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From the Townsend Letter
August / September 2008

Quantum Medicine Update
Understanding the Core Physiological and Bioenergetic Issues Underlying Carcinogenesis
Paul Yanick, Jr., PhD

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Unlocking the secrets of the innate immune system will allow medicine to go beyond treating cancer and prevent carcinogenesis from happening in the first place. Since studies have provided ample evidence that carcinogenesis arises from abnormalities of immune TH-1/TH-2-mediated immune responses and ion deregulation, understanding these deficits will help us slow down or halt carcinogenesis.1-6,20-25 Multi-layered and multi-microbial biofilm infections cause chronic, silent infections that promote endotoxicosis, a process that generates inflammation and causes damage to the organism. Could a deficiency of commensal cell microflora caused by taking antibiotics or anti-infective botanicals/minerals, at any point in one's life, promote disease-causing inflammation, biofilm infections, and ignite the process of carcinogenesis?

To answer this question, I will define commensal microflora (normal microflora, indigenous microbiota) as living cells present on body surfaces covered by epithelial cells and exposed to the external environment (gastrointestinal and respiratory tract, vagina, skin, etc.). The number of commensal cells that colonize mucosal and skin surfaces exceeds the number of human cells by a factor of ten. When plentiful, these resident microflora contain a number of components that activate innate and adaptive immunity and can eliminate a diverse range of pathogens. Since commensals can ramp up or quiet down inflammation and fight cancer in innate imunological warfare, they offer enormous therapeutic benefits. Simply using common probiotic products is not enough, as commensals need to be in an appropriate non-competitive balance and be nourished with synbiotics and marine plant flora to successively thrive and flourish in the body. Positive Ionic Poisoning (PIP) is the number one enemy of commensal cells, as it promotes biofilm infections and prevents commensals from being able to proliferate and find permanent residence in the body.7-10-13

The gastrointestinal tract (GI) is a complex ecosystem with a diverse assemblage of commensal cell microflora that produces supermedicines. The interactions that occur between commensal and human cells have been studied in cases of deficient commensal microflora (e.g., gastrointestinal tract infections, inflammatory bowel disease such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, antibiotic-induced diarrhea, constipation, food allergies, cardiovascular disease, and colon cancer).1-6 Dysbiosis, or an imbalance between human and commensal cells and pathogenic microbes, has been correlated with gut inflammatory responses and carcinogenesis.15,16 Since commensal cells have a rich genetic diversity and can produce anticancer and antiviral compounds, they have the amazing potential to wipe out some of the scariest cancers and viruses known to humankind. Moreover, commensal cells are vast reservoirs of essential hard-to-get nutrients and anti-inflammatory compounds that soothe inflammation with more clout than any kind of anti-inflammatory drug.

Refurbishing commensal cells with synbiotic nutrients can give new life to any cell and is particularly important to neurons that do not get replaced. When commensal cells die from antibiotic or anti-infective botanicals, autophagy becomes defective, causing problems with how efficiently cells clean house. A breakdown in autophagy has been linked to Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington diseases, cancer, and accelerated aging.17-19 By keeping the cell free of detritus, toxicants, and malfunctioning cell parts, autophagy can create a major barrier to invasion by pathogens and capture and destroy unwanted cancer cells and parasites while building highly specific adaptive immunity.17

The importance of commensal cells in developing an optimally functioning mucosal immune system has been seriously overlooked in clinical practice. Commensal microflora have strong immunoactivating properties (e.g., LPS, peptidoglycans, superantigens, bacterial DNA, Hsp), and when deficient or out of balance ,they can cause complex, multifactorial, and multigenic diseases, including inflammatory bowel diseases, cancer, periodontal disease, rheumatoid arthritis, atherosclerosis, and allergies.20 Regulation of microflora composition (e.g., by probiotics, synbiotics, and prebiotics) offers the possibility of influencing the development of mucosal and systemic immunity while slowing down and even halting carcinogenesis.

