Rechârge Biomedical Clinic

Recharge Biomedical “PODCAST 012: Exercise”

Dr. Ed Park of Recharge Biomedical explains the simple cause for most cancers and how Telomerase Activation prevents them, not causes them.

(note: there is an essential video that accompanies this post at the bottom of the page.)

Cancer is hard to define. Would-be cancer cells are routinely destroyed by your immune system prior to becoming clinically apparent.  That may have happened billions of times already but “if a tree falls in the woods, and no one hears it…”

Cancers can also fail to travel or invade very well, leading to cancers of “low malignant potential” that you can live with indefinitely, like Steve Jobs’ Neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer.

And if cancer-like behavior, such as loss of contact inhibition or uncontrolled replication, occurs in a telomerase-inactive cell, then its lineage is dead within 50 divisions due to the Hayflick limit, so who cares?

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What we can say without hesitation about both Cancer (and Aging) is that they may not be diseases like Scurvy (Vitamin C deficiency) or a Heart Attack (coronary artery blockage) but they are both the result of DNA damage which can be caused by radiation, oxidation, but most of all, telomere shortening and dysfunction.

Since it is Breast Cancer Awareness month, let’s look at the infamous “breast cancer gene,” or BRCA1.   A BRCA1 mutation is associated with a 60% chance of breast and ovarian cancer by age 90.  But did you know that “BRCA,” although it sounds like “breast cancer,” is really named after Berkeley, California?

Even more surprising, BRCA1 is no more a “cancer gene”  than policemen are crime-inducers. They don’t cause cancer but if they aren’t policing the DNA, cancers will develop.

This policeman’s role of BRCA1 is to keep the telomeres healthy and repair DNA breaks. That is what they do 99.99% of the time. When a breast ‘stem cell,’ which is already immortal by virtue of telomerase activation, loses its heterozygosity (LOH), it loses its only good copy of the BRCA1 gene and then the “bad” copy (or no copy) is all that is left.  As a result, the cell can no longer protect the telomeres and bad things happen.

LOH occurs with high frequency in BRCA1 patients who get cancer because chromosomes are not evenly segregated between a cells two daughters, a process described in the video about chromosome damage at the end of this posting.

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In your car, friction causes your pistons to wear out, the brakes to fail, and the tires to go bald.

Just as motion creates friction in your car, so replicative senescence grinds down the cells in your body.  Cells are constantly “in motion” because they must copy their 46 chromosomes 50 billion times a day. With each division, telomeres shorten and that’s why cells age.

Analogies are not even needed when it comes to radiation and oxidative stress. Radiation can cause DNA breaks just as radiation causes paint to crack and upholstery to fade. And oxidation causes DNA damage in cells just as it causes rust to your undercarriage.

————Other cancer syndromes

In addition to BRCA, there are other gene defects which can cause cancer syndromes and they often relate to DNA repair, such as the Retinoblastoma protein and P53 (Li-Fraumeni Syndrome).

When I say there is only one cause of breast cancer, I mean that DNA damage is the sina qua non of all cancers. And when I say there are many cures, just look at this chart because all of these pathways are constantly at work to repair DNA or cause cell apoptosis (forced death) in order to prevent cancer. When any of them are disabled, as in the case of BRCA1 gene mutation, your DNA surveillance is compromised and like a city without cops, crime ensues.

Interestingly, 10 of 11 premature aging syndromes (aka Progerias) are related to DNA repair problems as I describe in this video, so the premature aging and the premature cancer syndromes are cut from the same cloth: failure of DNA repair and/or cell apoptosis.

Now that we have a telomerase activator in TA-65, we can assist DNA repair by preventing the telomere decay that causes breaks and incorrect chromosome separation at cell division.  Don’t let another day pass without naturally recharging your stem cells by safely activating your telomerase.

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To really increase your breast cancer awareness, you must watch this video which explains how DNA damage occurs and explains why cancer-prevention genes like BRCA1 are so essential.

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There are 11 syndromes that result in premature aging, or PROGERIAS (pro- towards / geria – elderly).  Scientists have determined the genetic and molecular causes for them, so what can those details tell us about aging in general?

——————– THE PROGERIAS

(adapted from a chart from: “Shared Phenotypes Among Segmental Progeroid Syndromes Suggest Underlying Pathways of Aging,”
Hofer, AC et al , J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci (2005) 60 (1): 10-20)

You may notice that only four of the Progerias show accelerated telomere shortening, but since 10 of 11 involve DNA maintenance problems, I believe a Telomere theory of aging still applies insofar as telomeres are made of DNA and therefore a subset of DNA maintenance.  My own version of the telomere theory of aging can be found at the bottom of this page from my website: http://www.rechargebiomedical.com/aging.html

Here is a closer examination of Progerias by molecular etiology:

1) Helicases (in Blue above) are enzymes (like nanomachines) needed to unwind the double helix for all manner of DNA processing

2) DNA Transcription (in Orange) is the matching of complimentary strands for existing sequences (reading GGGTTA causes a ‘writing’ or transcription of CCCAAT on the opposing strand). Removal and repair of ‘typographic’ errors.

3) DNA Repair (in Red) fixes breaks in DNA, caps the telomeres, and permits checkpoints to hypnotize or kill off genetically-damaged cells.

4) Nuclear membrane integrity (in Yellow) is poor, making chromosome sorting and synthesis difficult

5) Telomerase dysfunction (in Green) allow for rapid shortening and uncapping of chromosome ends

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Q: So what do all these cell processes have in common?

