Light at the end of the labyrinth

An all-natural cancer treatment, tested by the National Insititutes of Health, shrinks tumors and slows their growth by as much as 50 percent.

When my husband and I got married, we built our traditional church ceremony around our families, asking relatives to participate in the various tasks involved. My Aunt Jane lovingly agreed to perform one of the readings. But the aunt who took part in our wedding that day wasn’t the same aunt I’d grown up with. She’d been battling cancer for several years, and as she slowly made her way to the altar on the arm of my brother, it struck me that she had literally become a shell of her former self. Her personality was still as dynamic and sparkling as ever, but the chemotherapy she’d been undergoing regularly for years had ravaged her body until she was frail and unsure she could trust her own two feet to get her where she needed to be without giving out on her. It made me sad and angry that this was the result of the “best” treatments modern medicine has available for cancer patients. But, thanks to some open-minded researchers, that sort of devastation may soon be a thing of the past.

Believe it or not, this study actually came out of the National Institutes of Health. The reason I say “believe it or not” is that the substance they investigated was nothing more than simple, natural vitamin C.

Research on this essential nutrient for cancer treatment has fallen by the wayside since a study published in 1985 declared that the vitamin offered no benefit for cancer patients. But when they took another look at that study, the NIH team realized that those patients had been taking the vitamin orally — and the body can only process a limited amount of oral vitamin C. So even though the nutrient does have the potential to kill cancer cells, humans can’t absorb enough from oral sources for it to have an impact on cancer cells.

But rather than chalking this conclusion up as a loss, the NIH researchers decided to test the effects of high-dose vitamin C injections on cancer cells.

In lab experiments, this approach worked on 75 percent of the cancer cell lines they tested. So from there, they tried the approach on mice with aggressive forms of ovarian, pancreatic, and brain cancers. They found that the vitamin C injections reduced tumor growth and weight by as much as 53 percent.

And the real miracle? While the vitamin C had clear anti-cancer effects, unlike “modern” treatments like chemotherapy, it leaves normal, healthy cells completely unharmed.

While these results have only occurred in mice so far, the researchers contend that they can also be achieved in humans, and additional trials are in the planning stages. Of course, we both know that there will be a labyrinth of red tape that the researchers will have to navigate their way through to make this therapy available to the public. But the light shining for cancer patients at the end of the maze is certainly worth working toward. So for the time being, let’s just keep our fingers crossed that they don’t get lost or make any wrong turns along the way

Source:
“Vitamin C injections slow tumor growth in mice,” Science Daily (www.sciencedaily.com), 8/4/08