VITAMIN C AND ITS ROLE AGAINST CANCER
Vitamin C has been appreciated for decades for its role against cancer as a pro-oxidant, which I will talk about in this video. However, recent research has shown why vitamin C’s effect in killing cancer is more permanent than the effect of chemotherapy, and I will talk about that too.
Let’s first look at normal cells and the fluid surrounding them. This fluid is called extracellular fluid because it is outside of the cells.
Then let’s look at the cancer cells, and they are surrounded by the same fluid.
This extracellular fluid is forced out of the bloodstream through these gaps, but negative pressure then draws that fluid back into the bloodstream.
I want to first compare normal cells to cancer cells:
Normal cells have nice regular borders, whereas cancer cells have irregular borders.
Normal cells have just one nucleus and one nucleolus, where genetic machinery works. But cancer cells have multiple nuclei and many nucleoli, because they are very active genetically, always reproducing quickly.
Much more importantly though, normal cells have a lot of healthy, active mitochondria to produce energy. Cancer cells, on the other hand, have few, damaged mitochondria. So not much energy is produced here, and cancer cells frequently exhaust their energy supply.
There is another difference: Normal cells have an enzyme called catalase, and cancer cells do not.
Then when vitamin C comes along, because that’s how we treat cancer at my clinic, with vitamin C primarily, among other things, . . . when Vitamin C comes along, it breaks down into hydrogen peroxide, or H202. Now when that hydrogen peroxide meets normal cells, that’s okay, and they do not have any damage from the hydrogen peroxide, because that enzyme catalase that I mentioned, which normal cells have, that enzyme breaks down the hydrogen peroxide. It breaks it down to just water and oxygen – all very well tolerated by normal cells.
HOWEVER, and this is very important – remember I said that cancer cells LACK the enzyme catalase, and because they do not have this enzyme, cancer cells are killed by hydrogen peroxide in an oxidative assault, which the cancer cells suffer, but normal cells DO NOT suffer. This makes vitamin C a far more useful “magic bullet” type treatment, that is, a selective treatment that is preferable to chemotherapy, because it does not hurt normal cells.
How do I know that this happens? The National Academy of Sciences found this to be a main mechanism of Vitamin C against cancer.
THIS, folks, is the Holy Grail of cancer treatment – finding something that kills cancer, while leaving normal cells unharmed, and even better functioning. Normal cells actually love vitamin C. It is an essential nutrient that we cannot live without.
Now there is another really important effect that Vitamin C has against cancer, and that is that it kills cancer STEM cells.
Here is an article from the prestigious journal Nature, showing that this happens.
Now why is this important?
Cancer stem cells are produced in the presence of toxins: whether pesticides or other toxic materials that found their way into the body – poor diet, all kinds of environmental toxins – cells have damaged mitochondria, and start to change the way they metabolize. Some of them become cancer stem cells. The trouble with chemotherapy is – it is simply additional poison. But poison was the influence that caused the problem in the first place. So cancer stem cells are formed even faster, in order to try to survive an environment that is now even more toxic than before. They are the stimulating cells that make tumors malignant in their growth. This is why cancer keeps coming back after chemotherapy, and it keeps coming back stronger than before and harder to fight – because chemotherapy actually ENCOURAGES the growth of cancer stem cells. You could not PAY me to consent to have chemotherapy, mostly because of this.
So we need to change the environment. Vitamin C was found to kill these cancer stem cells, or source cells, which makes vitamin C very useful against cancer. In fact, Vitamin C was found to be TEN TIMES more effective at killing cancer stem cells than the other substances tested.
Here is an article from the journal Oncotarget showing that Vitamin C has this effect.
So this is an additional reason to choose vitamin C FIRST as the first-line strategy against cancer – not only has it been shown over decades of use to be safe for normal cells, but it has shown that it can kill cancer cells and that it has crucial effect against cancer stem cells.
I am Dr. Colleen Huber, and thanks for watching.
