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Acid Bodies Increase Cancer Risk

ACID BODIES and CANCER

Source: CANCERactive

(based on an article by Stephen Colclough, with new and additional research and comment by Chris Woollams). This article looks at how acid bodies can cause both ill health and cancer. It provides ideas on how to alkalise for health and, indeed, how to alkalise to help prevent cancer forming or returning. In the article we also cover how alkalising your body can alkalise your cells and stimulate your immune system making both work more efficiently.

“Unlike healthy cells in the human body, cancer cells do not require oxygen – in fact it kills them”

The science of acid cells and acid bodies
Cancer cells are different. For the biochemists amongst you, a normal cell produces its energy in its power stations, or mitochondria, by a 26 step process where carbohydrate is burned in the presence of oxygen to produce energy (and waste products). Over hundreds of thousands of years the chemical reactions in this oxygen-burning, energy-producing process have come to rely on potassium compounds to make them work efficiently.

In the cellular membrane there are ´pumps´ that rely on magnesium to work properly. The pumps push potassium into the cell and pump out sodium. If too much sodium gets into the mitochondria, the energy producing steps start to use sodium instead of potassium – this will still work but not as efficiently. Less oxygen is burned and less energy produced. The waste products will now be sodium salts, which are more ´acid´ than potassium salts. This ´acidity´ in the power stations´ environment then makes the energy production process even less efficient – taking in even less oxygen and producing even less energy. A downward spiral has begun. You are on your way to ill health and even a cancer cell.

Most people in the Western world have sodium-rich and potassium-poor diets. On top of that they consume insufficient amounts of magnesium (40 per cent of Americans are deficient in magnesium), so all-in-all the cells have too much sodium and become ´ACID´.
And acid cells mean acid bodies. Once the cell has powered down, certain DNA repair genes (like p53) are switched off while the genes (like ras) that tell the cell to divide rapidly still run at low power and a cancer cell is in the making.

Cancer cells have other differences – for example their fuel is glucose rather than carbohydrate. There are several recent research studies that show people with cancer who have high blood glucose levels have shorter survival times.

Cancer cells make their energy burning this glucose in the absence of oxygen in the cytoplasm. The power stations have been so run down, they eventually switch off. People with cancer have lowered blood levels of oxygen, which is why exercise and oxygen generating complementary therapies can be so helpful.

Cancer cells are also clever – cancer cells make their own glucose: One waste product of their energy production process is lactic acid, which is only broken down in the liver. However, one end product of that chemical process is …..glucose, which passes round the body to feed the cancer cell. ´Alien´ has taken over your body! You may like to read our article about Hydrazine Sulphate which can block this self-feeding mechanism.

The Acidity of cancer tumours
To stress the acid nature of cancer I refer to research published online (March 10th 2009) in Pubmed (19276390 – Cancer Res 2009; 69 (6); 2260-8) from Arizona Cancer Center (University of Arizona); the Department of Pharmacology, Wayne State University, Detroit and the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center Florida seems pretty convincing. It is entitled ´Bicarbonate increases Tumor pH and inhibits spontaneous metastases.´

The researchers start by commenting on the acid nature of cancer tumours, saying that the internal pH of solid tumours is acidic due to the glucose metabolism system inside the cells. The external surrounds are also acidic, and this seems to encourage metastases to fire off, and also to take hold and develop. The researchers comment that the pH inside a tumour can be 6, whereas a healthy body should have cells at 7.2 to 7.5.

Oral ingestion of sodium bicarbonate reduced the formation of new metastases in breast cancer models in mice. The equivalent human consumption would be 12 gms of sodium bicarbonate a day. It reduced metastases to the lungs and intestines. No lymph node infection occurred. Oral ingestion stopped the growth of the tumours.

When using injections directly into the tumours, the tumours regressed. A shot of alkali is a simple way to stop a chemical reaction that demands acidic conditions. A 16 year old at school will tell you that!

Other ways to develop an acid body?

1 Oestrogen
These same acid conditions inside the power stations and cells can also be set up by certain forms of oestrogen, the female sex hormone, binding to receptor sites on the cells membrane. One natural oestrogen, oestradiol, is particularly aggressive and can create havoc inside the cell, reducing potassium levels, increasing sodium levels, with the resultant effect that the cell becomes more acid, uses less and less oxygen, and ´powers down´ in the same way as above. Again, the result can be ill health and cancer.

