How to Grow a Cancer Cell (by Changing Your Body’s pH)

Oh, don’t worry, it’s not that hard to do.
However, you’ll not be able to grow a cancer without first establishing the right chemical climate so it can flourish in your body. Back in 1900, only one person out of twenty-five did it. But today, like I said, growing a cancer cell is easy. So easy, in fact, that every other male in this country and every third female will do it during their lifetime.

The chemical climate of the average American is perfect for growing cancer because our bodies have become acid, and cancer loves low pH readings that indicate high acidity. Consider, the national soft drink consumption per person is in excess of 38 gallons per year! It has been estimated that it would take 30 glasses of water with a pH of 10 to neutralize one can of soda. See why it’s so easy?

And we’re not even taking into account all the acid-producing foods served by fast food restaurants, all the packaged, canned, and processed foods found in your local grocery store, or the air pollution caused by too many cars, trucks, and buses. And I’m not even including the harmful positive ions found in the average home. Let alone the acid rock music that seems to be blaring away everywhere you go!

I’m simply talking about the stored acid wastes that you’ve accumulated in your organs, your glands, and even in the layers of your skin. And as they accumulate, your pH continues to change. When you understand pH, you’ll have a powerful tool that you can use to prevent a cancer climate.

The term pH stands for the hydrogen ion concentration of a solution. An ion is an atom or group of atoms that carries a positive or negative electrical charge. pH is simply the electrochemical effect we get when negative ions (alkaline-forming) and positive ions (acid-forming) interact with each other. Basically, this determines your life force energy.

When you experience an alkaline reaction, your body has more energy and you’ll discover an alkaline residue in your urine if you test for it. Remember, any substances you put into your body will leave an alkaline or acid ash residue in the urine. If your urine is consistently giving you an acid reading, you’ll find it easy to grow cancer.

Additionally, if at times you find yourself hyperventilating, it’s because of acidosis. Your body is attempting to remove carbon dioxide and carbonic acid. That’s what’s left from metabolizing food. As the amount of carbonic acid decreases, the pH increases. That means more energy and an alkaline pH reading from your urine. If your urine reads 7.0 or higher on the pH scale, you’re alkaline. Below that indicates an acid condition in which viruses thrive and cancer grows.

People who are heavy meat eaters show higher acid readings. However, this doesn’t mean that vegetarians fare much better by filling themselves with cooked foods.

A healthy inclusion of plenty of organic, raw veggies and fruits will help shift your body over to alkaline. However, bear in mind that your emotional swings also determine your pH balance.

How do you test your pH? Simply by using litmus paper or nitrazine paper, found at your local drugstore. Take samples of your urine in a jar for a 24-hour period, then dip the strip of paper and compare the color against the chart. The reason for all the samples over a 24-hour period is to get an average reading rather than a random reading that may or may not be accurate. You can also record a series of random tests and average out the readings.

Bear in mind, if you’re on an intense cleansing regime, the reactivated stores of acid will recirculate and be picked up by the kidneys to be excreted into the urine. So, you’ll get acid readings while the body is laboring to make itself more alkaline.

Remember, what you eat and drink, as well as your lifestyle, plays a critical role in the pH balance of your body. The bottom line is, if you know how to avoid creating a climate for cancer, you’ll never grow a tumor.

Yours in Luminous Health and Natural Cures,
Peter Ragnar

How to Grow a Cancer Cell (by Changing Your Body’s pH)

Oh, don’t worry, it’s not that hard to do.
However, you’ll not be able to grow a cancer without first establishing the right chemical climate so it can flourish in your body. Back in 1900, only one person out of twenty-five did it. But today, like I said, growing a cancer cell is easy. So easy, in fact, that every other male in this country and every third female will do it during their lifetime.

The chemical climate of the average American is perfect for growing cancer because our bodies have become acid, and cancer loves low pH readings that indicate high acidity. Consider, the national soft drink consumption per person is in excess of 38 gallons per year! It has been estimated that it would take 30 glasses of water with a pH of 10 to neutralize one can of soda. See why it’s so easy?

And we’re not even taking into account all the acid-producing foods served by fast food restaurants, all the packaged, canned, and processed foods found in your local grocery store, or the air pollution caused by too many cars, trucks, and buses. And I’m not even including the harmful positive ions found in the average home. Let alone the acid rock music that seems to be blaring away everywhere you go!

I’m simply talking about the stored acid wastes that you’ve accumulated in your organs, your glands, and even in the layers of your skin. And as they accumulate, your pH continues to change. When you understand pH, you’ll have a powerful tool that you can use to prevent a cancer climate.

The term pH stands for the hydrogen ion concentration of a solution. An ion is an atom or group of atoms that carries a positive or negative electrical charge. pH is simply the electrochemical effect we get when negative ions (alkaline-forming) and positive ions (acid-forming) interact with each other. Basically, this determines your life force energy.

When you experience an alkaline reaction, your body has more energy and you’ll discover an alkaline residue in your urine if you test for it. Remember, any substances you put into your body will leave an alkaline or acid ash residue in the urine. If your urine is consistently giving you an acid reading, you’ll find it easy to grow cancer.

Additionally, if at times you find yourself hyperventilating, it’s because of acidosis. Your body is attempting to remove carbon dioxide and carbonic acid. That’s what’s left from metabolizing food. As the amount of carbonic acid decreases, the pH increases. That means more energy and an alkaline pH reading from your urine. If your urine reads 7.0 or higher on the pH scale, you’re alkaline. Below that indicates an acid condition in which viruses thrive and cancer grows.

People who are heavy meat eaters show higher acid readings. However, this doesn’t mean that vegetarians fare much better by filling themselves with cooked foods.

