2008 - Age of Awakening / 2016 - Age of disclosures / 2021 - Age of Making Choices & Separation / Next Stage - Age of Reconnection! Heretic

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Fuhrman's diet - repeat of the Natural Hygienist's dead end

I thought of rehashing this issue on behalf of my friends and fans (just kidding) from the WebMD forum, especially one person who seems to be doing much better on Dr. Fuhrman's diet and his IMT scan as a measure of arteriosclerotic progression started even reversing as opposed to his previous 30 years on a Pritikin vegan/vegetarian diet. Even though the following text is addressed to EngineerGuy of the webmd forum, I hope that more people will benefit reading it. I am encouraging everyone to read and add comments.

All Dr. Fuhrman did was reintroducing blended salads and added a little bit of meat or fish plus liberal amounts of nuts which are still in severe anathema pronounced by other vegan propagators. One can consider Fuhrman's diet to have 90% in common with the purist vegans like Drs McDougall or Ornish but that 10% difference has made ALL THE DIFFERENCE! What is happening here is that it seems that the 90% compliant vegans seem to be doing better than the 100% compliant vegans!

I think that this little addition of animal produce and nuts has made a huge difference by addressing some of the vitamin deficiencies inherent in the plant-only diets.

That deficiency is not only in B12. I was surprised to find out that some vegans suffer from obvious and easily measurable vitamin deficiencies, even vitamin A in spite of consuming massive amounts of beta carotene! Many seem to suffer from tooth decay, low bone density and/or osteoporosis which would point towards deficiencies of D3,K2 or some other factor. Neurological problems (mood disorders, depression, panic attacks) seem to be associated with the deficiencies of DHA and EPA (fatty acids) in my opinion (this is only my speculative guess, I have no proof).

There is also a possibility that the malnutrition symptoms among some vegans may be caused not only by their deficient diet (note: vitamin D2 and K1 can be obtained from plants, but their proper human forms D3 and K2 cannot!) but also by some intestinal digestive disruption. That possibility was first discovered and proposed as a possible explanation by Natural Hygienists. See Dr. Stanley Bass and read "With Three Generations of Vegetarian Hygienists" by Dr. Gian-Cursio. After suffering many health setbacks on their pure raw food vegan diets, including death of Dr. Cursio's son, they treated them with fasts every few months, followed by some special recovery diet that involved unpasteurized goat's cheese and eggs yolks. Dr. Cursio also introduced (and perhaps invented) the blended salads. (Note: Dr. Bass no longer recommends vegetarian diets, for which he was kicked out of the Natural Hygiene movement, after his life long participation). I am inclined to believe that their recovery approach and explanation may be correct, given the intestinal-disruptive properties of many plants. I think that the absorption problems are related to some plant phyto-toxins from wheat family (I suspect gluten and agluttins like WGA) and the cabbage family of plants (digestive enzyme inhibitors and thyroid hormone disruptors). Fasting would allow the intestinal lining tissue to regenerate itself and recover after excessive raw consumption of those plants.

I am bringing the Natural Hygienist's article to illustrate that Dr. Fuhrman is following in the footsteps of the people who tried that all before him and eventually had to abandon that approach, after many years of trials tribulations and errors. I recommend to learn from their mistakes. Dr. Bass wasted probably ~60 years of his life along this path and is kind enough to inform us of his experience. I am grateful to him since I don't have to go though all this!

Neither should you, after already wasting 30 years of your life on some vegetarianism, you don't need to waste another 30 years on some slightly less harmful variation of the same thing.

P.S. (2/07)

Dr. Bass describes how his fruitarian dietary experiment destroyed his teeth. It turns out that the damage might not be limited to fruitarian diets:

Vegetarian diet 'weakens bones'

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Are Saudis evacuating their money? Is a new war imminent?

I will make exception and post this comment on the recent news:

Suitcase With $134 Billion Puts Dollar on Edge: William Pesek (Bloomberg)

I consider it to be too bizarre to be false. I totally do not buy the "mafia forgery" theory. I also doubt that it has anything to do with Japan but of course have absolutely no proof whatsoever.
I think its time to buy some more oil...

