It seems that you do have the resources to follow this through. I'm thinking you could make DIA yourself? Is there something stopping you?Originally Posted by Sir Knots A Lot
Order of Kilopi
It seems that you do have the resources to follow this through. I'm thinking you could make DIA yourself? Is there something stopping you?
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Yes, that was my point. He could get salt intended for a marine aquarium from a fish store, but then just use a little bit for his freshwater aquarium. That wouldn't have any iodine, and if anything, would more closely resemble the conditions freshwater fish might encounter in an estuary, where some of the ocean water has mixed in, rather than using non-iodized table salt.
Conserve energy. Commute with the Hamiltonian.
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Where's BigDon when you need him.
BTW, I didn't expect the majority of kosher salt to be eaten by orthodox Jews either, especially since Alton Brown started using it for everything needing salt, but they introduced it for others to learn to use, something that hasn't happened here.
And we don't get Alton Brown on cooking TV either, so no mainstreaming that way.
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I have some of the resources, not all.
Its possible to create diiodoacetate from triiodoacetate, which is more readily available, but haven't been able to secure that compound either. As a private individual its difficult to obtain a lot of specialized compounds from suppliers.
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I'm a little confused, then. I don't think Henrik said he was working with a freshwater aquarium, but rather one that needed salt added. I'll grant that I have basically no freshwater aquarium experience, mind you. The last one I had was taken care of by my parents when I was in preschool.
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It is a freshwater aquarium.
They're using information from another thread to know this.
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Aquariums and Kosher Salt are off topic
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The mitochondria are extremely complex molecular machines. Within the mitochondria, ATP Synthase is a nano-scale rotating biologic motor which turns at 9,000 rpm: http://vcell.ndsu.edu/animations/atp...t/advanced.htm
Boyer and Walker won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for figuring this out: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_priz...aureates/1997/
I don't see how a compound from seaweed could repair such things, any more than pouring a liquid on a malfunctioning Formula One engine would fix an internal camshaft problem. It would take a rationally designed therapeutic agent, specifically engineered to repair a complex molecular target.
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Or something evolved over millions of years as ATP Synthase itself is.
The bit I'm really seeing as very misleading in the OP is the claim that it's non-toxic, the DCA study linked to specifically mentioned nerve damage and other studies have shown semi-permanent nerve damage if administered without extra medication specifically to suppress that effect.
Without any toxicology data on the seaweed compound in therapeutic doses, a claim of non-toxicity is not only premature but also irresponsible.
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By the way, one can buy sodium dichloroacetate online at Amazon. Diiodoacetate js available from quite a few commercial suppliers.
The description of 'mass ratios' and spinning carbonyl groups is, speaking charitably, unfounded.
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Just noticed a study that shows that some cancers actually get worse with DCA.
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DCA is a pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase inhibitor. Pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase inhibits pyruvate dehydrogenase, so DCA upregulates the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex which is what converts pyruvate to acetyl-coA.
So presence of DCA means increased production of one of the molecules driving the krebs-cycle.
I doubt there's any repair going on, rather it's compensating for a failing signaling path.
ETA It looks like the real effect is to shift the cells away from an anaerobic metabolism based on lactic acid fermentation over to the aerobic pyruvate oxidation of the previous paragraph.
The anaerobic metabolism is important for tumor cells as many tumors don't have blood vessels so they don't get much oxygen.
BTW, the iodine version doesn't seem to be a pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase inhibitor but rather a cysteine peptidase inhibitor, so results can't be extrapolated from DCA in any meaningful way.
Last edited by HenrikOlsen; 2011-Dec-19 at 11:27 AM.
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Where did you find information regarding the iodine version and its effect as a cysteine peptidase inhibitor?
Here's the only real research I've found regarding the possible toxicity of DIA versus DCA. They've also looked at BrIA as an alternative. I've spoken with both directly, but they haven't published any further results yet.
Development of a less toxic dichloroacetate analogue by docking and descriptor analysis
I've considered DIA playing a role in cysteine protease reactions, by acting as the catalyzing substrate in the below reaction, the R group being the carbon carrying the halogens.
300px-Cysteinprotease_Reaktionsmechanismus.svg.png
As for the Formula One reference, while you wouldn't just pour liquid onto an engine to fix an internal problem, its quite normal to use antioxidant fuel additives to prevent 'gunk' from building up and degrading engine performance.
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The spinning carboxyl group, with the shared double bond between the oxygen being the real player.
I don't see how any discussion of a compounds physical motion in solution can be seperated from its fundamental chemical characterisics. DIA has known electrophoretic properties.
Search for diodoacetate to find reference.
Also, which suppliers have diiodoacetate available?
