Guest guest Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Part Three - Magnesium for Other Serious Health Threats Magnesium protects cells from aluminum, mercury, lead, cadmium, beryllium and nickel. Magnesium in general is essential for the survival of our cells but takes on further importance in the age of toxicity where our bodies are being bombarded on a daily basis with heavy metals. Glutathione requires magnesium for its synthesis. Glutathione synthetase requires ?-glutamyl cysteine, glycine, ATP, and magnesium ions to form glutathione. [ii] In magnesium deficiency, the enzyme y-glutamyl transpeptidase is lowered. [iii] According to Dr. Blaylock, low magnesium is associated with dramatic increases in free radical generation as well as glutathione depletion and this is vital since glutathione is one of the few antioxidant molecules known to neutralize mercury. [iv] Without the cleaning and chelating work of glutathione (magnesium) cells begin to decay as cellular filth and heavy metals accumulates; excellent environments to attract deadly infection and/or cancer. Cancer Since ending one's life with cancer is not pleasant, it is important all of us to be concerned with its prevention. It certainly is time to get serious about cancer prevention, with the disease predicted to surge in the next 15 years. The Association for International Cancer Research (AICR) said that if current trends continue, the number of people developing cancer was set to rise at an " alarming " rate. The World Health Organization predicts that cases of cancer will increase by up to 50% worldwide by 2020. The weight of evidence based on the findings of wildlife biologists, toxicologists, and epidemiologists clearly indicates that the world's populations are being exposed to a host of chemical contaminants that have recently passed over an invisible barrier and is now more dangerous and threatening than any combination of viruses. Chronic disease is the number one killer in the United States, accounting for about four out of five deaths in America each year. According to the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) about 100 million Americans, more than one-third of the population, suffer from some form of chronic disease like asthma, diabetes, cancer, heart and kidney disease or arthritis. Cancer is the second leading cause of death, exceeded only by heart disease. Among children ages 1 to 14, cancer is now the leading cause of death by disease. At current rates, invasive cancer will be diagnosed in half of all men and in one in three women in their lifetime.[v] More than 1.3 million new cases of invasive cancer will be diagnosed in 2006 meaning that approximately 1,500 Americans will die of the disease everyday. " Whether it is cancer or autism that is affecting our families and showing up in our examination rooms, the growing rates of chronic disease compel us to search for clues and answers to determine the true causes of these increasingly prevalent illnesses, " says the PSR. Almost 100% of these people are suffering from chemical poisoning. " With rates of cancer incidence rising, mortality rates not falling, and an ever increasing arsenal of high-tech scanners, radiotherapy equipment, and chemotherapeutic drugs being directed in what sometimes appears as a losing battle, there is no more emotive nor scientifically charged issue than cancer, " writes Dr. Goodman. Along with the rest of the allopathic medical establishment the last thing oncologists want to admit is that the population is suffering from poisoning from hundreds of carcinogenic compounds and that this, in large part, is a great part of what is driving the escalating epidemic in cancer. In March of 2004, the U.S. federal government issued an unusually detailed alert to the nation's 5.5 million health care workers: The powerful drugs used in chemotherapy can themselves cause cancer and pose a risk to nurses, pharmacists and others who handle them. Four years in the making, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) issued the alert. Chemotherapy - the use of potent drugs to kill cancerous cells - is more than 60 years old. The first such drugs were nitrogen mustards, originally developed as chemical warfare agents. Modern chemotherapy drugs are so strong that they can cause secondary cancers in patients; to a healthy person, they're poison. Most health care workers are clueless about how toxic these agents really are. Oncologists use treatments that cause cancer to treat cancer when they use radiation and chemotherapy treatments. A Harvard thesis has shown a connection between water fluoridation and a 700% increase in osteosarcoma in young men if they are exposed to fluoridated water during their 6th to 8th years.