A healthy inclusion of plenty of organic, raw veggies and fruits will help shift your body over to alkaline. However, bear in mind that your emotional swings also determine your pH balance.

How do you test your pH? Simply by using litmus paper or nitrazine paper, found at your local drugstore. Take samples of your urine in a jar for a 24-hour period, then dip the strip of paper and compare the color against the chart. The reason for all the samples over a 24-hour period is to get an average reading rather than a random reading that may or may not be accurate. You can also record a series of random tests and average out the readings.

Bear in mind, if you’re on an intense cleansing regime, the reactivated stores of acid will recirculate and be picked up by the kidneys to be excreted into the urine. So, you’ll get acid readings while the body is laboring to make itself more alkaline.

Remember, what you eat and drink, as well as your lifestyle, plays a critical role in the pH balance of your body. The bottom line is, if you know how to avoid creating a climate for cancer, you’ll never grow a tumor.

Yours in Luminous Health and Natural Cures,
Peter Ragnar

How to Grow a Cancer Cell (by Changing Your Body’s pH)

Oh, don’t worry, it’s not that hard to do.
However, you’ll not be able to grow a cancer without first establishing the right chemical climate so it can flourish in your body. Back in 1900, only one person out of twenty-five did it. But today, like I said, growing a cancer cell is easy. So easy, in fact, that every other male in this country and every third female will do it during their lifetime.

The chemical climate of the average American is perfect for growing cancer because our bodies have become acid, and cancer loves low pH readings that indicate high acidity. Consider, the national soft drink consumption per person is in excess of 38 gallons per year! It has been estimated that it would take 30 glasses of water with a pH of 10 to neutralize one can of soda. See why it’s so easy?

And we’re not even taking into account all the acid-producing foods served by fast food restaurants, all the packaged, canned, and processed foods found in your local grocery store, or the air pollution caused by too many cars, trucks, and buses. And I’m not even including the harmful positive ions found in the average home. Let alone the acid rock music that seems to be blaring away everywhere you go!

I’m simply talking about the stored acid wastes that you’ve accumulated in your organs, your glands, and even in the layers of your skin. And as they accumulate, your pH continues to change. When you understand pH, you’ll have a powerful tool that you can use to prevent a cancer climate.

The term pH stands for the hydrogen ion concentration of a solution. An ion is an atom or group of atoms that carries a positive or negative electrical charge. pH is simply the electrochemical effect we get when negative ions (alkaline-forming) and positive ions (acid-forming) interact with each other. Basically, this determines your life force energy.

When you experience an alkaline reaction, your body has more energy and you’ll discover an alkaline residue in your urine if you test for it. Remember, any substances you put into your body will leave an alkaline or acid ash residue in the urine. If your urine is consistently giving you an acid reading, you’ll find it easy to grow cancer.

Additionally, if at times you find yourself hyperventilating, it’s because of acidosis. Your body is attempting to remove carbon dioxide and carbonic acid. That’s what’s left from metabolizing food. As the amount of carbonic acid decreases, the pH increases. That means more energy and an alkaline pH reading from your urine. If your urine reads 7.0 or higher on the pH scale, you’re alkaline. Below that indicates an acid condition in which viruses thrive and cancer grows.

People who are heavy meat eaters show higher acid readings. However, this doesn’t mean that vegetarians fare much better by filling themselves with cooked foods.

A healthy inclusion of plenty of organic, raw veggies and fruits will help shift your body over to alkaline. However, bear in mind that your emotional swings also determine your pH balance.

How do you test your pH? Simply by using litmus paper or nitrazine paper, found at your local drugstore. Take samples of your urine in a jar for a 24-hour period, then dip the strip of paper and compare the color against the chart. The reason for all the samples over a 24-hour period is to get an average reading rather than a random reading that may or may not be accurate. You can also record a series of random tests and average out the readings.

Bear in mind, if you’re on an intense cleansing regime, the reactivated stores of acid will recirculate and be picked up by the kidneys to be excreted into the urine. So, you’ll get acid readings while the body is laboring to make itself more alkaline.

Remember, what you eat and drink, as well as your lifestyle, plays a critical role in the pH balance of your body. The bottom line is, if you know how to avoid creating a climate for cancer, you’ll never grow a tumor.

Yours in Luminous Health and Natural Cures,
Peter Ragnar

Vitamin C: a Cancer Cure?

Vitamin C: Cancer cure?By Marie McCullough
Inquirer Staff Writer
Is mainstream medical science ignoring an inexpensive, painless, readily available cure for cancer?

Mark Levine mulls this loaded question.

The government nutrition researcher has published new evidence that suggests vitamin C can work like chemotherapy - only better. But so far, he hasn't been able to interest cancer experts in conducting the kind of conclusive studies that, one way or the other, would advance treatment.

"If vitamin C is useful in cancer treatment, that's wonderful. If it's not, or if it's harmful, that's fine, too," said Levine, a Harvard-educated physician at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. "The goal is: Find what's true. Either way, the public wins, clinicians win, and patients win."

If Linus Pauling, the two-time Nobel laureate turned vitamin C zealot, had taken an equally dispassionate stance 30 years ago, who knows where the vitamin would be in oncology today. Surely not where it is: a dubious alternative on the fringes of medicine, despite its continuing links to remissions and cures.

This is not about popping supplements. It's about putting high-dose vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, into a vein, which requires needles and trained professionals.

The distinction between oral and intravenous is crucial. The body automatically gets rid of extra C through urine. Levine's lab has shown that, at high concentrations, the vitamin is toxic to many types of cancer cells in lab dishes. But to get that much C into the body before it's eliminated, it must be put directly into the blood.

