Month: November 2015

VITAMIN K2

Vitamin K2, D and Calcium

Vitamin K is a fat-soluble vitamin known for the important role it plays in blood clotting. However, there are different kinds of vitamin K, and they are completely different.

The health benefits of vitamin K2 go far beyond blood clotting, which is done by vitamin K1, and vitamin K2 also works in partnership with a number of other nutrients, including calcium and vitamin D.

The importance of Vitamin K2?

Vitamin K is actually a group of fat-soluble vitamins. Of the two main ones, K1 and K2, the one receiving the most attention is K1, which is found in green leafy vegetables and is very easy to get through your diet. This lack of distinction has created a lot of confusion, and it’s one of the reasons why vitamin K2 has been overlooked for so long.

The three types of vitamin K are:

  1. Vitamin K1,  is found naturally in plants, especially green vegetables; K1 goes directly to your liver and helps you maintain healthy blood clotting
  2. Vitamin K2,  is made by the bacteria that line your gastrointestinal tract; K2 goes straight to your blood vessel walls, bones, and tissues other than your liver
  3. Vitamin K3, is a synthetic form. It’s important to note that toxicity has occurred in infants injected with this synthetic vitamin K3

It also plays a role in removing calcium from areas where it shouldn’t be, such as in your arteries and soft tissues.

“K2 is really critical for keeping your bones strong and your arteries clear,”

Vitamin K2 can be broken into two additional categories, called:

  1. MK-4 (menaquinone-4), a short-chain form of vitamin K2 found in butter, egg yolks, and animal-based foods
  2. MK-7 (menaquinone-7), longer-chain forms found in fermented foods. There’s a variety of these long-chain forms but the most common one is MK-7. This is the one you’ll want to look for in supplements, because in a supplement form, the MK-4 products are actually synthetic. They are not derived from natural food products containing MK-4.

Vitamin K1 exclusively participates in blood clotting — that’s its sole purpose.

K2 on the other hand comes from a whole different set of food sources, and its biological role is to help move calcium into the proper areas in your body, such as your bones and teeth.

The MK-7 – these long-chain, natural bacterial-derived vitamin K2 – is from a fermentation process, which offers a number of health advantages:

  1. It stays in your body longer, and
  2. It has a longer half-life, which means you can just take it once a day in very convenient dosing

How Much Vitamin K2 Do You Need?

The optimal amounts of vitamin K2 are still under investigation, but it seems likely that 180 to 200 micrograms of vitamin K2 should be enough to activate your body’s K2-dependent proteins to shuttle the calcium where it needs to be, and remove it from the places where it shouldn’t.

When we’re lacking K2, we’re at much greater risk for osteoporosis, heart disease, and cancer. And these are three concerns that used to be relatively rare. Over the last 100 years, as we’ve changed the way we produced our food and the way we eat, they have become very common.

Researchers are also looking into other health benefits. For example, one recent study published in the journal Modern Rheumatologyfound that vitamin K2 has the potential to improve disease activity besides osteoporosis in those with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Another, published in the journal Science, found that vitamin K2 serves as a mitochondrial electron carrier, thereby helping maintain normal ATP production in mitochondrial dysfunction, such as that found in Parkinson’s Disease.

The Interplay Between Vitamin K2, Vitamin D, and Calcium

Vitamin D is a critical nutrient for optimal health and is best obtained from sun exposure. However, many are taking oral vitamin D, which may become problematic unless you’re also getting sufficient amounts of vitamin K2.

When you take vitamin D, your body creates more of these vitamin K2-dependent proteins, the proteins that will move the calcium around. They have a lot of potential health benefits. But until the K2 comes in to activate those proteins, those benefits aren’t realized. So, really, if you’re taking vitamin D, you’re creating an increased demand for K2. And vitamin D and K2 work together to strengthen your bones and improve your heart health.

… For so long, we’ve been told to take calcium for osteoporosis… and vitamin D, which we know is helpful. But then, more studies are coming out showing that increased calcium intake is causing more heart attacks and strokes. That created a lot of confusion around whether calcium is safe or not. But that’s the wrong question to be asking, because we’ll never properly understand the health benefits of calcium or vitamin D, unless we take into consideration K2. That’s what keeps the calcium in its right place.

IMPORTANT: If You Take Vitamin D, You Need K2

This is a really crucial point: If you opt for oral vitamin D, you need to also consume in your food or take supplemental vitamin K2.

There are so many people on the vitamin-D-mega-dose bandwagon, taking more and more of vitamin D. And it could absolutely be causing harm if you are lacking the K2 to complete the job to get the calcium where it’s supposed to be,.

About 150-200 micrograms of K2 will meet the need for the “average” healthy person.

The good news is that vitamin K2 has no toxicity. No toxic effects have ever been demonstrated in the medical literature.

