Starting the conversation

19th October 2017

I am giving a presentation at this conference in London on the 25th of November, if any of the readers of this blog are interested in attending, it would be great to see you there. This is mainly in the area of cancer, but I am looking at how we have reached a situation where hugely expensive ‘pharma developed drugs’ are widely used, when many are completely ineffective. However, novel ideas, new ways of looking at cancer, are blocked at every turn.

87 thoughts on “Starting the conversation

  1. smartersig

    I found the book Tripping over the truth most interesting and only yesterday I was having a conversation here in Portugal with a lady who runs a clinic dealing in cancer care using amongst other things hypnosis and oxygen treatment

    Reply
  2. Martin Wdmundson

    I’m sorry I’m going to have to miss this conference it would’ve been very interesting . Have you by chance have the opportunity to read ‘Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams’ by Matthew Walker, Chapter 8 in particular supports a lot of what you have said. I found it very interesting .

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  3. Gay Corran

    Bravo, Dr Kendrick! But I fear for your safety when the big pharma and packaged food guns are aimed at you… Respect!

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  4. Sasha

    If there’s ever a time to give an overview of novel ideas on this blog, it would be great.

    Thank you for all you do.

    Reply
  5. Craig E

    It’s times like this I wish I was in England. I am very interested in whether your talk will be recorded and whether you could post a link to it.

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    1. jeanirvin

      I agree. There is a lot of info out there but, if it came from Dr Kendrick, we could be sure it was well researched. Perhaps, one day, he will turn his thoughts to cancer, when he has finished with CVD. I hope you are managing well, Anton. I am on chemotherapy for colon cancer.

      Reply
  6. Lynne Garwood

    Fabulous, so glad such conversations and presentations are at last happening in the UK.
    Everything happens in London though! The rare Functional Medicine docs practice in London.
    I would love to attend but can’t afford the journey. Is there any chance of online streaming/ recordings?

    Reply
    1. Bill In Oz

      He says he eats chook. Not quite a vegan or even a vegetarian.

      What I find interesting is the very high prices in UK pounds for the items he recommends. He can do it on a dcotor’s salary. But what about other folks ?

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  7. David Bailey

    It sounds like there is another scandal associated with cancer treatment – described here:

    http://healthinsightuk.org/2017/10/13/most-new-cancer-drugs-wont-let-you-live-longer-or-improve-your-quality-of-life/

    People near the end of their lives are tortured with the prospect of yet another hugely expensive drug that will only extend their lives marginally, and with much suffering.

    I hope someone at this conference will discuss this issue.

    Will a video of this conference appear online in due course?

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  8. Patricia Daniels

    As with the former comment l do hope you will be posting yours and others takes on curing cancer on your blog. There are so many people l know suffering

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      1. joye0712

        Please get on and clone yourself several times Dr Kendrick, there are so many issues that could do with an outspoken Dr I dont think one of you is enough.

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  9. Dr. Göran Sjöberg

    I just wonder about the terminology “integrated medicine”. Per definition this means that you can not begin with regarding the “school medicine” treatment of cancer as “criminal” which I myself consider it is, not least after having lost a close relative recently who received all these incredibly expensive drugs and with high sugar drinks added. To me this is just “insane”.

    What you can do as an MD in this environment is then only to add “complementary” procedures if you want to keep your license but in the school medicine there is no interest whatsoever in any “alternatives”. It is truly a stinking mess I would say.

    Prof. Thomas Seyfried is though pointing to the spectacular healing results that recently has been demonstrated in Turkey on terminal cancer patients through an “integrated” approach involving ketogenic diets and fasting. The only reason they used the traditional “criminal” chemotherapy was that they had to do it in order not to be forced to close down their business. Bottom line is that it is the alternatives that work.

    https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2017/03/19/metabolically-supported-therapies-cancer-treatment.aspx

    Reply
    1. celia

      Goran, I so agree with you. I have lost too many friends and family members who went through all the conventional treatments. I have been interested to read about Chris Wark, who now has a website and blog showing how he and others have defeated cancer using natural means. He can be found by looking up Chris Beat Cancer online. This will direct you to his website. It’s very inspiring.