This may explain the defining setback of Pauling's crusade. He and his collaborator, Scottish surgeon Ewan Cameron, gave C intravenously and orally, and claimed many of their cancer patients lived surprisingly long and well. In the 1970s, two rigorous government studies intended to test their claims gave only pills - and found no benefits.

How could so many smart people, including Pauling, ignore a variable as basic as the body's ability to absorb and clear a drug?

"I don't want to impugn anyone," Levine said. "It's one of these things where somebody didn't ask the right questions."

So Levine keeps on, driven by the still-open question:

Can intravenous C do what even the costliest, most targeted, most effective therapies cannot: kill cancer cells without harming healthy ones?

500 oranges

Loretta Hill, 42, of Pittsgrove, Salem County, sits at a faux granite table, facing a TV, chatting with two other cancer patients in the Marlton office suite of family physician Vivienne Matalon.

Each patient is tethered to an intravenous bag of C and other nutrients hung above the table that will take 40 minutes to drip into them. The fee, not usually covered by insurance, is $110.

Hill can't prove that C saved her from colon cancer, but she fervently believes it has.

She was diagnosed in 2001, at age 38, after a sudden bout of rectal bleeding. She had surgery, radiation, two courses of chemo. Six months later, the cancer was back - but had spread to both lungs.

After those tumors were cut out, her oncologist offered irinotecan, which costs about $9,500 a week. But, she says, he held out little hope. He declined to be interviewed.

By then, Hill could barely function, much to the anguish of her husband and 9-year-old daughter.

When she heard about Matalon's ascorbate infusions, she figured, "If this doesn't work, at least I'll be in a better position for more chemo."

Today, almost four years later, Hill is in college part time, plays soccer, and has no signs of cancer. Her weekly C dosage has been cut to 30 grams - about 500 oranges' worth - but she has no plans to quit because her only side effects are "fabulous hair and skin."

Bill Nath, 69, a Wichita, Kan., businessman, is an even more provocative case.

In 1996, blood in his urine led to a diagnosis of bladder cancer. Tumors were invading the organ and surrounding muscle.

Nath consulted experts at four major cancer centers from Wichita to New York. All recommended chemo, radiation, and removal of all or part of the bladder. Total removal would include the prostate, adding risks of incontinence and impotence.

One specialist "said if I didn't remove the whole bladder, I would die," said Nath. "It was pretty traumatic."

Nath ultimately made a choice that seemed suicidal to his wife, friends, and doctors: to keep part of his bladder and forgo chemo and radiation.

Instead, he got 30 grams of C twice a week for three months, then every month or two for four years at the Center for the Improvement of Human Functioning in Wichita. It was founded by Hugh Riordan, a physician and friend of Pauling's, now deceased.

Today, a decade after his diagnosis, Nath is cancer-free.

Levine, in collaboration with National Cancer Institute pathologists, reexamined, then published Nath's case and two others from Riordan's center. While such "case reports" prove nothing, Levine hoped they would stir interest in reexamining ascorbate in oncology.

But as Nath has discovered, when it comes to C, people who hear hoofbeats look for zebras.

"Everybody thought I was crazy," he said. "Now they probably think... it's a miracle or something."

Not a miracle

Vitamin C is not miraculous, proponents say. Just as some people die despite standard treatment, some die despite ascorbate drips.

"We may not be able to affect the ultimate outcome," said Matalon, who sees about 15 ascorbate patients a week. "But I think we see a dramatic improvement in quality of life."

The problem is, anecdotes and impressions don't count. Skeptics ask: Where's the data on dosing and regimens, on tumor responses, on survival?

"As far as I know, that kind of registry just doesn't exist now, and it's a huge weakness of the movement," acknowledged Ron Hunninghake, chief medical officer at Riordan's center, which is starting a database.

In any case, as consumers clamor for alternative therapies, intravenous C is gaining fans. Reports of side effects are rare, and risky patients - with kidney problems or blood disorders - are easily screened out.

"Interest is definitely growing," said Kenneth Bock, physician and president of the American College for Advancement in Medicine, an alternative-medicine society that teaches ascorbate infusion protocols.

Interest is not growing, however, among mainstream oncologists, judging from conferences, publications, and interviews with some of them.

The National Cancer Institute, with a $5 billion budget, is not sponsoring studies of intravenous C. Neither is the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine - although it is paying for cancer studies of the noni extract herbal supplement and Reiki energy healing. The American Cancer Society and the American Association of Clinical Oncologists warn patients against high-dose C, as do leading cancer centers such as the University of Pennsylvania's and Memorial Sloan-Kettering in new York.

Jeffrey White, director of the National Cancer Institute's office of cancer complementary and alternative medicine, said that he's tried to "generate awareness" of Levine's research, and believes it justifies more studies in humans. But White acknowledged that the NCI has rejected "a few" proposals for such studies.

At the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., oncologist Edward Creagan said the idea that intravenous, but not oral, levels are toxic to cancer is "an intriguing concept."

"However, my own belief is that the vitamin C story is really ancient history," he said. "It would be very difficult for patients and clinicians to mount a lot of enthusiasm for another vitamin C study."

It was Creagan and his Mayo colleague, Charles Moertel, since deceased, who in the 1970s conducted the two NCI-funded "clinical trials" that showed vitamin C pills were no better than placebo pills for cancer patients.

A clinical trial is considered ultra-reliable because it is designed to keep beliefs and hopes from slanting findings.

