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THE GENERAL approach to the treatment of patients with degenerative diseases should have as its purpose the overcoming of the biochemical abnormalities which are more or less responsible for the development of the disease. I am convinced that the problem of chronic diseases is not one of biochemistry, chemistry or the symptoms we observe in and on the body. Rather, it is produced by deeper-lying forces which cause "deficiency of energies". Physicians observe biological symptoms and work only with them. The real acting forces behind the visible chemical changes are physical energies, expressed by Einstein as the "electro-magnetic field". To a certain degree, this is closely connected with the electrical potentials which are lowered in cancer, according to almost all investigators (about 30) and also according to the observations of Dr. Rudolf Keller.
The above-mentioned biochemical symptoms are expressed in Hastings' "Terminology" as "intra-cellular" or "K-group minerals in essential organs" and the "extra-cellular" or "Na-group minerals in the fluids". Laboratory findings reveal that in chronic diseases, sodium and calcium, both negatively charged, invade the weaker positively charged organs; accordingly, K is lost from these organs, opening the door to further negative metabolic transformations. Here the disease starts, but not the symptoms.
It is my opinion that K and Na also play an important role in the cancer problem. These two minerals are the leaders of the two electrically opposite groups. They are in close connection with the development and maintenance of the human body as well as with the origin and progress of the disease. The human organism is, in embryonic life and early infancy, a sodium-animal, due to the relative preponderance of Na throughout the entire organism, but, in adult life, a potassium-animal. The potassium predominance must be maintained throughout life. To a certain degree it gives the basis for important developments in both directions- normal and abnormal. In this respect, the amount of minerals is necessary but the degree of their ionization is equally important, particularly in cancer.
We know now that what we have inherited is not a set of chemical substances, but a "pattern of dynamic energies", which directly distribute and ionize the minerals, hormones and enzymes, etc., for harmonic cooperation within living cells and tissues, where they belong and in which way they have to act and influence the growing tissue. Seen from this point of view, the chemical facts as they appear in the laboratory findings have the following line in our development: The unfertilized human egg cell is 1/10 mm in size, full of K-group or intracellular minerals (K, P, Mg, Mn, Cu, Fe, Au), electro-positive and has the corresponding enzymes, vitamins and protein-compounds, but the whole is inactive, waits and longs for animation. The sperm, which is 1/200 mm in size, contains the Na-group minerals and is electro-negative (Na, Cl, H2O, I, Br, Al and the ionized part of Ca), together with the other group of enzymes and vitamins, but is active and brings on enlivenment. The fertilized egg becomes, through a process of discharging some compositions and absorbing a great deal of Na from the surrounding lymph fluid, distinctly negatively charged; a "Na-animal" is created and remains one throughout the entire pregnancy and up to six months, after birth (Frank Golland). The tables on paragraph 3_22, 3_26 and 3_28 of Chapter 3 illustrate the different stages of development by taking the Na/K ratio as a guide.
In studying these figures, which are based on laboratory findings, one has to accept the strange fact that these Na-rich embryonal cells have, according to Speman, "organisator" power, which carry in themselves the dynamic patterns of the "preformed" future animal. The months of pregnancy and six months of extra-uterine life (Frank Golland) are only a "transitional stage" of a living being, which continues to pass over into normal life with an excess of K-group minerals in vital organs, until disease or old age makes it lose some of the K-minerals, together with the corresponding enzyme-functions, etc. Each cell carries in itself some potentialities of a normal living cell under normal internal and external environmental conditions, or else they fall back to their original embryonic state. R. R. Spencer and other investigators, with keen foresight, compare cancer cells not to the cells of old age but, rather, to embryonic ones. One important difference, however, is that cancer cells are not supplied with nerves and therefore lack nervous regulation. The experiments of Lohmann revealed that magnesium and manganese, both minerals of the K-group, inhibit the Pasteur effect there.