[vi] Dr. Connett Prevailing medical response protocols for cancer patients today give only tacit attention to nutrition as a factor in treatment and prevention. This clearly puts the cancer cure advocacy industry and health officials in clear opposition to many distinguished research scientists. Though data from thousands of studies support taking a less toxic, more holistic approach to treatment of the disease, the majority of allopathic specialists are only patronizing patients who wish to use a nutrition-base, immune system enhancing strategy in their cancer treatment. Vociferous and over-zealous protestations by oncologists, who are convinced that nutrition in cancer treatment is inherently worthlessness and tantamount to quackery, is embarrassing to the institution of medicine. It exposes many of these doctors as little more than medical automatons, who do only as they have been taught, adhering to established medical orthodoxy, extracting money and making profits for drug companies on the backs of cancer patients.[vii] Most mainstream physicians are unaware of the extensive depth of evidence about nutrients preventing and alleviating many deadly diseases. Again, it is because they have not been taught to consider, much less to respect, " alternative " , meaning non-pharmaceutical-based approaches to the treatment of disease. The emergence of integrative medicine programs, which was pioneered at the University of Arizona under the tutelage of Dr. Weil, shows that this trend is changing. However, it is a trend in need of acceleration, as today, needless suffering remains the rule, rather than the exception in the prevention and treatment of cancer. Nutritional sufficiency, and one of its major mineral components, magnesium, must be plugged in to the solution. Until this happens, we'll only be servicing the status quo. Magnesium stabilizes ATP[viii], allowing DNA and RNA transcriptions and repairs.[ix] Since so many enzymes and ion transport require magnesium, and its role in fatty acid and phospholipid acid metabolism affects the permeability and stability of membranes, we can see that magnesium deficiency can lead to physiological decline in cells. Anything that weakens cell physiology will lead to the infections that surround and penetrate tumor tissues setting the stage for cancer. These infections are proving to be an integral part of cancer. Magnesium deficiency poses a direct threat to the health of our cells. Without sufficient amounts our cells calcify and rot. Breeding grounds for yeast and fungi colonies they become, invaders all to ready to strangle our life force and kill us. The toxic effect of fluoride ions plays a key role in acute Mg deficiency. Fluoride ion clearly interferes with the biological activity of magnesium ions. In general, fluoride-magnesium interactions decrease enzymatic activity.[x] Aleksandrowicz et al in Poland conclude that inadequacy of Mg and antioxidants are important risk factors in predisposing to leukemias. [xi] Other researchers found that 46% of the patients admitted to an ICU in a tertiary cancer center presented hypomagnesemia. They concluded that the incidence of hypomagnesemia in critically ill cancer patients is high.[xii] In animal studies we find that magnesium deficiency has caused lymphopoietic neoplasms in young rats. A study of rats surviving magnesium deficiency sufficient to cause death in convulsions during early infancy in some, and cardiorenal lesions weeks later in others, disclosed that some of survivors had thymic nodules or lymphosarcoma. [xiii] Magnesium repletion produced rapid disappearance of the periosteal tumors. [xiv] Systems relying on magnesium to facilitate their catalytic action include ATP metabolism, creatine-kinase activation, adenylate-cyclase, and sodium-potassium-ATPase.[xv] It is known that carcinogenesis induces magnesium distribution disturbances, which cause magnesium mobilization through blood cells and magnesium depletion in non-neoplastic tissues. Magnesium deficiency seems to be carcinogenic, and in case of solid tumors, a high level of supplemented magnesium inhibits carcinogenesis. [xvi] Both carcinogenesis and magnesium deficiency increase the plasma membrane permeability and fluidity. Scientists have in fact found out that there is much less Mg++ binding to membrane phospholipids of cancer cells, than to normal cell membranes.