Category Archives: Heavy Metal Toxicit

Alcohol Abuse Kills

August 4, 2014

Alcohol Abuse Kills — Let’s Discuss the Magnitude

Alcohol

Alcohol is a killer drug it is very addictive and destructive to its users irrespective of the age and genda

If we say that alcohol is friendly and does not kill we are cheating ourselves and the society we live in. it is true that alcohol is legally allowed for human consumption and if you consume it moderately you may not find yourself in the wrong side of the law and still live a happy life. However this is not just a drug but a lethal one not just to the direct consumer but even to the people around the direct user. According to the World Health organization, alcohol is killing more than 3 million people globally each year translating to one person every 10 seconds. Does that one scare you? The picture illustrated by these statistics is that more than the population of people losing their lives due to AIDS, tuberculosis, and violence put together die as a result of alcohol. It must be made clear that these statistics includes alcohol-related driving fatalities, violence, and health issues arising from excessive alcohol consumption.

Because alcohol is legal in most countries, and because especially in the US and western culture in general it is promoted in advertising and glamorized in film, its dangers are often minimized or disregarded by young people, and the warnings about problem-drinking and its consequences are viewed as the admonitions of uptight grownups. Unfortunately, the facts support the admonitions.

So, how can alcohol kill you? Here are a few ways it can and does end lives:

  • Drunk driving accounted for ten thousand deaths in 2010 that was over thirty percent of all traffic fatalities. For how long will we be losing lives because somebody is sitting on their jobs, the authority, the drivers, passengers and the other general public must work and pool together to reduce deaths on our roads.
  • It is estimated that an acute alcohol poisoning kills over one thousand people each year.
  • The available findings from a study done about some years ago indicated that sixteen thousand people died in 2010 from alcohol-induced liver disease.
  • Over fifty percent of people who die in fires have high blood-alcohol levels.
  • One quarter of all emergency room admissions, one-third of all suicides and more than half of all homicides and incidents of domestic violence are alcohol related.
  • Unintentional injuries related to alcohol consumption cause over eighteen hundred deaths each year among college students.
  • Health problems, including increased likelihood of stroke, diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver, esophageal cancer, and compromised immune system can lead, if untreated, to premature death.
  • Alcohol in combination with other drugs, especially pain medications, tranquilizers, and sleep medications, can cause death by slowing down respiration as well as by causing the aspiration of vomit.

The simple fact among many risks involved to those taking alcohol in large quantities is that alcohol impairs judgment, cognition, inhibitions regarding excessive risk-taking and acting out of aggressive tendencies, and other faculties that reduce the likelihood of accident or death. If alcohol consumption becomes regular, increases over time, or increases in amount, or if consequences of drinking are accumulating, treatment is indicated, because yes, alcohol can kill you.

If you are an addict to alcohol you may not be able to completely understand what we are discussing in this article because to you alcohol is all you know as the solutions to your problems however much as we may agree with you that for a while alcohol may make you forget your problem or stressing issues the truth of the matter is that as soon as the alcohol content is brought down to a manageable level and sobriety sets in you will get back to your frustrating condition which you were trying to escape from.

Alcohol Abuse Kills — The liver

The liver is the organ that takes toxins out of our blood and converts
them to a non-toxic substance that the body can easily dispose of. The liver takes alcohol, and using the liver cell enzymes, will convert it into
acetaldehyde, then to acetate, and then to CO2 and water.

Some who over-consumes alcohol in a very short period of time doesn’t
give the liver cells a chance to make enough enzymes needed to convert it and when left unconverted completely, it can cause it to become Toxic to the liver cells.

People who consume alcohol over long time periods can develop fat inside
the liver which causes pressure there and can damage the liver cells.

Taking alcohol with medications can cause an interaction to occur between
then that can instantly damage the liver cells. {Example: Alcohol taken
with acetaminophen]

Some people are more sensitive to alcohol and some are even allergic to it.
Just like someone taking any kind of drug…it can cause a serious problem
to occur in people immediately or over a long period of time or not at all.
Each person is different.