If You Need Calcium, Aim for Calcium-Rich Foods First

For those who are calcium deficient,  look to food sources high in calcium, before opting for a supplement. This is because many high calcium foods also contain naturally high amounts of vitamin K2!

Nature cleverly gives us these two nutrients in combination, so they work optimally. Good sources of calcium include dairy, especially cheeses, and vegetables, although veggies aren’t high in K2.

Additionally, magnesium is far more important than calcium if you are going to consider supplementing. Magnesium will also help keep calcium in the cell to do its job far better.

If you do chose to supplement with calcium, for whatever reason, it’s important to maintain the proper balance between your intake of calcium and other nutrients such as:

  • Vitamin K2
  • Vitamin D
  • Magnesium

The Importance of Magnesium

Magnesium is another important player to allow for proper function of calcium. As with vitamin D and K2, magnesium deficiency is also common, and when you are lacking in magnesium and take calcium, you may exacerbate the situation.

Vitamin K2 and magnesium complement each other, as magnesium helps lower blood pressure, which is an important component of heart disease.

Dietary sources of magnesium include sea vegetables, such as kelp, dulse, and nori. Few people eat these on a regular basis however, if at all. Vegetables can also be a good source, along with whole grains. However, grains MUST be prepared properly to remove phytates and anti-nutrients that can otherwise block your absorption of magnesium.

How Can You Tell if You’re Lacking in Vitamin K2?

There’s no way to test for vitamin K2 deficiency. But by assessing your diet and lifestyle, you can get an idea of whether or not you may be lacking in this critical nutrient. If you have any of the following health conditions, you’re likely deficient in vitamin K2 as they are all connected to K2:

  • Do you have osteoporosis?
  • Do you have heart disease?
  • Do you have diabetes?

If you do not have any of those health conditions, but do NOT regularly eat high amounts of the following foods, then your likelihood of being vitamin K2 deficient is still very high:

  • Grass-fed organic animal products (i.e. eggs, butter, dairy)
  • Certain fermented foods such as natto, or vegetables fermented using a starter culture of vitamin K2-producing bacteria. Please note that most fermented vegetables are not really high in vitamin K2 and come in at about 50 mcg per serving. However, if specific starter cultures are used they can have ten times as much, or 500 mcg per serving.
  • Goose liver pâté
  • Certain cheeses such as Brie and Gouda (these two are particularly high in K2, containing about 75 mcg per ounce)

Fermented vegetables, which are one of my new passions, primarily for supplying beneficial bacteria back into our gut, can be a great source of vitamin K if you ferment your own using the proper starter culture.

Note that not every strain of bacteria makes K2. For example, most yoghurts have almost no vitamin K2. Certain types of cheeses are very high in K2, and others are not. It really depends on the specific bacteria. You can’t assume that any fermented food will be high in K2.

 

VITAMIN D AND CANCER

Vitamin D “Enormous potential to beat cancer”

The last ten years has seen a huge body of research evidence showing that:

* Vitamin D is an important factor in cancer prevention.

* Vitamin D activates the immune system to work against rogue cells.

* Vitamin D has the ability to normalise and correct cancer cells.

So it boosts the immune system, could prevent cancer, AND (according to several research studies) may even help beat it.

Furthermore, it seems to play an important role in preventing illness!

Vitamin D

* Research in 2012 in Cancer Causes and Control presented findings that former/never smokers were 44 per cent less likely to die from lung cancer if they had blood levels of vitamin D above 44nmo/litre. That applied to whether or not they had cancer – it seems to prevent, and reduce deaths.

* In 2013, researchers from St Louis University showed that women with a BRCA1 mutation are more likely to develop an aggressive breast cancer but vitamin D can block this pathway. BRCA1 is not just behind breast cancer but other cancers too like some prostate cancer.

* Another 2013 study,  in the Journal of Cellular Biology showed that vitamin D blocks cathapsin L which makes cells grow uncontrollably in cancers.

 Vitamin D works like a hormone

Vitamin D could be an important ingredient in any anti-cancer package.

It comes from sunshine.

A week lying on a beach will provide about 70,000 International Units, or I.U.s.

5,000 IU’s is the daily recommended level for people with cancer. Vitamin D may sound like a vitamin, but it acts more like a hormone with receptor sites on healthy cells and even more on cancer cells.   Three of the areas in which it acts are:

  1. Low Vitamin D levels are linked with higher rates of cancer

The Boston Medical School has completed a great many research studies on vitamin D. Their Professor Hollick quotes, “If women obtained adequate levels of vitamin D there would be 25 per cent less deaths from breast cancer.

Hollick is not alone in stressing the importance for women and breast cancer.  St Georges Hospital in London calculated from their studies that women with low levels of vitamin D in their breast tissue have three and a half times greater risk of breast cancer.