Pauling lobbied for a trial, then later contended that the Mayo researchers enrolled unsuitable patients. A second trial in response to Pauling's criticism also bombed. Again he faulted the Mayo oncologists. He also threatened a libel suit against a Rochester newspaper for the headline "Pauling Wrong on Vitamin C for Cancer," and accused the New England Journal of Medicine and the NCI of accepting a "fraudulent" study, according to Australian medical historian Evelleen Richards.

By then, Pauling advocated treating everything from the common cold to mental illness with vitamins and other substances he dubbed "orthomolecular," meaning "right molecule." To many colleagues, this genius and visionary, winner of the 1954 Nobel in chemistry and the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for his antiwar work, had become a kook - "The Old Man and the C".

Decades later, both skeptics and fans of C are gun-shy about more trials.

"There's tremendous resistance to even test this," Levine said. "It's very hard to revisit something like this without data. Information is diamonds."

As the chief of the molecular and clinical nutrition section at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases - hardly a hotbed of federal cancer research - Levine discovered some diamonds "by accident."

In the early 1990s, his lab began looking at how the concentration of a nutrient affects its function, and how the body gets the proper concentration.

"As part of those studies, we looked at how vitamin C is absorbed in the intestine," Levine said.

By 2000, when that work led to an increase in the U.S. recommended daily allowance of vitamin C, Levine had become an expert on ascorbate's "pharmacokinetics" - what the body does to the drug.

Consumers and scientists already knew that ascorbate was an "antioxidant," meaning it protects cells from reactive oxygen molecules - the same marauders that turn peeled apples brown and wet metal rusty.

Indeed, the reason the American Cancer Society and others discourage ascorbate megadoses is that a few studies of cells in dishes suggest C might protect cancer from oxidant damage. Chemotherapy and radiation work partly by intentionally unleashing this damage.

But Levine's lab-dish studies showed that ascorbate transforms from an antioxidant into just the opposite - an oxidant promoter - when it reaches high concentrations. At these levels, which are achievable in the body only intravenously, C acts like a toxic drug by generating hydrogen peroxide, a powerful oxidant used as a bleaching agent, an antiseptic, and even a World War II rocket fuel.

Still, the biochemistry was puzzling. Putting pure peroxide in the bloodstream can be fatal, so why did patients feel fine when the vitamin that produces it was dripped into their veins?

Levine's experiments offered possible answers. Vitamin C did not generate peroxide in blood, only in liquid such as that found in body cavities. Thus, in the body, intravenous C must seep out of the blood to work.

Five out of nine types of cancer cells that were put in simulated body-cavity fluid died when concentrated ascorbate or peroxide was added to the dish. And the best part: This same lethal marinade had no effect on healthy cells.

For some reason, cancer cells were like the Wicked Witch of the West splashed with water - powerful villains vanquished by a mundane substance that is harmless to good guys.

Previously, Riordan had speculated that this was partly because an enzyme that neutralizes peroxide is abundant inside normal cells, and scarce inside cancerous ones. But by inducing cells to take in C, Levine proved that the internal concentration doesn't matter; malignant cells withered only when C surrounded them.

Armed with this new evidence, a coterie of researchers - all associated with Pauling or his disciples - have recently obtained private funding for small trials of intravenous C.

University of Kansas Medical Center physician Jeanne Drisko has $375,000 for a trial of 30 ovarian cancer patients. In Montreal, McGill University oncologist Wilson Miller has $300,000 to find the maximum safe doses for treating various cancers.

Meanwhile, Levine is forging ahead with animal studies, trying to decipher the molecular magic of C's selective toxicity.

Does that mean he believes C is an unsung cancer weapon?

"I think that question is akin to 'Do you still beat your wife?' " he said. "The question I would ask is: Shouldn't we investigate the potential of ascorbate as a drug?... Let's not guess anymore. Let's be motivated by the truth."

Web Sites and Information

For more information on the pros and cons of intravenous vitamin C use, and where you might find the treatment:

• The Center for the Improvement of Human Functioning in Wichita, Kan., specializes in certain alternative medical approaches, including intravenous vitamin C: http://www.brightspot.org/

Its intravenous C treatment protocol can be found at: http://www.canceraction.org.gg/recnac.htm

• The American College for Advancement of Medicine is a medical society that educates health-care professionals about alternative therapies. It teaches vitamin C infusion protocols as part of training in chelation therapy. It has a physician referral phone line (1-888-439-6891) and a searchable online physician directory:

http://www.acam.org/dr_search/index.php

• The American Cancer Society is a national research, education, advocacy, and service organization. It offers information on alternative therapies. A Web page on vitamin C is at: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/ETO/content/ETO_5_3X_Vitamin_C.asp?sitearea=ETO

• The National Cancer Institute's Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine has information about treatments, research, and clinical trials:

http://www.cancer.gov/cam/


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact staff writer Marie McCullough at 215-854-2720 or

Vitamin C: a Cancer Cure?

Vitamin C: Cancer cure?By Marie McCullough
Inquirer Staff Writer
Is mainstream medical science ignoring an inexpensive, painless, readily available cure for cancer?

Mark Levine mulls this loaded question.

The government nutrition researcher has published new evidence that suggests vitamin C can work like chemotherapy - only better. But so far, he hasn't been able to interest cancer experts in conducting the kind of conclusive studies that, one way or the other, would advance treatment.

"If vitamin C is useful in cancer treatment, that's wonderful. If it's not, or if it's harmful, that's fine, too," said Levine, a Harvard-educated physician at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. "The goal is: Find what's true. Either way, the public wins, clinicians win, and patients win."