The real sign that the liver is not able to handle the amount of alcohol is
becoming drunk. The alcohol is one of the substances that can go pass
the blood brain barrier (that protects the brain) and cause mental changes
to take place. In simple understanding alcohol kills and you must run away from alcohol as you can by seeking help from the experts at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center under Doctor Akoury’s care. At this facility you will walk in with your alcohol problem heavy on your shoulder and leave that burden with them as the experts. Doctor Akoury together with her team of experts will focus on Neuroendocrine Restoration (NER) to reinstate normality through realization of the oneness of Spirit, Mind, and Body, Unifying the threesome into ONE

Alcohol Abuse Kills — Let’s Discuss the Magnitude

 

 

 

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Glycolysis Inhibitors Help in Fighting Cancer

August 4, 2014

 

The Role of Glycolysis Inhibitors In Fighting Cancer

The best way of killing cancer cells is to starve them. This is the safest way of killing cancer cell as the normal healthy cells are not affected by this way of killing the cancerous cells. In the past it was a big problem finding a way of killing the cancerous cells without affecting the healthy body cells. This is because all the cancer cells as well as the healthy body cells depend on glucose as their energy source that they need to survive. However very many researchers have done work on the subject of cancer cell metabolism and the discovery by Otto Warburg that the cancer cells depended entirely on glucose for source of energy unlike the healthy body cells that can adapt to other sources of energy like fats helps a lot in selective killing of cancer cells without hurting the healthy body cells. The cancerous cells undergo increased glycolysis and rely on this pathway for generation of ATP energy as their sole source of energy for growth and survival.

Basing arguments on the Warburg effect, doctors have come up with different cancer therapies to help in killing the cancer cells effectively without hurting the healthy body cells. The cancer cell overdependence on the glycolitic pathway for generation of ATP energy as the sole source of survival has provided a great loophole through which the cancer cells can be selectively killed without affecting any other healthy cell by inhibiting glycolysis.

There are Glycolytic inhibitors that can be used in maiming the cancer cells by denying them their source of livelihood. By inhibiting glycolysis they exert an anticancer effect on the cancer cells hence help in killing the cancer cells.

Glycolytic inhibitors can be used mostly in fighting cancer cells that have mitochondrial defects or in hypoxic conditions. These cells often become resistant to conventional medication such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy. However increased glycolysis is a common characteristic of all tumor cells and glycolysis inhibition can be used in wide range in treating cancer patients.

Though it may be difficult to understand the molecular and biochemical mechanisms that lead to increased aerobic glycolysis in the cancer cells, the metabolic repercussions of this increased glycolysis is very clear. The malignant cells become dependent or other addicted to the glycolysis pathway as the sole source of ATP energy. Researchers opine that the increased glycolysis in cancer cells may be caused by such factors as; hypoxia, oncogenic signals as well as mitochondrial dysfunction.

The cancer cells have to access a reliable supply of glucose in order to live. Unlike oxidative phosphorylation which generates more ATP energy per glucose the ATP generation of ATP through glycolysis is too little. Typically oxidative phosphorylation produces 36 ATP per glucose while glycolysis produces 2 ATP per glucose. This therefore forces the cancer cells to eat more glucose for effective metabolism as well as to accomplish other activities. The cancer cells therefore need to maintain glycolitic activities in order to grow and live on.

This metabolic characteristic of the cancer cells has availed a better way of killing cancer cells. Researchers have now proved that by inhibiting glycolysis the cancer cell will stop production of the ATP energy that they depend on and so they will die out of starvation.

When there is glycolysis inhibition the normal body cells will be able to adapt to other metabolic pathways to generate the ATP energy through the TCA cycle and oxidative phosphorylation in the mitochondria. The cancer cells however cannot adapt to other sources of ATP as they have defects hence will die as they will not be able to live without another source of ATP energy. The healthy body cells will be able to adapt to new sources of energy like fatty acids and amino acids to produce metabolic intermediates channeled to the TCA cycle for ATP production through respiration. Glycolysis inhibition is therefore a clever way of killing the cancer cells without harm on the healthy body cells.