  1. Immune booster

When it comes to fighting cancer, there seems little doubt about the virtues of Vit D. Many experts believe it is more like a hormone having receptor sites on both the cell and nuclear membranes – especially in cancer cells! According to research from the University of Copenhagen in 2010, when T-lymphocytes of the immune system come across a pathogen, the first thing they do is bind to a vitamin D molecule to ´activate´ themselves.

Recent studies suggest that the action of vitamin D is enhanced by vitamin K.

Unfortunately,most adults are increasingly short of both D and K vitamins.

  1. A Natural Cancer Cure?

Research published in the Journal of Cell Biology November 17, 2008; 183(4):697-710 has shown that vitamin D can adjust almost everything in the cancer cell, from its genetic messaging to its cytoskeleton. It can switch genes on and off, and it can reduce cell division, and it can calm the cancer cells so that they settle rather than spread. It seems vitamin D can actually return a cancer cell to a normal and healthy state. One pathway seems to control everything.

There is more than enough research to be clear that vitamin D could help prevent cancer.

From the latest studies, it is increasingly clear that every cancer patient should be having a daily half hour in the sunshine, or supplementing with Vitamin D.

The problem is: The sunshine factor “When it comes to vitamin D, are you getting enough?”

Cancer charities and cancer bodies continually deliver the message that  sunshine is bad for you and that sunshine cause skin cancer, and even melanoma?

 There are several studies which show over 90 per cent of people with melanoma are deficient in vitamin D; and others which show that people who have regular exposure to sunshine develop LESS cancers! Furthermore, 2011 research showed half of melanoma is found in locations not exposed to the sun.

Vitamin that cuts risk of cancer

Two studies in the USA showed that women with the highest levels of vitamin D were up to 50 per cent less likely to develop breast cancer. One study involved St. Georges Hospital Medical School in London and US researchers at Harvard and University of California; the other was carried out by Canadian researchers at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. Both were presented at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Washington. The doctors in the research concluded, “Women with high exposure to the sun as teenagers may be protected against breast cancer in later life, and Boosting levels of vitamin D could be beneficial at a time when breast cells are developing.”

New research draws some interesting conclusions:

  • Moores Cancer Centre at UCSD, San Diego concluded from a mega study of previous research that up to half the cases of breast cancer, and two thirds of the cases of rectal cancer in the USA could have been prevented if people had had adequate blood levels of vitamin D.

– The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology reviewed two studies concluding that women with the highest blood levels had the lowest risk of breast cancer 15 to 30 minutes in the sun every day, or 2000 IUs of supplement were recommended. One study showed that the lower blood levels of vitamin D, the more dense (and dangerous) the breast tissue.

What if you already have cancer?

Research published in the Journal of Cell Biology November 17, 2008; 183(4):697-710 has shown that vitamin D can adjust almost everything in the cancer cell and return it to the normal, healthy state. Another study has shown that vitamin D can bind to mutated cancer cell receptor sites and cause cell death.

Additionally:

  • Researchers at the Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health have concluded that good levels of vitamin D in the body may help people with early stage lung cancer survive longer after surgery. Patients who had surgery in the sunny summer months where vitamin D levels are higher were more than twice as likely to be alive 5 years after surgery compared with those with low vitamin D levels having winter time surgery.

Dr David Christiani said the survival differences were dramatic; the highest levels of vitamin D saw 72 per cent 5- year survivals compared with just 29 per cent for people with the lowest levels.

  • A study in September 2008, led by Pamela Goodwin, MD, Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, research concluded that women with vitamin D deficiency at the time of breast cancer diagnosis were 94 per cent more likely to experience cancer spread and 73 per cent more likely to die over the next 10 years compared to women with adequate vitamin D levels.
  • Breast cancer cells have been shown to have vitamin D receptor sites on their surface. Since women who have had breast cancer in one breast are clearly interested in preventing breast cancer in the other, supplementation of vitamin D seems an essential part of their anti-cancer programme.

Vitamin D supplementation is being used as part of breast cancer treatment programmes in some US hospitals; it is being used in conjunction with radiotherapy in others.

What is becoming clear in all the recent scientific studies on vitamin D is that:

  • A deficiency plays a crucial role in increased risk of cancer and a number of other illnesses
  • Most people in our the Western world are deficient. This is hardly surprising as they may live in colder, rainier climates with little winter sun; they may live out of the sun – watching TV indoors and working in offices; they may even refrain from enjoying sunshine because several major charities have warned them against sunshine!
  • You can only obtain reasonable quantities of this vitamin through exposure to sunshine; a far lesser amount may be obtained through consuming oily fish. After that, other foods contribute very little. So the third option is to take supplements!

First Discoveries

In 1919 Sir Edward Mellanby was working indoors with dogs and horses during the winter and concluded that if they didn’t get sunlight they developed bone disorders. He concluded that the essential action of fats preventing these problems was due to a vitamin; and that cod liver oil was a strong preventative agent

The chemical structure of this vitamin, which he named factor X, was identified in the 1930s by Professor A Windaus. And thus vitamin D came about. Bone disorders had also been noted in humans – typically rickets in children.

