I would like to explore some ways in which specific supplements can help reduce the terrible side effects of chemotherapy.  One of the main reasons for these ill side effects is the generation of free radicals by many commonly used chemo drugs.  This increased free radical burden comes at a cost, which accounts for most of the toxicities experienced by patients.

Lets review some supplements:
CoQ10 - is an antioxidant found in foods in small amounts, and which the body produces on its own. Found in all cells but in highest amount in heart, liver, muscles, immune system cells.  Gives the cell energy and improves oxygen uptake on a cellular level, Cancer doesn't thrive in a well oxygenated body.  Prevents shrinking of the thymus gland and decreased or eliminated cancer tumours in a small group of patients when 390 mg. was used daily along with antioxidants and essential fatty acids.

Maitake (Grifolia Frondosa)• Compounds in Maitake mushrooms called Beta-glucans are able to shrink tumours and have a beneficial effect on the immune system by increasing macrophage activity and the healing of breast and prostate cancer
• It also inhibits the formation of metastases
• Maitake lessens the side effects of chemotherapy, helping to decrease nausea, keep the white blood cells actively working, and in reducing pain


MGN-3

• MGN-3 is an extract of the outer shell of rice bran combined with extracts from the following three mushrooms: Shiitake, Kawaratake and Suehirotake. This combination possesses anti-cancer properties that improves the ability of the T-killer cells to destroy cancer cells by increasing the number of explosive granules in the T-killer cells
• MGN-3 increases the body’s levels of interferon and tumour necrosis factors, both of which help destroy cancer cells
• In one study involving 24 cancer patients who took the product for two months, the T-killers cells became 27 times more effective at killing cancer cells after the two months than they had been prior to treatment
• Used with chemotherapy, MGN-3 lessens toxic side effects of the chemo and fortifies the white blood cells

Indole-3-Carbinol (a plant compound from cruciferous vegetables)


• Indole-3-carbinol converts the stronger form of extrogen (estradiol) into a weaker form (2-hydroxy-estrone)
• When I-3-C was given to 25 women for two months the levels of C16-hydroxyestrone (bad estrogen) dropped
• I-3-C inhibits human breast cancer cells from growing by as much as 90%
• I-3-C interrupts the cell cycle in cancer cells. In one study I-3-C inhibited the growth of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer cells by 90% compared to tamoxifen’s 60% by stopping the cell cycle
• In estrogen receptor-negative cells I-3-C stopped the synthesis of DNA for new cells by about 50% whereas tamoxifen had no significant effect
• Chemically – induced breast cancers have been inhibited by both I-3-C and DIM in animals studies, with I-3-C being slightly more effective

Grape Seed Extract


• Fifty times more effective than vitamin E and twenty times stronger than vitamin C in neutralizing free radicals
• Help to slow down the rate of DNA mutation when cells are exposed to carcinogens
• Maintains the integrity of the arterial walls and circulation
• Slows down the aging process
• Not found in foods

Milk Thistle is best known for its protective effects of chemical toxicity.  It has a restorative influence that can speed up regeneration of new liver cells.  

Theanine - This amino acid found also in green tea appears to reduce the toxic side effects of various chemotherapy drugs.  Simply drinking green tea is not enough unfortunately, we need a concentrated amount that is found in green tea extracts.  

NAC (N-AcetyCysteine)


• Helps the liver to detox for melatonin to work effectively
• Makes toxic chemicals and carcinogens less harmful
• Fewer side effects from chemotherapy and radiation when taken but may make the chemo less effective
Found in, black beans, adzuki beans, chick peas, lentils, split peas, sried spirulina, nori, kelp, almonds, sunflower seeds, cottage cheese, fish

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Lynn has been working in the wellness Industry for more than 18 years and has a magical way of inspiring others to embrace healthy, balanced lifestyles and relish in living their best life!  Making even just one of the shifts she suggests can: reduce stress, take pounds off, reduce cholesterol and blood pressure, add quality years and vitality to your life.  Lynn searches for alternative, holistic and natural methods in taking care of one's health and wellness...  knowledge is a powerful tool.  Being informed about your disease , treatment options  and expectations will empower you to take control of the process.  This can affect your recovery and personal experience in a positive way.  

Radical Remission is a wonderful book that talks about 9 elements that radical remission cancer survivors have used to heal their bodies.  Not one thing alone works but using several elements together can help the body to heal from illness and disease.  As a cancer coach, nutritionist, & Time Line therapist, hypnotherapist, I teach clients to combine these very same elements together to effect change.  

