Positive Health Online

During the past 6-8 weeks I have experienced significant apprehension, anxiety, even emotional turmoil, all as a result of conflicts and cliff-hangers, both internal and external. I will elaborate on three apparently totally different concerns; however all three are intimately connected to each other and seemingly to the wider world.

It has taken me about two months to read the incredible thriller Tripping Over the Truth: The Return of the Metabolic Theory of Cancer by Travis Christofferson - the historical chronology detailing how the scientific establishment has apparently, once again taken the wrong turning in its quest to discover the cause(s) of cancer and identify its cure(s). This is Christofferson’s homage to Prof Thomas Seyfried PhD’s tome Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management, and Prevention of Cancer. Christofferson’s book details the historical quest prior to and during the 20^th century including characters such as Percival Pott, Rodolf Virchow, David Paul von Hansemann, Walther Fleming, Peyton Rous, leading up to and especially Otto Warburg, Founder of the Warburg hypothesis with a minority of others including Peter Pedersen and Korean research scientist Young Hee Ko PhD of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who carried on, nurtured and revived Warburg’s work:

“Warburg’s observation was this: cancer cells have a perverted method of generating energy. They truncate the conversion of glucose (sugar) into energy. They depend much less on the efficient process of respiratory energy creation, using oxygen - instead relying much more on the ancient and highly inefficient pathway known as fermentation. Later in his career, Warburg contended that this was the origin of cancer. The cell’s ability to generate energy through the oxidative pathway is damaged, and the cells reverts to fermentation. He said: ‘Cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. But even for cancer, there is only one prime cause. Summarized in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar’.”

Tripping Over the Truth reviewed recently in Positive Health PH Online, documents pivotal experiments showing how the body’s metabolism becomes deranged in cancer cells and become ‘stuck’ in their absolute requirement to utilize glucose rather than oxygen for energy.

“Seyfried proposed that chronic and persistent damage to the cell’s ability to respire aerobically triggered an epigenetic signal from the mitochondria to nuclear DNA. The signal then altered the expression of a plethora of key cancer-causing oncogenes - a classic epigenetic system…Pedersen had shown that the single transition of hexokinase II drastically altered the metabolic landscape of the cells. By binding to the mitochondrial outer membrane, it turned the cells into immortal, crazed fermenters… The signal told the nucleus to transcribe a host of genes responsible for preparing the cell to ferment glucose in order to compensate for declining oxidative energy production.”

The very fundamental scientific beliefs underpinning the cause of cancer by the establishment - the result of genetic / DNA mutations - apparently represents an incorrect paradigm, despite the many billions / trillions of dollars spent on sequencing the entire genome of a cancer cell:

“…in order to understand cancer in its entirety, the entire genome of a cancer cell (all the DNA inside the cell) would have to be sequenced identifying and cataloguing all the ‘driver’ mutations with the DNA… The project compares the sequence of normal DNA to that of different cancer types to determine the exact mutations responsible for the origin and progression of the malignancies. Researchers will finally know cancer in its entirety…Prior to the project, researchers largely believed the sequencing data would reveal an orderly sequence of maybe three to eight genes that when mutated, manifested in a specific type of cancer – an identifying signature like a fingerprint….But what the sequence data revealed was anything but orderly. It exposed an almost random collection of mutations – not a single one, or any combination...being absolutely responsible for initiating the disease…Other than a few commonly mutated oncogenes, the mutational pattern appeared largely random…”

This paradigm identifies cancer as a metabolic disease which arises, causes gene mutations and metastasizes due to faulty mechanisms originating in the mitochondria, not therefore as a result of multiple gene mutations.

Epigenetics - Current and Past  Progress by David E Marsh Dip Ag is published in this PH Online Issue 231.

My review of Christofferson’s book also includes links to several unmissable YouTube interviews highlighting clinical studies and positive results using a ketogenic and restricted ketogenic diet with patients suffering not only from cancer, but also epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and other degenerative conditions.

I found reading this book a roller-coaster ride of emotions; travelling through 150 years of scientific research with most of the money being spent on the wrong approach is absolutely riveting.

I spent a week during May visiting my family in Montreal; my 95-years young mother, brother and sister, nephews, nieces, great nephews and nieces, cousins, and old friends from school and university. And the residents of the retirement home into which my mother had only recently moved and which is now scheduled to close in a year! Such is life in the 21^st century! In addition to catching up with all the usual family news, I was also brought up-to-date with the very sad news of various rifts, resentments and outright estrangement between family members young and old.

My sister’s youngest son (29 years old) was hit by a hockey stick; despite all proper medical checks, x-rays etc. several days later the increasing pain and CT scans revealed a pulmonary embolism. He is receiving clot-dissolving medication; apparently the clot may take several months to completely resolve. The doctors were totally surprised at this outcome and said they couldn’t have predicted this; however such incidents are not totally unknown among young and healthy athletes and people participating in sports. This put somewhat of a damper on my visit and I continue to be apprehensive yet hopeful for his complete recovery.

I found myself in floods of tears while listening to Dr David Nott’s Desert Island Discs in which the vascular surgeon described how he spends several weeks each year working in conflict zones around the world for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In these conflict zones - Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Chad, Haiti, Yemen, Nepal and Syria - he describes how doctors have to work relying on their own skills and experience, often with no benefit of MDM teams, MRI or CT scans. He broke down as he told how he operated on a young child blown up by a bomb, in which most of the team apart from himself and the anaesthetist, had to leave, while he stayed to operate. Shortly after returning from Aleppo, Syria and while sitting with the Queen at lunch to collect an honour, he told how his trauma had completely overcome him, making him unable to speak. The Queen, sensing his trauma, invited him to feed biscuits to the Corgis; this helped to diffuse his profound trauma. I was overcome with emotion, listening.

We in the UK are approaching a profound decision upon whether to remain or leave in the EU. Having devoted my entire life to helping people to work together and find holistic health approaches I simply cannot vote to Leave the EU, despite the EU’s political, economic and bureaucratic flaws. In my view, if the ship is sinking, leaving it is not the right thing to do; better to help save lives and work to bring it and its people into port.

We will discover the result of the UK EU Referendum after 23 June.