DCA as a Glycolysis inhibitor

The way DCA works as a glycolysis inhibitor is very interesting; it forces the cancer cells to generate ATP through glucose oxidation but the cancer cells are not able to do this and they get starved and die. The healthy body cells can adapt to metabolic changes unlike the cancerous cells. The first way through which the body cells get energy is through glucose oxidation which happens in the mitochondria of every cell in the body and requires oxygen. Glucose respiration is the mostly utilized form of metabolism in the healthy cells. However in absence of oxygen the cells turn to glycolysis which takes place in the cell cytoplasm for energy generation. Glycolysis does not avail adequate ATP energy for normal cells; however it is the best for cancer cells. Glycolysis depends on sugar. This gives the healthy cell advantage as they have a backup plan in case the oxygen supply is interrupted. However to oxidize glucose there must be pyruvate. Pyruvate entry into the mitochondria is inhibited by an enzyme known as pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase (PDK). In case the PDK is strong then it will limit the transportation of pyruvate into the mitochondria and the healthy cells will have to depend on glycolysis even in presence of oxygen but incase its weak the pyruvate will be transported with ease to mitochondria even when the oxygen is low.

Cancer cells have the most active PDK than the healthy cells and they are adapted to glycolysis. When PDK is weak then the cancer cells are disadvantaged and this is what the DCA does. It weakens PDK forcing the cancer cells to rely on glucose oxidation which does not favor them. Hence they will starve and die.

Dr. Dalal Akoury is an experienced integrative cancer doctor who has seen very many cancer patients journey to victory in their fight against cancer. She is available for consultations. Just call her now and begin your journey to victory against cancer.

The Role of Glycolysis Inhibitors In Fighting Cancer

 

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Cancer Vaccines

August 4, 2014

Role of Cancer Vaccine In Integrative Cancer Treatment,

VaccineCancer is a multi-faceted disease that needs to be treated with different approaches. This is the reason why we have different alternative to cancer treatment. The researchers and doctors have done much to avail us these alternative and one of the alternatives that is used widely in cancer treatment today especially by integrative cancer doctors is the use of cancer vaccines in treating cancer. There are several vaccines that have been made available to be used in curbing cancer. However we are going to learn about two major vaccines that are widely used in integrative cancer centers to help in the course of curbing cancer.

Cancer vaccines play a role in making the body more resistant to the cancer cells. It works in a ways that make the cancer cells more visible hence can be spotted by the white blood cells and killed. The cancer cells are known to camouflage to the surrounding cells making them be mistaken for healthy cells by the killer cells. The vaccines “remove this mask” and makes them more vulnerable to the attacks of the white blood cells and hence are killed outright.

Baculillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG)

To those who might have heard of BCG can easily associate it with TB other than cancer. It is used against tuberculosis. However the recent research has found out that the Baculillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) can be used as a vaccine against cancer. It is found to have the abilities of stimulating the immune system to fight cancer naturally.

The researchers who led this research study were Dr Wai Liu and Professor Angus Dalgleish from St George’s, University of London. They opined that certain mechanism were likely to make the cancer vaccines more effective in enhancing the anticancer activity of the immune system. They said that these vaccines can be used alongside other cancer therapies as they will enhance the effectiveness of these treatments by awakening the immune system to fight cancer alongside these therapies.

The researchers used human tumor cells in a lab experiments. The researchers discovered that BCG played an apart by instructing the white blood cells to produce toxins that are known as cytokinins and use them in fighting the tumors. The cytokinins help by making the tumor cells more likely to be seen by the white blood cells. Hence making it easier for them to be fought.

