Low Level Oxygen & Cancer

posted by Kris Zurek on the 15th April 2013

Is it possible that one of the main reasons why there is so much cancer in our world, is because our cells are starved of oxygen?

But how that could be possible, because surely we all do breathe. But apparently not all oxygen gets to all the cells.

And why is that, you could wonder?

Here are few factors that I have identified:

1. shallow and rapid breathing (related to traumas, poor body-mind awareness & chronic stress)
2. chronic hyperventilation (research of Dr. Buteyko)
3. anemia; low iron levels (or wrong type of iron isotope) in the blood
4. damaged RBCs due to attacks of free radicals, bad bacteria, viruses, mycoplasma, and EFA deficiencies
5. consumption of acid-forming drinks and foods (don’t confuse with acid-tasting foods)
6. yeast overgrowth/systemic Candida (it lowers oxygen in surrounding tissues in order to proliferate)
7. bad bacteria infections create hypoxic, acidic and toxicity through their abnormal metabolism
8. sedentary lifestyle; lack aerobic type of exercises
9. poor blood circulation; cold extremities; blocked capillaries
10. life in the city with high pollution levels (the higher the pollution, the lower the oxygen levels)

Live Blood Analysis can identify oxygen deficiency and lowered capacity of red blood cells to carry oxygen, which if not corrected can lead to problems.

Go to Live Blood Analysis page

So lets look now at a research showing the link between low level oxygen and cancer development. This investigation has been initiated by Otto Warburg in the 1920′s . Since then it has been validated many times and nobody can say anymore that this is just a Medical Hypothesis. Unfortunately, to this day, many doctors are unaware of this very significant research.

Dr. Otto Warburg was a director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (now Max Planck Institute) for cell physiology in Berlin. He investigated the metabolism of tumors and the respiration of cells, in particular cancer cells.

In his research and published paper The Metabolism of Tumors (source: NCBI), he demonstrated that all forms of cancer are characterized by two basic conditions: acidosis and hypoxia (lack of oxygen). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery!

It is important here to mention that, acidosis and a lack of oxygen are two sides of the same coin: where you have one, you have the other.

Dr. Warburg is accredited to discovering that all normal body cells meet their energy needs by respiration of oxygen, whereas cancer cells meet their energy needs in great part by fermentation and ideally the fernantation of sugars.

Oxygen gas, the donor of energy in plants and animals, is very scarse in the cancer cells and replaced by the energy yielding reaction of the lowest living forms, namely the fermentation of sugar. Thus cancer survives anaerobically, without oxygen and additionally it survives in a low pH acidic and toxemic environment. As Dr. Warburg stated, ” Cancerous tissues are acidic”. Cancer cannot survive in high levels of oxygen.

All normal cells have an absolute requirement for oxygen, but cancer cells can live without oxygen – a rule without exception.” … “Deprive a cell 35% of its oxygen for 48 hours and it may become cancerous.”

Dr. Otto Warburg, The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Cell Physiology

Link to New York Times magazine article – An Old Idea Revived: Starve Cancer to Death

Cancer cannot survive in high levels of oxygen, but the trick is to be able to deliver O2 to the cells

Most recent research studies collaborating findings of Dr. Otto Warburg:

University of Toronto: Low Levels of Oxygen in Tumours Predicts Prostate Cancer Recurrence

The Warburg Effect: How Does it Benefit Cancer Cells?

Nine Year Study Finally Explains The Relationship Between Sugar And Cancer

Yeast study links sugar to growth of cancer cells

Low oxygen levels `may drive tumor growth in cancer

The findings of the new study, published in Journal of Molecular Cell Biology and conducted by researchers from the University of Georgia, run counter to widely accepted beliefs that genetic mutations are responsible for cancer growth. Researchers have found that low oxygen levels in cells may be the primary cause of uncontrollable tumour growth in some cancers.

If hypoxia, or low oxygen levels in cells, is proven to be a key driver of certain types of cancer, treatment plans for curing the malignant growth could change in significant ways” – Ying Xu, Regents-Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and professor of bioinformatics and computational biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

Tumour oxygenation: implications for breast cancer prognosis

The role of hypoxia in cancer progression, angiogenesis, metastasis, and resistance to therapy

Ozone Treatments can improve cellular oxygenation in the body much better than Hyperbaric Oxygen treatments.

Go to Ozone treatments page here

When Cells Suffocate: Autophagy in Cancer and Immune Cells under Low Oxygen

International Journal of Cell BiologyVolume 2011 (2011), Article ID 470597, 13 pages doi:10.1155/2011/470597

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study recently published in the journal Cancer Research details a mechanism by which hypoxic (low oxygen) conditions create aggressive cancer.

Oxford Journals, JNCI Journal of National Cancer Institute; 2001 Volume 93, Issue 4; Pp. 266-276.: Tumor Hypoxia

Pietro Gullino, at the National Cancer Institute, devised a test which showed that slow growing cancer always produced fermentation lactic acid. (which is synonymous with low oxygen environment)

Silvio Fiala, a biochemist from the University of Southern California, also confirmed that this slow growing cancer produced lactic acid, and that it’s oxygen respiration was reduced.

J. B. Kizer, a biochemist and physicist at Gungnir Research in Portsmith, Ohio explains:

Since Warburg’s discovery, this difference in respiration has remained the most fundamental (and some say, only) physiological difference consistently found between normal and cancer cells. Using cell culture studies, I decided to examine the differential responses of normal and cancer cells to changes in the oxygen environment.

“The results that I found were rather remarkable. I found that… “High O2 tensions were lethal to cancer tissue, 95 % being very toxic, whereas in general, normal tissues were not harmed by high oxygen tensions. Indeed, some normal tissues were found to require high O2 tensions. It does seem to demonstrate the possibility that if the O2 tensions in cancer tissues can be elevated, then the cancer tissue may be able to be killed selectively, as it seems that the cancer cells are incapable of handling the O2 in a high O2 environment.”