2 Lack of sleep
After 90 minutes of falling to sleep, your pineal gland produces melatonin, which helps put you into a deeper sleep. Apart from being a powerful antioxidant melatonin also helps regulate hormones like oestrogen and IGF-1 in the body. Without melatonin at adequate levels oestrogen levels rise, as does Insulin like Growth Factor 1, which makes your cells grow and divide more rapidly. So poor sleep patterns set up an acid body.

3 EMF´s
But then Electromagnetic Forces (masts etc) are known to depress melatonin levels too.

4 Some chemicals and pesticides
Some pesticides, and some quite common chemicals contain ingredients which, once inside the body, can mimic the action of oestrogen in your cells. Chemicals like Bisphenol A, Parabens, Phthalates and Toluene to name just a few are found in common usage as plasticisers, as preservatives and in nail polishes.

5 Stress hormones
All of the above cause acid stress in the body, as do the stress hormones themselves. Hormones like cortisol, produced by the adrenal glands in stressful times affect localised hormones around your cells – these are called eicosanoids. Insulin and steroids also stress your cells in this way.

6 Low blood oxygen
Dr. Otto Warburg was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1931 for the discovery that, unlike healthy cells in the human body, cancer cells do not “breathe” oxygen. Cancer cells are anaerobic, in other words they function with no oxygen present. In fact, cancer cells cannot survive in the presence of high levels of oxygen. Having a good level of oxygen in your blood and cells helps prevent cancer.

All of the above acid generating, stressful cell conditions lead to lowered cellular oxygen levels. In The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer, Dr. Warburg theorised that the way to treat cancer was to saturate the cells of the body with oxygen. This was his priority in treating cancer. The second priority was to avoid further exposure to toxins.

Keiichi Morishita agrees with this. “Cancer above all other disease, has countless secondary causes, but there is only one prime cause. The prime cause is the replacement of the normal oxygen respiration of body cells by an anaerobic cell respiration.”

However, Morishita went on to express another point: “The great advantage of knowing the prime cause of a disease is that it can then be attacked logically and over a broad front. This is particularly important in the case of cancer, with its numerous secondary and remote causes, and because it is often stated that in man alone there are over one hundred well-known and quite different kinds of cancer, with the implication that we will have to find one or several hundred bases for prevention and treatment, and usually without any realization that this need not necessarily be the case now that we know that all cancers studied have a characteristic metabolism in common, a prime cause.”

7 ´Acid dumping´
The toxins point of Warburg is amplified by Morishita. In his theory, as described in his book Hidden Truth of Cancer, it can all work at a more macro level than the mitochondrial and cellular goings on described above. He argues that the body dumps acidic substances from the blood into our cells to keep the blood in its naturally and essentially alkaline state. This causes the cells to become toxic and acidic, decreases their oxygen levels, and harms DNA. Eventually most of the acidic cells will die. However, some will evolve, and adapt, and survive by becoming abnormal, mutated cells. Malignant cells. These multiply indefinitely and without order. They are cancer.

Both Warburg and Morishita agree, from slightly different angles, that low oxygen levels turn some cells cancerous. Their research indicates, then, that to get as much oxygen as you can into the cells can be an effective way to prevent cancer, and increasing oxygen levels in already cancerous cells could destroy the mutant cells.

As Chris Woollams explained in The First Pillar of Cancer, and we have covered above, lowered cellular oxygen can be caused by a number of factors. Too much cellular sodium is one of the biggest contributors, and our salt-rich western diets are no help. Japanese research has shown that a doubling of sodium intake doubles colon cancer risk. But please be clear – poor diet, although vitally important, is only one factor that can give you an acid body, acid cells and lowered blood oxygen.

An Acid body means a weak immune system
You will probably have read that not just your cells, but your immune system flourishes in an alkaline environment. You may wonder how? The short answer is Beneficial Bacteria. The gut is known to contain about 800 different strains of bacteria; 400 have been identified and about 12 keep coming up in research. To put this in context there have been over 4,000 studies and 80 clinical trials on them in the last five or six years – and your doctor probably knows nothing about them.

However, thousands of years ago we did a deal with these bacteria – they will protect us, as long as we give them a nice cosy place to live. Unfortunately, we have broken the deal. Over the thousands of years, they have come to work best in an environment of a certain acidity. Increase that and they just won´t work as well. It is like a chemical reaction. Change the acidity or alkalinity in the test tube and it stops.

