Low Levels of Oxygen

The bundle of oxygen with cancer, cell, energy and blood

In 1931 Dr. Warburg won his first Nobel Prize for proving that "the cause of cancer is no longer a mystery; we know it occurs whenever any cell is denied 60% of its O2 requirements" (from the article titled The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer).

"Cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. But, even for cancer, there is only one prime cause. Summarized in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of O2 in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar. All normal body cells meet their energy needs by respiration of O2, whereas cancer cells meet their energy needs in great part by fermentation. All normal body cells are thus obligate aerobes, whereas all cancer cells are partial anaerobes."

Poor oxygenation comes from a build-up of carcinogens and other toxins within and around cells, which blocks and then damages the cellular respiration mechanism. Clumping up the red blood cells slow down the bloodstream, and restricts flow into capillaries. Even lack of the proper building blocks for cell walls, essential fatty acids, restricts its exchange.

What Warburg and other scientists found was that respiratory enzymes in cells, which make energy aerobically using O2, die when cellular oxygenation levels drop.

When this happens, the cell can no longer produce energy aerobically. So, if the cell is to live, it must, at least partially, ferment sugars, producing energy anaerobically. According to Warburg, cells that produce energy by fermenting sugars may turn cancerous. Warburg's contention is this...

The cells that cannot produce energy aerobically cannot produce enough energy to maintain their ability to function properly. So they lose their ability to do whatever they need to do in the body. Fermentation allows these cells to survive, but they can no longer perform any functions in the body or communicate effectively with the body. Consequently, these cells can only multiply and grow so they change into cancer cells.

Decades ago, two researchers at the National Cancer Institute, Dean Burn and Mark Woods, (Dean translated some of Warburg's speeches) conducted a series of experiments where they measured the fermentation rate of cancers that grew at different speeds. What they found supported Dr. Warburg's theory. The invasive tumor with the highest growth rates had the highest fermentation rates. The slower a tumor grew, the less it used fermentation to produce energy.

Low oxygenation levels in cells may be a fundamental cause of diseases.

There are several reasons cells become poorly oxygenated.

An overload of toxins clogging up the cells, poor quality cell walls that don't allow nutrients into the cells, the lack of nutrients needed for respiration, poor circulation and perhaps even low oxygenation levels in the air we breathe.

Ill cells produce excess lactic acid as they ferment energy. Lactic acid is toxic, and tends to prevent the transport of O2 into neighboring normal cells. Over time as these cells replicate, the cancer may spread if not destroyed by the immune system.

Chemotherapy and radiation are used because tumor cells are weaker than normal ones and therefore may die first. However, chemotherapy and radiation damage respiratory enzymes in healthy cells, and overload them with toxins, so they become more likely to develop into recurrence. The underlying cancer causing conditions are worsened, not improved. And the disease usually returns quickly a second time unless you make changes to support the health of your body.

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