Women’s Health Initiatives Foundation Supports Novel Cancer Research

Last week I had the honor of keynoting for the Women’s Health Initiatives Foundation Wellness Symposium held at the Shaker Run GolfClub in Lebanon, Ohio. My hostesses, Lyn Hogrefe, MS Ed, organization founder, and Kelly Brown, Executive Director, are pictured here presenting me with a generous $500 donation to BeatCancer.org – for which we are so grateful! Kelly is also taking our holistic cancer coach certification training.

There’s a lot of synergy between our two non-profit organizations. The Foundation’s mission is “to promote and support integrative health initiatives which prevent, treat, and defeat women’s cancers.” That’s a lot like our mission to provide research-based education on how to prevent, cope with, and beat cancer through diet, lifestyle and other immune-boosting approaches. Like BeatCancer.org, the Women’s Health Initiatives Foundation tries to grow awareness of holistic cancer prevention methods and treatment options beyond standard of care. Like BeatCancer.org, they believe that drugs, radiation and surgery are not the only answers to cancer. Unlike BeatCancer.org, they also support cancer research.

The research they are supporting, spearheaded by Dr. Mark Rosenberg, Medical Director of the Institute for Healthy Aging and Director of the Integrative Cancer Therapies Fellowship with the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, focuses on integrative therapy for advanced cancer patients. There is no question that oncologists in the US have made little progress over the past forty years in the treatment of patients with advanced stage cancer. The Rosenberg Integrative Cancer Treatment and Research Institute is dedicated to improving healthcare for those individuals diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The mission of the Institute is refreshing: “to provide a treatment program for advanced stage cancer patients that sustains health, life, good nutrition, energy, human dignity, and the opportunity for individuals to heal completely and lead full, comfortable and enjoyable lives.” Who could ask for more?

Novel Cancer Research

Many of our readers are aware of the relationship between cancer and sugar metabolism, and I often talk about how cancer thrives in an acid environment. Explaining the connection between the two, Dr. Rosenberg’s treatment addresses how cancers process glucose through a mechanism known as glycolysis (cancers rely much more heavily on glycolysis than normal tissue) and the end product of glycolysis, lactic acid. The latter is thought to be essential for cancer cells to prevent apoptosis (programmed cell death); in addition, as the cancer cells produce lactic acid and acidify their extracellular milieu, the resulting acidity helps promote the aggressiveness of the cancer.

This concept is validated by research conducted at the Department of Experimental Therapeutics, Cancer Research Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia, which concluded that cancers can escape the body’s anti-cancer immune response by maintaining a low pH in their micro-environment. Tumors achieve this by regulating the secretion of lactic acid, a promoter of cancer angiogenesis as well as a critical immuno-suppressive metabolite. Targeting the lactic acid-producing metabolism of cancers simultaneously addresses two fundamental cancer characteristics — altered energy metabolism and evasion of immune destruction. Such an approach could be effective for a broad range of cancers and particularly useful in combination with cancer immunotherapy.

Dr. Rosenberg developed an oral protocol which blocks three mechanisms that cancer cells use to allow excretion of lactic acid. After Dr. Rosenberg ensures that the acid pumps are blocked, he literally feeds the cancer cells by infusing high dose glucose. As the cancer cells feed, they create lactic acid that is unable to be pumped out of the cells. In Dr. Rosenberg’s words, “the more they eat the faster they die.”

In preliminary findings, using a process that he calls “Cancer pH Manipulation Therapy,” Dr. Rosenberg was able to completely normalize tumor markers in four weeks in a patient with metastatic endometrial carcinoma without the use of chemotherapy. In a second patient diagnosed with stage IIIC primary peritoneal carcinoma, Dr. Rosenberg’s treatment produced a 40% reduction in rapidly rising tumor markers in just two weeks.

Dr. Rosenberg stated, “Chemotherapy is insufficient because it does not affect cancer stem cells. My treatment, theoretically, will treat cancer stem cells, as well as non-stem cells. If we can truly kill the cancer stem cells, we are not just talking treatment, but rather we are talking cure.”

Join the conversation. Create a topic in our forum.