The number one thing that patients do is to radically change their diet!  Increasing vegetables, organic fruit, whole grains, eating whole foods, juicing, and eliminating dairy, wheat, gluten, meat, sugar, and processed foods. Giving the body the nutrients it needs to fight disease and increase the immune system and natural killer cells.  

Taking control of your own health and the ideal that in order for healing to occur, you must be willing to make changes even if those changes are time consuming and emotionally difficult.  Instead of relying in quick fix pills, you may need to make serious changes in your life in order to regain your health.  You may need to leave your stressful job or marriage in order to heal, whatever it is, evaluate, reflect and listen to your inner voice to do what is right for you.

Following your intuition.  The body knows what it needs to heal and it can often let you know why you got sick in the first place.  This belief goes against western medicine, which usually removes patients from the  planning process while the doctors determine a course of treatment after diagnosis.  IF the mind is allowed to quiet down, it will know what it needs to do in order to be well again.  Cancer is only a messenger that says something has gone wrong or out of alignment.  Find out what that something is, that root cause and correct it to heal the body.

Using Herbs and Supplements:  The difference between chemo and vitamins is that chemo kills cancer cells & the immune system while most supplements are designed to  strengthen the immune system so that it can remove cancer cells.  These 2 treatment styles stem from 2 different belief systems.  Vitamins and Herbs alone  will not do the trick however, combining them with all the other elements to heal the body may mean the difference between life and death just as diet alone may not work either.  

Releasing suppressed emotions- suppressed emotions are any emotions you are hanging onto from your past that are negative, positive, conscious or unconscious.  We hold onto negative one's such as anger, fear, sadness, and hurt.  Suppressed emotions may be conscious or unconscious, meaning you may not be able to remember them fully.  It could be from traumatic memories or events in the past, accidents, abuse are often blocked from one's conscious memory.  You can release these negative emotions easily with Time Line Therapy, hypnotherapy and using other healing modalities such as Reiki, yoga and meditation.

Increase positive emotions:  Happiness is a habit and a state that you can access at any time.  We all have happy memories that we can access and we an do it daily to make it a habit.  For cancer survivors that were interviewed, they had to force themselves to think of past happy events and memories in the beginning or they chose to watch funny shows and movies to increase their happiness.  They discovered that by doing this daily, it became a habit and the feeling of happiness came quickly the more they practiced it.  

Embrace social support:  We are social creatures by nature and humans need each other to survive.  Researchers have discovered that loved one's help our bodies in a sophisticated way.  When we are surrounded by them, even our pets the feeling of being loved releases a flood of hormones into the bloodstream which makes us feel better emotionally but also strengthens our immune system significantly.  

Deepening your spiritual connection:  Having a connection to a deeper or higher energy which some people call God and others call it the soul or energy or chi.  One may pray to find this connection others may have a deep yoga practice or meditation practice that they follow.  Whatever it is for you, is right for you, practice is daily, connect to your inner spirit and faith.

Having strong reasons for living:  Survivors that were interviewed said that they wanted to live and for many reasons.  Having confidence to your core that you want to keep living, to get excited about life was a recurring factor for cancer patients of radical remissions.  It is a recurring fact in this book that the mind leads the body, not the other way around.  Its a proven fact that when you have strong enough thought or emotion, powerful hormones and released instantly into the bloodstream and have either beneficial or detrimental effect on your immune system depending on the nature of your thoughts and emotions.

While each chapter in the book contains healing stories, its important to remember that it is never just one factor that helped people get well but a multitude of factors.  Empowerment is the key, cancer is a devastating disease and people often feel powerless since it can sneak up without any warming.  Finding your power will require some effort on your part, you can do it.  

Radical Remission, surviving cancer against all ods written by kelly A. Turner, Ph.D  You can find her book here: 
http://www.amazon.ca/Radical-Remission-Surviving-Cancer-Against/dp/0062268759/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1443444560&sr=1-1&keywords=radical+remission

A New Study Corroborates Dr. Langsjoen’s Research  
The study was published in the September 25, 2014, online edition of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Heart Failure. It described the effects of 300 mg per day of ubiquinone given to a large group of chronic heart failure patients.

After 16 weeks of administration of this dose and form of CoQ10, there were no significant changes in measures of ejection fraction compared to placebo.3  What the researchers discovered, however, is that when these chronic heart failure patients took 300 mg per day of ubiquinone for two years, there was (compared to placebo) a remarkable:

• 44% reduction in cardiovascular mortality.
• 42% reduction in all-cause mortality.
• 45% reduction in the number of hospital stays (some people consider hospitals worse than jail).
• 29% improvement in the proportion of patients seeing a beneficial change in their NYHA classification (a composite measure of heart failure severity).

