Cancer and Vitamin C explains, in plain language, the nature and known causes of cancer,
covering nearly all its different forms and their natural progression. It also weighs the value and limitations of various
modes of treatment: surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, hormones, immunotherapy, and a number of unorthodox ones. The value
of vitamin C as an adjunct therapy is corroborated by detailed accounts of cancer patients who have derived varying degrees
of benefit from vitamin C treatment. Cancer and Vitamin C explains in plain language the nature and known causes
of this disease. It also weighs the value and limitations of various modes of treatment: surgery, radiation, chemotherapy,
hormones, immunotherapy, and a number of unorthodox ones. The value of vitamin C as an adjunct therapy is corroborated by
detailed accounts of cancer patients who have derived varying degrees of benefit from vitamin C treatment.Moore
You'll be shocked when you read what you can do to improve your health and what Big Pharma doesn't want you to know about
the most affordable treatment around -Vitamin D.
Vitamin D is crucial to our health, yet most people are low in
this vital vitamin - despite the vitamins they take, the foods they eat, the milk they drink or the sun exposure they receive.
In Power of Vitamin D you will learn:
• Why we are facing a true Epidemic of Vitamin D deficiency.
• The crucial role Vitamin D can play in the Prevention as well as Treatment of various Cancers.
•
How Vitamin D can help Prevent Diabetes, Coronary Heart Disease, Hypertension and Kidney Disease.
• How Vitamin
D can Prevent as well as Treat Muscle Aches, Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia, Bone Pains and Osteoporosis.
•
The vital role of Vitamin D in the normal functioning of the Immune System.
• How Vitamin D can Prevent as
well as Treat the Common Cold, Tuberculosis, Asthma, Thyroid Diseases, M.S., Lupus and Arthritis.
• The essential
role of Vitamin D during Pregnancy for Mothers and Babies.
• Doctors frequently miss the Diagnosis of Vitamin
D deficiency because they often order the wrong test.
• The right test to Diagnose Vitamin D deficiency.
• The best way to Prevent and Treat Vitamin D deficiency.
• Vitamin D Toxicity and how to Prevent
it.
• Not just theoretical knowledge, but detailed, practical information from actual Case Studies. Moore
How does vitamin C combat cancer?
In cancers of microbial origins, vitamin
C helps prevent the replication of viral genes. It helps prevent viral genes from being turned on thereby preventing their
activation and infectious capabilities. As long as the genes are not turned on, the viruses are inactivated and dormant. The
antioxidant property of vitamin C is responsible for this feat.
Conventional therapies induce tumor cell death
by generating excessive amounts of free radicals. Their concern is that high-dose antioxidant supplementation during standard
cancer therapy could be harmful since the antioxidants might protect both normal and cancer cells against the cell-killing
effects of tumor therapeutic agents . This theory is contradicted by studies showing that vitamin C, tocopheryl succinate,
and Accutane (vitamin A analog) enhanced the growth inhibitory effect of radiation and certain chemotherapy agents on tumor
cells in culture and in vivo. This showed that antioxidants do not protect cancer cells against the growth-inhibitory effect
of conventional therapy and may in fact enhance the growth inhibitory effects on tumor cells.
In a new study, published
in the Aug. 4-8 issue of theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Mark Levine, chief of the U.S. National Institutes
of Health's Molecular and Clinical Nutrition Section and his colleagues found that intravenous vitamin C produced hydrogen
peroxide, which proceeded to reduce cancerous tumors in the mice by 43 percent to 51 percent. The mice had ovarian, pancreatic
and brain cancer. But getting heavy doses of vitamin C into the body is a challenge. Unlike some other vitamins, it's virtually
impossible for people to overdose on vitamin C since the body only ingests a certain amount through the mouth and then stops
allowing it to build up, Levine said. "The body wants to get to a certain place and no more," he said. Researchers
have found that they can disrupt the body's "tight control" over vitamin C levels by giving the nutrient intravenously
and bypassing the digestive system, Levine said. The intravenous approach involves "short-circuiting the body's normal
control mechanisms and finding there's an unexpected surprise that may be beneficial," he said.
