Cancer, Cowan, Cytoplasm, Seyfreid, and the methylation cycles.

An FYI for people wondering why the ketogenic diet for cancer isn't working as well as expected by Seyfreid and Cowan.

The answer is in this older post: Nature loves a good design; Cancer, POTS, Epigenetics & the One-Carbon Methylation Cycles. Dec. 7, 2022, (Substack)

Pertinent research article: (Hayden, Tyagi, 2022)

Nutshell version - Dr. Thomas Seyfried did a series of experiments showing that the nucleus of a cancer cell, with its heterogenous mix of genetic differences from normal cell nuclei, was not the cause of cancer by transplanting them into a healthy cell that had the nucleus removed. Healthy cytoplasm → no cancer cell division continued even though the transplanted nucleus had been from a cancer cell. However, when he transplanted the nucleus of a normal cell into the cytoplasm of a cancerous cell that had its nucleus removed, it led to cancerous cell growth even though that nucleus had been normal without a heterogenous mixture of gene differences.

Dr. Thomas Cowan, MD describes the history of cancer research and Seyfried’s work in his book: Cancer and the New Biology of Water - Why the War on Cancer Has Failed and What That Means for More Effective Prevention and Treatment. 2019, Chelsea Green Publishing. A review of the book (westonaprice.org), and an on topic reply:

Thomas Milton says

March 16, 2023 at 9:56 am

Statins and their effect on cholesterol metabolism may be a big culprit. This chart corresponds with a 46% rise in prescriptions from ’08-’18. Plain as day.

[*link is inaccurate though. similar: Blais, et al., 2021]

Dr. Cowan mentions in the opening two chapters that cancer treatments, even with massive funding for research, has not proven to be effective as increasing survival rates by much at all, or improving quality of life of patients receiving the treatments. The reverse is more probable - patients who accept the standard treatments of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation tend to have greatly reduced quality of life and survival rates may be reduced instead of improved. How can these treatments be approved or have widespread support by cancer doctors? The studies are often set up to show an effect greater than placebo on the size of the cancer while the quality of life and survival rate of the patient is not monitored as the ‘significant’ goal of the study or treatment.

Throw a party! this cancer drug shrank a tumor by 10%, while the patient survival rate was only 10%, so, . . .let’s not talk about that. A cancer ‘treatment’ with a 10% survival rate is also a toxic poison with a 90% lethality rate. Hospice care and ‘no invasive cancer treatment’ often is better quality of life for people with ‘terminal’ cancer. The drugs or radiation often cause pain and severe digestive upset, hair can fall out, and weakness and not feeling well is common.

Why does the cancer treatment industry continue with this path? !A) It makes a lot of money and B) people who have spent their entire career with a single focused mindset may be unable to step back far enough to see a bigger picture - or a more microscopic/atomic one.

I recently bought a mini-library of functional medicine/nutrition texts and other books and I am not done reading about Dr. Cowan’s views on structured water and the cytoplasm of cancer cells - BUT - a well written book tells you in the introductory chapters where you will be heading and he doesn’t mention methylation cycles at all. He gives the overview of Seyfreid’s research, the current alternative strategy of a ketogenic diet, and mentions that that also hasn’t been giving as consistently positive results for cancer treatment as hoped based on the theory that dysfunctional cytoplasm is the key to why cancer happens, and how to reverse it.

What they are missing is what needs to happen in functioning cytoplasm in order for the genetics of the cell nucleus to do what it is supposed to be doing instead of promoting non-stop growth. And that is - methylation cycle production of cSAM - cytoplasm derived SAM or mitochondrial derived SAM is needed within the cell nucleus in order to keep its genes properly methylated in the correct variety of genes being turned off and only the desired cell function genes being epigenetically in the ‘on’ position.

Generally more methylated genes are ‘off’ and less methylation of genes allows them to be ‘on’. If all of the genes in a cell are allowed to be actively ‘on’, then it makes sense that the cell will be growing uncontrollably. The cell nucleus may not have genes that should be inactive in the ‘off’ position. We are no longer a rapidly developing infant and many genes throughout the body should be turned ‘off’ with adequate methylation cycle activity.

