One of the basic differences between cancer cells and normal healthy ones is their relationship to oxygen. Cancer cells lack oxygen. They are ‘anaerobic’, meaning that they require an absence of free oxygen to survive. On the other hand, normal cells are ‘aerobic, that is, they need oxygen in order to live and grow. Put another way, normal body cells thrive in a living organism with an internal environment that is oxygen rich while cancer cells don’t. Conversely, an oxygen deprived environment is a breeding ground for malignancy. 75 years ago, when this quality of cancer cells was discovered, it was worthy of a Nobel Prize because it had the potential to shed light on the causes of cancer and provided insights into strategies to both cure and prevent it. The implication is that a goal of cancer treatment should be to create this type of oxygen rich environment where the likelihood of a cancer developing or thriving is greatly diminished.
This type of approach is yet another reminder that the prevention and treatment of illness, in this case cancer, cannot be separated from the general state of the body, or what some call ‘the terrain’. Merely targeting cancer cells for destruction without changing the terrain of the tissues in which they thrive usually only buys a respite from the disease, often at the expense of great discomfort and a vastly diminished quality of life. Even worse, it often leads to a diminished capacity to regain a healthy terrain. Once the cancer cells have been destroyed, cancer will almost inevitably re-emerge in a terrain conducive to its growth.
For the last 4 decades, a biochemist on Long Island in New York State has been conducting extensive research to develop a cancer therapy that can change the terrain of the body to make it inhospitable to the development of cancer by taking advantage of this difference between cancer and normal cells. Fifteen years ago, after experimenting with some 20,000 formulae, he came across a compound that realized his goal of stimulating the healthy function of normal aerobic body cells while at the same time inducing cellular death in malignant anaerobic ones.
It goes by a number of names. Originally, during the research trial phase, it was called ‘POLYDOX’. Some researchers have referred to it as ‘LAPd’ since its main ingredients are lipoic acid and palladium. Currently, it is generally known as ‘Poly-MVA’. ‘Poly’ referring to a proprietary blend of ingredients. ‘MVA’ stands for minerals, vitamins, and amino acids.
Lipoic acid is a strong anti-oxidant, a crucial facilitator of many enzymes and is essential for aerobic respiration. Palladium is a rare precious metal similar to platinum that is an excellent catalyst with a strong affinity for hydrogen. When bound together, the metallo-organic complex becomes water and fat soluble, and can move throughout the body, even across blood-brain barrier.
To gain a general understanding of how Poly-MVA works, it is necessary to look at the way cells produce and transfer energy.
A mitochondrion is a discrete structure in a cell that functions to generate energy for cellular activity; it is the cell’s power plant. The healthy human cell in an oxygen rich environment generates an appropriately strong electrical current in the cell that stimulates the mitochondrion. This results in the high production of energy during cellular respiration, when the chemical bonds of energy-rich molecules are converted into energy usable for life processes.
The ‘currency’ of energy production on a molecular level is the chemical compound Adenosine 5'-triphosphate, known as ATP. It facilitates the transfer of energy within the cell. During aerobic respiration, high amounts of ATP are produced by the cell resulting in a high level of energy for it to carry out its functions.
Amongst the most important of these functions is ‘apoptosis’, which relates to the cells own demise. Apoptosis is the process by which cells in a multicelluar organism deliberately relinquish life as a means to benefit the entire organism. It is a series of biochemical reactions that bring about the cellular death and safely discards the remains of the dead cell. This capacity to facilitate an ‘out with the old and in with the new’ program is actually a programmed cellular function that is essential for the healthy development, growth and continued life of a complex forms of life.
In contrast, the anaerobic respiration of a cancer cell does not have the capacity to generate more than a low cellular electrical current. This results in a low production of energy during respiration. Compared to aerobic respiration, anaerobic respiration only produces about 5% as much ATP. Without sufficient amounts of energy, cellular activities are greatly diminished.
Interestingly, one of the activities that the cancer cell is no longer capable of carrying out is apoptosis. That is, it can’t kill itself. While that might sound good for the cell, it isn’t so great for the organism as a whole. Without programmed cell death, the replication of cancer cells is carried out without control. This is the reason why cancer produces tumors. So, the result is low energy, ‘brain dead’ cells that go on forever: think zombies and ‘Night of the Living Dead’.
