Sunday, November 15, 2009

A Vaccine for Breast Cancer? And, Unrelatedly, How to Convince a Die-Hard Vegetarian to Eat Meat

I’m back after a few weeks of midterm madness and, in response to my dear readers’ request for more information on how we’re formulating treatments, I’m going to keep going with the patient snippets. So without further ado, here are a couple of the interesting cases we’ve seen in the last few weeks.

Debbie, aged 56, came in to see us with late-stage breast cancer. She’s been seeing a naturopathic doctor in the UB Clinic and has arrived at the Personalized Medicine Shift for nutritional recommendations that will complement the treatment she’s already undergoing. After seeing her, Dr. D’Adamo recommended that she pursue allopathic oncologic treatment, continue with all of the prior recommendations made by her ND, and start with her personalized dietary recommendations that we’d be making to her. Dr. D’Adamo’s approach to cancer is unique; so let me try to explain it, as best I understand it. When cells become cancerous, they glycosylate in an unusual fashion. In his protocols, D’Adamo seeks to target and, as much as possible, halt aberrant changes in cell membrane glycosylation. When normal cells become cancerous, they show various antigens on their surfaces— most commonly the Tn and Thomsen-Friedenreich (T) antigens. Our patient is a Group A secretor, which makes her particularly well suited to this kind of cellularly targeted approach.

D’Adamo’s protocol, then, is several-fold. First, in the SWAMI software, he activated the oncology sequence that I’ve referred to in a previous blog here: it’s called Deep Blue and it tweaks diet preferences to fight cell glycosylation. We walked her through her diet carefully and made sure she understood particular food harmonics and foods to especially avoid and emphasize. We also tweaked her diet to enhance methylation, which will decrease generalized inflammation. Her supplements will be the following: arabinogalactan (ARA6), a snail lectin product (HELIX), and a marrubrium/baptisia combination (REKON). Later, D’Adamo would like her to take the probiotic Polyflora A to combat Tn induction via activity in the gut. If Debbie starts to receive chemotherapy, he recommends we switch her diet to enhance histone deacetylation, which will essentially open up all of her cells so they are most available to radiation.

The last thing he recommended is her getting the typhoid vaccine. This is a novel approach based on the approach originated by Georg F. Springer, MD (whose wife died of breast cancer). It’s known as the Springer Vaccine and it has shown 5-10 year cancer survival rates for late-stage cancer. What the vaccine does is stimulate the immune system to fight cancer cells that specifically have the T and Tn antigen. The vaccine is in three parts: 1) degraded O-group blood cells with T and Tn antigens, 2) the Salmonella typhii vaccine or typhoid vaccine, also containing T and Tn antigens, and 3) calcium phosphate, which Springer believed the T and Tn antigens stick to. The vaccine is given subcutaneously every six weeks “ad infinitum,” according to Springer. T and Tn antibodies are, thus, stimulated, and cancer cells stand less of a chance of survival. The Springer Vaccine, as it was originally conceived, was no longer available after Springer died in 1998 but the typhoid vaccine (which is a component of the vaccine) is accessible — and that is what D’Adamo is seeking to get for Debbie. We are currently seeking an allopathic doctor who can work in conjunction with us to administer the vaccine.
For more information on the Springer Vaccine, check out this article by Dr. D: http://www.dadamo.com/science_Tantigen.htm

Our next patient, Nadine, is a 50-year with a calming and lovely demeanor, which became a bit feisty when we told her — a lifelong vegetarian — that she, as an Explorer, needed to start eating meat in order to see her health shift in a positive direction. We see a lot of vegetarians coming into Clinic who would do well to be eating meat. They have the same pasty complexion, spaciness, fatigue and general lack of physical resilience. I’ve never seen one doctor or student clinician talk someone out of vegetarianism, try as they might. This case was interesting to me because I saw Dr. D’Adamo did the impossible: get someone who hasn’t put a morsel of animal flesh in his or her mouth in decades on the road to meat eating. Her chief complaint was chronic sinus headaches that started a few months ago. D’Adamo attributed these to vascular stasis and inflammation from a liver functioning improperly without adequate diet, which causes the sinuses to flare up and headache to ensue. We put her on a battery of supplements: Migrafew (with feverfew that is specifically useful in combating headaches), Collinsonia Plus (with Collinsonia canadensis that is indicated for sinus function and larch arabinogalactan, which is an immune-enhancer among other things), the probiotic Polyflora A, Explorer Activator (which contains NAG, milk thistle, artichoke and malic acid to support liver detoxification) and Explorer Catalyst (a complex supplement that also supports detoxification processes).

So how did Dr. D’Adamo convince her to try meat? I’m fairly certain Dr. D’Adamo would be a very successful car salesman if he needed another career. The man is very convincing. First, he drew a parable from a recent program he saw on National Geographic, which showed an eagle plucking a salmon out of a rushing stream. The salmon, he said, seemed to have a look on its face that this was part of the natural order of things, and indeed it is, exclaimed Dr. D’Adamo! I’m not doing justice to the eloquence with which Dr. D delivered this description, but Nadine backed down a little bit from her defense of vegetables after mulling over this story. Dr. D’Adamo then told Nadine about his friend, another hardcore vegetarian and a Type O who came down with pemphigus. He started to eat meat and most of his symptoms cleared away. What was the friend’s takeaway from the experience? “I refuse to die for the cause of vegetarianism,” he said. And this is what’s most important, probably, to impart to patients. If a patient is completely well, then why are they coming to see us doctors? If what they’re doing is working, then why are they here? We urged Nadine, then, to be open to changing something as important as diet, even as an experiment to see what shifts if she introduced more complete protein sources. To use another Dr. D analogy: an Explorer eating vegetarian is like putting low octane gasoline into the Porsche that is her body. It’s interesting to note, too, that D’Adamo, himself, is a Type A vegetarian. Ultimately what we tried to impart to Nadine is that if you can change your belief system, you can grow.

A week later, Nadine called in with some questions about her program and to give us an update on her progress. She’d been eating fish every night, as well as egg whites. Her headaches were gone and she’d lost two pounds. Red meat might seriously be on the dinner menu next week.