We have stopped feeding them their favourite foods – fibrous whole foods, whole grains, green vegetables. Instead we eat too much salt or drink too much alcohol that increases the gut acidity. As does meat, as does stress. Then to make matters worse, we feed their enemies – we eat too much sugar and dairy, the favourite food of yeasts and microbes. There is nothing a yeast likes more than a molecule of glucose. As we said, it is also the favourite food of a cancer cell.

The final ´coup de grace´ is we then kill them off – antibiotics (prescribed or in chicken breast), steroids and drugs, chlorinated tap water. These beneficial bacteria are crucial to our very existence – something no doctor, drug company or Government Health baron seems to realise. At night when we sleep they consume yeasts and microbes for us – up to 2.2 kgs. They are our first line of defence. (Can Candida cause cancer? Essential reading.)

Their very presence stimulates our immune system. It has been estimated that these beneficial bacteria direct a whopping 85 per cent of our antibody production. It is now thought they even orchestrate your immune memory system. They help release crucial vitamins from our food; particularly the anti-cancer vitamins biotin, B-12, folic acid and vitamin K. They even produce a powerful anti-cancer chemical (sodium butyrate) They help chelate with and eliminate cancer causing oestrogenic chemicals and nitrosamines, plus heavy metals like cadmium and mercury.

But just from this you can see that changing the acidity in the gut hinders their action and aids the enemies. Is it any wonder that excess salt and microbes have each been linked with increased colon cancer. The correct pH in the gut is essential for a tip-top immune system.

How can you Alkalise your body and your cells?
So how do we go about increasing the oxygen levels in our cells? It is not as easy as it sounds. Deep breathing – part of the package of therapies used for cancer patients in China? This can increase oxygen, but not in a sufficient amount, because it can be limited by the amount of haemoglobin in the blood, and by acidity levels.

Regular exercise will certainly help as this can increase oxygen and haemoglobin levels whilst also providing ´happy´ endorphin hormones to neutralise some more toxic hormones. Yoga has been proven to reduce cortisol levels.

Being slightly underweight will also help as this will reduce your total oestrogen levels, as will getting a good night´s sleep in a darkened room, avoiding EMF´s, and avoiding pesticides and harmful ´oestrogen mimics´, or xenoestrogens, in household products and toiletries.

But, while all of the above is essential, Warburg stated that our cells´ inability to uptake oxygen is due to increased amounts of toxicity, or over-acidity. Sang Whang, in his book Reverse Ageing, agrees. If your body is overly acidic, your cells cannot detoxify. You then develop acidic and poorly oxygenated cells, which may turn cancerous. “In general, degenerative diseases are the result of acid waste build ups within us. When we are born, we have the highest alkaline mineral concentration and also the highest body pH. (i.e. we are very alkaline). From that point on, the normal process of life is to gradually acidify. That is why these degenerative diseases do not occur when you are young.

Reverse ageing requires two separate steps: chemical and physical. The first step is to lower the acidity of the body so that it can dispose of acidic wastes in the blood and cellular fluids safely and easily. The second is to physically pull out old stored wastes into the blood stream so that they can be discharged from the body.”

To increase oxygen, to decrease toxins, to build health and well-being we need to positively alkalise.

Water and Diet – the focus of alkalising for health!
The aim, then, is to ensure the pH level of your body is very slightly alkaline. You can test yourself using pH strips you can buy at your chemists´. pH (potential of hydrogen) is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a solution. It is measured on a scale of 0 to 14-the lower the pH the more acidic the solution, the higher the pH the more alkaline (or base) the solution. When a solution is neither acid nor alkaline it has a pH of 7 which is neutral. Your body is at its healthiest at a pH of about 7.2 – 7.4.

There is extensive research showing that cancer exists and flourishes in an acidic environment, and deteriorates and dies in an alkaline environment. Making the body more alkaline is important in fighting cancer. So, focus on alkalising for health! Let´s look at some more things that can help: As JB Haldane said famously, “Even the Archbishop of Canterbury is 80 per cent water”.

1. Acidic water can hold very little oxygen. Alkaline water can hold large amounts of oxygen. This is particularly relevant to the water in your body and your cells. To increase the amount of oxygen in your cells, you therefore need to create a more alkaline water environment. Sang Whang believes that water is the key to balancing your inner terrain. “The best kind of water for this function is acid-free, alkaline water, the water that neutralises harmful acids and disposes of them safely while it does not leach out valuable alkaline minerals such as potassium, magnesium, sodium, calcium.” Sang Whang also states that, as everyone knows, water is H2O; two hydrogen atoms for each oxygen atom.