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Can ketogenic diet cure cancer?

(Fatty pork with curry veggies in butter and 'matoes)
There is very little data but what is available, so far is quite encouraging. Strangely enough most medical research institutions do not seem to think so or there would be a mad rush to study it on thousands of patients.

References:

"Effects of a ketogenic diet on tumor metabolism and nutritional status in pediatric oncology patients: two case reports." Nebeling LC, Miraldi F, Shurin SB, Lerner E.

"Targeting energy metabolism in brain cancer: review and hypothesis", Thomas N Seyfried and Purna Mukherjee, Nutrition & Metabolism 2005,2:30

"Can a High-Fat Diet Beat Cancer?"
By Richard Friebe Monday, Sep. 17, 2007


And finally a paper from my favored scientific publisher specializing in printing fake peer-review journals:

"Tumor growth in patients with tuberous sclerosis complex on the ketogenic diet" Catherine J. Chu-Shore, Elizabeth A. Thiele

Quote:
Three out of five patients, all children, had progression of a known tumor or tumors or the development of a new tumor while on the ketogenic diet. Conclusion: In this limited case series of five TSC patients, the ketogenic diet did not induce tumor regression or suppress the growth of TSC-related tumors.

I am curious, if they emphasize that it didn't help the 3 out of 5, should we interpret it as stating that it did help the other 2 out of 5? (I do not have the access to the full paper to check it).

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Footnote (for an oncologist with a PhD's)

No, it does not work (if it works) by starving a cancer through lowering serum glucose level down to zero. Yes it would of course have killed a patient together with a tumor.

What the ketogenic diet does do is it totally alters a body's predominant metabolic mode shifting it from glucose to ketone bodies and lipids. One side effect of ketogenic diets is the enhancement of the immune system (we all heard of course, I presume of the standard pre-penicillin therapy against TB...)

Another effect is reduction of glucose uptake by the healthy cells that are not yet cancerous and the protective effect resulting from much lower insulin production (and insulin tissue uptake) on the true ketogenic diet versus a low fat high carbohydrate diet. Another and probably even more important effects are those that we do not yet fully understand due to a curious lack of curiosity or competence of some oncologists with the PhD who do not seem to want to pursue any investigation that might actually work...

Based on my mom's experience, the best survival strategy is to listen carefully to the oncologists, write thoroughly down everything they have to say - and do the opposite! It has worked well for my mom since her close encounter with the disease in 1998 when she refused a friendly "slash-burn-and-poison" therapy offer from her local hospital. Eleven years later, so far so good...

Be free and prosper,
Heretic

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More references (thanks Cynthia):
"Acetoacetate reduces growth and ATP concentration in cancer cell lines which over-express uncoupling protein 2."
Fine EJ, Miller A, Quadros EV, Sequeira JM, Feinman RD.



CONCLUSION: Seven human cancer cell lines grown in glucose plus acetoacetate medium showed tightly coupled reduction of growth and ATP concentration. The findings were not observed in control fibroblasts. The observed over-expression of UCP2 in cancer lines, but not in controls, provides a plausible molecular mechanism by which acetoacetate spares normal cells but suppresses growth in cancer lines. The results bear on the hypothesized potential for ketogenic diets as therapeutic strategies.

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Added 12-Nov-2009

Yes!

Read Peter's post: Methylglyoxal on Atkins...

The story can be compressed into two titles:

Ketosis leads to increased methylglyoxal production on the Atkins diet.

A brief critical overview of the biological effects of methylglyoxal and further evaluation of a methylglyoxal-based anticancer formulation in treating cancer patients.

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Added 15/04/2012
Carbohydrates and the Risk of Breast Cancer among Mexican Women

Starch Intake May Influence Risk for Breast Cancer Recurrence, Jennifer A. Emond, M.S.
Abstract Number: P3-09-01, San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, 2011, Title: Change in Carbohydrate Intake and Breast Cancer Prognosis.


Is there a role for carbohydrate restriction in the treatment and prevention of cancer?
Rainer J Klement and Ulrike Kämmerer

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