[xvii] There is drastic change in ionic flux from the outer and inner cell membranes both in the impaired membranes of cancer, and in Mg deficiency. Anghileri et al [xviii],[xix], proposed that modifications of cell membranes are principal triggering factors in cell transformation leading to cancer. Using cells from induced cancers, they found that there is much less magnesium binding to membrane phospholipids of cancer cells, than to normal cell membranes. [xx] It has been suggested that Mg deficiency may trigger carcinogenesis by increasing membrane permeability. [xxi] Magnesium deficient cells membranes seem to have a smoother surface than normal, and decreased membrane viscosity, analogous to changes in human leukemia cells. [xxii],[xxiii] There is drastic change in ionic flux from the outer and inner cell membranes (higher Ca and Na; lower Mg and K levels), both in the impaired membranes of cancer, and of Mg deficiency. And we find that lead (Pb) salts, are more leukemogenic when given to Mg-deficient rats, than when they are given to Mg-adequate rats, suggesting that Mg is protective. [xxiv] Long ago researchers postulated that magnesium supplementation of those who are Mg-deficient, like chronic alcoholics, might decrease emergence of malignancies[xxv] and now modern researchers have found that all types of alcohol - wine, beer or liquor - add equally to the risk of developing breast cancer in women. The researchers, led by Dr. Arthur Klatsky of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program in Oakland, Calif., revealed their findings at a meeting of the European Cancer Organization in Barcelona in late 2007. It was found that women who had one or two drinks a day increased their risk of developing breast cancer by 10%. Women who had more than three drinks a day raised their risk by 30%. The more one drinks, the more one drives down magnesium levels. Breast cancer is the second most common cancer killer of women, after lung cancer. It will be diagnosed in 1.2 million people globally this year and will kill 500,000. According to data published in the British Journal of Cancer in 2002, 4% of all breast cancers - about 44,000 cases a year - in the United Kingdom are due to alcohol consumption. It's an important question though, and one not asked by medical or health officials, is it the alcohol itself or the resultant drop in magnesium levels that is cancer provoking? Though some studies have shown that light to moderate alcohol use can protect against heart attacks, it does us no good to drink if it cause cancer. Perhaps if women drinkers who were studied ingested more magnesium, there would have been less or no increase in their cancer. Alcohol has always been known to deplete magnesium, and is one of the first supplements given to alcoholics when they stop and attempt to detoxify and withdraw. Researchers from the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota have just concluded that diets rich in magnesium reduced the occurrence of colon cancer. [xxvi] A previous study from Sweden reported that women with the highest magnesium intake had a 40% lower risk of developing the cancer than those with the lowest intake of the mineral. [xxvii] The anti-colon cancer effects of calcium are linked to magnesium levels, says a new study. Researchers from Vanderbilt University found that low ratios of the minerals were associated with reduced risk of colorectal cancer, according to findings presented at the Seventh Annual American Association for Cancer Research International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research. Both high magnesium and calcium levels have been linked to reduced risks of colon cancer but studies have also shown that high calcium levels inhibit the absorption of magnesium. According to Qi Dai, MD, PhD, and co-workers, Americans have high calcium intake, but also a high incidence of colorectal cancer. " If calcium levels were involved alone, you'd expect the opposite direction. There may be something about these two factors combined - the ratio of one to the other - that might be at play, " said Dai. The risk of colorectal cancer adenoma recurrence was reduced by 32% among those with baseline calcium to magnesium ratio below the median in comparison to no reduction for those above the median, " said Dai. [xxviii] Pre-treatment hypomagnesemia has been reported in young leukemic children, 78% of who have histories of anorexia, and have excessive gut and urinary losses of Mg.