Randy
Dotinger,HealthDay Reporter Washighton Post .August 5th ,2008.
Pure L-ascorbic acid (vitamin C) was first prepared
in 1928 by the Nobel prize winning biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi and in 1932 it was shown that this substance was vitamin
C. In 1954 and 1959 Dr. W. J. McCormick, a Canadian physician, hypothesized that cancer is a collagen disease, secondary to
a vitamin C deficiency. His theory was based on the fact that collagen is the “mortar” that binds cells together
and if cells stick together, tumors would have a more difficult time breaking away and metastasizing.
This concept was
expanded upon when, in 1966, Dr. Ewan Cameron wrote a book entitled “Hyaluronidase and Cancer.” In it he pointed
out that the ground substance or “intercellular cement” that binds cells of normal tissues contains various molecules
that strengthen it including glycosaminoglycans and fibrils of collagen. Dr. Cameron discussed how tumors can produce enzymes
that breakdown these molecules (i.e. hyaluronidase and collagenase).Working with Dr. Cameron, Linus Pauling, Ph.D. (chemistry)
pointed out that Vitamin C could: A) stimulate normal cells to produce increased amounts of a hyaluronidase inhibitor and;
B) increase the number of collagen fibrils made. Based on these theories, Drs. Pauling and Cameron embarked on a number of
studies to test the efficacy of vitamin C in cancer patients.
By Cancer Monthly on December
10, 2007 9:40 AM
The molecular structure of vitamin C is very similar to that of glucose. Vitamin C has been
shown to offer protection against cancer causing agents in our food supplies like nitrosamines that are implicated in cancers
of the mouth, colon and stomach.vitamin C has been found to exacerbate hydrogen peroxide induced apoptosis. Since cancer loves
and needs glucose to survive, it develops an attraction to the ‘glucose- like molecule’ of vitamin C. This attraction
often turns fatal for cancer not by killing the cancer cells directly but by making them apoptotic. At lower doses vitamin
C is a potent antioxidant and free radical scavenger. In clinical settings where vitamin C is administered intravenously
at high doses vitamin C becomes a pro-oxidant and initiates oxidative responses i.e. vitamin C becomes perioxidative. Cancer
cells lack the enzyme to neutralize the peroxide and aldehyde formed from the perioxidative process generated by high doses
of Vitamin C. Cancer cells cannot survive in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. Their attraction to the glucose like
molecule of vitamin C brings them in contact to the peroxide and aldehydes which are fatally toxic to cancer cells i.e. they
are lured in by their fatal attraction to the glucose –like molecule in vitamin C and are destroyed by the perioxidative
process.
Studies show that there are three types of tumor cells models- the dense model layer,
the sparse model layer and the hollow fiber tumor model. Majority of the solid tumors are of the hollow
fiber tumor model and the sparse and dense models are found on the outer portions or layers of tumor. As patient undergo repeated
high doses of vitamin C, they continue to pill of the outer layers of the tumor cells until the inner hollow fiber tumor model
is exposed. Continuous perioxidation with higher doses of vitamin C causes the hollow fiber tumor model to experience apoptosis.
They explains the cytotoxic ability of vitamin C as it relates to cancer.
Which form of
vitamin C should I use
According to Dr Tim O’Shea D.C ‘Most sources equate vitamin C with ascorbic
acid, as though they were the same thing. They're not. Ascorbic acid is an isolate, a fraction, a
distillate of naturally occurring vitamin C. In addition to ascorbic acid, vitamin C must include rutin, bioflavonoids,
Factor K, Factor J, Factor P, Tyrosinase, Ascorbinogen, and other components as shown in the figure below: In addition, mineral
co-factors must be available in proper amounts. If any of these parts are missing, there is no vitamin C, no vitamin activity.
