A reason for FASTING..

[Guest guest]

or even becoming a vegetarian..I've been seeing a lot of " raw-fish " recently

in my visions which of course points to either eating the fish in soups with

lots of greens..and to the oils in the fish..especially pink Salmon..

mel.. ;-)

http://www.wsu.edu/NIS/Universe/Diet.html

Cancer isn't just one disease.

It's a collection of them.

What they all have in common is cells that don't know when to stop growing.

To make matters worse, many cancers spread from their original sites in the

body to other organs, a process called metastasis. This is usually what

kills, which is certainly the case with melanomas, the cancer with the most

rapidly increasing incidence in the United States today. Caught early,

melanomas are treatable. Once they've metastasized, they're deadly.

Meadows, WSU professor of pharmaceutical sciences, has found that

simply reducing the amount of two amino acids, the chemical building blocks

of protein, in the diet of mice can reduce the metastasis of melanomas in

mice. Now he's looking at whether the same is true for human melanoma cells

in the laboratory.

His early results suggest that the relevance is there. If the results hold,

Meadows can focus on determining how the dietary restriction works. " What is

the importance of these two amino acids? " he asks. " How do they affect the

ability of melanoma cells to metastasize? "

Others have hypothesized that melanoma cells, which derive from cells that

make the pigment melanin, need the amino acid tyrosine to do their work.

This is one of the amino acids restricted in the mice's diets.

But the proof is not quite so simple.

It is known that the dietary amino acid restrictions slow the growth of

cells and change their ability to make a variety of proteins. But the

restrictions also affect tumor and normal cells differently. For example,

although some melanoma cells will switch into an automatic death mode when

restricted, normal cells do not.

Since tumors are collections of cells with differing abilities to

metastasize, it is possible that the dietary restrictions primarily target

those that do it well. Restriction, for example, may change a cell's ability

to make or secrete some of the proteins it needs in order to metastasize,

says Meadows.

" Once I establish how the dietary restriction reduces metastasis, it will be

easier to target those mechanisms and develop better, more specific

therapies, " says Meadows. Similar tactics have been used in treatments for

other cancers.

Leukemia cells can't survive without asparagine, another amino acid.

Chemotherapy targeting asparagine is part of the standard repertoire of

leukemia treatments. In fact, Meadows' work on the effect of amino acid

restrictions on cancer began while he was in graduate school, where he

worked with the scientists who helped develop the leukemia treatments.

Since that time, his work has evolved to include the question of whether

other cancers might also have specific and different amino acid

requirements. He initially investigated the effect of dietary restrictions

on tumor growth but soon switched to the effect on metastasis. " The spread

of a melanoma, or of cancers in general, has more clinical relevance, " says

Meadows.

The move from tumor growth to metastasis was a good one, for the restriction

not only worked to reduce the spread of melanomas, but has since been found

to reduce the spread of lung cancers, liver cancers, and some leukemias.

It will be interesting but difficult to take the next step in the work-to

move from testing human cells in the laboratory to human cells in the living

person. For one, it's difficult to determine exactly what's happening with

the restricted diet. For most people, amino acid restriction means cutting

back on protein foods and increasing vegetable intake. " We already know a

vegetarian diet is healthy, " says Meadows. That makes it hard to tell

whether any changes seen during dietary restriction are caused by the change

to a more vegetarian diet or by the restriction in the two amino acids.

In addition to moving from mouse to human studies, Meadows' work is moving

into an area new to the study of cancer: the interactions that occur between

the host and the tumor. " It's important to remember that cancer cells are

parasites and need a host in order to survive and grow, " says Meadows.

In a normal, healthy host, the non-tumor cells can regulate processes inside

tumor cells in both positive and negative ways. Thus host-tumor interactions

are key, and Meadows wants to know what effect dietary restriction will have

on them. " It's becoming clearer, " he says, " that the integrity of the host

may ultimately determine a tumor's survival. "

by Aegerter