How Our Dad Is Outliving Cancer, pt. II

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Right now, our dad is not just outliving cancer, but living his best life, as he's travelling with mum in South America. When he first was diagnosed, he was told, that he'd have 6 to 60 months left to live. This is now three years ago.

Technically, he has yet to fully outlive his diagnosis, but when he left for South America, his cancer was completely undetectable, despite the poor five-year survival rate of 5% and the median survival of about a year (1, 2). But how did he do it? And what might you learn from it?

This article will be the second part to an article I posted a few weeks ago, detailing the more nutritional side of how dad is outliving cancer. In so doing, we looked at four of the seven measures of the Mosaic Method, which my brother Cedric and I developed to help cancer patients such as yourself with surviving and thriving in spite of cancer. Today, I want to take a closer look at the remaining three of those seven measures.

If you want to read dad's full story, I implore you to read the first part.

With that out of the way, let's remind ourselves of the seven measures of the Mosaic Method:

1. Stop all consumption of carbohydrates

2. Eliminate all possible consumption of glutamine and glutamate

3. Maximise fat consumption

4. Supplement vitamin D3 and omega-3 fatty acids

5. Supplement EGCG and curcumin

6. Eliminate all oxalates, alcohol, and pro-inflammatory substances

7. Keep a positive mind at all times

We have already taken an in depth look at measures 1–3 and 5. The logic for these measures – just to recapitulate, so we're all on the same footing – was to lower the availability of fuels, which cancer cells can efficiently use (measures 1 and 2), and to get ourselves into a metabolic state (namely, ketosis), where cancer is weak and can't grow efficiently or – best-case scenario – at all (measures 3 and 5).

But there's more to the story; there's more we can do to slow cancer growth or even invert it. If you were attentive, you may well have noticed the potential attack avenue against cancer in the last article, when I talked about mitochondria being the heart of the matter.

Let's refresh our memory of cell anatomy first, and then recapitulate how normal cells work and how cancer cells deviate from this.

So, cell anatomy. You may remember from last post, that our cells are comprised of complex biological machinery, that utterly beggars belief. You may also remember, that this general machinery is floating in a suspension termed 'cytosol', and that this cytosol is enveloped by the cell membrane (Fig. 1 – 2 and 1, respectively). The cytosol is where most of the non-energy metabolism transpires, whereas our normal energy and carbon metabolism largely happens in the mitochondria – those small compartments, which use oxygen to produce biologically available energy (Fig. 1 – 3).

Beyond cytosol, cell membrane, and mitochondria our mammalian cells have another important characteristic: They feature a cell nucleus, which is shielded against the rest of the cell by the nuclear envelope (Fig. 1 – 5 and 4, respectively).

Now that we're back up to speed with regard to normative cell anatomy, let's remind ourselves that cancer cells deviate starkly from normal cells. For one, most of our cells act in concert as a single organism. Cancer cells oftentimes lose the ability to integrate into our multicellular organism and act more like a colony of unicellular organisms. One of the major reasons for this behaviour is the reliance on non-mitochondrial energy, which skews their cellular programme away from the modern multicellular one to a far more ancient one, which relies on cytosolic fermentation and acts as a unicellular organism.

Other things happen as well, such as manyfold genetic mutation and epigenetic modification, but I explained in the last article, why these can't be causal to the disease that is cancer. They are symptoms of the metabolic and programmatic departure from multicellular life (3, 4).

So, since a shift away from reliance on mitochondrial energy and carbon metabolism seems to be the primary cause of cancerous development, you may already have asked yourself, if it's possible to force cancer cells back to using mitochondria. This should be another good weapon against cancer, as mitochondria – beside being energy production masters – also monitor cellular health and stress and have the power to force the cell into suicide (apoptosis), if they determine, that the cell is unsalvageable and has become detrimental to the organism. Intrinsic apoptosis depends on mitochondria (5). It thus stands to reason, that non-functioning mitochondria can stop the intrinsic apoptotic pathways from running their course, thus having the cancer cell survive far longer than it should.

I briefly considered explaining the mechanism of the intrinsic apoptotic pathways in depth, but I think this would only serve to confuse at this juncture. If interest is made obvious, I shall launch into such an in-depth explanation in the future, God willing.

In any case, normalising mitochondria and bringing them back to health is another potent weapon in our fight against cancer. Cancer cells, which kill themselves, can't harm us anymore. Granted, getting them to go into apoptosis is the difficult part. Some of the ways this can be achieved, I've already spoken of in the first part, so I shall not reiterate those here.

Rather, I'd look at some other ways, in which we harm our mitochondria, and conversely, how we can stop harming them and start healing them.

One of the biggest – and least controversial – offenders is alcohol. It's consumed worldwide as a central nervous system ('brain') intoxicant. It has a multitude of acutely detrimental health effect and inhibits normal brain function, which is why we're not supposed to 'drink and drive'. Beyond acute intoxication, it also causes chronic ails, which can be seen in their most pronounced state in alcoholic, but are far from absent in other regular drinkers (6).

