Been a over a week since I posted that last update, so I felt obliged to follow up on it.
Let me fill in a little background information on other things I work on for those who haven’t read down past the post regarding Canadian politics.
There’s a compound currently in use across the world called DCA. Dichloroacetate, usually as a sodium or potassium salt. It’s classified as completely synthetic, but it’s been shown for decades to have an effect on people and animals with mitochondrial disorders.
In 2007, researchers at the University of Alberta published research that showed it was shrinking tumors in lab animals. After researching the effect in vitro and in vivo, they theorized that the method of action was a catalytic effect on the mitochondria of each cell which was restoring basic functionality that is known to be lacking in all cancerous cells. Restoring this functionality allows pre-cancerous cells to return to normal and triggers apoptosis (natural cell death) in cancerous cells, shrinking tumors.
If it helps, you can think of the cell as a mini-computer in your body’s Internet. DNA is your cell’s hard drive where it stores all the information about how to build each of your cells and interact with neighboring cells. All the processing of this information goes on within the various organelles of the cell. This cellular fluid is the data bus that allows information to transit between these various sites and the cell wall is where it communicates with the cellular Internet. One of the most important organelles, the mitochondria, performs key processes that are essential to multicellular life. It controls efficient energy production through oxidative phosphorylation, as well as triggering important cellular processes like apoptosis. Think of this as sort of an Inner Engine that acts as malware protection for your cellular computer. It protects not only the cell, but the neighboring network of cells. When it malfunctions, the cell begins to lose its multicellular character, instead acting like the single celled or colony organisms that multicellular life evolved from. We call this malfunctioning state cancer.
The University of Alberta’s research was initially seen favorably as providing a foundation for a new non-toxic and non-invasive treatment for cancers that seemed to be broad spectrum. All cancerous cells steal their energy requirements from neighboring non-cancerous cells, producing their own energy through glycolysis, an energy production regime that produces energy through the fermentation of sugars. This energy production process takes place in the cellular fluid and is, evolutionarily speaking, one of the most ancient metabolic pathways. It’s common in single-celled organisms as it allows them to produce energy in the absence of oxygen. Multicellular life requires active mitochondria capable of using oxygen to produce energy more efficiently. When these newer metabolic pathways break down, we end up with cancer or other conditions as our cells strive for individual instead of multicellular survival.
What makes the mitochondria of a cell malfunction?
It can be any number of factors. Toxins, mutation due to radiation, genetic factors, or just general oxidative stress from diet and lifestyle. A single malfunctioning mitochondria doesn’t mean you’ll end up with cancer. Some cells, like those in your liver, have thousands of these organelles. Since the liver is responsible for dealing with toxins, the high number of mitochondria per cell make sense. It maximizes the cellular processing power available for removing toxins from the body. But if you pour enough toxins and stress into your body for long enough, even the thousands of mitochondria in your liver cells can go on strike.
This compound, DCA, seemed to have the potential to reactivate these important cellular functions. It alleviates oxidative stress by restoring mitochondrial function. This much had already been known for years, as that was its original use in both humans and animals prior to the cancer discovery in 2007. Several studies were funded by Health Canada and contributions from individuals, but no interest was ever found from the pharmaceutical industry. DCA is an off-patent compound. It was first synthesized and patented decades ago and that patent has long since expired. Because the compound is so simple, it’s difficult to make a signature version of the compound to produce a similar effect. Therefore, there’s been no commercial interest in funding research.
Since the initial publishing, new research has come to light that shed doubt on DCA’s ability to deal with broad spectrum cancers. The University of Guelph in Ontario released their findings in 2010 that DCA was ineffective against hypoxic tumors. When considering that the mitochondria requires the presence of oxygen to perform its energy generation, this makes sense according to the theory put forth by Alberta regarding DCA’s function. What Guelph found was that DCA was actually strengthen these hypoxic cells, making them more resistance to traditional forms of chemotherapy.
What doesn’t make sense is what followed. Instead of concluding that they should treat the hypoxia as a symptom that can be relieved, the conclusions out of Guelph were that DCA was simply unsuitable for use as a broad spectrum treatment.
Why?
This is where my thoughts entered the picture and my thinking went in a different direction.
In 2007, while the father of one of my friends was dying with cancer, I first learned of the DCA results published in Alberta. At the time, the research seemed exciting and innovative and really caught my interest. I knew the results were only preliminary, but the seemed to advance the knowledge of cancer in a bold new direction that looked to provide real answers. It gave me hope that the cure had been found.
One of the my first thoughts regarding this compound as I learned more was that it was incredibly simple. Structurally, it’s identical to the acetate ion (vinegar), but with two of the hydrogen atoms on the methyl-group replaced by chlorine. Why would a compound as simple as vinegar that has such a beneficial impact on cellular machinery not exist in nature?
Since the presence of heavier halogens like chlorine is foreign to fresh water lakes and streams, I wondered if it didn’t occur naturally in a marine environment instead. Sea water is full of heavy halogens and plants like seaweed concentrate it out of the sea water for their own uses. This is why seaweed is use as a source of iodine. In realizing that, I came to the conclusion early on that seaweeds might be an overlooked source of compounds like DCA, theorizing that iodine might replace the chlorine in the compound to produce a stronger analogue.
