And for a minute I thought that's it, carbonated drinks are being researched and Cancer Research are paying for it. My client Kim had told me the news and had pointed out that they were seemingly in agreement with research we've discussed for number of years.
The researchers from both Ulster and Oxford universities state that low oxygen levels in tumours is a key reason why radiotherapy and drugs fail. I'd counter that the hypoxia in the tissue is the reason the cancer is able to grow, not the reason 'treatments' have such poor success. Otto Warburg found that oxygen starved cells cannot utilise oxidative metabolism, and thus have to use lactate fermentation, in the absence of oxygen to generate energy. Of late that has been translated and misrepresented as sugar causes cancer by everyone from Jamie Oliver to the World Health Organisation (WHO), but the very presence of lactate in a cancer metabolism is evidence that the cells are deriving energy without oxygen, so it is a metabolic defect much like diabetes.
My thoughts soon turned the moment I realised that it was funded by Cancer Research. I couldn't comprehend that they were intending to fund carbon dioxide research, surely that wouldn't be profitable or patentable? And then I read further, the plan is to develop a drink that is "rich in oxygen micro-bubbles", aimed at targeting the specific cancer cells. No doubt this drink will come at a high cost and be treated as medicine. In some ways it's great that their is the potential for a less toxic agent to be used. However, my experience tells me that pumping oxygen into a cell that has stopped using isn't really the answer. As Dr. Peat has previously stated "Breathing pure oxygen lowers the oxygen content of tissues; breathing rarefied air, or air with carbon dioxide, oxygenates and energizes the tissues".
I wish them luck but if their has been a metabolic adaption and the individual is stuck in glycolysis, unable to perform the other stages of cellular metabolism, including the inability to produce CO2 as an end product, then it would seem wiser to address those issues rather than attempt to hyperventilate the cells with O2.
As discussed in previous posts, without Carbon dioxide (CO2), you can't use oxygen efficiently. If you're an athlete that wants to increase the oxygenation, go train at altitude, sleep in an altitude tent or any other way you can increase the % of CO2 you breath in. Other methods could be drinking carbonated drinks, bag breathing (like you would in a panic attack), using sodium bicarbonate, ensuring you have enough glucose in your diet (and active thyroid hormone), or even using the drug diamox which helps retain CO2, and is used in those suffering altitude sickness or high blood pressure.
In short, it is great that they've looked outside the box. It's just a shame they're looking out of a box that was supplied by the medical industry, which still has a back to front mechanistic view of biology.