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    2. Fergus Glencross

      Hi Prof.
      Unfortunately people die of cancer, it is a very complicated disease. Your relative may well have died no matter what treatment given. Regards Fergus

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      1. David Bailey

        Well yes Fergus, but if nobody ever tests these alternatives – which are based on a reasonable theory that cancer cells rely on sugar (a fact that has been known for years, and is the basis for PET scanning for cancer) – we will never know if they offer a better alternative to trying to devise drugs that are slightly more poisonous to the cancer than to the rest of our cells.

        Many of those cancer drugs are also carcinogens!

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      2. Anne

        It’s unfortunate that many people diagnosed with cancer then follow a diet whcih is high in complex carbs, especially grain foods which are smply converted to blood glucose and no better than sugary foods. They forgo meat and dairy and fats which are low carb.

        I used to work at the Royal London Homoepathic Hospital (as a secretary/admin) – they used “integrated medicine” and, in fact, the hospital has been renamed The Hospital for Integrated Medicine. Among other disciplines of medicine they use, or used to use, are herbal and nutritional medicine (intravenous vitamin C was one that I remember being used and something made from misletoe). The medical care is is called “integrated” becasue the doctors are fully qualified doctors who have then gone on to study and qualify in other branches of medicine.

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    3. Stephen T

      Goran, Gary Taubes would agree with you. In ‘The Case Against Sugar’ he strongly implicates sugar in the metabolic syndrome, that range of diseases and conditions associated with chronically high insulin.

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      1. joye0712

        This is not to argue with the sugar cause cancer idea I am just thinking. If sugar causes cancer then we might expect very low rates of cancer in the innuit communitys and also in people who have early onset diabetes as often these people eat very low carb, low sugar diets. I am wary of any kind of diet that excludes food groups or cause people to feel deprived as I think leads to disorderred eating although obviously a lot of people would rather have a disorderred eating pattern than die. People have been debating to merits of different diets probably since humans leant to talk. I dont think even the internet will solve that one. I think what we could do with is a forum where people with cancer and their relatives can support each other and explore cures together.

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  10. chris c

    A question I’d dearly like to see the answer to: where is the “evidence” that high carb low fat grain based (vegetarian) diets are the best – or only – diets for cancer?

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  11. Hans

    Give them hell, Doc. GIVE THEM HELL! I can’t get over there right now and I’m still yet to make it to Cowdenbeath for haggis. In the meantime I’ll check with my local Scottish embassy – they should know, they hafta go somewhere for lunch..

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  12. Chris Palmer

    the list of speakers looks to be excellent whilst there looks to be room for more cause oriented curiosity and concern from amongst them. And as yet it doesn’t seem as if anyone will include discussion of electrophysiology.

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  13. SJ

    I do hope that one day you’ll find time for a few posts on the problems of patients being treated badly for hypothyroidism. We really need all the help we can get, what with the NHS banning the prescription of T3, and very rigged research papers coming out saying that older people don’t need to be treated for hypothyroidism, or they only need to be treated enough to get their TSH down to something astronomical.

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      1. SJ

        Thank you, Dr Kendrick, a thousand times thank you. It means a lot to me and I’m sure to many tens or hundreds of thousands of others who wait years for a diagnosis or who are kept under-treated or are given no choice in what treatment is on offer. And every year the problem gets worse.

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  14. Archie Robertson

    Anne and I recently had the privilege of attending another conference, “Rethinking Cancer”, at the Gustave Roussy Cancer Centre near Paris. Among the speakers were Valter Longo, Thomas Seyfried, William Li, Ernest G. Hope, and Ulrike Kämmerer, along with many others.
    Full-scale trials of ketogenic diets and anti-angiogenesis therapies are being planned as a result of this conference.
    I spoke for a few minutes on my own experience of healing cancer with a ketogenic diet.
    My full story is here:
    http://vernerwheelock.com/212-recovering-from-cancer-case-history-of-archie-robertson/

    We can’t understand why cancer is not yet being treated as primarily a metabolic disease, given the sterling research carried out by Prof. Seyfried and others.
    Incidentally, to us, the vegan approach is a red herring, or even a blind alley! I ate lots of meat, fat and dairy, and could only swallow very limited quantities of vegetables, but I kept my carb count extraordinarily low.