In occasional drinkers, when only a few drinks are ingested, the normal liver detoxification metabolism is able to handle the incoming alcohol sufficiently, though the first step of this detoxification becomes saturated after only a few drinks. Excessive consumption, even occasionally, should be avoided at all costs.

Furthermore, the detoxification process, whilst necessary, does disrupt the redox homeostasis of the cells involved (liver cells in this case). Redox homeostasis is a fancy term used to describe the capacity and flexibility of a cell to deal with oxidative stress, glycation, and normal metabolic demands. If redox homeostasis is disrupted, the cell's ability to mitigate cellular damage and fulfil its normal metabolic functions suffers drastically.

And it gets worse still. If you drink alcohol regularly or excessively, your body will react by building up alternative systems, which can handle, what the normal detoxification system cannot. The problem with these alternative systems are, however, that they are far from as efficient as the normal system. These alternative systems are not specifically made to handle alcohol detoxification and thus produce large amounts of acetaldehyde and acetate, without further processing capacity.

Acetaldehyde is highly toxic and reacts with various structures, including DNA. When reacting with DNA in already metabolically dysfunctional cells – which is true for the liver cells handling alcohol detoxification due to disrupted redox homeostasis –, acetaldehyde can promote cancer development. Acetate itself depresses brain function and affect various metabolic pathways.

But it gets worse still. Alcohol produces changes in mitochondrial structure and function in liver, heart, and several other organs. One of these mitochondrial changes in function is loss of energy production. This loss is obviously not complete, but weakens mitochondria and can require the cell to use non-mitochondrial energy production, which is decidedly not what we want in cancer patients, as non-mitochondrial energy production is to the best of our knowledge causal in cancer development (3).

Before me move on from alcohol, it remains to be said, that it probably isn't a problem to have one or two glasses of wine or beer every once in a while. But drinking every day, or a lot all at once is absolutely terrible both for systemic and mitochondrial health. And abstaining fully from alcohol is preferable in fighting cancer, as every weapon in our arsenal improves our chances of surviving and thriving and reduces those of the cancer to kill us.

This may already seem bad enough, but there's an often overlooked toxin, which produces similar effect for our mitochondria. Worse still, traditional 'healthy eating' advice – namely, 'eat a lot of vegetables' – saturates us with precisely this toxin.

The toxin in question is oxalate. It's been reported, that oxalate causes mitochondrial disruption of renal tube cells. A finding, which has been repeated in monocytes (a type of innate immune cell) (7). In the given paper, it was found that monocytes exposed to oxalate had significant disruptions to their mitochondrial function and to cellular redox homeostasis – remember: if redox homeostasis is disrupted, the cell's ability to mitigate cellular damage and fulfil its normal metabolic functions suffers drastically. Both impaired mitochondrial function and disrupted redox homeostasis are things, we decidedly don't want to see in cancer patients.

It thus stands to reason, that eliminating all sources of oxalates is another weapon in our arsenal. Since oxalates are only found in plant foods, eliminating these – or at least drastically reducing them – is probably a good idea. Now, if we do eat plant foods, there are processing methods, which can drastically lower the amount of soluble oxalate in the food, thus protecting us from this poison (8). Long boiling and soaking in water can lower the amount of soluble oxalate, as can the addition of calcium salts or high-calcium ingredients. Some example include calcium carbonate, calcium chloride, milk, and yogurt.

Beyond alcohol and oxalate, there's another thing, which negatively impacts mitochondrial health and is absolutely rampant in the world: chronic inflammation. It's well known, that inflammation is implicated in a number of chronic ailments – amongst these is cancer, which should be highly interesting to us –, and it's becoming evident, that pro-inflammatory signalling impairs mitochondrial function (9). Diving into exactly how this transpires is probably too much at this juncture. So, if demand is made, I shall dive into this in a future post, God willing.

If inflammation impair mitochondria through pro-inflammatory signalling, it stands to reason, that decreasing our consumption of substances, which promote inflammation, and increase our consumption of substances, which inhibit inflammation, is beneficial in our fight against cancer.

One very wide-spread indirectly pro-inflammatory substance class is that of the prolamins, of which gluten is the most well-known representative. Gluten, for example, can permeabilise our intestinal membrane, which is the driving factor behind coeliac disease, and has been replicated with another the maize prolamin (10, 11).

Prolamins aren't directly pro-inflammatory, but their harm comes from permeabilising our intestinal lining, thus allowing for the entry of a whole swath of pathogens, allergens, and toxins directly into the blood stream. All three of these promote inflammation as they well should: they are foreign objects, which our body needs to eliminate. Without an inflammatory response this elimination doesn't take place.

The only problem is, that by eating bread, for example, we ingest such prolamins every day, thus causing chronic inflammation in our guts and our blood stream at large. This is decidedly undesirable for humans in general, but cancer patients especially.