When some of them are present, the body will draw on its own stores to make up the differences, so that the whole vitamin
may be present. Only then will vitamin activity take place, provided that all other conditions and co-factors
are present.
Ascorbic acid is described merely as the "antioxidant wrapper" portion of vitamin C; ascorbic
acid protects the functional parts of the vitamin from rapid oxidation or breakdown. (Somer p 58 "Vitamin C: A Lesson
in Keeping An Open Mind" The Nutrition Report). Vitamin C complex in fruits and vegetables consists of ascorbic acid,
flavonoids, polyphenols, catechins, rutins, enzymes and thousands of unknown alkaloids. Ascorbic acid is only an infinitesimal
part of the whole complex (The outer shell of the enzyme).
The commercial isolation of ascorbic acid eliminates the
antioxidant’s synergistic actions of the complex making it incompatible with the human biochemical organ systems. Over
90% of ascorbic acid in this country is manufactured at a facility in Nutley, New Jersey, owned by Hoffman-LaRoche, one of
the world's biggest drug manufacturers (1 800 526 0189). Here ascorbic acid is made from a process involving cornstarch
and volatile acids. Most U.S. vitamin companies then buy the bulk ascorbic acid from this single facility.
After that, marketing takes over. Each company makes its own labels, its own claims, and its own formulations, each one claiming
to have the superior form of vitamin C, even though it all came from the same place, and it's really not vitamin C at all’ (http://www.thedoctorwithin.com/vitaminC/Ascorbic-Acid-Is-Not-Vitamin-C.php) (http://www.whale.to/a/shea1.html)
Foods that contain the C vitamins are rose hips, kale, parsley, collard greens, mustard greens, cauliflower,
red cabbage, strawberries, papaya, spinach, kiwi fruit, citrus fruits, asparagus, mangos, oranges, peppers, broccoli and Brussels.
ScienceDaily (Sep. 12, 2007)
— Nearly 30 years after Nobel laureate Linus Pauling famously and controversially suggested that vitamin C supplements can prevent cancer, a team of Johns Hopkins scientists
have shown that in mice at least, vitamin C - and potentially other antioxidants - can indeed inhibit the growth of some tumors
¯ just not in the manner suggested by years of investigation.
The conventional wisdom of how antioxidants
such as vitamin C help prevent cancer growth is that they grab up volatile oxygen free radical molecules and prevent the damage
they are known to do to our delicate DNA. The Hopkins study, led by Chi Dang, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and oncology
and Johns Hopkins Family Professor in Oncology Research, unexpectedly found that the antioxidants' actual role may be to destabilize
a tumor's ability to grow under oxygen-starved conditions. Their work is detailed this week in Cancer Cell.
"Once again, this work demonstrates the irreplaceable value of letting researchers follow their scientific noses
wherever it leads them," Dang adds.
The authors do caution that while vitamin C is still essential for good health,
this study is preliminary and people should not rush out and buy bulk supplies of antioxidants as a means of cancer prevention.
The
Johns Hopkins investigators discovered the surprise antioxidant mechanism while looking at mice implanted with either human
lymphoma (a blood cancer) or human liver cancer cells. Both of these cancers produce high levels of free radicals that can
be suppressed by feeding the mice supplements of antioxidants, either vitamin C or N-acetylcysteine (NAC).
However,
when the Hopkins team examined cancer cells from cancer-implanted mice not fed the antioxidants, they noticed the absence
of any significant DNA damage. "Clearly, if DNA damage was not in play as a cause of the cancer, then whatever the antioxidants
were doing to help was also not related to DNA damage," says Ping Gao, Ph.D, lead author of the paper.