Vitamin D And Bones

Vitamin D is essential for maintaining bone density and preventing osteoporosis as it helps the absorption of the bone-building materials calcium and phosphorus. In this action it is helped by magnesium.

Vitamin D and cortisol (the stress hormone) have recently been shown in the USA to be the crucial determinants in osteoporosis. Not oestrogen.

Cortisol can bind with receptor sites on bone cells normally used for natural progesterone (not natural oestrogen) and this weakens bone structure. Apart from taking HRT many doctors will advise more dairy. Dairy foods provide high levels of blood calcium (and a tiny amount of vitamin D). However this calcium surge actually depresses vitamin D levels and the bodys ability to absorb magnesium. Catch 22. Dairy gives you high blood calcium, but low bone calcium.

Much work has been done on the effect of vitamin D with bones. For example, in 1991 Tufts University, Boston showed that vitamin D was essential for improving bone density and supplementation was important in the winter months. This work was confirmed in Lyon, France in 1992 where a group taking 800 IUs of vitamin D and 1.2 gms of calcium per day had 43 per cent fewer hip fractures and 32 per cent fewer other, non-vertebral fractures. So for osteoporosis think vitamin D and a healthy intake of greens, rather than dairy and HRT supplements!

Sources of Vitamin D

Sunlight on our skin is now thought to be the main source of vitamin D. Night shift workers have lowered blood levels of vitamin D. Heavily tanned, or black people have real problems making vitamin D through the effect of sunlight in their skin. On the other hand, people with Celtic, or Type I skin (ginger hair/ freckles/ burn easily but dont tan), could be said to have skin designed to pick up on any stray bit of UV light in their northerly natural habitat. These days, though, they do tend to avoid the sun, for good reasons, but this can land them with a vitamin D shortage.

Whilst a little is found in dairy foods, the major food source is fish liver oils (omega-3 fish oil supplements dont contain much, though). Cod liver oil is unfortunately a poor source of vitamin D compared to halibut liver oil, while most of the top brands actually contain an added D supplement. Unfortunately, in order to get a useful dose of vitamin D from fish liver oil, you would simultaneously be getting an even bigger dose of vitamin A, which then can interfere with the beneficial effect of vitamin D on bone density – catch 22. (Really this is a biological, practical system of checks and balances. But its thrown out of balance by our near-universal vitamin D deficiency).

Kidney or liver disease (and alcohol) depress vitamin D levels; indeed anything that interferes with the digestion and absorption of oils and fats will – including any form of diarrhoea, diseases such as coeliac and Crohns, and pale bowel motions for whatever reason.

So also do antacids and acid-inhibitors like Zantac, cholesterol-lowering drugs (e.g. statins), mineral oils, anticonvulsants and toxic chemicals in the environment (e.g. smog).

Recommended Daily Allowance

On a sunny summer day, a young adult exposing a fair amount of skin for 15-30 minutes will manufacture about 20,000 IUs of vitamin D; this goes down with age to 10,000 IUs or less.

The best supplementation to take is vitamin D3. D3 provides vitamin D in its most usable form.

Most anticancer experts suggest people with cancer ensure that they are getting at least 2,500 IUs a day, and ideally 4,000 IUs..

What Is The Situation With Skin Cancer?

Although excess and burning sunshine can give rise to skin cancer, the charities that scare people against sunshine are doing the public a huge and dangerous dis-service.

The University of New Mexico (Journal of Nat Cancer Institute 2005, 97) has shown that its research findings conclude people with high exposure to the sun are less likely to die from melanomas. They conclude vitamin D might be the protecting factor.

Increasing levels of skin cancer and melanoma are largely due to increasing levels of  chemicals in the body and particularly on the skin, together with low levels of protective, antioxidant nutrients such as vitamins C, E, and omega-3 oils and minerals.

One research study showed that with identical women, the one on the oestrogenic contraceptive pill had twice the risk of developing melanoma. Some sun screens have had chemical ingredients banned in Scandanavia as they mimic the action of oestrogen on the skin. And melanoma is driven by oestrogen, not simply excess sun light.

Conversely, very recent evidence indicates that high blood levels of vitamin D actually help to prevent burning by speeding up tanning of the skin!

It is quite clear that everyone who is unable to achieve regular, gentle sun exposure would be well advised to supplement with a vitamin D3 supplement, at a dose of at least 400 IUs for prevention and 2,500 IUs to 4,000 IUs if they already have cancer.

There appear to be no reported contraindications with cancer drugs or cancer treatments in fact, exactly the opposite seems true.

Anybody with cancer, or at high risk of developing it, will do themselves no harm with a daily dose of up to 10,000 IUs, and may very well help themselves greatly. Some hospitals have been using vitamin D supplementation with breast cancer patients, and/or during radiotherapy, and/or as a part of a general programme of cancer therapy.