“Cancerous cells are known to camouflage themselves as healthy cells. This means our blood cells responsible for immunity aren’t able to recognize the cancerous cells as being a problem and so the disease is able to continue to spread,” says Dr Wai Liu who led the research.

“This study found that a small quantity of BCG – similar to the amount that is administered in a TB inoculation can help the immune system recognize the cancer cells as ‘foreign’. The immune system can then attack these cells in the same way it would any other infection.” He concludes

When the BCG is introduced in the body cytokinins are released by the white blood cells in response, these cytokinins cause very many processes that begin by forcing the cancerous cells to switch off its camouflage or better yet “unmasking” the cancer cells. This makes the cancerous cells to be more visible to the white blood cells and the entire immune system. With this improved visibility of the tumor cells the white blood cells can now target the cancerous cell more strategically.

The effectiveness of the vaccine on different type of cancers was tested. The researchers did this by injecting BCG to the human cells from the lung, breast, colon, pancreatic and skin cancer. The test revealed that BCG increased the visibility of cancer cells on the colon, breast and lungs greatly. They verified that when camouflage of the cancer cells is reduced then they can be easily attacked and killed by the body’s immune system.

The Coley’s Vaccine

Coley’s vaccine also known as endotoxin treatment, Issel’s therapy or mixed bacterial vaccine was developed in New York City in 1890’s by a bone surgeon known as William Coley. Coley vaccine works and though currently doctors have found no scientific evidence that Coley’s vaccine can treat or prevent cancer there are many cancer survivors who claim to have used the Coley’s treatment.

Dr. William Coley developed the Coley’s therapy after realizing that the cancer      patients who got infections after surgery lived longer than those who did not get an infection. His basis for developing Coley’s treatment was an argument that the infection stimulated the immune system of the patients to fight cancer. The first approach to Coley’s treatment was rather risky as he would inject live bacteria in the tumors, in most cases this method caused serious illness and in some cases the patients died due to the infection. Having seen the dangers in using live bacteria, he began using killed bacteria which raised the patient’s temperatures but did not cause any threat to the patients’ lives.

The Coley’s vaccine uses infectious agents. The treatment has it that the infectious agents are injected in the bloodstream. These infectious agents however has to be prepared by a qualified doctor in the hospital to ensure that they are safe and not contaminated hence cannot harm the patient. The infectious agents maybe mixed in given proportions to come up with a Coley’s Vaccine personalized to the patient’s type of cancer. Coley’s Vaccine is mostly used with other traditional cancer treatment methods.

VaccineDr. Coley opined that fever induction is a key aspect of treatment. In his treatment he observed that a stronger febrile response was the symptom most associated with tumor regression. When researchers went deep to look into the Coley’s Vaccine treatment method it was found that it was more effective on patients whose fevers ranged between 38-40 degrees. The Patients who had no fever during treatment did not do so well in the treatment.

Dr. Dalal Akoury is an experienced integrative cancer doctor who has seen very many cancer patients journey to victory in their fight against cancer. She is available for consultations. Just call her now and begin your journey to victory against cancer.

Role of Cancer Vaccine In Integrative Cancer Treatment

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Cancer Stem Cells

August 3, 2014

 

Cancer Stem Cells and How They Can Be Handled By Integrative Cancer Centers

 Cancer treatment needs to be effective enough to save the cancer patients from the nightmare of having to go through repeated chemotherapy as that causes not only unbearable pain but also causes lots of financial crisis as repeated chemotherapy is not always cheap. There are very many alternatives to cancer treatment today, thanks to our compassionate cancer doctors and researchers who are not pleased to see how we are losing our loved ones everyday to this monster. All the alternative cancer treatments work well in curbing the spread of the tumors in the patient’s body and trying to kill all the cancer cells so as to restore good health to the cancer patient.

There is a problem however with most of cancer treatment alternatives. This is because most of the cancer treatment alternatives target the circulating tumor cells (CTCs). I don’t mean to say that targeting circulating tumors cells in cancer treatment is wrong; my concern is that very few cancer treatment alternatives target the cancer stem cells. It is important to know what role the cancer stem cells play in cancer cell growth formation so as to understand why it is so important to address them in any cancer treatment.

