed mice.

“This study is not saying that stress causes cancer, but it does show that stress can help support cancer once it has developed,” Cole said. “Stress helps the cancer climb over the fence and get out into the big, wide world of the rest of the body.”

Cole said Sloan detailed the biology of the stress-induced changes in the cancer cells along every step of the pathway, providing a road map by which stress promotes cancer metastasis. Additionally, she proved that using beta blockers in stressed mice prevented the same cancer progression seen in the stressed mice that did not receive medication.

When cancer occurs, the immune system sends out macrophages to try to repair the tissue damage caused by uncontrolled growth of cancer cells. The macrophages, in an attempt to help, turn on inflammation genes that are part of the normal immune response to injury. However, the cancer cells feed on the growth factors involved in a normal immune response. Blood vessels that are grown to aid healing instead feed the cancer the oxygen and nutrients it needs to grow and spread, and the extra cellular matrix, which provides structural support for normal cells, is attacked during the immune response, In Sloan’s study, mice with breast cancer were divided into two groups. One group of mice was confined in a small area for a short period of time every day for two weeks, while the other group was not. helping the cancer cells escape from the primary tumor and spread to distant parts of the body.

“Many of the genes that promote cancer metastasis get turned on during the immune response by macrophages,” Cole said. “This study shows that stress signaling from the sympathetic nervous system enhances the recruitment of macrophages into the primary tumor, and increases their expression of immune response genes that inadvertently facilitate the escape of cancer cells into other parts of the body.”

Sloan showed that the beta blockers prevented the macrophages from hearing the signals sent by the sympathetic nervous system, and stopped them from infiltrating the tumor and encouraging cancer spread.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense and the Jonsson Cancer Center.

UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center has more than 240 researchers and clinicians engaged in disease research, prevention, detection, control, treatment and education. One of the nation's largest comprehensive cancer centers, the Jonsson center is dedicated to promoting research and translating basic science into leading-edge clinical studies. In July 2010, the Jonsson Cancer Center was named among the top 10 cancer centers nationwide by U.S. News & World Report, a ranking it has held for 10 of the last 11 years. For more information on the Jonsson Cancer Center, visit our website at http://www.cancer.ucla.edu.

N-acetyl-cysteine (NAC): good for some things but dangerous with cancer.

High grade soft tissue sarcomas in one study exhibit high levels of glutathione, especially after Doxirubicin therapy.  This is my situation exactly.  Link to the study here. 

The article below comes from Jacob Schor a Naturopath specializing in cancer.  

NAC is the precursor to a chemical called glutathione.  Oral NAC is rapidly taken up by the body and quickly converted to glutathione.

Glutathione is the primary antioxidant within all of our cells.  It protects our cells from oxidative damage.  This is a good thing in healthy cells; we prefer that they are not damaged.  But in cancer cells we prefer the opposite.  We want cancer cells to be extra vulnerable to damage.  Cancer cells generate oxidative chemicals referred to in total as reactive oxygen species (ROS) in an attempt to destroy themselves.  Glutathione acts as a brake and prevents them from self-destruction or to use the scientific term, apoptosis. 

Raising glutathione stops cancer cell death. 

Most cancer therapies work to kill cancer cells by increasing the levels of reactive oxygen species within the cancer cells.  This includes radiation therapy, most chemotherapies and most natural therapies. 

Providing cancer cells with NAC, because it will increase glutathione, protects the cancer cells and prevents them from dying. 

We often see NAC being used in studies investigating the mechanisms of how anticancer agents work; they use NAC in a simple trick to see if the drugs are killing cancer cells through the common mechanism of increasing reactive oxygen species.  If adding NAC stops the action of the anticancer agent, than it is assumed it was acting through oxidative action.  Let me find a recent example.

In April 2010, Korean researchers reported on the action of NAC in combination with a proteosome inhibiting chemotherapy drug known as MG132.

 First they showed that MG132 increased the amounts of ROS in lung cancer cells and as expected, the drug slowed the rate of growth of the cancer cells. Then they treated the cancer cells with NAC.  The drug no longer slowed growth rates.  

The procedures followed in this study were not novel. They are routine when evaluating chemotherapy drugs.  First, measure how well the drug works against tumor cells and then measure whether NAC stops the effect.  This tells the scientists to what degree the drug’s action is via reactive oxygen species generation and whether other anti-cancer mechanisms are involved.

It’s not just the medical treatments that NAC will potentially interfere with.  A paper from December 2010 tells us that NAC ‘blocked the antiproliferative’ effect of curcumin, that is stopped it from hindering the growth of cancer cells. 

For the whole story click on the title to follow the link.

'I'm a tumor and I'm over here!' Nanovaults used to prod immune system to fight cancer

By Kim Irwin and Jennifer Marcus May 03, 2011

Nanovaults

UCLA scientists have discovered a way to "wake up" the immune system to fight cancer by delivering an immune system–stimulating protein in a nanoscale container called a vault directly into lung cancer tumors. The new method harnesses the body's natural defenses to fight disease growth.