Vitamin D, are you getting enough?

If you cannot get adequate levels of daily sunshine nor eat large amounts of oily fish, then you might think seriously about Vitamin D supplements as part of your disease- prevention thinking. And if you want to supplement make sure it is the best, naturally-sourced supplement you can find.

Oxygen and Cancer

Oxygen and Cancer

We can live a long time without food, a couple of days without drinking, but life without breath is measured in minutes. Something so essential deserves our full attention but rarely gets it unless you are a yoga practitioner.

The makeup of the human body is largely composed oxygen (O2) water (H2O), carbon, bicarbonate and CO2 (Oxygen’s necessary twin gas), magnesium, sulphur and then a host of other important substances like iodine and selenium and all the basic amino acids etc. We need all the basic building blocks of life and even the absence of just one vitamin can make us sick.

We need carbon and oxygen every moment of everyday or we will die.  Our lives are fed second to second from the twin gases of O2 and CO2.

The prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the use of oxygen in normal body cells by fermentation of sugar/glucose.

Oxygen levels are sensitive to many influences:

  • Toxicity,
  • Emotional stress,
  • Physical trauma,
  • Infections,
  • Reduction of atmospheric oxygen,
  • Nutritional status,
  • Lack of exercise,
  • Improper breathing

All of which will affect the oxygen levels in our bodies.

Any element that threatens the oxygen carrying capacity of the human body will promote cancer growth.

Likewise any therapy that improves the oxygen function can be expected to enhance the body’s defences against cancer.

In order for cancer to ‘establish’ a foothold in the body it has to be deprived of oxygen and become acidic.

If these two conditions can be reversed cancer could theoretically, not only be slowed down, but it could actually be overturned.

Oxygen is one of the sources of health. Oxygen is essential to the human body, extending effects beyond breathing.

For example,not enough oxygen to the brain is the main cause of memory loss, inability to find the right words, getting words mixed up and not being able to speak in sentences.

In the 1920s Dr Otto Warburg carried out a great deal of work on cancer’s basic mechanism and was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1932. Warburg’s work clearly demonstrated that cancer is, fundamentally, a relatively simple disease where cell oxygen levels fall to a level sufficiently low enough for the cell to change in nature. Without a dependable supply of oxygen, the cells in our bodies cannot function properly. Nutrients in our diets must have oxygen present to convert their potential energy into usable energy. In order for new cells to be formed, hundreds of amino acids must link together using oxygen as the source of their energy.

All normal body cells meet their energy needs by respiration of oxygen, whereas cancer cells meet their energy needs in great part by fermentation in an acidic, anaerobic environment.

Poor oxygenation comes from a build-up of carcinogens and other toxins within and around cells, which blocks and then damages the cellular oxygen respiration mechanism. As more acid wastes back up, a chronically over acidic body pH corrodes body tissue.

Cancer needs anaerobic – airless – conditions to grow and spread.

In 1966, after his efforts had been ignored by the cancer industry for over thirty years, Warburg addressed a group of fellow Nobel Laureates, reiterating his views and concluded, “Nobody today can say that one does not know what cancer and its prime cause be. On the contrary, there is no disease whose prime cause is better known.”

Dr Warburg’s work has never been refuted but it certainly has been avoided by orthodox oncology.

Medical scientists are excited to have uncovered what they thought was a brand new approach to cancer treatment. Because they never paid Warburg any attention they thought that by increasing an oxygen supply to tumour cells they would help them grow. But actually by oxygenating the cell they found the opposite and were able to do a better job of killing them.

A healthy cell breathes oxygen for energy. A cancer cell shuns oxygen and ferments sugar instead for its energy requirements.

Lack of oxygen is followed by fermentation of sugar in cells, which then leads to the primary condition upon which cancer, infectious and inflammatory processes feed.

Viruses are “anaerobic” creatures which thrive in the absence of oxygen. Yeast, mould and fungus live in an anaerobic environment. Most strains of harmful bacteria (and cancer cells) are anaerobic and are not comfortable in the presence of higher oxygen levels so doctors will find cancer cells easier to kill when oxygen levels are increased.

What they did not guess at is that O2 levels can be dramatically increased by the simple administration of sodium bicarbonate. Increasing Co2 levels through the use of sodium bicarbonate is good in cancer treatment because bicarbonate drives up CO2 levels in the blood, which increases oxygenation to the cells.

Sodium bicarbonate is safe when taken with appropriate caution and knowledge, extremely inexpensive and effective when it comes to reducing cancer tissues. It’s an irresistible chemical, cyanide to cancer cells for it hits the cancer cells with a shock wave of alkalinity, which allows much more oxygen into the cancer cells than they can tolerate. Cancer cells do not survive well in the presence of higher levels of oxygen.