In The Biochemistry of Malignant Tumors, the Pasteur effect is described as follows: "The increased conversion of methylglyoxal to lactic acid which thus may be induced by the activated enzyme was believed to be responsible for the accumulation of lactic acid in neoplasm, and the rapid disappearance of methylglyoxal was thought to interfere with the re-synthesis of this compound to hexose."84
Inasmuch as our mineral metabolism is dependent upon the food produced by the soil, I would like to refer to an introduction to this subject by Charles E. Kellogg. "The soil is the living matter at the surface, and of the mineral matter beneath the surface, and of the atmosphere above and the solid rock beneath - essentially all living matter depends upon it, directly or indirectly, is, in fact, a part of those very processes that produce the soil upon which life depends."
"Plants and soils have grown up together, each partly a cause of the other - man has somewhat the same relationship to the soils. He may change them, either for better or for worse."85
The leading mineral of the negative group, potassium, plays an important role in clinical symptomatology, for example, in The Journal of the AMA, we find the following summary:86 It is known that K-deficiency may occur when:
Based on other articles and my own experience, I would like to give the following summary of hypoKalemia and hyperKalemia.
The content of potassium in the serum is, in many cases, misleading. The latest article of Burnell and Scribner also tends in this direction but starts to draw attention to the observation that "changes in the serum potassium concentration reflect changes in body need."87 My experiences are mostly limited to cancer cases. The curves of these patients over years are very difficult to evaluate. (Not one examination, but the curve decides). Single examinations can not be regarded as "an excellent guide to the potassium need of patients" - as the above-mentioned authors say. It does not give any definite indication of an increasing or decreasing amount of potassium present in the tissues of essential organs. There are only a few examinations made in serum and tissues at the same time. More coincident examinations of K made at the same time in serum and tissues and in different stages of the disease, are necessary for such decisions.
Potassium appears to play an indispensable and unique role in tissue protein synthesis, although the mechanism of its utilization is at present unknown. Potassium ions are indispensable in certain enzymatic reactions, and this may be a further reason for its urgent need. It appears that the heavy isotope K41 is definitely lower in tumors, as well as in tissues of tumor-bearing animals.88
Muscles, brain and liver normally have a much higher potassium content than a sodium content. It can be accepted as a general rule that as long as potassium is normally in the majority, sodium is in the minority. A similar relationship exists between magnesium and calcium, so that where magnesium is increased, calcium is diminished.
Kurt Stern and Robert Willheim wrote that "A tumor promoting property of potassium salts administered perorally or parenterally has been made very probable. The impeding action of calcium salts is much more problematic and the alleged antiplastic quality of magnesium must be regarded as wholly unfounded."89 In the older literature, controversial opinions were expressed regarding one of the most important mineral constituents of food, sodium chloride. Some authors suspected this salt as the most stimulating neoplastic growth agent and accordingly, recommended its restriction in the cancer diet.90 Other clinical observations indicated that regimes extremely poor in salt, such as have been used for dietary treatment of tuberculosis,91 exert a "rather unfavorable influence on human neoplasia."92
The effects of sodium chloride on tumors were studied in a number of animal experiments which were not conclusive. Whether cancer was stimulated by alkalosis or was hindered by acid formation has been long disputed. Finally, Ragnar Berg strongly rejected the viewpoint that diets producing alkalosis could be responsible for cancer development.93 In evaluating most of these studies, one finds that all these attempts to change the hydrogen ion concentration in blood and tissues by special dietary combinations encounter great difficulties, since every author used some other food for that purpose. Some of the authors used thymus, an organ rich in protein and nucleic acids, but very poor in minerals; others used kidneys, livers and extracts prepared from different organs. According to the clinical observation that the incidence of malignant tumors in the duodenum and small intestines are extremely rare, they used for their experiments these organs in animals bearing transplanted tumors and in others to prevent any growth.