If Linus Pauling, the two-time Nobel laureate turned vitamin C zealot, had taken an equally dispassionate stance 30 years ago, who knows where the vitamin would be in oncology today. Surely not where it is: a dubious alternative on the fringes of medicine, despite its continuing links to remissions and cures.

This is not about popping supplements. It's about putting high-dose vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, into a vein, which requires needles and trained professionals.

The distinction between oral and intravenous is crucial. The body automatically gets rid of extra C through urine. Levine's lab has shown that, at high concentrations, the vitamin is toxic to many types of cancer cells in lab dishes. But to get that much C into the body before it's eliminated, it must be put directly into the blood.

This may explain the defining setback of Pauling's crusade. He and his collaborator, Scottish surgeon Ewan Cameron, gave C intravenously and orally, and claimed many of their cancer patients lived surprisingly long and well. In the 1970s, two rigorous government studies intended to test their claims gave only pills - and found no benefits.

How could so many smart people, including Pauling, ignore a variable as basic as the body's ability to absorb and clear a drug?

"I don't want to impugn anyone," Levine said. "It's one of these things where somebody didn't ask the right questions."

So Levine keeps on, driven by the still-open question:

Can intravenous C do what even the costliest, most targeted, most effective therapies cannot: kill cancer cells without harming healthy ones?

500 oranges

Loretta Hill, 42, of Pittsgrove, Salem County, sits at a faux granite table, facing a TV, chatting with two other cancer patients in the Marlton office suite of family physician Vivienne Matalon.

Each patient is tethered to an intravenous bag of C and other nutrients hung above the table that will take 40 minutes to drip into them. The fee, not usually covered by insurance, is $110.

Hill can't prove that C saved her from colon cancer, but she fervently believes it has.

She was diagnosed in 2001, at age 38, after a sudden bout of rectal bleeding. She had surgery, radiation, two courses of chemo. Six months later, the cancer was back - but had spread to both lungs.

After those tumors were cut out, her oncologist offered irinotecan, which costs about $9,500 a week. But, she says, he held out little hope. He declined to be interviewed.

By then, Hill could barely function, much to the anguish of her husband and 9-year-old daughter.

When she heard about Matalon's ascorbate infusions, she figured, "If this doesn't work, at least I'll be in a better position for more chemo."

Today, almost four years later, Hill is in college part time, plays soccer, and has no signs of cancer. Her weekly C dosage has been cut to 30 grams - about 500 oranges' worth - but she has no plans to quit because her only side effects are "fabulous hair and skin."

Bill Nath, 69, a Wichita, Kan., businessman, is an even more provocative case.

In 1996, blood in his urine led to a diagnosis of bladder cancer. Tumors were invading the organ and surrounding muscle.

Nath consulted experts at four major cancer centers from Wichita to New York. All recommended chemo, radiation, and removal of all or part of the bladder. Total removal would include the prostate, adding risks of incontinence and impotence.

One specialist "said if I didn't remove the whole bladder, I would die," said Nath. "It was pretty traumatic."

Nath ultimately made a choice that seemed suicidal to his wife, friends, and doctors: to keep part of his bladder and forgo chemo and radiation.

Instead, he got 30 grams of C twice a week for three months, then every month or two for four years at the Center for the Improvement of Human Functioning in Wichita. It was founded by Hugh Riordan, a physician and friend of Pauling's, now deceased.

Today, a decade after his diagnosis, Nath is cancer-free.

Levine, in collaboration with National Cancer Institute pathologists, reexamined, then published Nath's case and two others from Riordan's center. While such "case reports" prove nothing, Levine hoped they would stir interest in reexamining ascorbate in oncology.

But as Nath has discovered, when it comes to C, people who hear hoofbeats look for zebras.

"Everybody thought I was crazy," he said. "Now they probably think... it's a miracle or something."

Not a miracle

Vitamin C is not miraculous, proponents say. Just as some people die despite standard treatment, some die despite ascorbate drips.

"We may not be able to affect the ultimate outcome," said Matalon, who sees about 15 ascorbate patients a week. "But I think we see a dramatic improvement in quality of life."

The problem is, anecdotes and impressions don't count. Skeptics ask: Where's the data on dosing and regimens, on tumor responses, on survival?

"As far as I know, that kind of registry just doesn't exist now, and it's a huge weakness of the movement," acknowledged Ron Hunninghake, chief medical officer at Riordan's center, which is starting a database.

In any case, as consumers clamor for alternative therapies, intravenous C is gaining fans. Reports of side effects are rare, and risky patients - with kidney problems or blood disorders - are easily screened out.

"Interest is definitely growing," said Kenneth Bock, physician and president of the American College for Advancement in Medicine, an alternative-medicine society that teaches ascorbate infusion protocols.

Interest is not growing, however, among mainstream oncologists, judging from conferences, publications, and interviews with some of them.

The National Cancer Institute, with a $5 billion budget, is not sponsoring studies of intravenous C. Neither is the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine - although it is paying for cancer studies of the noni extract herbal supplement and Reiki energy healing. The American Cancer Society and the American Association of Clinical Oncologists warn patients against high-dose C, as do leading cancer centers such as the University of Pennsylvania's and Memorial Sloan-Kettering in new York.

Jeffrey White, director of the National Cancer Institute's office of cancer complementary and alternative medicine, said that he's tried to "generate awareness" of Levine's research, and believes it justifies more studies in humans. But White acknowledged that the NCI has rejected "a few" proposals for such studies.

At the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., oncologist Edward Creagan said the idea that intravenous, but not oral, levels are toxic to cancer is "an intriguing concept."

"However, my own belief is that the vitamin C story is really ancient history," he said. "It would be very difficult for patients and clinicians to mount a lot of enthusiasm for another vitamin C study."