Forms of boswellic acid are thought to trigger apoptosis in cancerous cells as well. This kind of antioxidant effect would be one predicted to have evolved in terrestrial flora in the absense of the heavier organic halogens, if compounds like DIA and BrIA are among the earliest antioxidants.
200px-Beta-boswellic_acid.svg.png Structure of Beta-boswellic acid.
The only elements used in the formation of this organic acid are oxygen, hydrogen and carbon, with the most reactive portion of the compound being the carboxyl group. The mass of the carbon chain attached to the carboxyl group is similar to that of the iodine carrying carbon in DIA, but boswellic acids are physically much larger than the simpler halogenated compounds like DIA or BrIA.
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That study also specifies that the conditions they're testing under are hypoxic. How are you supposed to stimulate oxygen consumption in the cell without any oxygen to burn? They even come right out and specify that:
DCA treatment caused significant apoptosis under normoxia in SW480 and Caco-2 cells, but these cells displayed decreased apoptosis when treated with DCA combined with hypoxia
and later claim:
DCA is cytoprotective to some CRC cells under hypoxic conditions
If anything I'd like to see this tested again with normal cells to see if healthy cells survive better under hypoxic conditions when treated with DCA, DIA, BrIA or Boswellic acids.
It would be a certain benefit to anything living under the sea, which should have DIA and BrIA at the base of their dietary food chain, to have an additional cellular protection against hypoxia.
It could create a whole new field of medicine to allow invasive surgical treatements to be performed with the body essentially turned off.
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Tumors rapidly outgrow the arteries supplying them with oxygen, and thus tend to hypoxia. That's why hypoxia is an important variable in cancer treatments, especially when looking at whether to extend in vitro studies to in vivo studies. Hypoxia (low oxygen) isn't the same thing as anoxia (no oxygen).
It's a hypothesis you could test, at least. Right now, it's pure conjecture, based on effects in abnormal cells-- you know, you could just as easily leap to the conclusion that because DCA treatment is cytotoxic in normal concentrations of oxygen to some cancerous cells, that it would be cytotoxic to healthy cells as well. A potentially cytotoxic (maybe carcinogenic as well) treatment for hypoxia might not be very useful. Treatments do exist that involve the body being "turned off" to various degrees. Improvements on those techniques would be valuable. (EDIT: Although the problems involved in hypoxia usually have less to do with oxygen starvation than they do with reperfusion.)If anything I'd like to see this tested again with normal cells to see if healthy cells survive better under hypoxic conditions when treated with DCA, DIA, BrIA or Boswellic acids.
It would be a certain benefit to anything living under the sea, which should have DIA and BrIA at the base of their dietary food chain, to have an additional cellular protection against hypoxia.
It could create a whole new field of medicine to allow invasive surgical treatements to be performed with the body essentially turned off.
It seems to me that part of your hypothesis is that one or more kinds of seaweed (taken orally) prevents or treats a wide variety of cancers. If this is a significant effect even at normal, seaweed-as-food doses, you can bypass a lot of the problems you're running into by treating this less as medical research and more as dietary supplement research. Not sure which country you're writing from (Canada?) but in the US, regulation of medical treatment is very different than regulation of dietary supplements-- in fact, the latter are almost unregulated.
In other words-- if you're having trouble synthesizing your compound, but it's found in clinically significant amounts in seaweed, then start by using seaweed instead. (Quick google shows seaweed + cancer results, but just from folks I would describe as quacky. There's no point to half-hearted research in fields where quacks predominate, but there's always room for good research.)
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Its the wrong season to pick edibles locally, but I've obtained a supply of local edible seaweed from New Brunswick.
I'm going to begin daily consumption and at the same time see if I can get the samples tested for the presence of these compounds.
Where would be the best place to go to have them tested for a reasonable price? Any takers on that one because I've got no idea.
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I don't know, and I don't see any reason to suspect my google fu is any stronger than yours, but a twinge of conscience is making me write an addendum.
First of all, look into the health risks of seaweed before you start eating it. Wikipedia says iodine toxicity and hydrogen-sulfide poisoning are common. Just because a food is a common food source doesn't make it a safe food.
Second, nobody here knows anything about your health situation. If you're motivated by the fact that you have some form of cancer, please speak to your oncologist before engaging in some kind of self treatment. If your oncologist thinks it's useless but safe, he or she will still give the go-ahead. That goes for any loved ones with cancer as well-- if they're going to trying out seaweed for you, they should only be doing it under the supervision of a doctor.
You might have other health issues that can affect this. Talking to a doctor is never a bad idea.
Even if seaweed turns out to be an effective treatment or prevention for cancer, it still might be bad for your health. Cancer isn't the only thing that kills people. If you plan on experimenting on yourself, do so only in the knowledge that you're taking a risk. If you plan on involving anybody else in your experiments, they need to know that they're taking a risk as well. It's entirely possible that DCA could be beneficial to people with cancer and yet dangerous to people without cancer. That's how most medical treatments work.