Oncologist Dr. Tullio Simoncini, the founder of the bicarbonate approach to cancer, believes that only several types of cancer can be approached through oral application of bicarbonate. He suggests expensive and hard to get (meaning hardly any physician will do them in any country) medical procedures (placement of catheters) and IVs to get the bicarbonate as close to the tumours as possible.

Dr. Simoncini never realized that when bicarbonate is taken orally the full body pH is shifted dramatically higher affecting all tissues including the brain and bones. He does not understand that oral administration is actually a superior method for all cancers because higher pH and oxygen levels can be maintained 24 hours a day constantly wearing down tumours and individual cancer cells wherever they might be. The different in costs between oral and transdermal dosing with bicarbonate and catheters and IVs is enormous with the oral weighing in at pennies a day. That alone can make the difference between life and death for millions of people who could not get and cannot afford expensive treatments.

Just as there are many ways to skin a cat there are many important ways to approach cancer and the task of increasing O2 to all the bodies’ tissues. Other doctors have concentrated on :

  • hydrogen peroxide,
  • ozone
  • hyperbaric oxygen chambers.
  • exercise,
  • proper breathing (which is very important) and
  • magnesium supplements

M.S.M. (Methylsulfonylmethane)

M.S.M. (Methylsulfonylmethane)

SUMMARY

  • The clinical use of sulphur as an adjunct in our diet is becoming progressively more recognized as an important tool for optimizing health. MSM is already well-known for its joint health benefits, but may also be helpful for other conditions related to chronic inflammation and damage due to oxidation
  • MSM, which is a metabolite of DMSO. MSM is approved for use in humans whereas DMSO is not, and primarily impacts your health by reducing inflammation. It’s widely used as a supplement for arthritic conditions. Like DMSO, MSM also appears to improve cell wall permeability, so it can be used to help deliver other active ingredients
  • MSM may be providing a missing link for optimal health, which appears to be related to sulphur. MSM is 34 percent sulphur by weight, but it is more than just a simple sulphur donor. It also affects sulphur metabolism in the human body, although it’s still not entirely clear how
  • Sulphur also plays a critical role in detoxification, as it is part of one of the most important antioxidants that your body produces: glutathione. Without sulphur, glutathione cannot work
  • Toxicity studies have shown that MSM is extremely safe and can be taken at very high doses. Even if you have a very rich diet full of raw vegetables and MSM-rich foods, you can still supplement and not hit that toxicity level. Clinical research studies have found that the effective amounts range from about 1.5 grams to 6 grams

***************************************************************************

The clinical use of sulphur as an addition in our diet is becoming recognized as an important tool for health.

Certainly, diet is the primary tool for reducing your risk for chronic degenerative diseases. But the practical question becomes, how do you obtain sulphur from food grown in sulphur depleted soils?

The nutrient MSM (methylsulfonylmethane) is a naturally occurring sulphur compound found in us all. MSM is already well-known for its joint health benefits, but it may be important for a whole host of other reasons as well.

MSM is a metabolite of DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide, an organo-sulphur compound), but DMSO is approved for use in veterinary medicine only, not in humans.

Are the Health Benefits of MSM Related to Sulphur?

Therapeutic impact of DMSO

  • supports soft tissues,
  • helps with muscle soreness and
  • soft-tissue injury.
  • benefits lung function.
  • cryogenic preservation of tissues
  • preserves organs ready for transplantation

MSM, which is a metabolite of DMSO, and approved for use in humans, primarily impacts your health by reducing inflammation. It’s widely used as a supplement for arthritic conditions. Like DMSO, MSM also appears to improve cell wall permeability, so it can be used to help deliver other active ingredients. Perhaps most important, MSM helps protect against oxidative damage.

Within the last two years, at least four human clinical trials have been conducted on MSM and its ability to help with exercise recovery, and muscle injuries like delayed onset muscle stiffness or soreness (DOMS) and large muscle injuries like that from a heart attack—all of which is related to oxidative stress and subsequent cellular damage.

The Importance of Sulphur

MSM is 34 percent sulphur by weight and it affects sulphur metabolism in the human body, although it’s still not entirely clear how.

Sulphur is just now becoming more widely appreciated as a really critical nutrient, without which many other things don’t work properly, and most people are probably not getting enough sulphur from their diet anymore.

For example, sulphur plays a critical role in detoxification, and also in inflammatory conditions. For detoxification, sulphur is part of one of the most important antioxidants that your body produces: glutathione.

Without sulphur, glutathione cannot work.

MSM Improves Your Body’s Ability to Make its Own Antioxidants

Sulphur plays an important role in the production of glutathione—one of the most important antioxidants that your body produces.

Glutathione also serves important functions for detoxification. Without sulphur, glutathione cannot work. So, while not an antioxidant by itself, part of MSM’s action is to improve your body’s ability to make its own antioxidants.