The vaults, barrel-shaped nanoscale capsules found in the cytoplasm of all mammalian cells, were engineered to slowly release a protein — the chemokine CCL21 — into tumors. Pre-clinical studies in mice with lung cancer showed that the protein stimulated the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells, potently inhibiting cancer growth, according to the study's co-senior author Leonard Rome, a researcher at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and associate director of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA.

"Researchers have been working for many years to develop effective immune therapies to treat cancer, with limited success," said Rome, who has been studying vaults for decades. "In lung tumors, the immune system is down-regulated, and what we wanted to do was wake it up, find a way to have the cancer say to the immune system, 'Hey, I'm a tumor and I'm over here. Come get me.' "

The study appears in the May 3 issue of PLoS One, a peer-reviewed journal of the Public Library of Science.

Waking up the immune system

The new vault delivery system, which Rome characterized as "just a dream" three years ago, is based on a 10-year, ongoing research effort focused on using a patient's white blood cells to create dendritic cells, which are immune system cells that process antigen material and present it on their surface to other immune cells known as T cells, stimulating a response. 

Interview With Alternative Cancer Doctor Nicholas Gonzalez

This is an interview of noted cancer specialist Nicholas Gonzalez by Joseph Mercola.  Dr. Gonzalez uses a system of metabolic typing diets, juicing, coffee enemas to detox colon and liver and very high doses of pancreatic enzymes.  The history of the development of this story is fascinating.  

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Alternative cancer treatments are a kind of "forbidden area" in medicine, but Dr. Gonzalez chose to go that route anyway, and has some remarkable success stories to show for his pioneering work.
He didn't set out to treat cancer at first however, let alone treat patients. His original plan was to be a basic science researcher at Sloan-Kettering; a teaching hospital for Cornell Medical College. He had a chance meeting with William Kelley, a controversial dentist who was one of the founders of nutritional typing. Dr. Kelley had been practicing alternative- and nutritional approaches for over two decades at the time, led him to begin a student project investigation of Kelley's work, in the summer of 1981.

"I started going through his records and even though I was just a second year medical student, I could see right away there were cases that were extraordinary," he says. "Patients with appropriately diagnosed pancreatic cancer, metastatic breast cancer in the bone, metastatic colorectal cancer… who were alive 5, 10, 15 years later under Kelley's care with a nutritional approach."

This preliminary review led to a formal research study, which Dr. Gonzalez completed while doing his fellowship in cancer, immunology and bone marrow transplantation.

The "Impossible" Recoveries of Dr. Kelley's Cancer Patients

After going through thousands of Kelley's records, Dr. Gonzalez put together a monograph, divided into three sections:

1. Kelley’s theory
2. 50 cases of appropriately-diagnosed lethal cancer patients still alive five to 15 years after diagnosis, whose long-term survival was attributed to Kelley’s program
3. Patients Kelley had treated with pancreatic cancer between the years 1974 and 1982

According to Dr. Good, the president of Sloan-Kettering who had become Gonzalez' mentor, if Kelley could produce even one patient with appropriately diagnosed pancreatic cancer who was alive 5-10 years later, it would be remarkable. They ultimately tracked down 22 of Kelley's cases. Ten of them met him once and didn't do the program after being dissuaded by family members or doctors who thought Kelley was a quack.
The average survival for that group was about 60 days.
A second group of seven patients who did the therapy partially and incompletely (again, dissuaded by well-intentioned but misguided family members or doctors), had an average survival of 300 days.
The third group consisting of five patients, who were appropriately diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer and who completed the full program, had an average survival of eight and a half years! In Dr. Gonzalez' words, this was "just unheard of in medicine."
One of those patients included a woman diagnosed by the Mayo Clinic with stage four pancreatic cancer who had been given six months to live. She'd learned about Kelley's program through a local health food store. She completed his treatment and is still alive today, 29 years later.

Total Video Length: 1:42:22
Download Interview Transcript

In looking around the internet I found a clinic that gives a basic rundown of what Dr. Gonzalez is doing.
http://www.aspenintegrativemedicine.com/?q=node/49

Dr. Kelley's original book is online here
http://www.drkelley.com/CANLIVER55.html







 

Meats Not To Eat

You might have missed the media headlines last month which extolled hotdogs as better for you than chicken. If you click on the Time Magazine link above you can get a taste of this nonsense. This is a perfect example of how taking too narrow-minded a view can lead you astray from the truth about what's healthy and what's not.
Here, the researchers measured several different types of meats for levels of heterocyclic amines (HCAs), and because hot dogs and pepperoni happened to have lower levels of HCAs than rotisserie chicken, MSNBC leapt to the conclusion that these processed meats are better for you because they're "relatively free of carcinogenic compounds."
WRONG! They're just relatively lower in ONE type of carcinogenic compound! But hot dogs and other processed meats contain OTHER compounds that put them squarely on the list of foods to avoid or eliminate entirely...