[xxix] Several studies have shown an increased cancer rate in regions with low magnesium levels in soil and drinking water, and the same for selenium. In Egypt the cancer rate was only about 10% of that in Europe and America. In the rural fellah it was practically non-existent. The main difference was an extremely high magnesium intake of 2.5 to 3g in these cancer-free populations, 10 times more than in most western countries. [xxx] The School of Public Health at the Kaohsiung Medical College in, Taiwan, found that magnesium also exerts a protective effect against gastric cancer, but only for the group with the highest levels. [xxxi] It is generally accepted that a higher magnesium intake in the drinking water is associated with reduced cancer incidence and reduced frequency of cardiac infarction. Preliminary data also suggests a relationship between low intake of magnesium and kidney cancer. In 1961, Dr. Hans A. Nieper, introduced cardiac therapy based on magnesium aspartate. He was surprised to observe that hardly any new cancer occurrences appear in the group of patients so treated. The rate of new cancerous diseases with long-term magnesium therapy was reported to be less than 20% of the frequency otherwise expected. In an uncontrolled trial, researchers in the UK found that intravenous magnesium relieves neuropathy pain in patients with cancer.10[xxxii] Magnesium acts as a noncompetitive antagonist of the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor, which has been implicated in the transmission of pain, according to Dr. Crosby and colleagues at Nottingham City Hospital. If we looked, it would probably be very difficult to find a cancer patient with anywhere near normal levels of cellular magnesium meaning cancer probably does not exist in a physical cellular environment full of magnesium. It makes perfect medical sense to saturate the body with magnesium through transdermal means. Magnesium deficiency has been implicated in a host of clinical disorders but the medical establishment just cannot get it through its thick skull that it is an important medicine. It is as if the collective medical profession had just pulled the plug on medical intelligence. In fact it has done exactly this and it seems too late for it to redefine itself, which is a tragedy. Though magnesium improves the internal production of defensive substances, such as antibodies and considerably improves the operational activity of white granulozytic blood cells (shown by Delbert with magnesium chloride), and contributes to many other functions that insure the integrity of cellular metabolism, no one thinks to use it in cancer as a primary treatment. It is even worse than this, the medical establishment does not even use magnesium as a secondary treatment or even use it at all, and instead uses radiation and chemotherapy, both of which force magnesium levels down further. It is negligent, especially in the case of cancer when a person's life is on the line, not to replenish magnesium levels to support the immune system and every other part of the body. If the patient has already had chemotherapy, they have four times the reason to pay attention to a concentrated protocol aimed at replenishing full magnesium cellular stores. [Why four, maybe I missed it?] Magnesium chloride is the first and most important item in any person's cancer treatment strategy. Put in the clearest terms possible, our suggestion from the first day on the Survival Medicine Cancer Protocol is to almost drown oneself in transdermally applied magnesium chloride. It should be the first, not the last thing we think of when it comes to cancer. It takes about 3 to 4 months to drive up cellular magnesium levels to where they should be when treated transdermally, but within days patients will commonly experience its life saving medical/healing effects. For many people whose bodies are starving for magnesium, the experience is not too much different than for a person coming out of a desert desperate for water. It is that basic to life, that important, that necessary. Magnesium chloride, when applied directly to the skin, is transdermally absorbed and has an almost immediate effect on chronic and acute pain. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linus ing Institute http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/minerals/magnesium/index.html#function [ii] Virginia Minnich, M. B. , M. J. Brauner, and Philip W. Majerus. Glutathione biosynthesis in human erythrocytes. Department of Internal Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, J Clin Invest. 