More About Chelated Calcium

A couple of things to mention about taking chelated calcium, as calcium citrate or calcium tartrate. The different names reflect that different amino acids are bonded to the calcium in each case. They are both effective, although some personal experimentation may reveal a greater absorption of one over the other.

However, it should be noted that the body is limited as to how much calcium it can absorb in a given amount of time, and that limit is 600 milligrams every few hours. Taking more than that in a single dose is just a waste. Since the caplets typically come in 250mg sizes, I find it’s easiest to take 2 at a time, for a total of 500mg at breakfast, dinner, and before bed, for a total of 1.5 grams per day. This, for me, is a maintenance dose. If I were repairing damage from a break, or trying to restore lost calcium, I would take 2 to 2.5 grams a day, in four or five 500mg doses, four hours apart during the waking part of the day.

Again, forget about taking ordinary calcium carbonate, you can eat it until you’re blue in the face and it won’t do you any good. Absorption will be minimal. Plus, this type of calcium is typically made from ground-up oyster shells and is basically chalk, not something I really fancy eating.

Another thing I want to mention is the number of studies that have proved positive results with regard to cannabis preventing cancer. Here’s another one, performed recently by well-known researcher Donald Tashkin, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, showing, to his admitted surprise, that cannabis tars in the lungs do not cause lung cancer, and in fact, offer some degree (the actual extent needs further investigation) of protection from cancer. I’ll just reprint the article here:

STUDY FINDS NO MARIJUANA-CANCER CONNECTION

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 26, 2006; A03

The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.

The new findings “were against our expectations,” said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.

“We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use,” he said. “What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.”

Federal health and drug enforcement officials have widely used Tashkin’s previous work on marijuana to make the case that the drug is dangerous. Tashkin said that while he still believes marijuana is potentially harmful, its cancer-causing effects appear to be of less concern than previously thought.

Earlier work established that marijuana does contain cancer-causing chemicals as potentially harmful as those in tobacco, he said. However, marijuana also contains the chemical THC, which he said may kill aging cells and keep them from becoming cancerous.

Tashkin’s study, funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, involved 1,200 people in Los Angeles who had lung, neck or head cancer and an additional 1,040 people without cancer matched by age, sex and neighborhood.

They were all asked about their lifetime use of marijuana, tobacco and alcohol. The heaviest marijuana smokers had lighted up more than 22,000 times, while moderately heavy usage was defined as smoking 11,000 to 22,000 marijuana cigarettes. Tashkin found that even the very heavy marijuana smokers showed no increased incidence of the three cancers studied.

“This is the largest case-control study ever done, and everyone had to fill out a very extensive questionnaire about marijuana use,” he said. “Bias can creep into any research, but we controlled for as many confounding factors as we could, and so I believe these results have real meaning.”

Tashkin’s group at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA had hypothesized that marijuana would raise the risk of cancer on the basis of earlier small human studies, lab studies of animals, and the fact that marijuana users inhale more deeply and generally hold smoke in their lungs longer than tobacco smokers — exposing them to the dangerous chemicals for a longer time. In addition, Tashkin said, previous studies found that marijuana tar has 50 percent higher concentrations of chemicals linked to cancer than tobacco cigarette tar.

While no association between marijuana smoking and cancer was found, the study findings, presented to the American Thoracic Society International Conference this week, did find a 20-fold increase in lung cancer among people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.

The study was limited to people younger than 60 because those older than that were generally not exposed to marijuana in their youth, when it is most often tried.

In addition, the following articles also turned up:

Cannabis-Linked Cell Receptor Might Help Prevent Colon Cancer

FRIDAY, Aug. 1 (HealthDay News) — A cannabinoid receptor lying on the surface of cells may help suppress colorectal cancer, say U.S. researchers. When the receptor is turned off, tumor growth is switched on.

Cannabinoids are compounds related to the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) found in the cannabis plant.

It’s already known that the receptor, CB1, plays a role in relieving pain and nausea, elevating mood and stimulating appetite by serving as a docking station for the cannabinoid group of signaling molecules. This study suggests that CB1 may offer a new path for cancer prevention or treatment.

“We’ve found that CB1 expression is lost in most colorectal cancers, and when that happens, a cancer-promoting protein is free to inhibit cell death,” senior author Dr. Raymond Dubois, provost and executive vice president of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, said in a university news release.

In their study of human colorectal tumor specimens, the researchers also found that the drug decitabine can restore CB1 expression.

In addition, mice that are prone to developing intestinal tumors and also have functioning CB1 receptors developed fewer and smaller tumors when treated with a drug that mimics a cannabinoid receptor ligand, the researchers found. Ligands are molecules that function by binding to specific receptors.

“Potential application of cannabinoids as anti-tumor drugs is an exciting prospect, because cannabinoid agonists (synthetic molecules that mimic the action of natural molecules) are being evaluated now to treat the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy,” DuBois said. “Turning CB1 back on and than treating with a cannabinoid agonist could provide a new approach to colorectal cancer treatment or prevention.”

