Food may influence cancer spread
“Over to you my dear beloved
uncle JB Lim, How true is this report by scientists from the University of
Cambridge, England about asparagine in asparagus and cancer spread, as reported by BBC”
From Niece Lim Ai Lian
……………………………………….
My dearest niece Ai Lian
Thanks for the report to solicit my
comment and explanation on this site from your Whatsapp to me:
First of all let me tell you Nutrition
is a very difficult and dynamic subject, and especially in the area of
Nutrition and Cancer.
There are a tremendous wealth of
knowledge we already know about natural substances present in fruits,
vegetables, spices and herbs and how they can affect our health and our outcome
of disease including cancer.
Scientists learn about them
through an inundation of their scientific discoveries, and yet there are much
more information about the medicinal values of tens of thousands of natural
substances in foods that remained undiscovered.
New discoveries on food and
nutrition are published every 10 minutes worldwide. This makes our
understanding how natural substances in foods affect our health very difficult
to understand if not confusing with conflicting scientific disclosures being
published
Nutrition is an extremely broad
field of study, and nutritional science is also a specialty of medical sciences
and their applications under dietetics plays an extremely important part in therapeutic
medicine
Despite of the avalanche of our knowledge
about plant-based foods, yet if you were
I ask me for instance, whether durians,
mangosteens, Psidium guajava (guava), Averrhoa bilimbi (camias), Averrhoa
carambola (star fruit), Nephelium lappaceum (rambutan), Achras sapota
(sapodilla or ciku), Lansium domesticum (langsat), etc, etc, if consumed
regularly could block, prevent, reverse
or cure cancer, or use to treat hypertension, diabetes or any other disease, the
answer I am going to give you is:
“I do not know”
We already know that fruits and
vegetables high in potassium and low in sodium as well as rich in antioxidants
of various molecular weights are very useful in the control of hypertension and
many chronic diseases where free radical damage to the cells, tissues, organs
and systems are involved
But their medicinal values are far more than
their uses in managing mere hypertension, diabetes or the prevention of cancer.
They contain thousands of phytochemicals and antioxidants that act collectively
and in different ways unknown even to research nutritionists, practicing dieticians
and food scientists
Then we ask, what about
vegetables like Bambusa sp. (bamboo shoots), Sechium edule (chayote), Allium
fistulosum (spring oinion), Sauropus androngynus (sayur manis), Amaranthus
gangeticus (Chinese spinach), and thousands of other tropical vegetables, etc.?
Can these too have a therapeutic
or medicinal properties that could prevent or even reverse renal diseases like glomerulonephritis
and nephrotic syndrome, or able to restore re-establish normal sinus rhythm in
heart block? What about their role in liver and bile duct disorders like Gilbert's
syndrome, sclerosing cholangitis? We are giving examples of course, not
specific diseases where diet plays a paramount importance.
Again we do not know without
studies. These are only questions we ask which food acts prophylactically and therapeutically.
Scientists who conduct research
on food and nutrition would normally only observe and record their effect instead
of trying to explain how they work
It is not that they cannot
explain, it is just that it would be exceedingly difficult, considering that
there are several possibilities with tens to hundreds into thousands of unknown
active principles found in naturally in fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices
So which one ingredient among the
thousands of phytochemicals is actually working, or do they act synergistically?
We have little answers
Even if we manage to identify and
isolate their bioactive principles, it is hard to explain their mechanisms?
This is the dilemma challenging
the most brilliant scientific brains how food substances act as a medicine.
Indeed Hippocrates had advised
doctors in his days and even for doctors and patients today very correctly and
appropriately about the therapeutic values of foods when he advocated:
“Let Food Be Thy Medicine”
Hippocrates never said let
medicine be thy food. This of course was put into his mouth by pharmaceutical people
today and modern doctors who want to replace food with drugs for their own survival.
In order to explain how food
substances work as a medicine, it would involve a very deep understanding of
food chemistry, biochemistry, metabolic pathways, molecular biology, genetic
switches, epigenetics, among other medical-scientific disciplines
These are highly complex and
specialized areas of studies. Without these integrated knowledge it is almost
impossible to explain how food substances can affect health and disease like
cancer.
Nutrition is indeed very complex and
complicated trying to explain
Any attempt to explain their
mechanisms would require a team of scientists from various fields working
together to unravel its dynamics. So, researchers try to avoid giving an
explanation as far as possible except demonstrating an effect on the body or on
a disease.
You can clearly see that even scientists
from the University of Cambridge conducting above study as reported by BBC did
not try to explain much except mentioning that cancer spread may depend on the
amino acid asparagine. But how asparagine works they remain silent.
It was also shown earlier and independently
by Prof Charles Swanton, Cancer Research UK's chief clinician that the drug
L-asparaginase is used to treat acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, which is
dependent on asparagine, and that the development of lymphoma and intestinal
cancer were also slowed down in the absence of amino acids serine and glycine.
We already know that amino acids
in which proteins are derived are very crucial in all cell and body growth and development.