The good news is, that we've already eliminated prolamins by eliminating carbohydrates and oxalates. So, this doesn't require further intervention; it's just good to know. We find a similar example with the compound class of the lectins, which too cause intestinal permeabilisation (12, 13). I don't want to go into too much detail here, because we've already eliminate lectins, which are primarily found in legumes, by eliminating oxalates from our diet.

Another pro-inflammatory class of compounds, which goes completely overlooked, is the class of the omega-6 fatty acids. Within our body, omega-6 fatty acids work in a kind of counter-balancing system with omega-3 fatty acids on the other side of the see-saw. Omega-6 is here broadly pro-inflammatory and omega-3 anti-inflammatory (14).

Omega-6 fatty acids are highly abundant in seeds and seed oils like brazil nuts, almond, walnut, corn oil, canola oils, and sunflower oil (14). In particular, they have an unhealthy over-abundance in comparison to their omega-3 fatty acid content (15). This is something, which holds somewhat true for grain-fed beef. The good news is that grass-fed beef has an omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, which is conducive to anti-inflammatory signalling (16). Since the abundance of other important nutrients, such as vitamin A and C is also higher in grass-fed beef, it's probably to be recommended to consume grass-fed beef, milk, and cheese (17).

Now, if that isn't possible, there's another very accessible way to improve our omega-6/omega-3 ratio. And that is to simply supplement omega-3 fatty acids. This way our bodily signalling can return to more balance between pro- and anti-inflammatory pathways, improving our mitochondrial health in the process. Remember: mitochondria really hate chronic inflammation.

Don't worry, I'll summarise the seven measures of the Mosaic Method at the end and give you an actionable system, so that you don't need to go back through the entire article yourself.

Before we get to the summary, though, I want to go pass by the last two measures of the Mosaic Method.

One of these measures is the supplementation of vitamin D3. The reason for this is threefold. Firstly, vitamin D3 has been found to improve mitochondrial function in skeletal muscle cells (18). It would stand to reason, that this is true for other cell types as well, but that remains to be researched fully. We do, however, know, that vitamin D3 is heavily involved in immune system regulation (19). Vitamin D3 enables our immune system to respond rapidly, but proportionately by modulating relevant messenger molecule production.

Again, I won't go into depth here, but as vitamin D3 enable better immune modulation, it simply improves general health whilst having a prospect of being able to improve cancer cell death by extrinsic apoptosis. Remember here, that apoptosis is the name of cell suicide, which can be initiated intrinsically by the mitochondria, or extrinsically by certain cells of the immune system.

As you might have noticed the Mosaic Method is complex in scientific background, simple in recommendations, but difficult in execution. So, let's summarise the seven measures of the Mosaic Method alongside a heavily abbreviated explanation of their reasoning.

1. Stop all consumption of carbohydrates

This lowers access of cancer cells to the fermentable fuel glucose.

2. Eliminate all possible consumption of glutamine and glutamate

This lowers access of cancer cells to the fermentable fuel glutamine.

3. Maximise fat consumption

This pushes body-wide metabolism toward ketosis, where cancer cells are weaker than healthy cells.

4. Supplement vitamin D3 and omega-3 fatty acids

This improves immune modulation, mitochondrial health, and anti-inflammatory signalling.

5. Supplement EGCG and curcumin

This improves anti-cancer signalling and cancer cell death, it improves mitochondrial health, improves anti-inflammatory signalling, and inhibits the metabolic pathway, which ferments glutamine.

6. Eliminate all oxalates, alcohol, and pro-inflammatory substances

This improves mitochondrial function, redox homeostasis, lowers pro-inflammatory signalling, and stops pathogens, allergens, and toxins from moving from the intestinal lumen directly into the blood.

7. Keep a positive mind at all times

Now this one, I have yet to explain, but I trust that you understand why this is necessary.

If there's one superpower, that the human soul possesses, it's faith and hope. If you lose trust in your ability to overcome your disease, you won't ever overcome it. Keep a positive mind, cultivate trust and faith in success, and try and lead a thriving life, despite the diagnosis. Don't worry, doubts will arise. That's perfectly normal.

After all, only in having doubts and understanding why they're wrong do we increase in faith and trust. We can surrender to hope and a way of doing things, because it's logical to us, that doesn't mean we won't doubt it. And only by doubting it and thinking through these doubts do we attain faith and trust in our ability.

I hope, that this may have opened your heart and mind but a little to the importance of faith and a positive mind. Pessimism is to our minds what cancer is to our bodies.

Lastly, to wrap up, I want to point you to our Mosaic Method Guide, where the seven measures are listed and shortly explained, and more importantly, where we give applicable dosages for the interventions listed above. You can get the Mosaic Method Guide on our homepage.

Keep in mind, that none of this is medical advice, but simply a missive of knowledge from molecular biology, cell biology, anatomy, and human biology.

God grant you swift healing, lasting health, and peace.

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