It was Creagan and his Mayo colleague, Charles Moertel, since deceased, who in the 1970s conducted the two NCI-funded "clinical trials" that showed vitamin C pills were no better than placebo pills for cancer patients.

A clinical trial is considered ultra-reliable because it is designed to keep beliefs and hopes from slanting findings.

Pauling lobbied for a trial, then later contended that the Mayo researchers enrolled unsuitable patients. A second trial in response to Pauling's criticism also bombed. Again he faulted the Mayo oncologists. He also threatened a libel suit against a Rochester newspaper for the headline "Pauling Wrong on Vitamin C for Cancer," and accused the New England Journal of Medicine and the NCI of accepting a "fraudulent" study, according to Australian medical historian Evelleen Richards.

By then, Pauling advocated treating everything from the common cold to mental illness with vitamins and other substances he dubbed "orthomolecular," meaning "right molecule." To many colleagues, this genius and visionary, winner of the 1954 Nobel in chemistry and the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for his antiwar work, had become a kook - "The Old Man and the C".

Decades later, both skeptics and fans of C are gun-shy about more trials.

"There's tremendous resistance to even test this," Levine said. "It's very hard to revisit something like this without data. Information is diamonds."

As the chief of the molecular and clinical nutrition section at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases - hardly a hotbed of federal cancer research - Levine discovered some diamonds "by accident."

In the early 1990s, his lab began looking at how the concentration of a nutrient affects its function, and how the body gets the proper concentration.

"As part of those studies, we looked at how vitamin C is absorbed in the intestine," Levine said.

By 2000, when that work led to an increase in the U.S. recommended daily allowance of vitamin C, Levine had become an expert on ascorbate's "pharmacokinetics" - what the body does to the drug.

Consumers and scientists already knew that ascorbate was an "antioxidant," meaning it protects cells from reactive oxygen molecules - the same marauders that turn peeled apples brown and wet metal rusty.

Indeed, the reason the American Cancer Society and others discourage ascorbate megadoses is that a few studies of cells in dishes suggest C might protect cancer from oxidant damage. Chemotherapy and radiation work partly by intentionally unleashing this damage.

But Levine's lab-dish studies showed that ascorbate transforms from an antioxidant into just the opposite - an oxidant promoter - when it reaches high concentrations. At these levels, which are achievable in the body only intravenously, C acts like a toxic drug by generating hydrogen peroxide, a powerful oxidant used as a bleaching agent, an antiseptic, and even a World War II rocket fuel.

Still, the biochemistry was puzzling. Putting pure peroxide in the bloodstream can be fatal, so why did patients feel fine when the vitamin that produces it was dripped into their veins?

Levine's experiments offered possible answers. Vitamin C did not generate peroxide in blood, only in liquid such as that found in body cavities. Thus, in the body, intravenous C must seep out of the blood to work.

Five out of nine types of cancer cells that were put in simulated body-cavity fluid died when concentrated ascorbate or peroxide was added to the dish. And the best part: This same lethal marinade had no effect on healthy cells.

For some reason, cancer cells were like the Wicked Witch of the West splashed with water - powerful villains vanquished by a mundane substance that is harmless to good guys.

Previously, Riordan had speculated that this was partly because an enzyme that neutralizes peroxide is abundant inside normal cells, and scarce inside cancerous ones. But by inducing cells to take in C, Levine proved that the internal concentration doesn't matter; malignant cells withered only when C surrounded them.

Armed with this new evidence, a coterie of researchers - all associated with Pauling or his disciples - have recently obtained private funding for small trials of intravenous C.

University of Kansas Medical Center physician Jeanne Drisko has $375,000 for a trial of 30 ovarian cancer patients. In Montreal, McGill University oncologist Wilson Miller has $300,000 to find the maximum safe doses for treating various cancers.

Meanwhile, Levine is forging ahead with animal studies, trying to decipher the molecular magic of C's selective toxicity.

Does that mean he believes C is an unsung cancer weapon?

"I think that question is akin to 'Do you still beat your wife?' " he said. "The question I would ask is: Shouldn't we investigate the potential of ascorbate as a drug?... Let's not guess anymore. Let's be motivated by the truth."

Web Sites and Information

For more information on the pros and cons of intravenous vitamin C use, and where you might find the treatment:

• The Center for the Improvement of Human Functioning in Wichita, Kan., specializes in certain alternative medical approaches, including intravenous vitamin C: http://www.brightspot.org/

Its intravenous C treatment protocol can be found at: http://www.canceraction.org.gg/recnac.htm

• The American College for Advancement of Medicine is a medical society that educates health-care professionals about alternative therapies. It teaches vitamin C infusion protocols as part of training in chelation therapy. It has a physician referral phone line (1-888-439-6891) and a searchable online physician directory:

http://www.acam.org/dr_search/index.php

• The American Cancer Society is a national research, education, advocacy, and service organization. It offers information on alternative therapies. A Web page on vitamin C is at: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/ETO/content/ETO_5_3X_Vitamin_C.asp?sitearea=ETO

• The National Cancer Institute's Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine has information about treatments, research, and clinical trials:

http://www.cancer.gov/cam/


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Contact staff writer Marie McCullough at 215-854-2720 or

Grapefruit

The Citrus Fruit Every Diabetic Should Eat

Most doctors tell diabetics to avoid citrus fruit because it causes blood sugar problems. But there’s one citrus fruit I think all diabetics should include in their diet. Not only does it reduce your blood sugar, it can also help you lose weight.

