Tuesday 9 April 2013

Male with cancer mixes DCA drug with Mountain Dew....and achieves FULL remission!

Cancer cells change their metabolism in such a way that it allows them to preferentially uptake and utilise glucose as their primary energy source. This phenomenon is called the "Warburg Effect", named after Otto Warburg, who was awarded the 1931 Noble Prize in Medicine.



Otto Warburg, 1931 Nobel Prize winner. Source: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1931/warburg-bio.html


Normal cells do take up glucose, but the way they metabolise or process glucose is different. Normal cells utilise oxygen in the mitochondria (the powerhouse of the cell) to make use of the full potential of glucose. Cancer cells often switch off this oxygen requiring part of glucose metabolism and instead uptake much more glucose so that they can survive in the absence of oxygen. This has two advantages:

1) Since they are no longer dependent on oxygen, cancer cells can divide quickly with an adequate energy source despite the lack of oxygen.

2) The mitochondria where oxygen is normally utilised also happens to be the site which can instruct the type of cells that don't behave (such as cancer cells) to commit suicide in a process called apoptosis. By switching off the mitochondria, you prevent apoptosis!

Back in 2007, a group led by Dr Evangelos Michelakis in Alberta, Canada caused widespread excitement by reporting that a drug called dichloroacetate (DCA) which is already available for patient with inherited mitochondrial disorders, can reverse the Warberg effect in cancer cells. 

In the next two posts which I will post soon, I am going to present to you two case studies of patients who had stage 4 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and their tumour relapsed and returned with a vengeance after chemotherapy treatment. These two patients refused any further treatment and started to self-administrate with DCA.

The first case study involves a male patient who mixed DCA with Mountain Dew (yes the softdrink) and the second patient took DCA with thiamine (protects nerves). 

Follow this blog and please do return back soon for more updates!


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