Sulphur-Rich Foods

Ideally, you’d be best off getting your sulphur needs from the foods you eat. However, this can be a bit of a challenge these days. There’s been a move away from many traditional foods that have been the big sources of sulphur, like collagen or keratin, which we just don’t eat much nowadays.

You can perhaps get enough if you cook down bones from organically raised animals into bone broth and drink the broth regularly (or use for soups and stews).

The connective tissues are sulphur-rich, and when you slow-cook the bones, you dissolve these nutrients out of the bone and into the water.

“MSM is in almost all raw foods. It’s in leafy green vegetables. Interestingly enough, there’s MSM in beer and coffee. Actually, it’s been identified as one of the main flavouring constituent in port wines… raw milk has the highest naturally occurring content of MSM.” Dr Benjamin

One caveat is cooking and pasteurization. While MSM is stable to extremes of pH and temperature, it volatilizes and turns to gas very easily. It’s also very water soluble. So when cooked at high temperatures, it simply wafts off in the steam. That’s why it’s easily removed during cooking and processing.

Pasteurization cuts the MSM content by approximately 50 percent. So, in order to ensure you’re getting the most MSM from any food, it must be either raw or as minimally processed as possible.

Toxicity and Dosage Recommendations

Toxicity studies have shown that MSM is extremely safe and can be taken at very, very high doses. Even if you have a very rich diet full of raw vegetables and MSM-rich foods, you can still supplement and not hit that toxicity level. Clinical research studies have found that the effective amounts range from about 1.5 grams to 6 grams, although at higher doses, potential side effects include:

  • Intestinal discomfort
  • Swelling of the ankles
  • Mild skin rashes

These are likely detoxifying effects that can typically be mitigated or minimized by cutting back on the initial dosage, and slowly working your way up. In that case, you might want to start out with half a gram (500 milligrams) for a couple of weeks and then slowly increase until you get up to the desired dose.

MSM is approved for use in fortified food and beverage and gram quantities may be consumed when consuming raw diet and approved MSM fortified foods. The amount from the fortified foods that have been approved would be between 1.9 to 3.8 grams per day. For comparison, intake of MSM from natural sources such as fruits and vegetables would be in the milligram per day range of about 2.3 to 5.6 mg/day.

L-ARGININE and CANCER

L-Arginine & Cancer

Researchers around the world are serious about the use of amino acids in cancer treatment. L-arginine is the common substrate for two enzymes, arginase and nitric oxide synthase (NOS). As a precursor to nitric oxide, it is a key component of endothelial-derived relaxing factor. The endothelium is the lining inside blood vessels and arginine supplements help make more nitric oxide, which helps to relax and dilate blood vessels.

The body needs higher levels of arginine when it is under conditions of stress, illness, malnutrition or injury. When these conditions are present, arginine becomes essential for healing to occur.

Arginine is used to treat conditions that improve with increased blood flow, such as chest pains, erectile dysfunction, clogged arteries, vascular disease and headaches, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Arginine is one of the 20 most common natural amino acids.

What we can do with what we know right now about L-arginine:

In 2011 in the journal, Clinical Cancer Research, scientists at the University of Colorado Cancer Centre showed that treatment with the over-the-counter amino acid arginine reactivates cancer-fighting T-cells in patients with glioblastoma, thus potentially allowing the immune system to help cleanse the body of cancer.

It is likely that every one of us has some cancer cells in our body all the time but our immune system is usually successful in destroying them. It just makes sense to have a strong immune system when fighting cancer.

Cancer develops when the cancer cells overwhelm our immune system and grow into a noticeable tumour, so anything that strengthens the immune system is going to help us.

Nitric oxide (NO) can also have a multitude of effects on other aspects of tumour biology, including angiogenesis and metastasis.

In the past decade, the use of Nitric Oxide in the treatment of cancer has become a new field that has rapidly gained credibility and understanding at the biochemical and molecular levels.

Nitric oxide production goes down as we age, which is important to note regarding middle aged and elderly people with Cancer.

Nitric oxide is an important signalling molecule that plays a significant role in the regulation of cancer biological functions.

The paradoxical action of Nitric Oxide in cancer biology depends on concentration and other factors. In a 2006 issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, a Johns Hopkins team said that boosting levels of nitric oxide appear to dampen the effects of a specialized cell that diverts the immune system away from tumours, allowing swarms of cancer-attacking T-cells to migrate to tumour sites.

Dr. Ivan Borrello, professor at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Centre concluded that arginine that raises Nitric Oxide levels won’t cure cancer “but could be used in addition to standard chemotherapy or immunotherapy treatments.” He is probably correct, but as he is saying, it could be and should be used in addition to other safe and effective medicine

Oxygen, Arginine & Cancer

One of the basic reasons arginine could be helpful for cancer patients is its ability to safely deliver more oxygen to oxygen-deprived tissues in the body. The entire world of alternative medicine agrees that getting more oxygen to the tissues is going to be bad news for any and all cancer cells because they have given up normal respiration for fermentation and live in an acidic aerobic environment. When acid levels are high and oxygen levels are low we find cancer flourishing—a situation that orthodox oncology ignores.