A recent study proves this. Researchers at the prestigious Scripps Institute in Lajolla, CA divided 91 obese volunteers into several groups. Each group ingested either one-half raw grapefruit, eight ounces grapefruit juice, grapefruit capsules, or a placebo. They took the capsules and the placebo with apple juice – a non-citrus fruit juice.

Each group took their treatment three times daily before each meal. After 123 weeks, all of the volunteers in the grapefruit groups experienced weight loss. The most weight loss was in fresh grapefruit use, followed by grapefruit juice, and then capsules. The placebo group had insignificant weight loss.
But most importantly, subjects in the fresh grapefruit group had lower glucose and insulin levels. Insulin resistance, a serious marker for future disease, also improved.

The researchers didn’t give an explanation for why the grapefruit works, other than it’s ability to help lower blood sugar and insulin levels. But I suspect there’s a lot more to it than that.

We know that vinegar helps with glucose intolerance and metabolic syndrome. Well, grapefruit is similar to vinegar in that both contain organic acids. These acids act as tiny fatty acids that are very easy for your body to burn. When they enter your stomach, they slow your body’s digestion of sugars and other carbs. The result is lower blood sugar.

This is great news because I like grapefruit a lot more than vinegar. I’m sure you do too. Eating grapefruit to lose weight was considered an old wive’s tale. But now we see that it’s really an effective folk remedy. This study confirms two things I have repeatedly stressed: (1) Fresh living foods are best, and (2) natural remedies, especially food, should be your first choice in healing. Fresh grapefruit and grapefruit juice are a living food, bursting with vitamin C, bioflavonoids and other nutrients. I recommend you eat or drink it whenever you can.

Yours for better health and medical freedom, Robert Jay Rowen, MD

Ref: Fujioka K, F. Greenway, et al. “The effects of grapefruit on weight and insulin resistance: relationship to the metabolic syndrome,” J Med Food, 2006; 9(1): 49-54.

Cut Anger Problems by 40%--without Drugs

In our last health alert, you saw how psychiatry and the drug companies are out to solve our nation’s anger problems. Their solution, of course, is prescription drugs – usually tranquilizers.

While they like to blame TV and bad parenting for the rise in anger mismanagement, there’s something else to blame. And fixing this one simple problem can reduce anger problems by 40% or more.

Some innovative researchers went into violent juvenile detention centers and cleaned out violence. How? By simply improving the teens’ diets. Yes, just replacing soft drinks with juice, and swapping refined sugar with fruit caused an immediate 40% reduction in violence.

Think that’s just coincidence? Think again. God designed your body to survive. The survival instinct is called the “fight or flight’ response, and is mediated by adrenaline. Pump adrenaline into a tranquil person, and you can get a crazed and uncontrollable behavior.

Now if your brain can’t respond properly response to a situation, this “fight or flight” response will naturally come out. What might prevent your brain from working normally? A lack of nutrients! Researchers have repeatedly shown that a mineral imbalance can dramatically alter your brains biochemistry, energy production, neurological response, and subsequent behavior.

So if you improve your diet with nutrient-rich foods and it causes an immediate drop in violence, is IED a real disease? Or is it simply the visible symptom of a more insidious problem – a brain starving for minerals? You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure this one out.

Action to take: If you or a loved one struggles with rage, don’t let a shrink label you with this new diagnosis. And definitely don’t let the shrink spoon-feed drugs to “solve” the problem.
You’ll be stuck with the label and the drugs for the rest of your life.

Instead, head to your integrative physician. Have your minerals, amino acids, and other nutritional deficiencies evaluated and fixed. The brain you save and the anger you avoid might be your own.

Yours for better health and medical freedom, Robert Jay Rowen, MD

Electrical Fields

Harold Saxon Burr, Professor at Yale School of Medicine in 1929, initiated a study of the role of electricity in development and disease. Burr's work on energy fields from 1932 to 1956 was way out of step with the mainstream medicine and biology of the time. This was a period of explosive growth in pharmaceutical medicine and in the use of X-rays for diagnosis. Antibiotics were winning the war against disease and the thrust of medical research and public policy was towards a pill for every problem.

See James Oschman,Energy Medicine

While Burr discovered the theory of the influence of electricity on optimal performance, inventors like the Russian George Lakhovsky, the American Royal Rife or the Italian Antoine Priore and Gianni Dotto developed the corresponding technical devices. Lakhovsky (1869-1942) postulated the theory that a state of health or disease of a cell was dependant on whether the oscillations from healthy cells were maintained or were overtaken by the oscillations of the disease-causing cells. In the 1930ís, he developed an electro-therapeutic system called the Multi-Wave Oscillator (MWO). The MWO produced a broad-spectrum electromagnetic field specifically aimed at restoring cellular function to its normal state. (see George Lakhovsky, The Secret of Life)

Harold Saxon Burr, the Yale physiologist who was one of the first great pioneers in the scientific (or third-person) study of energy fields, often used diagrams of ever expanding energy fields around the body, much like an aura, which represent experimentally detected energy fields.

Such diagrams include a " P-field," or any gross physical energies associated with this body; as well as an " L-field" (or "life-field") and a " T-field" (or "thought-field"). Note that none of these energy fields are merely local, or confined simply to a physical and localized space. The local aspects of these energy fields are simply the areas of highest density of the fields (or, alternatively, the areas of greatest probability of finding the signature energy). But many of these local aspects can indeed be physically detected with various instruments (e.g., Burr, Motoyama, Tiller). Also, well-known and highly respected psychics (e.g., Michal Levin) often perceive these energy shells in essentially the way Burr depicted them—fields within fields within fields.