1971 March; 50(3): 507-513. Abstract: The two enzymes required for de novo glutathione synthesis, glutamyl cysteine synthetase and glutathione synthetase, have been demonstrated in hemolysates of human erythrocytes. Glutamyl cysteine synthetase requires glutamic acid, cysteine, adenosine triphosphate (ATP), and magnesium ions to form ?-glutamyl cysteine. The activity of this enzyme in hemolysates from 25 normal subjects was 0.43±0.04 ?mole glutamyl cysteine formed per g hemoglobin per min. Glutathione synthetase requires ?-glutamyl cysteine, glycine, ATP, and magnesium ions to form glutathione. The activity of this enzyme in hemolysates from 25 normal subjects was 0.19±0.03 ?mole glutathione formed per g hemoglobin per min. Glutathione synthetase also catalyzes an exchange reaction between glycine and glutathione, but this reaction is not significant under the conditions used for assay of hemolysates. The capacity for erythrocytes to synthesize glutathione exceeds the rate of glutathione turnover by 150-fold, indicating that there is considerable reserve capacity for glutathione synthesis. A patient with erythrocyte glutathione synthetase deficiency has been described. The inability of patients' extracts to synthesize glutathione is corrected by the addition of pure glutathione synthetase, indicating that there is no inhibitor in the patients' erythrocytes. [iii] Braverman, E.R. (with Pfeiffer, C.C.)(1987). The healing nutrients within: Facts, findings and new research on amino acids. New Canaan: Keats Publishing [iv] http://www.dorway.org/blayautism.txt [v] www.cancer.org, ACS Cancer Facts and Figures 2008. [vi] Dr. Connett posted on 20 July 2005 at 4:55 am. I am really surprised that Medical News Today published the puff piece from the American Dental Association about their celebration of 60 years of fluoridation, but missed the real news from last week. This was the revelation carried by the Washington Post and the Associated Press (July 13, 2005) that a Harvard thesis has shown a connection between water fluoridation and a 700% increase in osteosarcoma in young men if they are exposed to fluoridated water during their 6th to 8th years. Particularly disturbing is the information that the thesis adviser, Porfessor Cheser s, who is also a consultant to Colgate, has covered up these results in talks to the public and in a report to his funding agency. Both the NIEHS and Harvard University are investigating his conduct. [vii] Some doctors just take it too far. Dr. A. Rosin, for instance, was accused of falsely diagnosing patients with skin cancer and operating on them unnecessarily. He was recently ordered by federal authorities to refer all patients with confirmed or suspected skin cancer to other doctors instead of treating them himself. The order says Rosin, 54, poses " an immediate and serious danger to the health, safety and welfare of the public. " He was found guilty by jury trial. [viii] Mg2+ is critical for all of the energetics of the cells because it is absolutely required that Mg2+ be bound (chelated) by ATP (adenosine triphosphate), the central high energy compound of the body. ATP without Mg2+ bound cannot create the energy normally used by specific enzymes of the body to make protein, DNA, RNA, transport sodium or potassium or calcium in and out of cells, nor to phosphorylate proteins in response to hormone signals, etc. In fact, ATP without enough Mg2+ is non-functional and leads to cell death. Bound Mg2+ holds the triphosphate in the correct stereochemical position so that it can interact with ATP using enzymes and the Mg2+ also polarizes the phosphate backbone so that the 'backside of the phosphorous' is more positive and susceptible to attack by nucleophilic agents such as hydroxide ion or other negatively charged compounds. Bottom line, Mg2+ at critical concentrations is essential to life, " says Dr. Boyd Haley who asserts strongly that, " All detoxification mechanisms have as the bases of the energy required to remove a toxicant the need for Mg-ATP to drive the process. There is nothing done in the body that does not use energy and without Mg2+ this energy can neither be made nor used. " Detoxification of carcinogenic chemical poisons is essential for people want to avoid the ravages of cancer. The importance of magnesium in cancer prevention should not be underestimated. [ix] Magnesium has a central regulatory role in the cell cycle including that of affecting transphorylation and DNA synthesis, has been