Curing Cancer Network newsletter for October 2024
19 November 2024
Our Curing Cancer Network newsletter for October 2024 is posted here and at https://www.pathologyoutlines.com/ccnnewsletter.html . Older newsletters have links at the bottom of this page.
Some highlights:
Our cancer precursor project has identified 1218 distinct human malignancies (the number changes slightly over time as we review each malignancy). Cancer precursors are not universal, as was previously thought. Even using our broader definition, only 14% of malignancies have a precursor.
We have updated the American Code Against Cancer.
Cancer researchers are making progress in developing liquid biopsies in childhood tumors to complement or serve as alternatives to tissue biopsies.
More at https://www.pathologyoutlines.com/ccnnewsletter.html
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American Code Against Cancer (how you can prevent cancer)
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"Our cancer precursor project has identified 1218 distinct human malignancies"
Nat, are you familiar with the protocol of Thomas Seyfried, professor at Boston College, to treat cancer by starving it to death? (If not, Seyfried has a multitude of lectures available on YouTube going into great detail.) Cancer mitochondria are damaged and have lost the ability to respire, so they have fallen back on the ancient metabolism of fermentation. This is much less productive than respiration, so cancer cells require about 50 times more glucose than healthy cells to produce enough ATP to survive. The key to Seyfried's protocol might be said to be the fact that respiring cells can burn ketones as well as glucose (actually, more cleanly than glucose: less ROS) while cells limited to fermenting cannot, so this provides a clear discriminator between cells to kill and cells to protect.
Seyfried builds upon the theory of Nobel Prize winning chemist, Otto Warburg, that the root of cancer lies in mitochondrial dysfunction forcing the damaged cells to ferment. The genetic mutations are a downstream effect: not the cause. (Unfortunately, in falling back on fermentation to survive, the cells lose their "sociability": it's "ever man for himself".) Hence my reason for quoting you above: chasing the multitude of variable genetic mutations consequent to the mitochondrial dysfunction is to go down a primarily sterile rabbit-hole. What Warburg did not know was that cells with damaged mitochondria can ferment glutamine, the most abundant amino acid in the body, as well as glucose, so they have two available food sources. His not knowing this created downstream facts that are the reason his theory was set aside.
Seyfried's protocol is centered on a rigorous ketogenic diet to reduce the GKI (glucose ketone index), the ratio of serum glucose to serum ketones to a value of 1. Unlike glucose, the body unfortunately has no alternative to glutamine, so simply minimizing it is not workable. So he employs a "press pulse" strategy of periodically administering a glutamine analog to temporarily interfere with cellular ingestion of glutamine. Being temporary it does not harm healthy cells, but it works to kill the starving cancer cells. Another pulse component is hyperbaric oxygen therapy, flooding the body with oxygen: fine for the healthy cells but toxic for the cancer cells. Minimal amounts of conventional Standard Of Care (SOC) components--chemo, radiation, and surgery-- are held off until the cancer is minimized or dead. Surgery may be employed to debulk the cancer remains. The SOC damage (broken cells) creates a feast of glucose for the cancer cells. Feasting them instead of starving them is a highly questionable strategy.
Unfortunately "mainstream" medicine--the Institutes, the medical schools, and big pharma (with no interest in losing their cancer industry)--are locked into their long held dogma that cancer is primarily a genetic disorder. The evidence supports Seyfried, but turning the medical bureaucracy is a slow process. Meanwhile millions die.