I wrote letters to researchers, posted in science-based forums, and emailed email listservs to try to find new information. The closest I found to the Iodine-based version of the compound was a bit of scientific research on tomato wound healing where they used sodium diiodoacetate to perform the electrophoretic seperation of RNA. The research paper mentioned a book from the 80s that described the method used, but that had been removed from subsequent editions of the book and I couldn’t find the original to learn more.
In 2011, after years of hobby research, I was directed to a chemical research site by a colleague. Through that site I found a link to research conducted by a researcher from New Zealand who’d been studying a popular edible Hawaiian red seaweed. The research had been published in the late 70s. The intent had been to determine what kinds of organic acids exist in the edible species. Sure enough, right there in the middle of the document was not only the chlorinated version, DCA, but the Iodine-based version I’d been looking for, and other compounds based on Bromine and a mix between Iodine, Bromine and Chlorine.
Just so we’re clear here, this research paper from the 70s proves that DCA is not a new synthetic compound as is currently put forth by the modern medical establishment. Evolutionarily speaking, red seaweeds are exceptionally old. They are among the first multicellular life to evolve on this planet.
Excited by this new finding, I fired up my email and forums and began trying to talk to people about the idea again. I was met with doubt and disbelief and one person who sent me the link to the Guelph hypoxia studies, which he believed proved that DCA was unsuitable for use. Because I’d been considering the source as occurring naturally in marine environments, I had a different perspective on the issue of hypoxia. Marine animals don’t have to worry about hypoxic tissue the same way us land animals do. They can live at depths in the ocean where the atmospheric pressure is so high that oxygen dissolves directly into fluids as opposed to being carried by the blood. This combination creates a niche where animals who consume large quantities of phytoplankton and krill, and also spend their days diving deep, would be receiving these potent anti-cancer benefits naturally. This would allow them to grow to a prodigious size and be able to fend off cancers with ease, relative to us poor land animals limited to a very narrow window of atmospheric pressure in our daily lives.
Hence blue whales.
To clarify everything so far, let me restate it:
- Synthetic compound (DCA) turns out to have anti-cancer properties – 2007
- My original hypothesis that DCA may occur naturally – 2007
- Synthetic compound (DCA) is shown not to work on hypoxic tumors – 2010
- Rediscovery that DCA is not synthetic but occurs naturally in Asparagopsis Taxiformis – 2011
- Hypothesis that hyperbaric therapy eliminates the hypoxic symptoms – 2012
Trying to put all this together, I made a video that tries to explain it as best I can in plainer language for a general audience. It received very little attention. There are a million people out there who claim to have found a treatment for cancer, I’d just become another crank with a theory in a very large pond.
Fast Forward to 2014
After publishing the information online in 2012 and sending it out to various research groups who promptly ignored it, I became a little discouraged about the whole problem. I’m not wealthy in the material sense, so I have no way of bringing these concepts forward myself. I’m currently trying to build another business to help finance my other research, but I’m having plenty of difficulty there, even though I’m working with a simpler concept that is easier to prove.
I did start eating seaweed on a regular basis after obtaining a regular supply of dulse from Real Raw Food in Vancouver so the idea was never far from my mind. I didn’t have access to a hyperbaric chamber or the money to go scuba diving on a regular basis though, so I was still searching for a way to obtain the full benefits. I hoped that more research would be completed that would verify my thoughts or that someone would stumble across mine and might trigger some inspiration that would lead them to the answers.
I built this blog, ParadigmSlip, as a means for cataloging some of the various research I’ve completed and for ease of sharing. I’d found it difficult to talk directly about these ideas because they’re so esoteric, so a blog seemed like the best way to keep my thoughts organized. I hadn’t done much work on the seaweed/hyperbaric cancer theory as I waited for more results of existing DCA therapy to be published.
During Spring of 2014, I was home watching the movie “The Fountain”, when I had an epiphany. The Fountain starts with a quote from the Bible:
Genesis 3:24 – So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way of the tree of life.
During one of the first scenes, the main character is accosted by someone with a literal flaming sword. The juxtaposition of the image of a flaming sword and that particular Biblical quote brought up an image in my mind from my research. Asparagopsis taxiformis, the same seaweed that I’d been researching for its health benefits, looks like a flaming sword that turns back and forth under water. The flaming sword wasn’t meant to be thought of as guarding the Tree of Life, but showing the way to the Tree of Life.
Red Seaweed even shows up at the base of the Tree of Life of modern evolutionary theory. It’s one of the first multicellular lifeforms to appear on the planet. It contains potent compounds shown to promote mitochondrial functioning that can’t form in fresh water sources naturally.
The idea that the mythological Tree of Life that appears in a variety of ancient cultures might have a common origin in red seaweeds instead of terrestrial plants set my mind on fire. I started digging through the mythologies of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Maya, and hordes of others looking for common links and finding many.
Another commonality that blew my mind was that all these ancient cultures who’d incorporated this red seaweed into their lifestyle to the point of venerating it were also monument building hydraulic cultures. Not only that, but with my understanding of the need for eliminating hypoxia, their monuments seemed to serve a purpose beyond being simple temples for religious worship or burial mounds.
They were hyperbaric chambers, powered by water.
There’s a lot more that I have to write on this subject, but I wanted to publish this much for today. Most of the next post will be in regards to the mythological and Biblical links.
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Revelations 22: 1-3
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3