That conclusion
led Gao and Dang to suspect that some other mechanism was involved, such as a protein known to be dependent on free radicals
called HIF-1 (hypoxia-induced factor), which was discovered over a decade ago by Hopkins researcher and co-author Gregg Semenza,
M.D., Ph.D., director of the Program in Vascular Cell Engineering. Indeed, they found that while this protein was abundant
in untreated cancer cells taken from the mice, it disappeared in vitamin C-treated cells taken from similar animals.
"When
a cell lacks oxygen, HIF-1 helps it compensate," explains Dang. "HIF-1 helps an oxygen-starved cell convert sugar
to energy without using oxygen and also initiates the construction of new blood vessels to bring in a fresh oxygen supply."
The authors confirmed the importance of this "hypoxia protein" by creating cancer cells with a genetic
variant of HIF-1 that did not require free radicals to be stable. In these cells, antioxidants no longer had any cancer-fighting
power.
"...it takes much
more than logic and clear-cut demonstrations to overcome the inertia and dogma of established thought." —
Irving Stone
Irving Stone was an early thinker and writer
about vitamin C (its scientific name is ascorbic acid). He knew it would be an uphill battle to change the way the medical
profession viewed vitamin C. While most doctors accept that scurvy is a vitamin C deficiency illness, few have made the rather
humongous jump to seeing high dose intravenous vitamin C as a major player in the management of cancer.
There is actually
a wide spectrum of medical uses for vitamin C. Evidence exists documenting it as the best antiviral agent now available ...
IF used at the proper dose. Vitamin C can neutralize and eliminate
a wide range of toxins. Vitamin C will enhance host resistance, greatly augmenting the immune system's ability to neutralize
bacterial and fungal infections. Now the National Institutes of Health has published evidence demonstrating vitamin C's anti-cancer
properties. With so many medical benefits, why do so few doctors know of them?
One explanation stems from ascorbic
acid's designation as a "vitamin." Consider Dorland's Illustrated Medical
Dictionary's definition of vitamin: A general term for a number of
unrelated organic substances that occur in many foods in small amounts that are necessary in trace amounts for
the normal metabolic functioning of the body. As a vitamin, only a minuscule 60 mg of ascorbic acid is needed
to prevent the emergence of scurvy symptoms. As a medical treatment for cancer and life-threatening infections and toxic exposures,
tens of thousands of milligrams of ascorbic acid must be administered, often by the intravenous (IV) as well as the oral route.
The Center's founder, Dr. Hugh Riordan, was a true scientist who believed in the power of scientific measurement over
dogma. With the establishment of The Center in 1975, he routinely checked plasma vitamin C levels in chronically ill patients.
He found these sick patients to be consistently low in their plasma C levels. Interestingly enough, the cancer patients he
was seeing had VERY LOW vitamin C reserves. This matched scientific
literature documenting low vitamin C levels in cancer patients. Cancer cells were actively taking up vitamin C in a way that
depleted tissue reserves of C.
PET scans are commonly ordered by oncologists to evaluate their cancer patients for
metastases (cancer spread to other organs). What is actually injected into the patient at the start of the scan is radioactive
glucose. Cancer cells are anaerobic obligates, which means they
depend upon glucose as their primary source of metabolic fuel. Cancer cells employ transport mechanisms called glucose transporters
to actively pull in glucose.
In the vast majority of animals, vitamin C is synthesized from glucose in only four metabolic
steps. Hence, the molecular shape of vitamin C is remarkably similar to glucose. Cancer cells will actively transport
vitamin C into themselves, possibly because they mistake it for glucose. Another plausible explanation is that they are using
the vitamin C as an antioxidant. Regardless, the vitamin C accumulates in cancer cells.
If large amounts of vitamin
C are presented to cancer cells, large amounts will be absorbed. In these unusually large concentrations, the antioxidant
vitamin C will start behaving as a pro-oxidant as it interacts with intracellular copper and iron. This chemical interaction
produces small amounts of hydrogen peroxide.