From a philosophical perspective, the history of medicine is written as if it was a series of wonderful discoveries, but in reality, it's mostly been a series of dangerous failures. Looking at any potential treatment just in terms of "Well, this should work," ignores how little we know about physiology. Consider the promise and failure to deliver on that promise of antioxidants in regards to cancer. Very few compounds interact only with one part of the body, with one disease. "This should work" should always be heard as "This ought to have an effect, and we'll see after testing whether it's good or bad." The fact that a compound is found in plants doesn't make that compound any safer than one found only in a lab; there is very little validity to the myth that plants want to be eaten. Our food devotes a lot of resources to making sure it doesn't make for a good dinner, and that's only balanced by the resources we devote to making sure that it does.
If you do start doing some research, I encourage you to speak to as many people as possible about your research, before your research, even (especially!) with pesky, irritating skeptics. It is far preferable to argue about an experiment's validity before doing the experiment! Even if you are suffering from cancer and are seeking a treatment, you want to have data to share with the world so that others can benefit. That's not just a matter of having data, but of having data that's built to withstand scrutiny and answer potential objections. Even if that data shows no benefit to be had from seaweed/DCA.
Apologies if you've heard all this before.
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Thanks for those thoughts.
Just to clear the air, I don't personally have cancer. At the moment, or in the past.
That I know of.
I also don't have anyone in my life who is currently suffering from cancer, nor would I intend to experiment on them, but I have had friends and family die from cancer while I've been researching this compound.
I'm planning on consuming some known local edible seaweeds in quantities that they'd normally be consumed to study the effects over a few months. It's a variety thats been eaten for centuries by residents of Atlantic canada called Dulse. It's actually pretty tasty to just eat on its own, but I'd like to know if it contains any concentrations of DIA or BrIA. Getting the studies done locally could be problematic and an idea of how to proceed would be welcome.
I've actually quite some time just try to discover if DIA existed in a natural form in seaweed, I'd originally only been looking for possible natural alternatives to DCA and had theorized that DIA might be present in seaweed due its tendency to concentrate these heavy halogens. It was over 4 years before I even got that question answered. Now that I know it exists as a natural compound in one variety, I'd like to determine it's presence or absence in others. I suspect it should be a fairly standard part of oceanic plant life cellular chemistry.
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I had to think about this one for a bit.
Wouldn't sea life naturally have move dissolved gases in their tissues? The increase in ambient pressure should increase the oxygen dissolving directly into cancerous growths, bypassing the need to be carried by the blood. This should offset the hypoxic conditions created by a lack of circulatory tissue, even in higher mammals such as whales.
As an aside, this could mean the deep diving abilities of larger sea mammals have an additional healing benefit and would explain why cancer risk doesn't correlate to increased body size.
Treating a person who's already on DCA therapy with a hyperbaric chamber should then produce positive and more rapid results.
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Higher partial pressure the lower you go, true, but that doesn't make up for the fact that the amount of oxygen dissolved in the ocean is far less than the amount swirling around in the atmosphere, according to:
http://books.google.com/books?id=M8o...20fish&f=false
(left it in the google search format to preserve the page I was looking at)
Fish have to concentrate the oxygen they find. Sea mammals do things differently; they do it the same way that we do (although they're capable of taking really low oxygenation, so they don't have to surface as frequently.) Not sure how environmental pressure changes affects sea mammals.
Tumor hypoxia is not something that benefits the cancer at the expense of the host, as far as I understand it. The reason that they're hypoxic is because they're burning a lot of calories going nutso (reproducing like crazy, although they also do other things like crazy as well). Increasing the oxygen available to them just gives energy to the cancerous cells which they then use to reproduce. However, the way that something toxic affects a cell depends on the environment of the cell, and what is toxic in one environment is not-- or is even beneficial-- in another environment. (There's a loose analogy here: if you're healthy, you are not going to have a stronger heart if you start taking some of your uncle's cardiac meds.)
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Just like if you get enough already, you're not going to get any benefit from vitamin D supplements.
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The atmosphere may have a higher concentration, but less oxygen dissolves directly into tissue at atmospheric pressure. Just diving 10 meters below the surface doubles that pressure and increases the oxygen dissolving into tissues.
As for tumor hypoxia, from my understanding it usually a result of the rapid tumor growth as it outgrows the blood supply available to those tissues. Hyperbaric treatment should offset that deficiency. While tumors grow well in blood rich environments, they do not process oxygen like regular cells (Warburg hypothesis), hence the whole issue regarding DCA and mitochondrial reactivation. No studies have linked hyperbaric treatment and increased cancerous growth rates that I can find. In fact, its already used in conjunction with chemo, radiative and surgical options to speed the healing process.
