Live Immune

 

There are many reports being released now that include very significant findings in terms of the effects, benefits, and losses we face when it comes to antioxidants. Long touted as the means to prevent cancer, stay healthy, and never catch-a-cold remedies, antioxidants come with  very complex biochemical names, as well as some very complex side-effects, and problems.

Through my journey with cancer I have discovered many different ranges, clasess, and strengths of antioxidant, and one must VERY careful and selective about what to put in your mouth, let alone in your veins.

Vitamin C was reportedly the most powerful antioxidant known, begetting fame and notariety by Nobel scholar and chemist, Linus Pauling. In some select cases, intravenous vitamin C (acorbic acid) has been useful to a very select few individuals. Taking vitamin C by mouth will not give you the same sort of distribution within your body as intravenous (I.V.), since drugs administered I.V. are 100% available to almost all tissues; in medical circles this is referred to as bioavailability. Oral bioavailability of vitamin C reaches its peak at 200mg orally, or around 500mg oraly if you take Ester-C (a slightly different type of vitamin C that has been chemically altered to be better-absorbed). If you take more than this orally, congratulations, you will either experience diarrhea, or will have wasted the rest of the vitamin C as all your body will be doing with the rest of the vitamin C is filtering it out via your kidneys.

In the world of oncology/cancer, taking high dose vitamin C (ascorbate) is extremely dangerous! Don’t! In a systematic review of medical and laboratory medicine in 2007, I.V. ascorbate over 10mMol concentrations given in three different cancer cell lines caused cancer to grow by as much as 333%! The ascorbate causes release of hydrogen peroxide in the cancer cells in successful cases, however, like any other cell or living entity, cancer cells also want to live and will adapt any way the can to accomplish this. The cells change their chemical structure quite rapidly to prevent the ascorbate from continuing to release hydrogen peroxide. This is achieved through modification of surface proteins on the cancer cells called MMP1, MMP2 and TGF-b (matrix metalloproteinases 1 & 2, and transforming Growth Factor beta). Basically these altered proteins rearrange their stuctures therein becoming impervious to the effects of I.V. ascorbate. it is basically like giving cancer cells rubber a suit of armour and a get-out-of-jail-free card. 

The following news report was just recently issued through Reuters from Journal of the National Cancer Institute, January 7, 2009:     

In the large Women’s Antioxidant Cardiovascular Study, participants who took beta carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E, or a combination of supplements had no significant reductions in their risk of cancer.

The clinical trial, which involved 7,627 women who were followed for an average of 9.4 years, was conducted by Dr. Jennifer Lin and colleagues at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and is published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The patients were randomly assigned to a placebo group, or to 500 mg ascorbic acid daily, 600 IU alpha-tocopherol every other day or 50 mg beta-carotene every other day. Overall, 624 women developed invasive cancers and 176 died from their disease.

Compared with women who took placebo, the relative risk of developing cancer was almost identical in the vitamin C group, the vitamin E group and the beta carotene group.

There was also little difference of dying from cancer in any of the groups. The risk increased by 28 percent in women who took vitamin C, decreased by 13 percent in those who took vitamin E, and decreased by 16 percent in the beta carotene group.

“We observed no overall associations of the three antioxidant supplements, taken singly or combined, with total cancer incidence or mortality. Duration of supplementation also did not appear to alter the associations of these supplements with risk of cancer or mortality due to cancer,” Lin and her colleagues write.

The findings “suggest that there are no overall benefits or risks of vitamins C and E and beta carotene supplementation in the primary prevention of total cancer incidence or cancer mortality,” the authors conclude.

Dr. Demetrius Albanes of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland notes in an editorial that despite the lack of overall benefits with antioxidants, two of the study’s findings “deserve additional mention.” First, there was a trend toward protection against colorectal cancer with vitamin E supplementation. Second, there was an elevated lung cancer risk in the women who took beta carotene supplements.

Albanes adds that clinical trials with negative results or those with outcomes that are unexpected are not failures; “they have and will continue to shed light on the causes of cancer and help us discover the means for its prevention.

 

Continue to live healthy, informed, safe and self-aware lives. Live immune.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 1st, 2009 at 17:19 and is filed under General Jazz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.