A: They all cause poor maintenance of our genetic integrity.

To quote from my older blog post:
“There are 50 billion cell divisions x 6 billion base pairs copied per cell division every day. This means there are 300 quintillion (300,000,000,000,000,000,000) chances to make a mistake every day.”
http://www.rechargebiomedical.com/blog/uncategorized/288/

But the biggest problems are probably not from simple transcription “typos” but rather when telomeres become critically short, or uncapped.  Uncapped DNA triggers repair mechanisms because the repair systems see them as DNA breaks which must then be joined together.

When the cell divides the next time, the fused chromosome is torn apart like trapeze artists that can’t let go, because the points of failure after end-to-end chromosome fusion are no longer the natural “fingertips”.

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Now that you understand that premature aging, we can apply the same principles to  regular aging, which simply reflects loss of data integrity made possible by telomere attrition (both from replicative senescence and oxidation) and by poor DNA repair and transcription in general.

By taking TA-65, you will recharge your telomeres and that is always a good thing. Call now before any more of your stem cell chromosomes become uncapped.

As a new feature to these blog posts, I’m offering this video ‘walk through’ of the main ideas. Click the image below to view it.

Premature Aging Syndromes

If you found this post and/or video interesting, please forward it to a friend. Thanks!

Here is the link to the complete DNA transcription video

Q: Does aging prevent cancer?
A: No, yes, no, no, and huh?

I’ve tossed together a quick posting about the question “Does Aging prevent cancer?”

We’ll take this question on Five levels:

1) The Molecular Level – No!
Replicative senescence causes telomeric DNA to shorten each cell division.
Unprotected telomeres allow for DNA damage which is the sina qua non of cancer.
So at the level of the DNA, it’s quite the opposite: aging of the DNA causes cancer.

2) Nuclear Level -Yes
Yes.  A wonderful experiment created a custom p53 enzyme (the policeman of the genome) that could no longer kill (apoptosis) but COULD shut down (senescence) critically damaged telomeres.  They proved that in real-life mice, p53 prevention of skin cancer required the forced-aging of old dysfunctional cells possessed of critically-short telomeres.  Surprisingly, the p53 prevention of skin cancer in these mice was not mediated by killing those cells.

3) Organism level – No
Obviously, older people get more cancer, premature aging syndrome kids (progerics) get more cancer, and aging immune systems (i.e. AIDS) area associated with more cancer.

4) Evolution of the Species level – No.
From aging conferences and reading editorials, I’ve heard some intelligent scientists suggest that aging is Nature’s way of preventing cancer. Dubious at best.

Hominid evolution never included aging because the fossil record doesn’t even show any of our ancestors made it much past 30.  Since cancer never occurred (because aging was uncommon,) it couldn’t have be a factor in natural selection.  Those scientists need to brush up on their Darwin and Dawkins, and put down the Genesis and Grimm brothers.

5) Cosmic – huh?

Isn't it Ironic?

Grimm Brothers are a good model for much of what passes for theories on Aging.  Deeply ingrained in our core values is the ironic comeuppance, which serves as a karmic gyroscope in what is essentially a magical and personal view of living.  “Be careful what you wish for” they say, the Monkey’s Paw, Vampirism, the Twilight Zone episode where Burgess Meredith has all the time in the world to read books but breaks his glasses.

But let’s face it, in the real world, the bad guys often come out on top and usually, Grace gives us more than we truly deserve.

In my opinion, the universe doesn’t concern itself with ‘aging’ or ‘cancer’.  These terms are abstractions that emerge from human biology and consciousness. Scientists who suggest that aging prevents cancer should concern themselves more with the mechanics of the watch, than whether the watchmaker was blind, deaf, or in a foul mood when he wove the tapestry of our lives.

As Alexander Pope pointed out: “The proper study of mankind is Man” and the experts there are the storytellers, musicians, and artists.

The experts on God and the Metaphysical “meaning of it all” are clergy and philosophers.

In my opinion, scientists should stick to science and avoid hand-waving and trying to interpret the cosmic ‘meaning of it all’

The news yesterday was of a new class of drug to fight melanoma using a new mechanism: it boosts your immune system instead of destroying it.

I created this diagram to illustrate the treatment of cancer as of 2010:

But as with many things, best treatment for cancer is prevention. If you protect the tips of the chromosomes (the TELOMERES), you don’t get the recombination and breaks that cause cancer.

The second best the p53 enzyme, the “watchman of the genome”, which repairs DNA, causes damaged cells to stop dividing, or destroys them outright.

The third line is the adaptive immune system of the T Cells, especially the Natural Killer cells. Check out this link to see how your body has possibly cured you of cancer millions of times already.

Once cancer becomes clinically-evident (like the weeds above ground in this diagram,) treatment becomes increasingly destructive from precision surgery, to local radiation, to systemic chemotherapy.

The efficacy of radiation and chemotherapy comes from targeting rapidly-producing cells.  Unfortunately, your own body’s stem cells are also rapidly-producing. So the cure is often worse than the disease and at the very least, it makes it harder to fight the disease

Would you put down a student protest....

.... by dropping napalm on campus?

Returning to our pyramid diagram, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of weed-killer, or scorched earth.

Telomerase activation occurs with rest, exercise, good diet, and taking TA-65.

To learn more about the link between cancer and telomeres check out this link.