War

Nutritional Ketosis and Cancer

[This article is based on Dr. Joseph Mercola's piece "Promoting Advances in Managing Cancer as a Metabolic Disease Need Your Support," August 02, 2017]

In 2012 Dr. Thomas Seyfried wrote "Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management and Treatment of Cancer." In the book's preface he writes:

Several major findings planted the seed for this treatise: 

First, it became clear to me that the therapeutic action of some anticancer drugs operated largely through reduced caloric intake. 

Second, the reduced caloric intake could target the majority of cancer hallmarks. 

Third, that ketone bodies can serve as an alternate fuel to glucose in most cells with normal respiratory function. 

Fourth, that metastatic cancer arises from cells along macrophage lineage. 

Fifth, that all cancer cells regardless of tissue origin express a general defect in mitochondrial energy metabolism. 

Finally, that cancer can be effectively managed and prevented once it becomes recognized as a metabolic disease.

Seyfried has a distinguished background. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the department of neurology at the Yale University School of Medicine and then served on the faculty as an assistant professor in neurology. Throughout his long career, he's received many awards and honors from organizations such as the American Oil Chemists Society, the National Institutes of Health, the American Society for Neurochemistry and the Ketogenic Diet Special Interest Group of the American Epilepsy Society.

He recently received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of New England, and a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Comprehensive Integrative Medicine.

He presently serves on several editorial boards, including those for Nutrition and Metabolism, Neurochemical Research, the Journal of Lipid Research and ASN Neuro, where he is a senior editor. In total, Seyfried also has over 170 peer-reviewed publications in the scientific literature.

He and others have been able to advance the theory that cancer is primarily the result of defective energy metabolism in, and damage to, the cells' mitochondria.

Simply put, genetic mutations are not the primary cause of cancer but are, rather, a downstream effect of the defective energy metabolism. 

Seyfried is one of the pioneers in the application of nutritional ketosis for cancer, a therapy that stems from the work of Dr. Otto Heinrich Warburg, one of the most brilliant biochemists of the 20th century. Warburg, a personal friend of Albert Einstein, received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1931 for how cells obtain energy from respiration. He was even nominated for two additional Nobel's.

According to Warburg,

Cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. But, even for cancer, there is only one prime cause. Summarized in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar.

Primarily a researcher and professor, Seyfried doesn't personally see patients. Instead, he collaborates with clinicians who base their treatment protocols on metabolic therapy and nutritional ketosis protocols he developed. Yet, Seyfried receives progress reports from doctors and patients alike.  Mercola cites several encouraging reports.  Here is one:

Bomar Herrin

Dr. Bomar Herrin, 58, was the envy of many men his age. Working out regularly, he was averaging 16 pullups, punching the speed bag and doing a grueling P90X exercise program. But something unexpected occurred during his weightlifting routine in July 2009. Herrin, an emergency medicine physician for 30 years, felt a snap near his right shoulder.

Initially he was diagnosed with a pathological fracture. A biopsy revealed it was caused by a plasmacytoma, or a cluster of cancerous plasma cells. Plasma cells are a type of white blood cell, and when they become abnormal they are called myeloma. Myeloma cells in several parts of the body are called multiple myeloma. While Herrin had radiation to treat the plasmacytoma in his arm, a PET scan revealed lesions on his spine, sacrum and ribs, which indicated that his cancer might have spread.

Strongly motivated to find a way to halt the progression of his disease, he embarked on a different path: metabolic therapy. That was eight years ago. For eight years, Herrin has been following a ketogenic diet and fasting regularly. He recently reported to Seyfried that his cancer load and inflammation markers are down.

In March 2017, his kappa/lambda ratio was normal for the first time — a measure of multiple myeloma activity. His eating plan has also helped him reduce and stabilize his weight at 173 pounds, down from 225. And he reports: "At the Mayo Clinic, I am now being asked to describe just what I am doing!"

Conclusion

As Mercola states, metabolic therapy isn't a magic wand. It won't — and doesn't — save everyone's life. Typically, a majority of the clinics following this alternative protocol see patients at the end of their journey, typically when traditional treatments have failed. Unfortunately, a certain percentage of patients aren't going to survive, no matter what.

But if patients can get through this metabolic protocol, the median survival can increase 400 percent and their quality of life can be drastically improved.

A friend's health philosophy and diet

. . . in his own script, as of 2007.  He does not use computers and probably never will.  Overall, I think his diet and health philosophy has much to recommend it.  In my long life I've met no one who takes diet and exercise more seriously than he does.

More information:

Smart Crow

Here's a crow not hampered by the dumbing down of public education.