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    1. Mark Johnson

      .

      We can’t understand why cancer is not yet being treated as primarily a metabolic disease, given the sterling research carried out by Prof. Seyfried and others.

      I’ll give you three possible answers:

      1. Money
      2. Money
      3. Money

      If cancer were treated / prevented by diet and simple treatments such as hyperbaric oxygen, what role for oncologists? Not only would patients get genuinely better but just imagine the improvement in the NHS finances! The NHS will always be short of money as long as it’s funding ever more expensive and barely better than useless (being generous) drugs fighting the symptoms of disease.

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    2. Craig E

      I have read Seyfried’s book and although very heavy I think it’s on the money. The problem is that cancer also uses glutamine for energy not just glucose. Seyfried presents compelling evidence that mitochondrial dysfunction is the cause of cancer…and to survive without mitochondrial derived energy the cells ferment glucose/glutamine. It’s (relatively) easy to cut glucose out of the diet…not so with glutamine and it’s synthesised in the body too.

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    1. Martin Back

      Back in the ’60s ny mother died a slow, lingering death of colon cancer, despite radiation and chemotherapy.

      I remember helping my stepfather dispose of her leftover medication — hundreds of pills, of all shapes, sizes, and colours. And I remember thinking, what was the use of all these pills. She had a miserable last few months, unable to eat, turning into a human skeleton, gaga from all the morphine they pumped into her.

      It has given me an absolute horror of medication. I can’t remember the last time I took so much as an aspirin.

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  15. Mark Johnson

    .

    …but I am looking at how we have reached a situation where hugely expensive ‘pharma developed drugs’ are widely used, when many are completely ineffective.

    Just out of curiosity could you mention the top ones used which are completely ineffective please?

    My limited research has convinced me that a protective lifestyle consisting of limited processed food (that will naturally reduce the carbs) no veg oil AND periods of regular fasting is the way to go together with whatever exercise regimen you will maintain for life – simple walking is I think vastly under rated.

    If metabolic derangement is behind the majority of cancers then logic would dictate that “conventional treatment” is unlikely to be the answer. Should anyone be unfortunate to succumb to cancer then Prof Seyfried et al already have the answers.

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  16. Stephen Rhodes

    There was this https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4819002/ in 2014 that, faced with a growing incidence of cancer in those pats of the world least able to afford it, was beginning a concerted effort to confront the ‘conventional’ high cost often ineffectual cancer treatments by seeking cheaper more effective treatments from outside the mainstream thinking.
    I found the paper while seeking more about the work of P.L.Pedersen who has spent his career researching the role of mitochondria in cancer, my interest being personal. His work demonstrates that it is not faulty DNA but rather faulty mtDNA failing to provide sufficient energy to the cell that leads to cancer. Faulty mtDNA results in changes in cell metabolism that makes many cancers susceptible to ‘starving’ them of the glucose they need. Obviously not the whole story, but it opens possible new drug options for treatment, one of which, 3-bromopyruvate, can then block this new metabolic state, but requires highly targeted delivery.
    Good luck at the conference, it seems that things are finally being moved on from what Christofferson refers to when describing conventional cancer treatment as “slash, burn, and poison”

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  17. Dr. Göran Sjöberg

    Let me throw in the the following log on the fire about how little we know about the physiology of our endothelia.

    “Astronauts returning from space flight will typically experience a sudden drop in blood pressure when standing up. This orthostatic hypotension is an important indicator of the function of the cardiovascular system and its relationship to the vestibular system. Another effect is that the endothelium, the lining of your blood vessels, virtually disappears. Experiments with rats reveal their veins and arteries turn translucent after spending time in space.”

    I read this in the newsletter from Mercola this Sunday morning and where he as always is stressing the importance of of mowing and in this case avoid staying sedentary but standing up intermittently to achieve the health effects of gravity. Interesting new knowledge to me.