Blumenthal and Jacobs used a special extract of small intestines without much of a favorable result.94 A slightly more favorable result was obtained by the feeding of the brain or extracts of this organ. These observations, made by A. H. Roffo, H, Vassiliades and C. Roussv during 1935-1937 are extremely interesting since the substance of these organs are rich in lipids which have generally been found to stimulate tumor growth. "The development of tar cancer in mice was found enhanced by the feeding of liver or pancreas to the animals,"95 and the tumor-stimulating effect of liver feeding was confirmed in numerous studies of various tumor-bearing animals. An entirely different effect of liver feeding was observed by the production of liver tumors in rats by feeding butter yellow. This type of carcinogenesis could be prevented by a liver diet. It is interesting that feeding of liver could only prevent carcinogenic development of butter yellow, but it could not prevent the tumor production by benzpyrene or methylcholanthrene. The cause of these influences, which differ in various forms of neoplasms, was not given. Kurt Stern tentatively assumed that the effective unknown factors may be of an enzymatic nature and that vitamins and
"these hypothetical agents may interfere with tumor development and tumor growth via metabolic mechanisms."
I have expressed a similar opinion in several articles, and in this book explained the use of fresh calfs liver juice96 in cancer therapy. These controversial observations and descriptions are chosen to demonstrate how controversial the biological literature in cancer is. For each positive effect one can find a negative one. Generalizations in cancer are most difficult to formulate. In my opinion, the area wherein they may be possible will be in the biological field of electrical potentials, ionization of minerals and reactivation of enzymes.
Greenstein has stated that "In tumors in rats, mice or man, the catalytic systems involved in aerobic oxidations are considerably reduced as compared with normal tissues and, indeed, in each species, are reduced to nearly the same extent. A high rate of glycolysis, an increased water content, and a low activity of cytochrome are among the characteristics of practicaily all tumors in all species studied. Nearly all rapidly growing tumors in mice and rats produce identical systemic effects in the host animals, as shown by the marked reduction in liver catalase activity."97
Cancer is the most variable disease we have for which there are thousands of different names. The beginning can be most acute or very chronic, the course tedious or rapid, the complications innumerable, and it can be combined with many different deficiencies, with high or low blood pressure, with diabetes, arteriosclerosis and other diseases of old age. At the end, the intoxication increases and the liver deteriorates. Most of our life is built upon the activation and maintenance of the living processes. These are based on the mineral metabolism and function of the liver - which acts like chlorophyll in plants - accepting ions from the sun and transforming them as "life begets life." What Nature does in that wonderful, subtle form by transformations and combinations with these ions we cannot imitate biologically. Therefore, it seems to me advisable not to attack the cancer directly with X-Rays, radium or cobalt and damage at the same time the other parts of the body and its healing power. The more the whole body is detoxified, replenished and activated, the more the cancer is doomed.
The rare incidence of malignant tumors in countries where garlic is used in greater amounts (southern Italy, Greece, Montenegro, Yugoslavia) cannot be explained. I have seen two cancers of the breast disappear with the use of Fenugreek seeds tea in large amounts, combined with a saltless vegetarian diet. Two others were cured after the patients drank green leaf juice only for six to eight months.
The transformation of the minerals in the body and bringing them in sufficient numbers into the organs, where they belong, is a very difficult and complex task. A special relationship exists between sodium, chloride, and amino acids, which seem to parallel the amount of edema in the body. On the other hand, potassium belongs to a group which is associated with phosphoric acids and carbohydrates and is able to combine with these colloids. It is, therefore, more reasonable to speak of the potassium group and the sodium group as Rudolf Keller does.
The effect of the diet is that the potassium group is enriched in the essential organs and the abnormal sodium content in these organs reduced to a minimum and eliminated into the extracellular fluids, where they belong.
