The Candida Link to Cancer

Cancer, Candida and Alcohol

The National Cancer Institute projects “1 in 3 women and 1 in 2 men will have cancer in his or her lifetime.” Everyone knows someone who's been affected by it. Many Americans have swallowed hard at the discovery of a tumor that was later surgically removed or eventually pronounced ‘benign’, yet others remain in treatment now, fighting for their lives. So, what on earth enables this often fatal disease to overcome the human race so easily?

 

The Big Ugly

Cancer is ‘cell growth run amuck,’ or malignant transformation. It refers to any one of a large number of diseases where abnormal cells divide uncontrollably and have the ability to infiltrate and destroy normal body tissue. This messed up cell growth also has the ability to spread throughout the body. And it’s currently the second-leading cause of death in the United States.

My older brother was 6 when he died from cancer of the bone marrow or ‘multiple myeloma.’ Just prior to his diagnosis at age 5 he’d been sick with fever and stomach flu repeatedly and complained of painful leg aches for a number of months.

The pain inside his bones was the greatest discomfort to both him and my parents as they watched his little body become more frail and deformed from this aggressive malady. It must have given my parents some concern when ten years later, as a 5-year old I was also repeatedly sick with stomach flu and fever, earaches, urinary tract infections and regularly complained of leg aches at night.

We all ascribed it to “growing pains”, but what mom wouldn’t wonder? Back then so little was understood about the immune system, pH and disease, so she began a quest to learn what had taken her son at what should have been such a bright and bouncy time of life.

Some 40 years later doctors and scientists are discovering some fundamental relationships between body chemistry and cancer, and beginning to defray the overwhelming mystery.

Since the Human Microbiome Project was launched in 2008, scientists have begun to understand the central importance of a balanced microbiome in the prevention of cancer, and the dysbiosis or overgrowth of harmful organisms as a brand new piece in the understanding of the carcinogenesis puzzle.

A 2016 review by National Institutes of Health summarizes what science has uncovered so far. Some medical doctors theorize that candida yeast or other systemic fungal infections cause or at least contribute to the development of cancer. Why? When candida, which normally lives in limited numbers in the mucous membranes of the body becomes systemic (entering the bloodstream) it wreaks havoc on the immune system.

Not only does the immune system become overwhelmed and worn out from fighting the infection, but candida (or other fungi) excrete toxins that further weaken and harm the body. It’s not surprising, but a bit foreboding how many symptoms of underlying cancer match those of underlying systemic yeast. To name a few:

• Fatigue
• Weight changes, including unintended loss or gain
• Changes in bowel or bladder habits
• Persistent cough
• Difficulty Swallowing
• Persistent indigestion or discomfort after eating
• Persistent, unexplained muscle, bone or joint pain
• Sores that won’t heal

From Oxygen to Alcohol: Fermentation and the Human Distillery

All living creatures have one function in common, they breathe. Respiration allows the conversion of nutrients into energy within the organism. Humans and all other highly developed organisms require oxygen to carry out aerobic respiration, while primitive organisms like yeasts and mold can thrive in “anoxic” environments, carrying out anaerobic respiration in places where oxygen is limited, like the muddy bottom of a river, the inside of a corked wine barrel or the inside of your intestines. (Moist, dark and airless—that’s what I’m talkin’ about.)

 

Basics of cell respiration

Cell Respiration Releases Energy from the food we eat:  During the process of aerobic respiration (left side of pyramid), oxygen and food (glucose, fatty acids and proteins) combine and are broken down to obtain energy.

By this process, one molecule of glucose produces as many as 36 units of energy (ATP) with a little Carbon Dioxide and Water left over, which we exhale while breathing.

By contrast, anaerobic respiration (right side of pyramid - what yeast, mold and fungus do best) converts the same food molecule into only 2 units of energy (ATP) with some Ethanol (an alcohol-like neurotoxin in humans) and Carbon Dioxide (for gas).