(Hayden, Tyagi, 2022) Discussed in my post: Nature loves a good design; Cancer, POTS, Epigenetics & the One-Carbon Methylation Cycles. Dec. 7, 2022, (Substack)

The graphic in the post about One-Carbon Methylation Cycles shows that we need methylation cycles to be chugging along normally in three places in every cell - in the cytoplasm, in the mitochondria, and in the cell nucleus. The kicker is that for the methylation cycles to work within the cell nucleus, they first have to be working in the cytoplasm and mitochondria in order to produce SAM for use within the cell nucleus version of the cycles.

What is wrong in the cytoplasm of cancer cells compared to normal cells? They have lost their quantum-faster than chemistry- version of structured water. Structured water is a thickened gel-like form that has plasma flow of water ions in two layers: positive protons of hydrogen, -H+, and negative hydroxyl ions with an extra electron from the other hydrogen atom, -OH-. Normal cell function uses the quantum speed, more efficient Citric Acid/Kreb’s/Tricarboxylic acid cycle, rather than the slower and more acidic waste-producing fermentation of fats or carbohydrates or glutamate for energy. The Citric Acid Cycle creates many more units of ATP which Dr. Cowan points out in his book help to stabilize the structured water of healthy cytoplasm, in addition to providing a unit of potential energy for the cell.

So, to bring this back around to: Why doesn’t a ketogenic diet work as well against cancer as Dr. Cowan expected? Because saturated fats are signaling chemicals that can tell the cells to stop performing the efficient Citric Acid Cycle and to burn fat with the less efficient glycolysis method instead. Diet ratios that contain more than 10% of calories from saturated fat cause methylation cycles to switch to glycolysis, or total calories from any type of fats that is greater than ~ 60-70% of the total calories. The reason the body is so good at switching how energy is burned is to keep up with a varied diet that is being gathered or hunted. If the hunt did well and there is a feast of meat and fats from a carcass than eat well today, use the fat energy well today, then tomorrow when the fatty meat carcass ran out and the diet is more starchy gathered plant foods, the body switches back to the more energy efficient and less lactic acid producing Citric Acid Cycle.

Dr. Cowan does emphasize the loss of ATP in the switch - would you rather be paid 36 units of ‘money’ for your work or 2 units of money/(ATP) for the same input? The sensible person will say, pay me the 36 ATP please. However, Dr. Cowan seems unaware of the role saturated fat and total fat has in keeping the methylation cycles firmly in the mode of: “We are making 2 units of ATP, not 36, so just move slower and be patient with your chronic illness.”

- Or figure out what is keeping you in the chronic illness mode → which may be that a ketogenic diet is very high fat and Dr. Cowan’s support of Weston Price’s work includes a large amount of saturated fat too, calling it a health promoting good thing in a diet. That may be true for French people who also eat a wide range of plant foods and seafood, and whose use of saturated fats is in whole forms rather than modern processed fake versions of ‘dairy food’, or for hunter/gatherers who are actively expending energy gathering that food and getting sunshine and fresh air - but it may not be for a person living a modern lifestyle with modern inflammatory foods in their diet, too few phytonutrients, and an excess of EMF, bad air, noise pollution and other stressors.

Glyphosate also inhibits proper methylation cycles. Lots of things can disrupt including gut dysbiosis and reduced availability of B vitamins. Gene alleles may make methylation problems more of a risk for some people than others.

I do think that Dr. Cowan and Dr. Seyfried are correct that cytoplasm dysfunction is ‘the cause of cancer’ - but what is wrong with the cytoplasm may be many things, not just the lack of the gel phase and reduced ATP availability. Which came first, the chicken or the egg??, the reduced ATP leading to loss of gel phase? or dysfunctional Citric Acid Cycle leading to reduced ATP and loss of gel phase in the cytoplasm?