    “What do you think about this my friends?” to quote my favorite Nobel laureate Bod Dylan.

    Today there will thus be a Sunday morning walk if and when the heavy rain stops.

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  18. Lucy

    Thanks for looking into this. I so appreciate. I had a friend that did everything concerning colon cancer and screening, got it and died, but not before paying out 50,000 dollars an injection for a cancer drug. I suspect that cancer drug was useless.

    Reply
  19. Eric

    This Dutch study implicates protein and particularly animal protein in causing type II diabetes, with a hazard ration > 2. It goes against pretty much everything I have read in recent years. Can anybody spot what’s going on? I couldn’t so far.

    http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/33/1/43.long

    A hint may be found here (full text not available). Apparently, protein will lead to a similar glucose time integral as glucose:
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6389060

    Further evidence can be found an Australian paper (full text is available):
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21325437

    Just looking at FII (food insulin index) in table 1, a beef steak and white fish score 37 and 43, which is more than white pasta (29). This is a very surprising result.

    To be sure, eggs only have 23, and milk and cheese coming in around 30 with oultiers like low-fat cottage cheese at 52.

    On the high side of FII we find white rice (58), whole meal bread (70), white bread (73), low-fat strawberry yoghurt (84), potatoes (88), Quaker Oats waffle mix (110).

    On the whole, these data make sense, but I do suspect that the pasta and the cottage cheese were outliers within their groups whicht does make the methodology somewhat suspect. Also, who would have thought that high protein foods coming would still average at about 1/3 of the FII of the ususal highly refined high carb foods? This is not consistent with the thinking that gloconeogenisis is slow and costs energy.

    Takers?

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    1. Bill In Oz

      Eric I looked through your first link ( the Dutch one ). I was puzzled at the constant reference to ‘high protein being associated with diabetes’ without any statement as what ‘high’ meant.
      The nearest to an indication is given by the statement “Mean protein intake was 75.7 g/day….” But there is nothing else which indicates the ‘spread’ of protein consumption across the 40,000 odd trial participants.
      In ketogenic circles protein consumption can vary depending on the amount of fat eaten which can be as high as 60% of total foods eaten.

      It’s curious, we have previously been told that a high carb diet leads to Diabetes. And Greger in ‘How Not To Die’ states that high fats cause Diabetes..So I guess it is no surprise to now have a study claiming that high protein causes diabetes.

      Perhaps the solution is to avoid all of them by fasting, and so avoid completely diabetes because we would all be dead of starvation. 🙂

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    2. Roger A

      Eric
      The red meat protein is processed meat – link 9 – and according to the tables the % consumption of Carbs is higher than I would have expected.

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      1. Eric

        Roger, which study and link are you talking about? At least in the Australian study, the stuff is labelled as beaf steak and white fish. I hope it was not adultered with carbs…

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    3. Roger A

      Eric
      As Dr K tells us, the devil is always in the detail.
      My take on the trial is that the statistics in the Figures and Table ( in the first link) are not accurate enough to support the conclusion that a mere 5% difference in the consumption of carbs, fat or protein will influence the onset of T2 Diabetes because the basic consumption values for the constituents/ingredients of the diet themselves vary by way more than 5%.
      On top of this the text states that the animal protein is processed red meat – which may contain a significant % of carbs thus making the base diet one that is higher in carbs than the tables would have us believe.

      Reply
  20. Anna

    Well I, too, am glad for this topic. In fact, the reason I have been so scarce here is that since last January I have suspected I have inflammatory breast cancer and I wanted to successfully treat it myself and didn’t want to talk about it. At the same time, I have a lump in the same breast which I wasn’t too worried about as I had a similar one before which went away.

    So, I got a thermogram 6 months ago. Thermograms are meant to be 90% accurate on very small or impalpable lumps and 100% accurate if the lump is palpable.(Mine is)
    The lump by thermogram appeared completely negative. All this time the redness in the breast has steadily decreased under my many and various natural treatments. So, I just got a biopsy done on the lump and the doctor looking at the ultrasound said he is sure it’s cancer. I await the results and have been, let us say, extremely anxious as well as confused. The inflammatory cancer should also show up on thermogram, and it did not, which I took to mean that my nostrums have it attenuated and under control.