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Anyway, any claim for "a cure for cancer" is clearly false from the first letter of the sentence, since cancer isn't one disease and no one thing can cure all cancers.
Such a claim is an automatic red flag that indicates that the rest of the explanation will be either overblown hype or written from ignorance.
The Warburg hypothesis, which incidentally explains the mechanism by which DCA does kill some cancers, is relevant for solid tumors which is very fast from being all cancers.
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Reductionist and proud of it.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. Benjamin Franklin
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails. Clarence Darrow
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. Mark Twain
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By this theory lifelong supplementation of sea flora in the human diet would prevent solid tumors from having the chance to even get started. But I'm talking targeted therapy now. Drastic measures.
I consider tumorous cancer to be somewhat similar to scurvy in that both can result from a simple deficiency. Its no coincidence there's so many different types of cancer, there's over 200 different cells types and trillions of cells in the human body that have the potential to become cancerous. But blue whales can be around 30 meters in length and weigh in at over 180 metric tons. That's quadrillions of cells with the potential to become cancerous, yet its estimated they live can live for 80 years. If whales use deep diving as a means of pushing oxygen into hypoxic tissue, thereby dealing with their own cancers and allowing them to grow to prodigious size and age, why can't we copy them and use DCA (or a natural analog) and hyperbaric chambers?
Or just move to the beach and take up frequent scuba diving and diet including seaweeds.
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Absolutely-- hyperbaric treatment is not harmful. But neither is it helpful (in terms of killing off malignant cells). Note that while one would expect hyperbaric therapy to increase oxygen in a tumor, one wouldn't expect tumor concentrations to increase as much as the concentrations of healthy tissues increased, because the tumors are still feeding off of a choked-up blood supply.
Even when cancerous cells do unnecessary anaerobic glycolysis, they still need oxygen. Starve them of oxygen and they die.
I did a bit of looking, since I was curious, and I read of various responses of tumors to high concentrations of oxygen. Sometimes they did worse, sometimes they did better.
Also curious, I looked around a bit for incidences of cancer in terms of elevation/atmospheric pressure, and saw a few papers saying higher elevation was associated with a lower incidence of cancer, and nothing that said the reverse. Just correlation, just epidemiology, but it sounds like something you'd be interested in. (Notable more because higher elevations have higher levels of ionizing radiation, but hey.)
Oxygen+cancer research is pretty old stuff. (Modern research on oxygen continues, generally to try and get more out of chemo, rather than just to see if hyperbaric treatment would help.) Consider the introductory paragraph from http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/co...2/828.full.pdf :
"Since Warburg's classical experiments showing that tumors differ from other tissues in their requirements of and reactions toward oxygen, there have been a number of attempts to influence the development of tumors in animals by changing the oxygen pressure in the inspired air. Some measure of success has been reported by investigators who employed increased oxygen pressures, but nothing of therapeutic value has thus far resulted."
That's from 1942. And from what I see, that paragraph is still accurate. I would not expect higher oxygen concentrations to lead to reduced incidence of cancers in general. If you want something more recent on hypoxia, consider http://www.stanford.edu/class/archiv.../brown2004.pdf -- very good source, good details on how hypoxia affects treatment, reasonably accessible.
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At least it'll be accurate if you change it to read "...showing that some tumors...".
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Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails. Clarence Darrow
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Yeah, although what I was getting at was that when you're healthy, taking somebody else's meds isn't just unhelpful, it's likely to be harmful; I was getting at the idea that there's no such thing as an unequivocally good thing when it comes to medicine, and that includes things like oxygen, and, sure, vitamin D.
Different cancers are different, acknowledged. I don't mean to suggest that any malignantly proliferative cell is the same as any other. (I'm writing in general terms because that's how SKAL is looking at the problem.)At least it'll be accurate if you change it to read "...showing that some tumors...".
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Just a bit of additional clarification...
My suggestions about the possible health benefits of diving for whales relies heavily on the idea that they're also consuming DIA or BrIA in mass quantities. Whales that eat krill by the ton are only a step away from the algea that should be introducing these halogenated compounds into their food chain. Lacking these compounds, hyperbaric treatment alone would be ineffective.
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As an additional addendum to this line of thought...
Larger sea mammals that feed higher up the food chain, like sperm whales, bottlenosed (or beaked) whales and elephant seals, are the deepest divers. Sperm whales have been recorded diving 3 kms in depth. As a higher predator, the concentration of DIA or BrIA they'd be recieving would be reduced compared to a baleen whale that feeds on krill that've been consuming these compounds directly from algea. This could necessitate deeper diving, not only for hunting, but also to push more oxygen into hypoxic tissue and deal with solid tumors that may be forming due to this lack.
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