I strongly suggest that it is the latter, dysfunctional methylation cycles leads to more acidic waste and less ATP and more deuterium (heavy) water. Low iodine effects mitochondrial function and is likely also a factor.

Multifactorial problems are complex. Simple answers are nice, but may be inadequate to resolve a problem and restore normal function.

Dr. Cowan’s book offers some healthy food ideas and discusses deuterium depleted water in chapter 9, however the index of the book has zero entries for ‘methylation’. I will finish reading the book, but with the current increase in CoV related ‘turbo-cancer’, I wanted to get this critical information posted.

I would recommend a phytonutrient rich diet with mitochondrial support nutrients, genetic methylation screening if possible to target any individual gaps with supplements if needed, and based on my own personal dietary needs and study - 30% of calories from carbohydrates, ~ 20% of calories from protein, and ~50% of calories from fats with a focus on olive oil, whole nuts or seeds, avocado and coconut products, with only 10% or less of the calories from the coconut or other saturated fat sources.

• Mushrooms, seaweed, and other sources of non-fructose/non-glucose/non-galacatose monosaccharides are also a health need - mannose, fucose, xylose, N-acetyl-glucosamine, see Macronutrients/ Food Sources of Essential Monosaccharides (See Table 2.4: G.13): (effectivecare.info/glossary-%26-resources).

• Bitter tasting phytonutrients need to stay in foods, instead of being removed for ‘consumer taste acceptance’, and zinc adequacy is essential. Zinc, cancer, and bitter taste receptors, (transcendingsquare.com)

And roughly - do the opposite of the list in the graphic. It also roughly is a list of things that increase deuterium - heavy water, which disrupts cytoplasm and mitochondrial function.

• See post: Cancer - excess deuterium -> mitochondrial dysfunction; also black chickpeas, SOD1 and sulfur.

  Pfizer has invested in cancer drugs, post CoV 'success' (at promoting cancer), so a post on the underlying cause of cancer - fluid imbalance. Our structured water loses its shape from heavy hydrogen. (Substack)

Hyperinflammation - a positive feedback loop. (Substack)

For adequate sulfur chemistry within the body, we need our methylation cycles to work and we need some sulfur foods in our diet and we need to not be taking statin drugs so that we have adequate cholesterol. Health is a miracle rather than being something so easy that a physician can simply write a prescription for you to ‘fix you’ - or for a cancer surgeon to cut out part of you or poison all of you in the hope that rapidly growing cells will die - including your hair follicles.

I like health and I like helping people, but I don’t know how to reach people who only want to listen to popular or mainstream voices, and/or male voices. There is discrimination against females in science and academia and among everyone - we innately tend to trust males as leaders and authority figures. It is part of our biology as a species with two genders with a significant size difference. It is just ethology folks. But it can lead to an over focus on wrong answers by ‘male leaders’ in an industry and an over focus on believing they are the only ones with any answers. As if a wrong answer is better than a correct answer, because everyone supports the wrong answer and therefore it is popular, a beloved answer! Cancer patients are supposed to suffer and throw up and have their hair fall out! They are tough! Survivors! Except when they finally succumb and are dead! But they fought so hard and put up with so much that they are heroes! Dead heroes can’t fight another day though.

I helped my dad survive almost 16 months after surgery for post 3 CoV jab suddenly-metastasized benign prostate cancer left him partially paralyzed. He refused other drugs or radiation and was put on Hospice. He was a smart man - mechanical engineer, but he had the impression that doctors are like auto-mechanics and can just ‘fix’ people. He liked his cancer promoting favorite foods and I prepared some of them for him along with pomegranate peel and other healthy functional foods - AND adequate protein. It is common for elderly people to eat too little protein as appetite changes and it gets harder to do everything - or a male unused to selfcare has to takeover for a female spouse with Alzheimer’s dementia. Asking for help may be the biggest need or hurdle that many people have trouble with.

• Post: Hospice - dying with dignity, at home. Pros and cons - and chocolate porridge. Take home question - Is "aggressive care" really helping? as much as pomegranate peel and chocolate porridge might help? (Substack)

Practice saying the phrase “I may be wrong about this.” It will serve you well over the years to be more ready to consider that your daily habits are part of your problem rather than being rigid about changing your routines.