These findings are earth shattering! They reveal that more than 120,000 American lives could be saved each year with the use of a widely available dietary supplement. The authors of this study concluded:

“Long-term CoQ10 treatment of patients with chronic heart failure is safe, improves symptoms, and reduces major adverse cardiovascular events.”

These findings help corroborate Dr. Langsjoen’s pioneering research where he used higher doses of a superior-absorbingubiquinol CoQ10 to achieve quicker improvements in cardiac ejection fraction. Dr. Langsjoen sees improved heart function in as early as three months and almost always by six months of treatment with ubiquinol at 200 mg twice per day.

In 1992, the FDA and Texas Department of Health raided Austin Whole Foods and other retail outlets to seize their CoQ10.30  This severely affected the ability of Dr. Langsjoen’s heart disease patients to access coenzyme Q10.  The basis for these raids was the FDA’s contention that coenzyme Q10 was an unsafe food additive. Patients whose lives were being saved knew different.

The citizens revolted and protested the FDA seizures in every possible way. They alerted the news media, wrote hot letters to the FDA, congressmen, and senators, and phoned up the Texas Department of Health to protest. Sixty agitated patients and family members assembled at a local church to plan a strategy for keeping CoQ10 on the market.

An in-depth article about this raid and the impact it was having on Dr. Langsjoen’s patients was the subject of a detailed article, titled “Heartless Behavior,” in the popular Texas Monthly magazine (June 1992 issue) which is still available online (http://www.texasmonthly.com/content/heartless-behavior ).

After a monumental struggle, the Texas Department of Health backed down and patients were once again able to obtain CoQ10 (in Texas). For heart failure patients whose lives hung in the balance, the ordeal was beyond stressful.

Those with cardiac issues that would like to become a patient of Dr. Langsjoen can contact his clinical practice at the following address and phone:

Peter Langsjoen, MD 1107 Doctors Drive Tyler, Texas 75701 Phone: 903-595-3778

There are over five million Americans afflicted with congestive heart failure today. Many can’t wait two years for a conventional CoQ10 supplement to improve their condition and slash their risk of dying. They need to initiate 400-600 mgof ubiquinol daily to increase their heart’s ejection fraction as soon as possible.

There is now solid evidence from a large, randomized multicenter published trial showing remarkable benefits when 300 mg a day of CoQ10 is added to standard treatment over a two-year period. What makes this finding interesting is that many heart failure patients in the past tried a relatively small CoQ10 dose and if an improvement in ejection fraction did not happen quickly, they and their doctor would have felt CoQ10 to be ineffective. This helps explain why conventional cardiology has been slow to catch on to CoQ10’s lifesaving benefits.  To a patient suffering from chronic heart failure, this information is priceless!

National Cancer Institute and CoQ10

Most people associate CoQ10 as having beneficial effects for the heart, brain, and kidneys. Overlooked is data showing that CoQ10 has protective effects against several forms ofcancer.

According to the National Cancer Institute’s position paper:31
“Interest in coenzyme Q10 as a therapeutic agent in cancer began in 1961, when a deficiency was noted in the blood of both Swedish and American cancer patients, especially in the blood of patients with breast cancer.32-34 A subsequent study showed a statistically significant relationship between the level of plasma coenzyme Q10 deficiency and breast cancer prognosis.35 Low blood levels of this compound have been reported in patients with malignancies other than breast cancer, including myeloma, lymphoma, and cancers of the lung, prostate, pancreas, colon, kidney, and head and neck.”32,36,37

The National Cancer Institute goes on further to state:
“Some of the accumulated data show that coenzyme Q10 stimulates animal immune systems, leading to higher antibody levels,38greater numbers and/or activities of macrophages and T cells (T lymphocytes),38,39 and increased resistance to infection. 40-42Coenzyme Q10 has also been reported to increase IgG (immunoglobulin G) antibody levels and to increase the CD4 to CD8 T-cell ratio in humans.43-45 CD4 and CD8 are proteins found on the surface of T cells, with CD4 and CD8 identifying helper T cells and cytotoxic T cells, respectively; decreased CD4 to CD8 T-cell ratios have been reported for cancer patients.”46,47

With a plethora of studies showing CoQ10’s heart benefits, the data about its potential anticancer properties gets lost in the popular media.