This is known as alcoholic fermentation. So basically, if you feed candida sugar, it gives you very little energy, lots of alcohol and some gas & bloating for good measure. Notice that Anaerobic respiration produces far less energy – only 2 energy units compared with 36 units in aerobic respiration – which is why candida hosts feel so tired all the time. They aren’t getting the energy they deserve from their food!

What Yeast Gives you in return…

The major waste product of candida is acetaldehyde, which produces ethanol, a form of alcohol. Ethanol may be great fuel for cars, but in your body it is a neurotoxin that causes excessive fatigue, foggy thinking, weakness and other detrimental symptoms. Acetaldehyde also cancels the effects of dopamine which has the enormous job of regulating your mood, behavior, sleep, cognitive thinking, motivation and reward. Dopamine helps with decision-making and creativity and, when it’s interfered with, states of brain impairment such as Parkinson’s, schizophrenia or ADHD are the result. In addition to destroying your dopamine, acetaldehyde from yeast destroys defenseless enzymes needed for cell energy, and causes the release of free radicals that can damage DNA.

Ethanol also inhibits the absorption of iron. Because iron is one of the most important oxygen supports in the blood, ethanol in your body creates low oxygen levels. And you know what happens when your cells are deprived of oxygen, right? They die. Every cell needs oxygen to thrive. Which is why it’s important to deal with candida if you want to beat cancer.

If you know you haven’t consumed alcohol, yet you experience many of the symptoms of alcohol toxicity like dizziness, weakness, fatigue, foggy-thinking, memory loss, incoordination, quick temper, nausea, impaired vision, slurred speech, gas, bloating and burping or addiction to simple carbohydrates (sugar, soft drinks, pasta and yeast breads) or moldy foods like cheeses, mushrooms and peanut butter…you may have an overgrowth of yeast making a distillery of your body.

 

Brewing 101…

Making alcohol (wine or beer) requires only 3 ingredients; sugar from grapes or malted barley, moisture from grape juice or filtered water and yeast (natural yeasts that grow on grape skin or brewers yeast used in making beer). If you place these in a warm, dark environment and cork it to keep oxygen out, in a little while the yeasts will convert the sugar to alcohol. The sweeter the grapes or grain, the higher alcohol content you get. Yeasts also produce carbon dioxide which makes the beverage bubbly, or in the case of humans makes you a bit bubbly too (bloating and burping.) Okay, okay, so what does alcohol have to do with cancer? Read on.

Cancer Loves Alcohol

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has long maintained that there is a causal link between alcohol and cancers (especially in cancer of the liver, colon, upper digestive tract and, for women, breast). “Our data show that many cancer cases could have been avoided if alcohol consumption is limited to two alcoholic drinks per day in men and one alcoholic drink per day in women,” said Madlen Schutze, an epidemiologist at the German Institute of Human Nutrition in Potsdam and lead author of the study. “Even more cancer cases would be prevented if people reduced their alcohol intake to below recommended guidelines or stopped drinking alcohol at all,” she said in a statement. The results, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), are drawn from the EPIC cancer survey of 363,000 men and women living in Western European countries who have been tracked since the mid-1990s.

But I Don’t Drink…

With the help of candida, and dietary sugar you can elevate your own blood alcohol levels to exceed the “recommended guidelines” without ever touching a glass to your lips. Otto Warburg, winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine articulated his hypothesis in a paper entitled The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer which he presented in lecture at the meeting of the Nobel-Laureates on June 30, 1966 at Lindau, Germany. In this speech, Warburg presented evidence in support of the claim that anaerobiosis was a primary cause of cancerous cells. Anaerobic means “without oxygen”

Put in his own words, “the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar.” From his hypothesis has arisen a wide variety of oxygen therapies that attempt to increase cell respiration by injecting tumors with oxygen, peroxide, and other hydrogen peroxide therapies, but with marginal success at halting their growth. Because, until the overgrown anaerobic microbes are removed from the body, aerobic respiration of all the body’s cells will remain crippled.