Neutral water has an equal number of OH- ions (hydroxyl ions) and H+ ions (hydrogen ions), maintaining the 2 to 1 ratio of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Alkaline water is water with more OH- ions than H+ ions. This water has more oxygen atoms compared to the 2 to 1 ratio of hydrogen to oxygen atom of regular water. For this reason, alkaline water is considered water with more oxygen.

At icon(magazine) we are advocates of clean water and recommend ionisers or reverse osmosis systems for purifying water. The former, newer systems overcome the concern that although RO systems make the water purer, they do actually leave the water with no minerals and slightly acid. One other idea is the use of prime pH, which contains ionic mineral elements to increase the alkalinity of drinking water and can help release the oxygen molecules within water for easier absorption by the body.

2. Diet One key to realising this goal is by cutting your daily intake of SODIUM salt down to less than a gram. High sodium foods are typically processed and packaged foods, canned foods, dried meats like sausages and bacon, soy sauce, Chinese food with mono-sodium glutamate. Even 4 slices of bread, or three bowls of packaged breakfast cereal provide a gram of sodium.

Another area to cut out is what the Chinese would describe as ´phlegm foods´: cows´ dairy, and excesses of hormone and pesticide containing meats. And alcohol and caffeine don’t help in your alkalising regime. Instead beef up your consumption of POTASSIUM AND MAGNESIUM-RICH FOODS. And this means raw foods, greens, whole foods, whole grains, greens, vegetables, nuts, seeds and fruits. Other additions should be chlorella or wheatgrass, olive oil, sprouted seeds, garlic, ginger, herbs and figs, raisins, lemons, limes, carrots and apples.

Chlorella and other green foods and drinks are an easy way to incorporate green, alkalising, nutrient-dense food into your diet. As readers know we have long encouraged the use of chlorella, which apart from alkalising your body and helping to detoxify it, provides excellent levels of enzymes, and vitamins like B-12 and beta-carotene in a natural form. Green foods have also been linked in studies on the sunbelt in the USA to the lowered levels of cancer. Put simply, green foods photosynthesise under sunlight producing oxygen. They also provide high levels of glutathione in the cells and this increases cellular oxygen.

Many of you may have heard of Super Greens. This is a drink which has a deep, rich, herb-like natural flavour. If you have tried wheatgrass juice and cannot cope with its pungency, you will be pleasantly surprised, as this is a much nicer drink. You can increase its alkalising effects by mixing it with water and this mixture has a high pH level, being very alkaline.

Other tips?
You can also achieve a pH balance by adding in high quality natural supplements, alkalising pH drops, and certain mineral supplements, for example calcium and magnesium. (See also Prime pH below). Several other considerations are important. Firstly, people assume that eating acid things makes you acid. This is just not true. Vinegar and lemons seem to be ´acidic´, but can actually alkalise your bodies.

Taking a teaspoon of raw organic, unrefined Apple cider vinegar three times a day will be of benefit. As will a cup of ginger and lemon tea first thing in the morning (just slice ginger, squeeze in a lemon or lime and add a little raw honey). Secondly, we have talked about the importance of beneficial bacteria. The counter to them is yeast infection – and particularly candida.

One way of alkalising your body and creating an anti-yeast environment is to drink a small teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate in a glass of warm water first thing in the morning. It is also very alkalising. We even have a ´Living Proof´ article on our CANCERactive web site on a man who beat his prostate cancer by taking sodium bicarbonate 4 times a day, in this way! A must-read book is Chris Woollams´ ‘The Rainbow Diet – and how it can help you beat cancer’.

How to alkalise your acid body

Source: CANCERactive
Your body needs to be slightly alkaline to be at its healthiest. Your cells, the chemical reactions inside them, your beneficial bacteria in your gut and your immune system all work better in a slightly alkaline environment. An acid body means your systems do not work as efficiently as they should. This article tells you how to alkalise for health, and what foods and factors provide an anti-cancer diet, an alkaline diet. It will even thwart candida and yeast infections.

What do we mean by this?
There are a number of biochemical reasons for having a slightly alkaline body rather than an acid body – here are three major examples:

1 Energy Efficiency. Your cells’ energy production depends on you having good levels of magnesium and potassium, and low cellular levels of sodium. As we explain in ‘Acid Bodies and cancer’, the energy production systems in your cells’ power stations (mitochondria) thrive on potassium. If sodium displaces the potassium, the mitochondria use less oxygen and produce less energy. They also produce sodium salts which are more acid than the potassium salts they normally produce. These make matters worse as the cell becomes more acid and a downward spiral sets in – the cell uses even less oxygen, makes even less energy and so on.