    Diet. I eat well, but eat some carbs and some sugar. Weston Price follower. Grass fed, raw milk, raw butter, our own chickens. Most alternate sites stress strongly juicing (I do some but can’t drink quarts of it), lots of fruits and vegetables, staying away from processed foods, and usually eliminating dairy and most meat. I have resisted that but decided upon certain reading that I will eliminate dairy. It does make sense to me that eliminating a lot of heavy protein and eating lightly and simply might take a load off the digestive system. Maybe a radical diet change, if temporary, can help?

    But this whole thing is quite confusing. We have all discussed the low carb and high fat idea, which I have tried to follow but imperfectly for 2-3 years now. Here’s the interesting thing. At work they do a free blood work (yeah, medical care is not free here in the U.S.) once a year, and one year ago my hemoglobin a1c was 5.7 AFTER 2 months of prep for the test in which I was being very good.

    Just got it redone but this time I have been more off the wagon, eating bread, and my a1c was 5.3!

    To what can I attribute this? I do not know but one of my treatments is to eat maple syrup with baking soda, and into it I mix a teaspoon of cinnamon. Also, I take a lot of supplements now so maybe some minerals? All this makes me think something is wrong when people have to eat so very low carb and maybe Sasha is right about having a more balanced diet.

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  21. Anna

    What I read was that dairy and its growth factors, not all of which are hormonal, do seem to increase breast and prostate cancers.

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      1. Bill In Oz

        Sasha there is a detailed explanation of this in the blog post Rogue Health site link below by PD Mangan. Published earlier this year.

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      2. jeanirvin

        Having read about the Warburg effect, where glucose is used to detect tumours as they rely on glucose, I would infer that cancer cells feed off glucose.

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      3. Craig E

        In relation to precursors that can be converted to glucose these are glucogenic amino acids, the glycerol part of triglycerides, pyruvate and lactate. Gluconeogenesis is primed via oxaloacetate. The product of beta oxidation of fatty acids is acetyl CoA and this can’t be converted to glucose. The generation of fatty acids from glucose by the liver will only occur if glycogen stores are full. This is why the combination of excess carbs and low exercise levels can cause problems IMO.

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        1. Sasha

          Excess of any food group can lead to problems, IMO. In the absence of carbs the body will switch to producing glucose from proteins.

          Reply
  22. Errett

    Cureus. 2017 Jul 7;9(7):e1445. doi: 10.7759/cureus.1445.

    Efficacy of Metabolically Supported Chemotherapy Combined with Ketogenic Diet, Hyperthermia, and Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for Stage IV Triple-Negative Breast Cancer.
    İyikesici MS1, Slocum AK2, Slocum A2, Berkarda FB2, Kalamian M3, Seyfried TN4.

    Abstract
    Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is more aggressive and metastatic than other breast cancer types. Cytotoxic chemotherapy is presently the predominant systemic therapy for TNBC patients. This case report highlights the influence of metabolically supported chemotherapy (MSCT), ketogenic diet (KD), hyperthermia (HT), and hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) in an overweight 29-year-old woman with stage IV (T4N3M1) triple-negative invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast.

    The patient presented with an observable mass in her left breast detected during a physical examination in December 2015. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed a Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System Category 5 tumor and multiple lymphadenomegaly in the left axilla. A Tru-Cut biopsy led to the diagnosis of a triple-negative nuclear grade 2 invasive ductal carcinoma. The patient was admitted to ChemoThermia Oncology Center, Istanbul, Turkey in October 2016, and a whole body (18F)-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT) scan revealed a 77 mm x 55 mm primary tumor in her left breast, multiple left pectoral and axillary lymph nodes, multiple widespread liver masses, and an upper left nodular abdominal lesion.

    The patient received a treatment protocol consisting of MSCT, KD, HT, and HBOT. A follow-up whole body 18F-FDG PET-CT scan in February 2017 showed a complete therapeutic response with no evidence of abnormal FDG uptake. The patient continued to receive this treatment protocol and in April 2017 underwent a mastectomy, which revealed a complete pathological response consistent with the response indicated by her PET-CT imaging.