Sheer entertainment: 'Nique - Jordan

Dominique Wilkins was nicknamed the Human Highlight Film for good reason.  Michael Jordan needs no introduction.  Both were fierce competitors, especially when they played against each other.

Dominique Wilkins VS Michael Jordan | 'Nique 57 Points, MJ 41 | 12.10.86

Being Creative with Craigslist Ads

Callers have gotten into the spirit of the ad.  The first lady who called said she had a "galactic" interest in the items. 

My PhD son-in-law devised the ad after the two of us hauled it from upstairs down to our garage.  My original intention was to put it in the basement then call 1-800-GOTJUNK later when we had other stuff to get rid of.  He suggested Craigslist.  Giving it away would guarantee it would get a new home fast, and he had fun composing the ad.

The ad went up around 11:30 a.m. on a Saturday.  By 1:30 the desk was loaded into an F150 and on its way to its new home 20 miles away.

Climate Change Sanity

Some sober thoughts on this political thing called climate change:

Random Thoughts on Climate Change by Steve Saville 

A pat on his orange head by Eric Peters  

Pigs at the Trough by Bionic Mosquito

Even if humans are bringing about their own demise with uncontrolled pollution, getting governments involved will make it worse.  

The answer is the restoration and enforcement of property rights. 

Final Four? No, Final Two

My grandson and his new dog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZB1EN2BTwk&feature=youtu.be

Über hiring criminals

It should come as no surprise that the world's leading incarcerator would make it more difficult for companies to find people with spotless police records.

So Über, which according to Wikipedia is an "American worldwide online transportation network company," is changing its policy.  It has opened its doors to applicants who have certain nonviolent and non-sexual criminal records.

It actually initiated this policy earlier in 2016 in California.  Beginning in 2017 it will extend it to Connecticut and Rhode Island:

Uber's change in policy, which goes into effect early next year, will allow people with convictions for nonviolent misdemeanor offenses such as passing a bad check, resisting arrest, petty theft, prostitution, harassment and causing minor property damage to drive for the company. 

Previously, applicants with such records were automatically rejected if the offense occurred within the past seven years. Uber said it will continue to reject applicants who have felony convictions within the past seven years, as well as applicants with convictions for misdemeanor offenses that involve violence, sex crimes and serious motor vehicle violations.

Ryan McMaken reports that Connecticut and the rest of the US has been working hard to get more people behind bars or subject to extraordinary fines.

The War on Drugs brought longer prison terms and stiffer fines than had been the case in earlier decades. But drugs aren't the activity that have been leading to increasingly outsized punishments. In the United States today, we continue to witness what can perhaps be called "punishment inflation" in which fines and jail time for certain crimes have been increased above what punishments those same crimes brought in the past. 

He cites a 2015 report form the [Connecticut] legislature's Office of Legislative Research that lists numerous examples of punishment inflation. As the report states,

Based on our research, the legislature increased the penalty for at least 49 crimes from a misdemeanor to a felony from 1995 to 2015.

With so many regulations expanding the federal register each year, virtually the entire U.S. population has become criminalized.  As The Daily Caller noted in 2013:

The Federal Register is a daily digest published by the federal government since 1936. It contains proposed regulations from agencies, finalized rules, notices, corrections, and presidential documents. The 1936 Federal Register was 2,620 pages long. It has grown steadily since then, with the 2012 edition weighing in at 78,961 pages (it has topped 60,000 pages every year for the last 20 years). 

The Federal Register’s page count is by no means a perfect proxy for measuring regulatory burdens. A particularly onerous regulation might take up only a page or two, while one that costs relatively little could ramble on for dozens of pages. Despite this important shortcoming, it is still one of the more useful yardsticks we have, as it indicates a large and active federal government.

 Still think government works for you?

Uncounted chickens come home to roost - again

Gary North's Tea Party Economist posted these pictures.  Madam President and her cronies miscalculated.  We were spared the Hillary Horror Show and went for an unknown quantity instead.

"Near-great" Harry S. Truman was already a nightmare:
- atomic bombing of Japan*
- creation of the national security state
- Orwellian renaming of War Department to Defense Department
- forced repatriation of former Soviet subjects and non-subjects (Operation Keelhaul)
- Marshall Plan
- Inauguration of the Cold War against a war-devastated Soviet Union
- Employment Act of 1946

The 1948 election continued the Truman Horror Show
- NATO
- "police action" in Korea
- sinkholes such as the foreign aid program and promoting Zionist cause
- seizing nation's steel mills in response to a strike

* Twelve Navy fliers who were incarcerated in a Hiroshima jail were also killed in the attack

Keynes on destroying capitalism through inflation

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become "profiteers,", who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.

Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.

-- The Economic Consequences of the Peace, by John Maynard Keynes, 1919