Magnesium is required by a pump on the membrane of the cell to pump in potassium and pump out sodium. 40 per cent of the population are deficient in magnesium. You should also consume potassium at 5 times the level of sodium. Few people do. Common salt (table and most sea salts) is a negative factor in this system. Focus on potassium- and magnesium-rich foods and Himalayan salt.

2 Immune boosting. In your gut you have many, many strains of beneficial bacteria. They cut up your foods and release essential vitamins, natural compounds and even a cancer killing chemical, sodium butyrate. They also direct up to 85 per cent of your immune system. Their presence causes an immune response, and many experts now believe your immune memory stems from the bacteria in your gut. These bacteria thrive at a certain pH* and thrive on a high fibre diet. They also consume microbes and yeasts like candida. Any change in that balance (for example, through the consumption of non-fibrous foods, too much alcohol, or salt) will cause a stunting of their labours on your behalf.

Low fibre foods, salt, saturated fats, meats, common sugar, cows’ dairy, stress can all alter the pH in the intestine directly, or through the production of hormones or bile acids that have a secondary effect. It is essential, in illness or if you are over 50, that you ´top-up´ with a multi-strain Probiotic on a daily basis. And you feed your bacteria greens, grains, nuts, seeds and whole foods.

3 Candida preventing. A crucial side issue of an imbalance of beneficial bacteria in the gut, is that at night when you sleep they consume over 2 lbs of microbes and yeasts. They are your first line of defence. If your yeasts get past them the yeasts can cause an unhealthy body by blocking important receptor sites on cell walls. These receptors could be essential for receiving insulin (cinnamon is proven to kill yeasts in the blood and stop them from blocking insulin sites – research showed a 25 per cent decline in diabetes-2 effects by taking cinnamon) or anti-cancer agents like vitamin D (women who take more that 25 doses of antibiotics in their life-times have twice the rate of breast cancer). Yeasts, and particularly candida, thrive in low oxygen, slightly acid environments.

*NB. pH is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a liquid. You can test your saliva or your urine to see how acid or alkaline you are. The measurement of pH is from zero (acid) to 14 (alkaline) and ideally water is 7.0 to 7.2 and the human body 7.2 to 7.4. The acidity or alkalinity is almost entirely due to the various dissolved salts in the liquid. Where reverse osmosis removes salts, the pH of the water can fall to 6 and the water becomes more acid. The human body needs calcium, magnesium, potassium salts dissolved in it. Unfortunately many people confuse the term ‘salts’ with salt. The latter refers only to Sodium chloride. In our book The Rainbow Diet we argue that 1 gm per day of sodium chloride is more than enough. The average New Yorker consumes 16 gms per day. They undoubtedly have acid bodies!

Acid and alkaline Residue Producers
A number of commentators talk about ‘acid residue foods’ or ‘alkaline residue foods’. I have asked two of the top experts in the UK to prove to me that these exist. They can’t. It is tosh – and anyway irrelevant. The mechanism by which you generate an acid body, or you alkalise for health, involves complex and varied biochemical processes. There is no ‘one simple thing to do’. For example:
Potassium and magnesium foods are essential for efficient, oxygenated cells.

Animal fats can cause an acid, carcinogenic bile acid to be produced that can alter the effieciency of beneficial bacteria and even cause inflammation (a precancerous condition) via eicosanoids (localised hormones like prostaglandins). Stress via cortisol and sugar via insulin also cause negative eicosanoids to be produced. Garlic, ginger, omega-3, aspirin, curcumin and other natural compounds can prevent the formation of these harmful eicosanoids and alkalise an acid situation. So both foods and non-dietary factors can cause acid or alkaline situations. Here is a guide to pin on your fridge door.

Foods and factors that will help you alkalise your body:

Foods and factors that will cause your body to become more acid

The list is meant to be indicative, not exhaustive. There is debate about tomatoes and oranges, which some people say are acid forming. But lemons and limes are certainly not – a drink of fresh lemon, ginger and honey with hot water is a great way to start the day. Other foods like liver, shell fish and crab also have issues to do with stored toxins and chemicals. And of course, factors such as white can liners (BPA), plastic bottles (BPA, phthalates), nail polishes containing toluene, perfumes on your skin contain certain toxins etc can all heighten your oestrogen levels and set up the acid cell syndrome described above.

Useful websites:
National Institutes of Health
American Institute for Cancer Research
The Cochrane Library
MedlinePlus

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