Arginine opens up the veins and arteries to increase blood flow and volume, thus increasing oxygen to the cells. In some cancer protocols, there is also magnesium increasing oxygen-carrying capacity as it relaxes blood vessels and brings down blood pressure, coupled with sodium bicarbonate that, as every athlete knows, also makes it easier to circulate oxygen, thus immediately increasing endurance.

Results of a study at Howard Hughes Medical Institute/Duke University Medical Center in 2005 showed that adding nitric oxide to the blood’s haemoglobin can make it deliver more oxygen to tissues—without boosting heart rate or constricting blood vessels. Haemoglobin is the blood’s oxygen-carrying component. The study was led by Dr. Mark Dewhirst, professor of radiation oncology who said, “Haemoglobin needs its natural partner in the blood, nitric oxide, to do its job of delivering oxygen to tissues, but current treatments deliver haemoglobin without nitric oxide.

If we could raise the level of tumour oxygenation before radiation, we would have a better chance of killing more of the cancer cells.”

As it turns out, breathing in pure oxygen naturally raises the level of circulating oxygen, but not oxygen levels in the arteries feeding tumours. But haemoglobin plus nitric oxide, by contrast, raises oxygen levels in the tumours. The team’s finding in the study above is the strongest evidence to date supporting a theory, first developed in 1996, that nitric oxide is an innate part of the body’s oxygen delivery system. In previous studies scientists demonstrated that nitric oxide in blood cells is an active regulatory molecule that senses the oxygen level in tissue and causes haemoglobin to undergo subtle shape changes to release its oxygen in tissues when levels are low.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine was awarded in 1998 to Drs. Furchgott, Ignarro, and Murad for their discoveries concerning “Nitric oxide (NO) as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system.”  They conclude, in summary:

Arginine’s many benefits:

  • Aids in liver detoxification
  • Detoxifies ammonia
  • Increases sperm count in males
  • Aids in kidney disorders and trauma
  • Maximizes protein synthesis
  • Helps lower cholesterol
  • Stimulates blood flow
  • Stimulates cerebral circulation
  • Promotes optimum growth
  • Helps to reduce body fat and increase lean muscle mass
  • Assists the body in collagen production
  • Assists in the release of growth hormones
  • Assists sexual satisfaction and potency

Actions related to its use in cancer treatment are:

  • Increases oxygen-carrying capacity and delivery to cells
  • Inhibits cellular replication of tumours
  • Enhances immune system function
  • Causes retardation of tumour growth
  • Assists in the release of growth hormones
  • Enhances immune response
  • Improves rate of wound healing (in cases of surgical intervention)

Side Effects

L-arginine supplements should not be taken by

  • pregnant and lactating women unless under the care of a health professional and even then a broadband superfood like spirulina would be safer and better.
  • those with viral infections such as herpes,
  • those with liver diseases that cause an excess of ammonia in the system (some liver disorders are benefited from arginine),
  • those who have kidney failure.
  • Diabetics should be careful with arginine due to its insulin-blocking effects but that could be counteracted when embedded in a full protocol of other concentrated nutrients.
  • Schizophrenics should not take more that 30 milligrams per day.
  • Children who have not completed bone growth should avoid arginine supplementation but should eat arginine-rich foods.

In general, like all nutritional medicine, arginine has been shown to be remarkably free of side effects for the vast majority of people who have taken it, even in large therapeutic doses and with greater frequency of doses. Some have experienced diarrhoea and/or nausea when taking high therapeutic doses and one study found that several weeks of large doses might result in thickening and coarsening of the skin in some people.

Conclusion

Nitric oxide opens the microscopic blood vessels surrounding the cancer cells, and some might fear that this would allow the cancerous tumour greater nourishment and an avenue to spread into other parts of the body. But for these people the idea of using arginine as a Trojan horse—allowing cancer killer substances like sodium bicarbonate to overwhelm the cancer cells with blasts of alkalinity and oxygen that are flowing in with the new blood flow—would be reassuring.

It is not a good idea for people with pancreatic or any kind of cancer to take supplemental arginine outside the context of a well-thought-out protocol.

Research by Dr. Louis Ignarro has shown that you need to consume 4,000-6,000 mg of L-arginine in each serving to boost production of nitric oxide and receive meaningful benefits.

It is critical to read and compare labels when choosing any cardio-health supplement.

Unfortunately, many companies have reduced the amount of ingredients they use up to 90% in order to save money. L-arginine Plus contains 5000 mg of L-arginine and 1000 mg of L-citrulline.(critical in the production of nitric oxide. which extends the body’s production of nitric oxide to over 20 hours!).

The amino acid citrulline is metabolized to yield more L-arginine, which in turn provides the additional nitric oxide.