Cancer Stem Cells

Cancer stem cells are defined as those cells within a tumor that can self-renew and drive tumorigenesis. They are very critical in the formation of new tumors that will continue to grow even when after the parent tumors are killed.

Most, if not all cancers, are propagated by cancer stem cells. The bulk of a tumor consists of cancer cells that are not reproducing, or self-propagating. These unproducing cancer cells are what chemotherapy targets. And if what research findings points out are to be believed, chemotherapy does not kill the cancer stem cells but induces resistance in the cancer stem cells making it even hard for them to be killed by the chemotherapy drugs.

The cancer stem cells need to be killed if the cancer patient is to get an effective cancer treatment as they are the ones responsible for growth of cancer cells. The tumor may be targeted and attacked by the chemotherapy drugs or any other form of cancer treatment but if the cancer stem cells are not killed in the process the growth will re-occur as the cancer stem cells are still alive and are able to facilitate the growth and division of cancer cell.

The research on the roles of cancer stem cells on the tumor growth is an important are of study as cancer stem cells have been found to play the most important role in cancer. This is the fuel that forms the cancer cells. Targeting the circulating tumor cells is like trying to remove a weed by cutting its stem, the weed will obviously do; farmers know this better than we do . Targeting the cancer stem cells on the other hand is like uprooting the weed from its roots. It will not grow again lest another seed is planted. So if you kill the cancer stem cells that plays a major role in division and formation of new cancer cells will make it hard for the disease to recur. Cancer research focuses on stem cells present in malignant tumors. Most Researchers believe that most current cancer treatments mostly fail because they don’t destroy the cancer stem cells.

The conventional cancer treatment methods like chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgery are not effective in cancer treatment since they do not target the cancer stem cells which are like the root of the weed. Therefore it is advisable to have a cancer patient treated at an integrative cancer treatment centre so that other alternative cancer treatments can be explored in a bid to uproot the disease by killing the cancer stem cells.

It is also very important for cancer to be treated under the supervision of a qualified integrative cancer doctor. The best thing about having your cancer patient treated at an integrative cancer centre is that these centers are well equipped and the doctors are all round doctors who can combine both the conventional cancer treatment methods and the naturopathic cancer treatments to ensure that the disease is fought successfully. AwareMed is an example of an integrative cancer centre that has seen many cancer patients get the best treatment that not only targeted to kill the cancer cell but to ensure a whole person healing. Dr. Dalal Akoury has supervised many cancer patients in their cancer treatments and helped them get healing.  He is one of the few doctors who have embraced the idea of targeting cancer stem cells in cancer treatment to avoid possibility of the disease recurring.

At AwareMed for example the doctors implement the use of natural healing power of diet to target the cancer stem cell by altering their DNA composition making them unable to divide and give rise to new cancer cells. These can also be used alongside chemotherapy to avoid the recurrence of cancer after chemotherapy. Integrative cancer treatment is the best trough which the cancer stem cells can be done away with hence making treatment more effective.

Dr. Dalal Akoury is an experienced integrative cancer doctor who has seen very many cancer patients journey to victory in their fight against cancer. She is available for consultations. Just call her now and begin your journey to victory against cancer.