The study was published in the Aug. 1 issue of the journal Cancer Research.

— Robert Preidt

SOURCE: University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, news release, Aug. 1, 2008

Copyright © 2008 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

Here’s a page, too long to reprint here, containing background on a number of studies starting with the 1974 Medical College of Virginia study, the first (that we know of) showing the anti-VGF (see earlier posts) properties of cannabinoids that starve tumors, up through the Madrid, and the subsequent Naples study of recent years, proving the effectiveness of cannabis to eliminate or greatly reduce in size, cancerous tumors.

http://www.jcrows.com/cancerprevention.html

Again, I’d like to point out that the relationship between cannabis’ anti-VGF property and its effectiveness in preventing diabetic retinopathy has not yet even been imagined let alone investigated and I would like to claim credit as the first person to suggest it. You heard it here first, folks!

Halting and Preventing Osteoporosis

Sorry, it’s been a while, I’m trying to find a better blog program that actually has instructions, not just FAQs.

OK, so now we have the basic principles of avoiding diabetic complications, by 1) Getting to normal everyday, by whatever means necessary, to avoid acidosis, and 2) not eating when your sugar is high, at least not anything with readily absorbable calories. On top of that, there are the general health principles, especially important for anyone with a compromised system, which are; 1) Eat less, about 1/2 – 2/3 of what most people normally eat, to minimize free radical damage.  As Arnold Schwarzenegger said, ’stay hungry!’ 2) Breath properly, that is abdominally, to get as much oxygen into the blood as possible. 3) dilate the blood vessels by any or all the means described above; heat, exercise, cannabis, to get as much blood to the tissues as possible.

One extra factor I’d like to mention is Tea.

Tea, whether black or green, is loaded with free-radical-fighting antioxidants, as well as having been shown to prevent cancer.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1916798.stm

Having been born in England, I’ve been drinking tea all my life, and strongly feel it contributes to my health. Drink Tea!

Osteoporosis:

After I had been on Humulin(TM) less than 3 years, I was diagnosed with osteoporosis. This was odd, since only 6 years earlier, my calcium levels had been high normal. In that time, I changed my diet, after I started on Humulin, from frozen and prepared meals to cooking with fresh foods as much as possible, and increased the number of times I ate vegetables from monthly to daily, particularly broccoli and celery, so if anything my calcium levels should have risen not fallen. I knew the only medical change that had taken place was switching from animal insulin to biosynthetic Humulin(TM), so it didn’t take long to suspect a link. At that time I began searching online for any study taking note of a rise in osteoporosis among diabetics. After 3 years I found one. In February 2004, an study appeared in the Journal of Pediatrics titled ‘Type 1 Diabetes and Osteoporosis (Type 1 diabetes and osteoporosis
Stephen R. Daniels MD, PhD , The Journal of Pediatrics, Volume 144, Issue 1 , January 2004, Page A3 ) in which a previously unseen relationship was noted between osteoporosis cases and type 1 (ONLY) diabetes. The mechanism of the relationship, that is, an understanding of what actually was going on, what steps occurred, what was causing the relationship was unidentified, that is to say, not yet known.

The observation that the link was only between type 1s, not type 2s is significant. What is the difference between them? Obviously, the majority of type 2s do not take Humulin(TM), whereas all type 1s do.

When I was diagnosed with osteoporosis, my spine had begun to collapse. An MRI confirmed two vertebrae were crushed to one third their original thickness, and I was referred to a specialist, who told me I would have a hump and there was no way around it. I learned quickly, that was only the start, that I could expect my spine to continue collapsing until it was stopped only by my ribs running into my hips.

There is one main drug used to counter osteoporosis and its incipient version, osteopenia, and that is Fosamax(TM) which is the brand name for the chemical alendronate, one of a class of compounds called biophosphonates. Alendronate costs around $90/ month but only works for about half the people taking it, and it takes months to years to make that determination. The specialist I saw told me he would prescribe it to me if i wished, but that he was tired of telling people who couldn’t afford it to take it, only to tell them a year later that he was sorry they had spent all that money, but the drug hadn’t done them any good.

I was familiar with chelation, mostly as a means of ridding the  body of heavy metals, and knew that minerals could be chelated. I looked it up and found that chelated clacuium had absorption rates roughly equivalent to alendronate, and worked for anyone who took it. It was also a fraction of the cost. Currently I buy it from CVS at less than $10 for a bottle of 250 caplets, of which I take 6 a day, that is a gram and a half of chelated calcium. It’s important not to get slack and stop taking it, I have broken bones since the diagnosis, but only when I had been out of chelated calcium for at least 6  weeks. After the first few times, I made sure I refreshed my supply regularly, and since then have not broken a single bone, compared to 10 breaks in the 4 years preceding.