PART II
The other day, I was consulting with a patient of mine, someone I have worked with for a number of years, who reported to me that a recent mammogram had revealed some irregularities. The opinions of both the radiologist and oncologist concurred that nothing conclusive could be determined without removing living tissue from the breast, that is, without performing a biopsy. But while they did have some concerns about what might be taking place, they did not feel it warranted a biopsy – yet. So, the decision was to watch the situation and reassess at some unspecified later point.
I hear stories like this all the time. Breast cancer is a true epidemic in our society and it is a rare woman who, as she passes into middle age and beyond, hasn’t had some type of lump or cyst or calcification that becomes the object concern. Determining the status of these irregularities and the health of a person’s breast is not always easy. Reading a mammogram is not a simple thing and it doesn’t always reveal everything that is taking place.
Just as importantly, cancer is not a simple binary process. It isn’t like a light switch, either off or on, either you’ve don’t have it or you do. Cancer is a process. It is a disease that develops over a period of time as the internal environment of the body becomes a more conducive host to malignant tissue. There exists a nether world between not having cancer and having it, where the degenerative process has begun. If the process has developed to the point where cell and tissue abnormalities are present, it may be diagnosed as a precancer or dysplasia.
Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS) is a good example of this. It refers to the presence of cancer cells in the milk ducts that have not moved out of the duct in the surrounding tissues (‘in situ’ means ‘in place’). Sometimes it is described as a precancer or a ‘stage 0 cancer’ because it is not growing out of control. On the other hand, cancer cells being present, it can just as well be thought of as a cancer , but one that doesn’t act like most other forms. To my understanding, whether or not it is called ‘cancer’ is less important than that its presence indicates a significant deterioration of the body’s internal environment.
In contemporary conventional medicine, someone like my patient who inhabits this nether world between health and malignancy is basically asked to wait. ‘Wait until you really have cancer, then we can destroy it with surgery, radiation, chemotherapy.’
In that world, ‘preventative medicine’ means being watchful for the development of cancer and then treating after a positive diagnosis is made. But true preventative medicine is more than proactive diagnoses. It is being proactive to take steps to prevent the development of cancer. It means changing the internal environment of the body to reverse the degenerative process that is taking place.
There are a wide variety of ways someone like my patient can change the dynamic of her situation by switching from a passive to an active role. These run the gamut from life style changes such as exercise, stress management, spiritual pursuits to diet, nutritional supplementation, botanical medicines, homeopathic treatment and other more esoteric treatment modalities.
One of the most powerful therapies available to reverse the slide into malignancy – as well as eliminating malignant tissue once it has already developed - is the organo-mineral compound Poly-MVA. It has been described as a non-toxic, natural chemotherapeutic agent that is the result of decades of research and experimentation.
The basic mechanism by which it works takes advantage of the fact that cancer cells are anaerobic, which means that they only can thrive in an oxygen-depleted environment. This is the opposite of normal, healthy body cells that in order to function properly need oxygen to produce relatively high levels of energy in the form of ATP and electrical current. By contrast, anaerobic cells produce much less ATP and have a lower electrical current.
More specifically, when Poly-MVA is ingested or taken intravenously, it crosses the cellular membrane and conducts electrical current from the membrane itself to the mitochondria, which are structures within the cell itself that serve as centers for respiration and energy production. In a normal cell, the mitochondria can redistribute the electrical charge throughout the cell to energize it and enhance it activity.
But in the low energy malignant cell, the electrical pathways to distribute the charge are absent and when the electrical current is conducted to the mitochondria, it becomes damaged and releases a substance called ‘cytochrome c’.
Cytochrome c is a protein found on the inner membrane of the mitochondria. Its release in the cell is a crucial step in initiating apoptosis, the programmed cell death that take place in multicellular organisms to control cellular development or as a response to infection or damaged DNA. With the initiation of apoptosis, enzymes are released that cause the rupture of the cellular mechanism, resulting in the destruction of the cell.
The difference in the way that healthy cells and cancer cells react to Poly-MVA has been compared to delivering a 100 watt current to two different light bulbs, one a 100 watt bulb, the other a 40 watt bulb. The former will light up, while the latter will explode.
Contrary to conventional therapies, Poly-MVA does its job without harming healthy tissues, without causing fatigue or nausea or making one’s hair fall out. Quite to the contrary, I have noticed that when people start on a regimen of it, almost invariably their energy and sense of well-being increase in rather short order. It is truly a remarkable therapeutic tool.
For more information, the website http://www.polymvasurvivors.com/ is an excellent resource.