Battles To Defend Against CoQ10 Prohibition After we introduced CoQ10 in 1983, public demand for this nutrient soared. The FDA’s response was to seek to ban it altogether because they deemed it to be a prescription drug that required government “approval” to be sold.

Companies selling CoQ10 were raided and individuals (including us) were placed under intense criminal investigation at enormous cost to taxpayers. In 1987, FDA agents accompanied by armed US Marshalls (with guns drawn) kicked down our doors and proceeded to seize every bottle of CoQ10, every one of our newsletters, and any other nutrient (magnesium, fish oil, etc.) they deemed to be an “unapproved drug.” We later filed suit against the FDA and won back all of the seized materials, though the supplements were spoiled and had to be discarded.

In 1990, the FDA conducted an armed raid against Highland Laboratories in Oregon and seized their CoQ10 and accompanying literature.48 The owner of this company was criminally indicted and rather than face the expense and uncertainty of a trial, pled guilty and was placed on six months house arrest.49

Frustrated that we continued to offer CoQ10, the FDA went to a state pharmacy board and declared that nutrients like CoQ10 posed an imminent threat to the public’s health and therefore had to be embargoed from sale to the public. At the FDA’s behest, pharmacy board inspectors placed embargoes on our CoQ10 and that of another supplier of CoQ10 in the same state. We prepared a 300-page lawsuit against the pharmacy board attesting to the safety and efficacy of CoQ10.

As a courtesy, we presented the lawsuit to the pharmacy board’s attorneys and gave them the option of lifting the embargo before we filed the lawsuit. After reading the 300-page lawsuit that substantiated the safety and efficacy of CoQ10, the pharmacy board lifted the embargo against us (and the other company) and promised to never take the FDA’s word at blind faith again. The state pharmacy board was clearly perturbed that the FDA deceived them about the safety of CoQ10.

We were later arrested at the behest of the FDA and fought a multiyear battle in which the US Attorney’s Office eventually dismissed the charges that the FDA brought that sought to incarcerate us for life.

To this day, the FDA tries to censor claims that CoQ10 can benefit heart failure patients, despite overwhelming documentation that this nutrient markedly reduces death rates when properly used.

Based on findings published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology late last year, CoQ10 can reduce overall death rates in patients with congestive heart failure by 42%.

The number of lives that could be saved if every congestive heart failure patient properly supplemented with CoQ10 is potentially over 120,000 each year.

If you multiply the number of lives lost by the 30 years the FDA has been censoring information about CoQ10, the total comes to over 3.6 million dead Americans, which is more than all the American deaths suffered by all the wars this nation has ever fought.

The chart on this page documents the striking carnage caused by FDA censorship of CoQ10 compared to all military conflicts the United States fought starting with the Revolutionary War.

Based on these staggering statistics, it’s hard to argue why the FDA retains authoritarian power over the American citizenry. With universal access to websites, those Americans who wanted to trust the FDA could easily log on to the FDA’s website (www.fda.gov) to read the agency’s position on a given nutrient, drug, or hormone. They could then compare what the FDA says with another government website (www.pubmed.gov) that provides easy access to published scientific papers.

For example, if one enters into PubMed the terms “CoQ10 and congestive heart failure,” 11 new studies appeared in 2014 alone that further substantiate its efficacy. Yet the FDA continues to ignore this published scientific research by censoring health claims for coenzyme Q10.

Too bad our leaders don’t realize that amending the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to strip the FDA of its dictatorial power would save many more American lives and reduce healthcare cost outlays.

This catastrophic loss of life will continue until science is allowed to replace authoritarian edict in determining medical treatment protocols.



Source:  
http://www.lef.org/Magazine/2015/4/CoQ10-Wars/Page-01
Winkler C, Hobolth L, Krag A, Bendtsen F, Møller S. Effects of treatment with β-blocker and aldosterone antagonist on central and peripheral haemodynamics and oxygenation in cirrhosis. Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2011 Apr;23(4):334-42
Available at: http://www.naturalnews.com/033280_fda_raids_timeline.html. Accessed October 17, 2014
Available at: http://www.myopia.org/fdaraids.htm. Accessed October 17, 2014.
Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/heart-failure/medications.html. Accessed October 17, 2014.
Available at: http://www.texasmonthly.com/content/heartless-behavior. Accessed October 17, 2014.
Sacks CA, Jarcho JA, Curfman GD Paradigm shifts in heart-failure therapy—a timeline. N Engl J Med. 2014 Sep 11;371(11):989-91.