The effectiveness of the calcium replacement can be remarkable. The last bone I broke was the lateral condyle of the right femur. This is the horseshoe end that wraps around the kneecap. I fell off my bike (it was more complicated but I won’t go into that here), landed on my knee and completely broke off the extension at the end of the largest bone in the human body.  The break was quite clear on the x-ray. I told my doctor I would be taking chelated calcium and he expressed interest in whether it would speed healing.

Four weeks later I was already walking again, and drove back in for another x-ray. When he saw it he whistled and called for a few other doctors in the area to come and look at it.  He turned to me and said ‘this is quite astonishing.’ He pointed out that the area between the separated portion of bone was already filled in quite substantially with a whitish mass which was clearly bone regrowth. He told me ‘whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.’

Everybody suffering from or in danger of calcium loss needs to be taking chelated calcium. It is usually sold as calcium citrate or calcium tartrate, depending on which amino acids are used. Either is fine. The calcium is bound to amino acids that the cell seeks, and in drawing in the acids, the calcium is also absorbed into the cell. There are many brands available. It’s not expensive. It works.

And BTW, 7 years later: No Hump!

Back soon.

P.S. If anyone’s reading this, please leave a comment. This is basically a trial run for the blog, so I can organize ideas and get used to posting regularly. I’m not expecting it to be read right now, except by a handful of friends, but if there’s anyone else out there, please let me know. Questions  or critiques are always welcomed!

Cannabis and Cancer Continued

Following up on the ability of cannabis to cure cancer and, via the same VGF inhibition process (and its vasodilative properties), preserve diabetic eyesight, here’s another article, from the NORML blog on the subject.

Is Senator Kennedy A Victim Of Pot Prohibition?

May 20th, 2008 By: Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director

Forgive me if the headline above sounds slightly exploitive. My intention is not to piggyback on a personal tragedy, but I did want to get your attention.

In the fourteen years I’ve worked in marijuana law reform, few events have struck me as so needlessly tragic as the federal government’s consistent and deliberate stifling of medical cannabis research. Nowhere is the Feds’ refusal to allow this science more overt and inhumane than as it pertains to the investigation of cannabinoids as anti-cancer agents, particularly in the treatment of gliomas.

As noted in today’s wire stories regarding Senator Edward Kennedy’s diagnosis, glioma is an aggressive form of cancer that affects an estimated 10,000 Americans annually. Standard treatments for the cancer include radiation and chemotherapy, though neither procedure has proven particularly effective — with the disease killing approximately half its victims within one year and all within three years.

But what if there was an alternative treatment for gliomas that could selectively target the cancer while leaving healthy cells in tact? And what if federal bureaucrats were aware of this treatment, but deliberately withheld this information from the public?

Sadly, the above questions are not hypothetical. As I originally wrote in 2004 essay for Alternet.org, entitled “Pot Shows Promise as a Cancer Cure”

In fact, the first experiment documenting pot’s anti-tumor effects took place in 1974 at the Medical College of Virginia at the behest of the U.S. government. The results of that study, reported in an Aug. 18, 1974, Washington Post newspaper feature, were that marijuana’s psychoactive component, THC, “slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent.”

Despite these favorable preliminary findings, U.S. government officials banished the study, and refused to fund any follow-up research until conducting a similar – though secret – clinical trial in the mid-1990s. That study, conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program to the tune of $2 million concluded that mice and rats administered high doses of THC over long periods had greater protection against malignant tumors than untreated controls.

However, rather than publicize their findings, government researchers shelved the results, which only became public after a draft copy of its findings were leaked in 1997 to a medical journal which in turn forwarded the story to the national media.

In the years since the completion of the National Toxicology trial, the U.S. government has yet to fund a single additional study examining the drug’s potential anti-cancer properties. Is this a case of federal bureaucrats putting politics over the health and safety of patients? You be the judge.

Fortunately, in the past ten years scientists overseas have generously picked up where U.S. researchers so abruptly left off, reporting that cannabinoids can halt the spread of numerous cancer cells — including prostate cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and in one human clinical trial, brain cancer.

Writing earlier this year in the journal Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, Italian researchers reiterated, “[C]annabinoids have displayed a great potency in reducing glioma tumor growth either in vitro or in animal experimental models. … [They] appear to be selective antitumoral agents as they kill glioma cells without affecting the viability of nontransformed counterparts.” Not one mainstream media outlet reported their findings. Perhaps now they’ll pay better attention.

What possible advancements in the treatment of cancer may have been achieved over the past 34 years had US government officials chosen to advance — rather than suppress — clinical research into the anti-cancer effects of cannabis? It’s a shame we have to speculate; it’s even more tragic that the families of Senator Kennedy and thousands of others must suffer while we do.

WHAT’S an equal shame is the number of diabetics who have gone blind unnecessarily because the circulation-enhancing and VGF inhibiting properties of cannabis have gone largely uninvestigated and hence, their importance to diabetics in preserving their eyesight.