Commensal cells can be viewed as the "topsoil" or biological terrain that gives nutriture and power to the human immune system. Over a decade of my research has focused on acquiring an understanding of gut microflora composition, loops and processes such as intestinal adherence, colonization, translocation, and immunomodulation in ways that restore immunological competence and provide the scientific basis for the development of innovative biotechnology-based products tailored to prevent diseases and promote overall human gastrointestinal health. Symbiotic microflora provide a gut defense barrier by normalizing increased intestinal permeability through a balanced control of pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytocines.2,6

Is Carcinogenesis a Result of Disrupted Polarities and a Resultant Loss of Reciprocity?
Positive Ion Poisoning (PIP), as termed by Albert Krueger, MD (the late UC Berkeley researcher), is a toxic condition caused by toxicants with a positive ionic charge, many of which are known or potential carcinogens. Systemic ionization disrupts the mitochondrion electron transport chain (ETC), causing free radical pathology (oxidative stress), extreme chaos in the nervous system, chronic fatigue, hormonal chaos, prolonged inflammation, and destruction of gut microflora, allowing stubborn biofilm infections to proliferate.14 All man-made synthetic chemicals, including USP vitamins, amino acid-chelated minerals, colloidal minerals, and pharmaceuticals carry a toxic positive ionic charge, which can disrupt the polarities that are fundamental in augmenting innate intelligence and healing and in balancing TH-1/TH-2 cytokine responses.

Nature's supercontinuum of reciprocal and harmonic polarities entwines us with nature and weaves the web of our existence. Indeed, today's toxic and electro-polluted world necessitates that we address and restore reciprocal physiologic-bioenergetic functions. When we fail to do this in clinical practice, we tend to move away from our symbiosis with nature; commensal cells become dysfunctional; and maldigestion and toxin-induced inflammation become the predominate clinical issues we are faced with in everyday practice. When this happens, we can expect any genetic potential we have for cancer to play itself out while our physical shape, the quality of our movement and flexibility, and even our nourishment become seriously compromised.

Since quantic harmonic polarities are the driving force of innate healing, shouldn't we be finding effective ways to restore nature's polarities and remove PIP from the body? If we see nature as an ally rather than an adversary to be overcome and conquered and do not respect the innate healing powers of commensal cells, we will constantly engage ourselves in modes of symptomatic treatment. Fragmented and mechanistic approaches do not go far as reducing the body to functional parts and putting undue emphasis on any one organ or system of the body cannot restore the multiple functions of the body's inner physician.

Cancer is a complex process that involves acute and chronic cell injury and what researchers are calling "ion deregulation." Citing over 30 scientific papers, Dr Benjamin F. Trump and colleagues at the University Of Maryland School Of Medicine state, "We propose that ion deregulation is a major mediator in the process and, therefore, provides a critical link between acute cell injury, tumor promotion, and carcinogenesis."21-25

PIP can act as receptors for certain pathogenic microbes, causing free-floating yeast, fungi, and bacteria to form treatment-resistant biofilms (Figure1). Large amounts of exopolysaccharide are produced, which envelop biofilm, making it extremely resistant to antibiotics and any kind of anti-infective treatment. PIP disrupts the network of ion channels, allowing for the circulation of water and nutrients through the biofilm, which grows and flourishes on the byproducts of maldigestion and dysbiosis.27-31 PIP also diminishes the greater splanchnic nerve/celiac plexus (especially around T-8) functions and generates inflammation that locks infections deep in the abdominal viscera, causing maldigestion.

In battling biofilms, immunological warfare is against microcolonies that cause some of the most tenacious infections known (ostitis or cavitations, chronic gastro-duodenitis, colitis, UTIs, etc). The weapon is knowledge of the enemy's communication system, involving ion channels that bathe and nourish biofilm microcolonies. The dense aggregation of slime surrounding the biofilm is the organic matrix that acts as a barrier to antibiotics or natural anti-infectives. Hence, aiming anti-infective treatments only at the biofilm without addressing PIP tends to drive the infection deeper into the body. It only takes one antibiotic treatment or one anti-infective treatment to cause these persistent and chronic infections. Hence, it is erroneous and potentially harmful to believe that biofilms can be conquered with the use of anti-yeast, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial approaches, bee propolis, allicin, colloidal silver or ionic footbaths, and RIFE treatments. Because a wide diversity of microbes is closely juxtaposed in a biofilm, killing off some of the microbes provides nutrients for surviving ones in the microcolony. Instead, an Achilles' heel or a fragile target for knocking out stubborn biofilms involves simultaneous detoxification of PIP with specific marine fermented substrates and full-spectrum probiotics.