Because cancer cells are relatively low in an intracellular anti-oxidant enzyme
called catalase, the high dose vitamin C induction of peroxide will continue to build up until it eventually lyses the cancer
cell from the inside out! This effectively makes high dose IVC a non-toxic chemotherapeutic agent that can be given in conjunction
with conventional cancer treatments. Based on the work of several vitamin C pioneers before him, Dr. Riordan was able to prove
that vitamin C was selectively toxic to cancer cells if given intravenously. This research was recently reproduced and published
by Dr. Mark Levine at the National Institutes of Health.
As feared by many oncologists, small doses may actually help
the cancer cells because small amounts of vitamin C may help the cancer cells arm themselves against the free-radical induced
damage caused by chemotherapy and radiation. Only markedly higher doses of vitamin C will selectively
build up as peroxide in the cancer cells to the point of acting in a manner similar to chemotherapy. These tumor-toxic dosages
can only be obtained by intravenous administration.
Over a span of 15 years of vitamin C research, Dr. Riordan's RECNAC
(cancer spelled backwards) research team generated 20 published papers on vitamin C and cancer. RECNAC even inspired its second
cancer research institute, known as RECNAC II, at the University of Puerto Rico. This group recently published an excellent
paper in Integrative Cancer Therapies, titled "Orthomolecular
Oncology Review: Ascorbic Acid and Cancer 25 Years Later." RECNAC data has shown that vitamin C is toxic to tumor cells
without sacrificing the performance of chemotherapy.
Intravenous vitamin C also does more than just kill cancer cells.
It boosts immunity. It can stimulate collagen formation to help the body wall off the tumor. It inhibits hyaluronidase, an
enzyme that tumors use to metastasize and invade other organs throughout the body. It induces apoptosis to help program cancer
cells into dying early. It corrects the almost universal scurvy in cancer patients. Cancer patients are tired, listless, bruise
easily, and have a poor appetite. They don't sleep well and have a low threshold for pain. This adds up to a very classic
picture of scurvy that generally goes unrecognized by their conventional physicians.
When Center cancer patients receive
IVC, they report that their pain level goes down, and that they are better able to tolerate their chemotherapy. They bounce
back quicker since the IVC reduces the toxicity of the chemotherapy and radiation without compromising their cancer cell killing
effects. IVC is complementary to oncologic care. IVC is not "either/or" - it's a good "both/and" proposition.
IVC can help cancer patients withstand the effects of their traditional therapies, heal faster, be more resilient to infection,
develop a better appetite, and remain more active overall. These things promote a better response to their cancer therapy.
IVC has been used for three decades here at The Center. There have been no serious complications, but there are a couple
of potential complications that need to be screened for. Because vitamin C enhances iron absorption, iron overload must be
ruled out. The high sodium load of IVC can create a fluid overload in a patient with congestive heart failure, renal insufficiency
or failure. We also check our patients for G6PD deficiency (an enzyme used to maintain stability of the red blood cell membranes).
Although many physicians worry that large doses of vitamin C may cause kidney stones, we have rarely seen the phenomenon,
and several huge clinical trials in the medical literature refute this misconception.
To summarize, most organisms
make their own vitamin C. When they are under stress, either by illness or injury, Mother Nature has provided them with a
means to facilitate healing: they synthesize more ascorbic acid. As a result, they are in less pain, they remain active, they
can sleep, and they have a better appetite: all functions which promote healing.
Dr. Riordan once said that here at
The Center, we don't treat cancer... we treat people who happen to have cancer. IVC is a tool that allows our Center physicians
to harness a healing mechanism that our human ancestors lost long ago: the ability to dramatically increase tissue levels
of vitamin C. Research shows that the astonishingly high levels achievable only by IVC not only help fight the risk of infection
and the pain of metastases, they actually aid in the defeat of the cancer cells themselves, through a very elegant mechanism
that does no harm to healthy cells. It's a discovery that the medical world is only beginning to discover.
