cancer -alternative therapies?

[kevin017]

zomg lifetilt, finally made my response sound good and lost it. anyway, my previous post sucks, ignore it.


ginko, the vast majority of alternative medicines are totally bogus and have been proven as such, making your first statement totally misleading and false.

secondly, while it seems as though for example theanine has been proven to increase the effectiveness of that chemotherapeutic agent, your talking about vitamin d is purely speculation. Basically what you're saying is that if you look through papers and find stuff that has not yet been thoroughly studied, you can make educated guesses that some of it might help you. more power to you i suppose, its better than taking medicine that's already been shown to have no effect, but you should phrase what you say as pure conjecture, rather than implying it is fact, which your authoritative tone set at the beginning of your posts has done.

[ginko]

I never claimed vitamin D was a cure for cancer. I did quote an article that was talking about a study that showed a link between blood levels of calcitriol and progression of cancer.

You don't find it interesting that they report lower levels of blood vitamin D correlated with increased spreading of tumors?

If vitamin D can slow or stop the spreading of tumors in colon cancer(they concluded it might), don't you think it might prove useful for other forms of cancer?

I mean, what else are you expecting from me or anyone else? If there was a supplement or drug that cured cancer, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

We need to be making educated guesses when we have no other options, especially when there is no downside to the "treatment" in question.

Vitamin D is paramount to health, more so than you realize. We should all be supplementing with a couple thousand IU's of vitamin D daily if we aren't getting sunlight(which studies show we aren't, glass and pollution block UV-B which is what our skin converts to vitamin D).

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"Am J Clin Nutr. 2006 Jul;84(1):18-28. Links
Estimation of optimal serum concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D for
multiple health outcomes.Bischoff-Ferrari HA, Giovannucci E, Willett
WC, Dietrich T, Dawson-Hughes B.
Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA.

Recent evidence suggests that vitamin D intakes above current
recommendations may be associated with better health outcomes. However,
optimal serum concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] have not
been defined. This review summarizes evidence from studies that
evaluated thresholds for serum 25(OH)D concentrations in relation to
bone mineral density (BMD), lower-extremity function, dental health,
and risk of falls, fractures, and colorectal cancer. For all endpoints,
the most advantageous serum concentrations of 25(OH)D begin at 75
nmol/L (30 ng/mL), and the best are between 90 and 100 nmol/L (36-40
ng/mL). In most persons, these concentrations could not be reached with
the currently recommended intakes of 200 and 600 IU vitamin D/d for
younger and older adults, respectively. A comparison of vitamin D
intakes with achieved serum concentrations of 25(OH)D for the purpose
of estimating optimal intakes led us to suggest that, for bone health
in younger adults and all studied outcomes in older adults, an increase
in the currently recommended intake of vitamin D is warranted. An
intake for all adults of >/=1000 IU (40 mug) vitamin D
(cholecalciferol)/d is needed to bring vitamin D concentrations in no
less than 50% of the population up to 75 nmol/L. The implications of
higher doses for the entire adult population should be addressed in
future studies.

PMID: 16825677 [PubMed - in process]"


"Med Hypotheses. 2006 Dec 2

Vitamin D toxicity redefined: Vitamin K and the molecular mechanism.

Masterjohn C.
Weston A. Price Foundation, 4200 Wisconsin Ave., NW, Washington DC 20016, United States.

The dose of vitamin D that some researchers recommend as optimally therapeutic exceeds that officially recognized as safe by a factor of two; it is therefore important to determine the precise mechanism by which excessive doses of vitamin D exert toxicity so that physicians and other health care practitioners may understand how to use optimally therapeutic doses of this vitamin without the risk of adverse effects. Although the toxicity of vitamin D has conventionally been attributed to its induction of hypercalcemia, animal studies show that the toxic endpoints observed in response to hypervitaminosis D such as anorexia, lethargy, growth retardation, bone resorption, soft tissue calcification, and death can be dissociated from the hypercalcemia that usually accompanies them, demanding that an alternative explanation for the mechanism of vitamin D toxicity be developed. The hypothesis presented in this paper proposes the novel understanding that vitamin D exerts toxicity by inducing a deficiency of vitamin K. According to this model, vitamin D increases the expression of proteins whose activation depends on vitamin K-mediated carboxylation; as the demand for carboxylation increases, the pool of vitamin K is depleted. Since vitamin K is essential to the nervous system and plays important roles in protecting against bone loss and calcification of the peripheral soft tissues, its deficiency results in the symptoms associated with hypervitaminosis D. This hypothesis is circumstantially supported by the observation that animals deficient in vitamin K or vitamin K-dependent proteins exhibit remarkable similarities to animals fed toxic doses of vitamin D, and the observation that vitamin D and the vitamin K-inhibitor Warfarin have similar toxicity profiles and exert toxicity synergistically when combined. The hypothesis further proposes that vitamin A protects against the toxicity of vitamin D by decreasing the expression of vitamin K-dependent proteins and thereby exerting a vitamin K-sparing effect. If animal experiments can confirm this hypothesis, the models by which the maximum safe dose is determined would need to be revised. Physicians and other health care practitioners would be able to treat patients with doses of vitamin D that possess greater therapeutic value than those currently being used while avoiding the risk of adverse effects by administering vitamin D together with vitamins A and K.