Cancer Stem Cells and How They Can Be Handled By Integrative Cancer Centers

 

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Off-label Drugs and Cancer

August 3, 2014

Use of off-label Drugs in Cancer Treatment

off-labelIn the past, there was a belief that when you had gone for cancer diagnosis then the only options of treatment you had were only chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgery. This belief seemingly has refused to leave the minds of very many people even after medical researchers and other oncologists have done lots of work to avail various alternatives to cancer treatments. The researchers are giving us better ways of treating cancer everyday and all we ought to do is find an integrative cancer doctor who can make the best out of the discovered cancer treatment alternatives. The reason to why so many alternatives to cancer treatment are sought everyday is not because there is no cancer cure, no cancer unlike HIV has known cures all the doctors and researcher are trying to do is to find us a better cancer treatment that is free from all the severe and life threatening side effects that cancer patients have to embrace while undergoing the conventional cancer treatments. Some of these alternatives also work better when used alongside conventional cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation therapy. They also increase the effectiveness of the chemotherapy treatment as they induce the cancer cells to consume poisoned food particles, an example of this is the Insulin potentiation therapy that has been used to effectively target the cancer cells, killing them without causing any severe hurt to the healthy body cells. Other alternative cancer treatments have also proved their effectiveness in fighting cancer and so it is time to shift this belief in conventional cancer treatments and accept the new inventions that can help cancer patients to get better treatments. There are very many alternatives to cancer treatments and that is one of the reasons why AwareMed exists; to let you know of all the available options that you can utilize in case you become a victim of this dreaded disease. Here is one of the alternatives.

Use of Off-label Drugs

The off label use of drugs is to use medicine for another reason other than the intended purpose for which it was approved by the United States FDA or any other regulatory body. It is the use of drug for the purpose that is not on the official label, hence “off-label”. There are very many drugs that are meant to treat other diseases but can work very well in cancer treatment. The utilization of these off-label drugs is not something unusual, though they are not as common as they ought to be. The regulatory bodies have not supported the use of drugs approved for treatment of a particular disease to be used in treatment of another disease and this may explain why the use of off-label drugs is not that common. Cancer is a disease that is caused by many factors and so is it treatment facilitated by many factors. There are conditions that cancer shares with other diseases and so the treatment that works in those other diseases will work rather perfectly in cancer treatment. The integrative doctors knows the relationship between cancer and other diseases and whether the off-label drugs can work better in suppressing the tumor growth and restore the health of the cancer patient. Experienced integrative cancer doctors like Dr. Dalal Akoury (MD) can help personalize the use of off-label drugs to help in healing the cancer patient better.

The off-label drugs can work in different ways to help in fighting the cancer. The avenues through which the off-label drugs work to treat cancer are numerous and are based on the common features that cancer shares with the said diseases. It is not strange to hear that diabetes drugs are used for cancer.

Diabetes Drugs for cancer

One of the great oncologist; Otto Warburg showed the dependence of cancer cells on glucose. In his experiments he proved that cancer cells depended solely on sugar sources of energy to survive and metastasize. Without sugar the cancer cell will be starved to death as they will not access the necessary nutrient supplies. Diabetes drugs are used to suppress the sugar level in the blood. These drugs work in favor of cancer treatment as they tend to reduce the amount of energy that is available for the cancer cells to survive on. An integrated oncologist may decide to use a diabetic drug to suppress the sugar level in a cancer patient and hasten the death of cancer cells out of starvation. As the cancer cell will be dying the healthy body cells will be using other sources of energy like fats to survive.

Apart from diabetes drugs, there are other medications that are useful in cancer treatment. Drugs used in enhancing immunity can be used to stimulate the white blood cells to fight cancer cells. Antibiotics that are not mentioned as cancer drugs may help in fighting cancer by inhibiting the enzymes that the cancer cells are dependent on.

Noscapine has also been found to be very effective in fighting cancer as it helps in cancer by preventing the division of cancer cells.

off-labelSome of the drugs used as anti-HIV can also be used in cancer treatment. Examples are ritonavir, nelfinavir and saquinavir. A test that was done by Dr. Phillip Dennis found that these drugs have an effect on the growth of cancer as they were found to kill cancer cells through apoptosis, necrosis and autophagy.

Dr. Dalal Akoury is an experienced integrative cancer doctor who has seen very many cancer patients journey to victory in their fight against cancer. She is available for consultations. Just call her now and begin your journey to victory against cancer.

Use of off-label Drugs in Cancer Treatment

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