 

What the doctors say…

Candida and Cancer

Milton White, MD. believes that cancer is a chronic, infectious, fungus disease. He was able to find fungal spores in every sample of cancer tissue he studied. Some other doctors agree with him. One Italian doctor, Dr. Tullio Simoncini has a theory that all cancer is caused by candida and that candida fungus forms a vital role in cancer’s ability to survive. Candida makes toxins that impair the apoptosis process (which is the body’s ability to detect and destroy weird cells) allowing cancer cells to proliferate undetected.

Candida overgrowth intertwines with tumors, protecting them with a positively charged acid glue that holds candida and the tumors together. His original solution was to drink a teaspoon of baking soda (bicarbonate of soda) in a glass of water half an hour before every meal. (If you try this at home, prepare to be nauseated. It’s the most basic or alkaline substance you can eat.) This pulls acids out of cancer cells, and neutralizes the acid glue holding the candida together. Without the candida to protect the cancer, “apoptosis” kicks in and cancers self-destruct.

With this simple, inexpensive therapy Simoncini reported many remissions. Now several doctors in Italy inject pharmaceutical grade bicarbonate of soda into tumors – with better results. Tumors can disappear within days or weeks. Simoncini’s breast cancer protocol now calls for surrounding a breast tumor with up to 120 cc of 5% sodium bicarbonate solution injected daily if tolerated. After several sessions most local cancers are gone. Far less invasive than radical surgery!

Fungi and Leukemia

Other doctors implicate fungi as a cause of leukemia. In 1999 Meinolf Karthaus, MD, watched three children with leukemia suddenly go into remission upon receiving a triple antifungal drug cocktail for their “secondary” fungal infections. In 1997 Mark Bielski stated that leukemia, whether acute or chronic, is intimately associated with the yeast, Candida albicans, which mutates into a fungal form when it overgrows. Author Doug Kaufmann (The Fungus Link) asserts that fungi in foods may play a role in cancer. He has seen children become free of their documented leukemia once the child’s diet was changed to one that no longer encourages yeast growth. Kaufmann’s diet is based on the widely published problem of mycotoxin (yeast) contamination of our grain foods. Grains such as corn, wheat, barley, sorghum, and other foods such as peanuts, are commonly contaminated with cancer-causing fungal poisons called mycotoxins. One of them, called aflatoxin, just happens to be the most carcinogenic substance on earth.

According to Kaufmann we consume, on average, from 0.15mg to 0.5mg of aflatoxin per day. So it’s not sugar alone that is the problem in our western diet, but fungal toxins found in the sugary grains we eat as well. More than once Kaufmann interviewed callers (on his health talk show) who craved aflatoxin rich foods like peanut butter and popcorn just prior to their diagnosis of cancer. Kaufmann believes that antibiotics play a role in this, as they destroy the normal, protective gut bacteria, allowing intestinal yeast and fungi to grow unchecked. The resultant overgrowth can lead to immune suppression, symptoms of autoimmune disease, and even cancer. “If the onset of any symptom or disease, cancer included, was preceded by a course of antibiotics,” he says, “then look for a fungus to be at the root of your problem.” Take heed.

Be well!

References:

• Bertram JS (2000). “The molecular biology of cancer”. Mol. Aspects Med. 21 (6): 167–223. doi:10.1016/S0098-2997(00)00007-8. PMID 11173079.

• Hsu PP and Sabatini DM (2008). “Cancer Cell Metabolism: Warburg and Beyond”. Cell. 134 (5): 703–7. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2008.08.021. PMID 18775299.

• Otto Heinrich Warburg (June 30, 1966). The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer.

• Schulz TJ, Thierbach R, Voigt A, Drewes G, Mietzner B, Steinberg P, Pfeiffer AF, Ristow M. (January 13, 2006). “Induction of oxidative metabolism by mitochondrial frataxin inhibits cancer growth: Otto Warburg revisited.”. Journal of Biological Chemistry 281 (2): 977–981. doi:10.1074/jbc.M511064200

 

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