    This single case study presents evidence of a complete clinical, radiological, and pathological response following a six-month treatment period using a combination of MSCT and a novel metabolic therapy in a patient with stage IV TNBC.

    KEYWORDS:
    hyperbaric oxygen therapy; hyperthermia; ketogenic diet; metabolically supported chemotherapy; pathological complete response; triple negative breast cancer
    PMID: 28924531 PMCID: PMC5589510 DOI: 10.7759/cureus.1445

    Reply
    1. Bill In Oz

      Eric, that is an interesting article on preventing dementia in the elderly via blood thinning scripts. However I d wish the Guardian would present their source for the article. It is not there and I have grown to distrust the journalists of the Guardian as often they have their own barrow to push.

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    2. Jean Humphreys

      “Not really my anecdotal observation, having heard of several old folks who went into decline after beginning Warfarin”
      Is it possible that they were put on a statin too? They really can cuse dementia-like symptoms.

      Reply
  23. Bill In Oz

    Back in March PD Mangan ran a longish article on his blog about cancer. In it he states :

    “Otto Warburg, who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1931, first proposed that cancer is due to a metabolic defect.

    ‘Just as there are many remote causes of plague, heat, insects, rats, but only one common cause, the plague bacillus, there are a great many remote causes of cancer-tar, rays, arsenic, pressure, urethane- but there is only one common cause into which all other causes of cancer merge, the irreversible injuring of respiration.’

    In most normal cells, energy is burned in the mitochondria in the presence of oxygen to produce ATP, the currency of energy. Cancer cells have a severely diminished, or no, capacity to do this. Instead, they burn glucose for energy in a process known as aerobic glycolysis. The mitochondria of cancer cells appear to be severely damaged, so the only way they can obtain energy is through this alternative and relatively inefficient method.”

    For those interested in this area of medical work, here is the link :
    http://roguehealthandfitness.com/the-end-of-cancer/#comment-159374

    Reply
      1. Eric

        Because fermentative metabolism has nasty byproducts which may damage DNA. Warburg observed that he could make cells cancerous just by starving them of oxygen for a couple of hours. Makes one think whether interval training is all that good an idea. Also, are there data on cancer in apnoe divers? (actually, whatever the effect of oxygen deprivation is probably hidden by the healthy worker effect, as these folks are usually very fit.

        One should not forget that cancer cells can also live on glutamine, so just eating VLC is not going to cut it, as Seyfried is well aware.

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      1. Bill In Oz

        So do I Phillip. I read Dumping Iron back in January. I think he is right. High ferritin iron levels in the blood are damaging to the heart & cardiovascular system.

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    1. Dr. Göran Sjöberg

      Bill

      Good reference to a site and further connections to the BMJ where the editor in chief is quite outspoken.

      Long live internet!

      It is today just beyond ANY doubts that conventional school medicin is of practically no use in cancer treatments but only serves as a means of greedy profits. Who can deny this except Big Pharma? What a disgusting world of medicine!

      And there are for sure alternatives, based on true science, and specifically those proposed by Prof. Thomas Seyfried, based on the metabolic theory and alternatives that truly work. It is here you find the science in my eyes. However, as I understand, you have to go to Turkey or possibly Mexico to get cancer treatments worth the name that really cure cancer.

      On top of this science there are “natural” remedies which also tend to cure. I have myself a long list of such remedies/actions which I should start with if, and as soon as, I ever get a diagnosis and for sure before allowing me to be subjected to “standard treatment” or even to “health care” except for diagnosis.

      Stupidity is ruling!

      Well, on strict LCHF I now believe that the my risk och getting cancer is much reduced, along with the “teachings” of Thomas Seyfried. I am now waiting for a convenient gaget, Ketonix, to arrive any day by which I can measure the actual blood content of ketogens to see where I am on the “Seyfried” scale which includes blood glucose measurements.

      Reply
      1. William Robinson

        Goran:

        Then let’s get this thing rolling.

        World LCHF Day January 16th.

        Sounds fun! I’m all over it.

        Reply

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