Clinicians have struggled for years against the evasiveness of biofilm microcolonies of yeast, fungi, bacteria, and parasites. Unrestrained, these microcolonies secrete a steady flow of endotoxin-generating inflammation. Only commensal cells have the genes necessary to block the acute lethal effect of biofilms, which can provoke the formation of scar tissue damage to organs, as observed in many diseases. A lack of commensal cells can "blind" and disable the immune system so it has no power against cancer or other infections. When this happens, biofilm infections can put on a cloak of invisibility, as they develop thick mucus-type armor against immune attacks.

How cells clean house depends on nourishment like active polar lipids and synbiotic marine food substrates carrying quantic harmonic polarities. When nutrients are scarce, commensal cells starve and disrupt the balance between autophagy and cell death or apoptosis.17 A shortage of nutrients can prolong the life of a cancer cell, which can induce autophagy excessively. When this happens, a cancer cell can break down its own macromolecules for food and spread uncontrollably. When cells cannot cleanse themselves effectively, mitochondria can get damaged and flood the cell with ten times the usual release of reactive oxygen species, thereby accelerating carcinogenesis and damaging neurons. Since PIP is insidious and ubiquitous in today's toxic environment and is a major barrier to the proliferation of commensals cells, finding effective clinical ways to detoxify PIPs and activate the essential housekeeping functions of cells may minimize uncontrolled cell division and tumor formation that happens with cell toxicity and oxidative stress.

In summary, regeneration and healing take place primarily through the action of commensal cells when they are in symbiosis or balance with one another and free of the negative influences of PIPs. Our long-range clinical success depends on being able to eliminate microbe-microbe competition and finding innovative ways to rapidly feed, cleanse, and fortify commensal cells. Synbiotic nutrients, predigested by probiotic-commensal cells with appropriate marine plant synergists have proven in thousands of doctor-patient interactions to have powerful effects in eradicating all microbial stressors.8-10,32-35 Clearly, the immunological power and teamwork of these cells, comprising over 90% of the body's cells, exceeds anything we can do as practitioners and can potentially elicit a goldmine of anticancer agents and detoxifying enzymes as part and parcel of the body's immunological weaponary.8-10,32

Deferral of normal and natural innate immune reciprocity can induce an ever-widening, self-propagating wave of tissue destruction and degeneration that underlies carcinogenesis. On the other hand, restoring healthy and powerful immune responses via commensal cells can manintain optimal rebalancing of reciprocal TH-1/TH-2 responses and give the innate immune system its best shot at conquering cancer and quelling the fires of inflammation that underlie dengerative diseases. Rather than use fragmented, single nutrient or anti-infective approaches, might we address the abberant core physiological issues underlying carcinogenesis, demonstrating that we truly respect the body's inner physician? Following nature's recipes for nourishment and detoxifcation can activate the full operational complexity of the immune system. By approaching cancer this way, we remove ourselves from the realm of performing unethical and potentially lethal oncological or other medical treatments.

Detoxification can be a double-edged sword. While attempting to detoxify and control oxidative stress are important and indispensible clinical goals, we must examine our methodologies and be certain that malignancies are not amplified by our efforts to cleanse the body.8-10 This means focusing on immunorestoration instead of excessive immunomodulation to elicit a strong protective immune response. As I mentioned in earlier columns, aggressive detoxification without insuring that hepatocytes can produce ample bile can kill commensal cells, promote carcinogenesis, and sabatoge our best clinical efforts.8-10,14

Finally, in studying living cells with new powerful imaging techniques, scientists are observing fascinating and hidden processes of cellular life that were once impossible to observe or understand. Previously, the only way to observe the inner workings of cells was to kill them, and this has lead to all sorts of erroneous conclusions about how cells get nourished and cleanse themselves. But now, as advanced microscopes and sophisticated lab tests can view the living cell in action to see how a hormone binds to a receptor and how living nutrients can enter a cell and detoxify it, we can expect to see more evidence in the directions of aiming our clinical efforts at living human and commensal cells and the restoration of optimal and healthy TH-1/TH-2 cytokine responses.40-41

The author is supported in part by American Academy of Quantum Medicine, a non-profit foundation dedicated to frontier research in Quantum Medicine. The author is affiliated with QuantaFoods, LLC, a firm that develops and researches probiotics and fermentation to develop novel forms of mineral-ligand and protein-bound synbiotic nutrients. He is also a research consultant for several independent, university-based laboratories. The content of this article was neither influenced nor constrained by these facts.

Notes
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