proposed as the controller of cell growth, rather than calcium. It is postulated that Mg++ controls the timing of spindle and chromosome cycles by changes in intracellular concentration during the cell cycle. Magnesium levels fall as cells enlarge until they reach a level that allows for spindle formation. Mg influx then causes spindle breakdown and cell division. [x] A Machoy-Mokrzynska. Fluoride_Magnesium Interaction. Fluoride (J. of the International Society for Fluoride Research), Vol. 28 No. 4; November, 1995, pp 175-177 http://www.mgwater.com/fl2.shtml Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Pomeranian Medical Academy, Szczecin, Poland. [xi]Aleksandrowicz, J., Blicharski, J., Dzigowska, A., Lisiewicz, J. Leuko- and oncogenesis in the light of studies on metabolism of magnesium and its turnover in biocenosis. Acta Med. Pol. 1970; 11:289-302. (abstr: Blood 1971; 37:245) [xii] D. Deheinzelin, E.M. Negri1, M.R. Tucci, M.Z. Salem1, V.M. da Cruz1, R.M. Oliveira, I.N. Nishimoto and C. Hoelz. Hypomagnesemia in critically ill cancer patients: a prospective study of predictive factors. Braz J Med Biol Res, December 2000, Volume 33(12) 1443-1448 [xiii] Bois, P. Tumour of the thymus in magnesium-deficient rat. Nature 1964; 204:1316. [xiv] Hunt, B.J., Belanger, L.F. Localized, multiform, sub-periosteal hyperplasia and generalized osteomyelosclerosis in magnesium-deficient rats. Calcif. Tiss. Res. 1972; 9:17-27. [xv] Magnesium is used in the creatine-phosphate formation, activates the alkaline phosphatase and pyrophosphatase, stabilizes nucleic acid synthesis, concerning DNA synthesis and degradation, as well as the physical integrity of the DNA helix, activates amino acid and protein synthesis, and regulates numerous hormones. [xvi] Durlach J, Bara M, Guiet-Bara A, Collery P. Relationship between magnesium, cancer and carcinogenic or anticancer metals. Anticancer Res. 1986 Nov-Dec;6(6):1353-61. [xvii]Anghileri, L.J. Magnesium concentration variations during carcinogenesis. Magnesium Bull. 1979; 1:46-48. [xviii] Anghileri, L.J. Magnesium concentration variations during carcinogenesis. Magnesium Bull. 1979; 1:46-48. [xix] Anghileri, L.J., Collery, P., Coudoux, P., Durlach, J. (Experimental relationships between magnesium and cancer.) Magnesium Bull. 1981; 3:1-5 [xx] Anghileri, L.J., Heidbreder, M., Weiler, G., Dermietzel, R. Hepatocarcinogenesis by thioacetamide: correlations of histological and biochemical changes, and possible role of cell injury. Exp. Cell. Biol. 1977; 45:34-47. [xxi] Blondell, J.W. The anticancer effect of magnesium. Medical Hypothesis 1980; 6:863-871. [xxii] Whitney, R.B., Sutherland, R.M. The influence of calcium, magnesium and cyclic adenosine 3'5'-monophosphate on the mixed lymphocyte reaction. J. Immunol. 1972; 108:1179-1183. [xxiii] Petitou, M., Tuy, F., Rosenfeld, C., Mishal, Z., Paintrand, M., Jasmin, C., Mathe, G., Inbar, M. Decreased microviscosity of membrane lipids in leukemic cells; two possible mechanisms. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 1978; 75:2306-2310. [xxiv] Hass, G.M., McCreary, P.A., Laing, G.H., Galt, R.M. Lymphoproliferative and immumunologic aspects of magnesium deficiency. In Magnesium in Health and Disease (from 2nd Intl Mg Sympos, Montreal, Canada, 1976), b Eds. M. Cantin, M.S. Seelig, Publ. Spectrum Press, NY, 1980, pp 185-200 [xxv] Collery, P., Anghileri, L.J., Coudoux, P., Durlach, J. (Magnesium and cancer: Clinical data.) Magnesium Bull. 1981; 3:11-20. [xxvi] American Journal of Epidemiology (Vol. 163, pp. 232-235) [xxvii] Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 293, pp. 86-89 [xxviii] http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Magnesium-may-be-key-to-calcium-s-cance\ r-benefits-study [xxix] Paunier, L., Radde, I.C.: Normal and abnormal magnesium metabolism. Bull. of Hosp. for Sick Childr. (Toronto) 1965; 14:16-23. [xxx] MAY 19, 1931, Dr. P. Schrumpf-Pierron presented a paper entitled " On the Cause Of the Rarity of Cancer in Egypt, " which was printed in the Bulletin of the Academy of Medicine, and the Bulletin of the French Association for the Study of Cancer in July, 1931. http://www.mgwater.com/rod02.shtml [xxxi] Yang CY et al. Jpn J Cancer Res.1998 Feb;89 (2):124-30. Calcium, magnesium, and nitrate in drinking water and gastric cancer mortality. [xxxii] Reuters Health, Feb. 10, 2000 AND the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, Jan. 2000; 19:35-39 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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