Hence we can see nutrition and food
substances do influence the outcome of disease including cancers.
Food as a medicine as Hippocrates
of Cos (cica 460 BC) works differently from how pharmaceutical drugs act.
It is a breeze for any scientist in pharmacology to explain
how drugs work. They can explain in great detail how they work because drugs
are specially designed and modeled by them. They then educate a doctor how they work
(pharmacodynamics), and how to use them, their dosage, and explain the kinetic
of their absorption, distribution, retention time, and mechanisms of excretion.
They also inform the doctors
their clinical applications (indications), contraindications, toxicities,
adverse drug reactions, and the dosages because they study the chemical
pathology of a disease and work on them during the formulations and conduct
clinical trials on them. So these scientists know best. These information are all clearly summarized
in their literature (pamphlets) enclosed in the package.
Hence it is not a problem for a
pharmacologists or a scientist working in a drug industry to explain how a drug
works, their biochemical and clinical efficacy because they are the experts who
study the chemistry of the disease (pathology) first, and they are the person
who actually designed the drugs to block, substitute, replace or to mimic the
body’s chemistry, or slow down the chemical pathology.
They then manufacture the drug
and sell them to the doctors and teach the doctors how to use them with all the
dosage, precautions, etc. given to the doctors.
All these information are given
in their literature for the doctors. That’s not a problem for these medical scientists
to explain. That is because drugs are
something they designed, formulate and developed themselves.
But how are we to know what’s inside a food
(other than the usual carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, minerals and trace
elements) especially for fruits, vegetables, spices and herbs.
There are hundreds to thousands
of little known substances called phytochemicals in them, and even though we
already know a lot, but there are lots more we do not know
These natural substances too
possess therapeutic properties like pharmaceutical drugs except they are designed
and put there as natural medicines by God for our existence on this planet, and
they have been made used of by man for thousands of years by all civilizations.
These natural medicines are NOT
designed and formulated as a single compound for a specific use, or only for a
specific disease as done by pharmaceutical chemists and their therapeutic actions
studied by the pharmacologists.
Natural medicine are designed and
put there by God for all purpose. We just can’t match God in His formulation.
It is not that scientists are
unable to explain how many naturally occurring medicines works to block cancer.
It is just that it would be extremely difficult to explain considering that
there may be several possible explanations involving chemical, biochemical,
metabolic pathways, cell action, molecular and gene expressions, their switches
and their epigenetics involvement…etc.,
But in this case about an amino
acid slowing down some form of cancers, we are talking about just one food
principle namely, asparagine. This is a non-essential amino acid. The expression
“non-essential amino acid” does not imply that this amino acid or other
non-essential acids are not required or essential to the human body. They are absolutely
essential for growth, repair and development of the human body.
They are only non-essential because
the body can synthetize them, and hence
they need not come from food sources
So maybe this makes it much
easier for me to answer your question
First of all, let it be known
that asparagine is found not only in asparagus, but also in most legumes, soya
beans, nuts beef, eggs, sea foods, like fish and shell fish, milk and dairy
products like cheese and even in potatoes.
Now bear with me, as I need to
introduce just a tiny bit of biochemistry. Asparagine enters into the common
Kreb’s Cycle and changes into oxaloacetic acid as with all other nutrients before
entering the brain for its function. This makes this amino acid very important
for our survival. We just can’t block it just to prevent cancer.
But what is more important is
that, asparagine is encoded by the codons AAU and AAC ,
and its alpha-amino acid is then used in the biosynthesis of other proteins.
Codons are genetic codes responsible
for amino acid translation and their production as in gene expressions.
This step is very crucial if we now
try to explain how asparagine works in cancer development
First, all cells inclusive of
cancer cells need to genetically express their special proteins through these
codons in order to survive and spread.
Without these special proteins expressions
with the help of asparagine, the cells including cancer cells die. This step is
crucial in our understanding. In short, blocking off asparagine or avoiding
foods rich in asparagine may slow down existing cancers, but at the same time
seriously compromise our other biochemical and physiological functions.
Hence avoiding asparagus and all
foods rich in asparagine may not answer in preventing or slowing down cancer.
In any case, as I have already
mentioned, asparagine is a non-essential amino acid, meaning even if you avoid
foods with this amino acid, the body will still be able to synthesize it for
its vital requirements. So you are back to square one again, solving nothing.
However, my feeling in forwarding
my hypothesis how asparagine works is that, it may have helped in the synthesis
of the various types of proteins cancer cells need. Proteins are nitrogen in
composition and without a nitrogen base, no protein can be expressed by cancer
genes, and they cannot spread.
But it also affects the rest of the
body functions
This is the probable the answer I
offer you.
But if you are not satisfied with
my explanation you should contact those researchers at the Cancer Research Institute
in Cambridge, the UK for a better explanation.
Obviously they know more than I
do because they were the medical scientists who conducted the study.
They may have another alternative
explanation.
Lim jb