PMID: 17145139 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]"

[ginko]

Ashwagandha is an herb with many scientifically proven benefits..

"In addition to ashwagandha’s documented neuroprotective effects, exciting recent evidence suggests that it also has the potential to stop cancer cells in their tracks. For example, a recent analysis showed that ashwagandha extract inhibited the growth of human breast, lung, and colon cancer cell lines in the laboratory. This inhibition was comparable to that achieved with the common cancer chemotherapy drug doxorubicin (Caelyx®, Myocet®). In fact, researchers reported that withaferin A, a specific compound extracted from ashwagandha, was more effective than doxorubicin in inhibiting breast and colon cancer cell growth.11,14

Scientists in India recently conducted cell studies showing that ashwagandha extract disrupts cancer cells’ ability to reproduce—a key step in fighting cancer. Additionally, laboratory analysis indicates that ashwagandha extract possesses anti-angiogenic activity, also known as the ability to prevent cancer from forming new blood vessels to support its unbridled growth. These findings lend further support to ashwagandha’s potential role in fighting cancer.15 Based on these studies, research in this area continues.

In another study, orally administered ashwagandha extract significantly inhibited experimentally induced stomach cancer in laboratory animals. Tumor incidence was reduced by 60% and tumor multiplicity (number) by 92%. Similarly, in a rodent model of skin cancer, ashwagandha inhibited tumor incidence and multiplicity by 45% and 71%, respectively.16 Ashwagandha’s protective effect against skin cancer has been shown in other studies as well.17

A recent experiment demonstrated that ashwagandha extract produced a marked increase in life span and a decrease in tumor weight in animals with experimentally induced cancer of the lymphatic system.18 This is an exciting finding, suggesting that ashwagandha could enhance survival in individuals with cancer."

"Ashwagandha extract may also have applications as an adjunct to cancer chemotherapy treatment. One of the consequences of chemotherapy is neutropenia, a decrease in white blood cells called neutrophils that can leave patients dangerously vulnerable to infection. A study of animals demonstrated that orally administered ashwagandha extract protected against this decline in infection-fighting neutrophils. While further human studies are needed, these findings suggest that ashwagandha may be an excellent adjunctive therapy to chemotherapy.19

Another animal study investigated ashwagandha extract’s effects in normalizing the immune-suppressing effects of chemotherapy. When test animals received a common chemotherapy drug, levels of the desirable immune factors interferon-gamma and interleukin-2 decreased.

When the animals also received orally administered ashwagandha extract, however, their immune system parameters remained normal. These findings add support to the idea that ashwagandha may help protect immune function during chemotherapy treatment.20"

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"PURPOSE: Ashwagandha is regarded as a wonder shrub of India and is commonly used in Ayurvedic medicine and health tonics that claim its variety of health-promoting effects. Surprisingly, these claims are not well supported by adequate studies, and the molecular mechanisms of its action remain largely unexplored to date. We undertook a study to identify and characterize the antitumor activity of the leaf extract of ashwagandha. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Selective tumor-inhibitory activity of the leaf extract (i-Extract) was identified by in vivo tumor formation assays in nude mice and by in vitro growth assays of normal and human transformed cells. To investigate the cellular targets of i-Extract, we adopted a gene silencing approach using a selected small hairpin RNA library and found that p53 is required for the killing activity of i-Extract. RESULTS: By molecular analysis of p53 function in normal and a variety of tumor cells, we found that it is selectively activated in tumor cells, causing either their growth arrest or apoptosis. By fractionation, purification, and structural analysis of the i-Extract constituents, we have identified its p53-activating tumor-inhibiting factor as with a none. CONCLUSION: We provide the first molecular evidence that the leaf extract of ashwagandha selectively kills tumor cells and, thus, is a natural source for safe anticancer medicine.

PMID: 17404115 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]"

[kevin017]

lol. ok, my only problem is with your tone. you first started talking by making the blanket and totally incorrect statement that alternative medicine is not full of bs, then you proceed to say you have thousands of studies as proof, when in reality the studies you provide only suggest a possible benefit and the proof is just you guessing. yea, this is the best thing we have so far if you're desparate, but this isn't really alternative medicine (as most people think of it, i'd consider it more experimental medicine) and there is definitely not real proof of effectiveness as you claimed in the beginning.

also, "Vitamin D is paramount to health, more so than you realize." believe it or not, i already realized this, and you're not the only person who knows vitamin d is good for your health. but thanks for the tip.

[ginko]

Huh? Alternative medicine is a huge field, if anyone is making blanket statements, its you.

Your post is all over the place and your logic is flawed, posting anymore here would be a waste of my time. So, good day sir.