The visionary scientist, Harold Saxon Burr, commented in the 1930s on the electromagnetic determinants of life. He recognized the need to introduce a coordinating factor for the rapidly changing biochemical reactions constituting metabolism. Burr's research laid a solid experimental foundation behind the idea that every living system possesses an electric field that can be measured accurately. Life was an electro-dynamic event. This field has the properties, he said, to "control the movement and position of all charged particles within the living system...needed for control of growth and development". Burr and his colleagues left an enormous legacy in their papers and publications. His contributions to the developing science of bioeletronics was extremely important

Assumptions

5 False Assumptions About Natural Living
by Frederic Patenaude

It seems like every time you turn your head, you hear confusing and misleading information from every corner of the natural health movement. First, you have mainstream “experts” who rely on outdated and inaccurate data to advise us on the subject. And then there's the raw food or natural health movement itself, within which most people seem to disagree on what constitutes the healthiest diet.

In this article, I will review 5 wrong assumptions about natural living, spread by conventional “experts.” In the second part of this article, I will expose 5 false assumptions being spread by various raw-food advocates and naturopaths.

From the mainstream, we hear the following...

You have to make sure you eat enough protein

Without a doubt, the issue of “getting enough protein” is the number one concern of anyone switching to any kind of diet for any reason. Even though decades of vegetarian and vegan traditions and extensive research have proven that our actual protein requirements are fairly low and easy to meet - as long as we eat enough food - most people who will advise you about diet will likely make a much bigger deal about protein than it actually is.

Bodybuilders go beyond all extremes known to humankind by consuming upwards to 350 grams of protein per day, an amount that is completely off the charts and only possible through the consumption of refined protein powders.

At the same time, most people on the planet get by on less than 60 grams of protein a day, and many people in these cultures possess wiry and explosive strength that would put most gym goers to shame.

In the end, the evidence is still conclusive: as long as you eat enough calories to meet your needs, you will at the same time consume enough protein, even if all you eat are fruits and vegetables.

There is no reason to make protein more important than it actually is.

You need to eat a balanced diet

According to our nutritionists, a “balanced” meal is composed of carbohydrates, protein and fat in the right proportions.

A meal of bread (carbohydrate), with cheese (protein), and a salad containing a dressing of olive oil (fat) and a desert (carbohydrate) would be, in their opinion, a balanced meal.

That meal might be a digestive disaster for most people, but that aside, we don't find any evidence that our bodies need to receive nutrition in such a manner.

If we look all around the world, we see different cultures that have enjoyed excellent health eating far from “balanced” meals. In China, rice with vegetables is a meal. In the Great North, the Eskimos have lived on almost nothing but meat. The Hunzas regularly ate meals composed of vegetables and some chapati bread.

If we look at wild animals, we also see that they do not eat “balanced” meals. A meal for an orangutan might consist of nothing more than rambutan (a tropical fruit) or durian (another tropical fruit).

There is absolutely no need to worry about eating a very simple diet where most of our meals are composed of a few foods only. As long as we eat a large variety of food from week to week, it doesn't matter if our meals are not composed of “carbohydrates, protein and fat”.

You can't sustain yourself on just raw foods

Most nutritionists look at the raw food diet and claim that it's “impossible” to sustain ourselves from only fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Letting alone the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are doing just that and are still alive to tell about it, there is no scientific reason to believe that we can't live on raw foods.

Nutritionists will claim that it would be “very difficult” to eat enough fruits and vegetables to consume enough calories.

The problem is that they are still stuck with the view of cooked nutrition and its “balanced view” and can't think outside the box and realize that it is actually possible to consume enough fruits and vegetables and get the calories you need. It just is a lot of food!

The truth is, eating a raw food diet will mean that you'll be consuming more fruits and vegetables in a day than some people may consume in a week or even in a month. But as you learn to eat this way, you'll find that this “huge” amount of fruits and vegetables is actually the “right” amount.

You should never expose your skin to the sun.

Although we know that too much sun isn't good for us, the advice we get from dermatologists these days defy all reason. Apparently, we should never expose our skin to the sun unless we are fully protected by chemical lotions.

Did you forget the important fact that sunlight is essential to our well-being, and that regular sun exposure at safe periods of the day are actually beneficial to your health, even in 2006?

You need the sun. The question is just how much!

If it's natural it's good for you.

The word “natural” has been abused more than any other term in the food industry. We now have “natural potato chips”, “natural coffee” and “natural beer.”

The fact that these foods come from a factory should make it obvious that they are definitely not natural, nor healthy.

The truth is, even if a food were natural, it wouldn't automatically make it healthy. There are plenty of plants and mushrooms that grow in the wild that are not only “perfectly natural,” but also deadly!

Let's be clear: for a food to be healthy, it has to be a lot more than “natural.”

Flaky?

There is a language connection between mind, body, and emotions. Recent research has shown that much illness is self-created largely through this language. Words are often the trigger (catalyst) that lead to the symtoms of disease. You are what you believe about you. A "seedthought" is a significant catalyst for a physical or emotional response. For years I was involved in presenting new ideas such as women's liberation, holistic health and spiritual healing. At one point I was plalgued by a persistent case of dandruff. Months of aggressive treatment failed to eliminate the ugly white flakes. I wondered if there was a language connection. I soon had the anser. Frequently while presenting new ideas I would think "They think I'm flaky," a perfect catalyst for the dandruff. I began to tell myself the real truth "I am not flaky. I am serious, thoughtfyul, fun, loving and committed!" Within two weeks of my initial recognition of the flaky seedthought, and without further treatment, the dlandruff disappeared. When I knew I wasn't flaky, I stopped flaking.

Barbara Levine
Your Body Believes Every Word You Say