You can not ‘cure’ someone who is unwilling to change the habits that caused their problem in the first place - but you can keep them going and comfortable for longer than if you are filling them with a ‘treatment’ that has a 90% death rate.

---

Aside/ Random search engine find: “Findings could rewrite textbooks about molecular structure for solvent ubiquitous in chemistry and biology.” - says “You are not authorized to view this page” https://www.energy.gov/science/bes/articles/revealed-structure-proton-liquid-water Any research funded by US taxpayers is supposed to be available to taxpayers, ideally - open copyright.

---

Browsing old posts for a reference about the chemo drug with a 10% survival rate found this gem:

The problem with using force or bribery (treats, paychecks,) to get what you want is you might get what you didn’t want as well. The additional problem is that food only works when the belly is hungry. Cooperation can disappear when other sources of food are found or when rewards became inconsistent or not worth the effort. What point is there in cooperating then? Worse, when the little victim has grown up and is the big person then a new cycle of training begins – it only takes one step to grow a bully.

How to grow a bully –

1. Bully a child.

---

I didn’t find the chemo reference link, just a summary statement I had written about it. The gist - a chemotherapy drug was found to be so lethal, with only a 10% survival rate, that it was deemed too risky for use with older patients. A 90% death rate is a fatal poison in other words.

A review article with a similar summary point:

“Background: In patients over age 60 with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), cure rates are under 10% despite intensive chemotherapy. These patients often have comorbidities, and their treatment must be chosen with care. For those who are not candidates for intensive chemotherapy, one of the available options for palliative treatment should be chosen on the basis of an individual risk-benefit assessment.

Methods: Selective literature review.” (Krug, et al., 2011)

The cure for cancer is in figuring out why the person’s methylation cycles aren’t functioning in the cytoplasm and mitochondria so that epigenetic control of the cell nucleus can be maintained with an adequate supply of mtSAM or cSAM.

The answer is in this older post: Nature loves a good design; Cancer, POTS, Epigenetics & the One-Carbon Methylation Cycles. Dec. 7, 2022, (Substack)

Pertinent research article: (Hayden, Tyagi, 2022)

The thing about being right is that first you were probably wrong often and eventually steered towards the correct solution. Science is teamwork and passing the baton of knowledge so that it keeps blossoming into a fuller tree of knowledge. Science is not controlled academic silos who are not allowed to research anything that corporate profit is not funding. Science is not bought. Science pursues the correct solutions, and as many as are needed for multifactorial issues. Currently ‘science’ is owned and controlled and very wrong about a lot of things. Dr. Cowan an Dr. Seyfried are on the right trail at least, just missing the important point about methylation cycles in the cytoplasm having control over epigenetic control of the nuclear genes.

The post that has the info about Saturated fat causing a switch to fermentation of fats and sugar is Houston We Have a Problem (Substack) or maybe Rest in Peace, Dr. Zelenko. (Substack) Both posts are important and long ones. It is the Houston post though: “The mystery cause of ME/CFS is shutting down production of CoA - turning that back on again is the route to more energy. Restricting vitamin A and carotenoids could be the route.” (Substack)

The Dr. Zelenko memorial post includes a section on mitochondria and cancer and zinc ionophores would help treat cancer or autoimmune or parasitic or microbial infections. (Substack)

A photo that my father or mother took. Their digital images are a mixed bag.

We need both the forest and the individual leaves of finer detail.

Disclaimer: This information is being provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use and is not intended to provide individual health care guidance.

Reference List

(Krug, et al., 2011) Krug, U; Büchner, T; Berdel, W E; Müller-Tidow, C, (2011), The Treatment of Elderly Patients With Acute Myeloid Leukemia, Dtsch Arztebl Int 2011; 108(51-52): 863-70. DOI: 10.3238/arztebl.2011.0863 https://www.aerzteblatt.de/int/archive/article/117927