The extracellular fluids which comprise the blood plasma, the tissue or interstitial fluid, lymph and fluid in serous cavities, amount to about 20 per cent of the body weight. The plasma water constitutes only about four and one-half per cent of the body weight. The fluids within the cells amount to 50 per cent of the weight of the body, or two and one-half times the extra-cellular fluids. The skeletal muscles contain about 50 per cent, the skin about 20 per cent, and the whole blood only about 10 per cent of the total body water. In general, the intracellular fluids have a high potassium content and a low concentration of sodium, whereas the extracellular fluids have large amounts of sodium and small amounts of potassium. The water content of various tissues in average percentage is taken from a table:98
| Percent | |
| Muscle (striated) | 75 |
| Skin | 70 |
| Connective tissues | 60 |
| Blood: | |
| Plasma | 90 |
| Cells | 65 |
| Kidney | 80 |
| Liver | 70 |
| Nerve matter: | |
| Gray matter | 85 |
| White matter | 70 |
The higher sodium chloride content in the urine of cancer patients during the first weeks of the saltless treatment proves that sodium chloride and water are retained in cancer patients. The majority of the patients did not show any type of definite edema on the skin. A few of them were even undernourished, seemingly dried out and emaciated, but still eliminated very large quantities of sodium chloride in their urine, especially at first. The retention was probably in the internal organs.
If we contemplate the mineral metabolism as the basis for the construction of cells, we have to look into an invisible mineral circulation with a great storage power of the minerals of the potassium group and glycogen in the liver and equally for iodine and the minerals of the sodium group in the thyroid gland. If these mineral groups are partly displaced as we see in most acute as well as chronic diseases, we find simultaneously lower electrical potentials in the tissues and serum. Consequently, the storage power is smaller and the flow from the storage magazines is greater as the cells lose their normal attraction power with the lowered potentials. This smaller attraction power results in reduced storage of glycogen in liver and muscles and also in fewer minerals of the potassium group, while in the thyroid, the skin and other mainly negative tissues, the iodine and extracellular elements, show deficiencies or displacements.
The importance of potassium, iodine and blood sugar leads the physicians more and more to pursue these tests in almost all patients, as they give us valuable information not only about these mentioned substances but also about many other clinical processes. To have a better insight into the clinical processes of our patients, it is not sufficient to examine single substances, since we learn that a single substance does not travel alone from the blood to the tissue cells or inversely. To confirm this, one may stain a cell with many dyes; one single microscopic cell or part of it will not accept the stain of one dye only.
Behind the metabolism of minerals and matter there is a power of energy, an electrostatic and an electrodynamic one, and probably several other energies, which are the stimulating powers for all movements of matter. One should not think of matter in quantities or qualities only but also should take into account the quantities of energies which radiate from ionized minerals, and should stimulate and keep all important and vital functions of the cells active.
As H. Kaunitz and B. Schober have shown, the electrical potentials of liver and muscles went down by 30 millivolt or more after they injected diphtheria toxin or other poisons into the blood stream of a rabbit. After a few minutes one could observe with a microscope that some poisons entered the parenchyma cells which were repelled beforehand by the same cells. After one-half hour a quantity of sodium appeared in the liver parenchyma. This experiment, made in 1936, clearly shows that
This test demonstrates also the central position of the liver in all these processes. For centuries it was assumed by good clinicians that changes in the liver were the beginning of almost all diseases. As the liver gradually loses a part of its electrostatic maintenance power for reserves, it cannot support the entire body normally any longer from its reserves of glycogen, many minerals, vitamins and enzymes, especially during the night, but can store them during the daytime. K. H. Bauer wrote: "A great progress in the problem of cancer development is the recognition that it belongs to the general biology. The cells involved are changed into a different life existence. The fact that all kinds of tumors can be present in all living organisms is the confirmation of those findings. ... Within all living beings the capacity exists to fall sick with cancer, which is a property of all tissues and organs."99
To bring the system to normal or near to normal for healing purposes, it needs animating energies besides the pure substances without which it is unable to act, cooperate and fulfill duties for metabolism and distribution. It is impossible to live without the energies which are moving all substances all over the body and are supporting all cells.
The attempts of old and new medical authors to abandon the most specific methods or the symptomatic treatments and to rely upon and to stress the "conception of totality" have many advantages. Putting the positive center of the liver and the negative center of the thyroid more in the foreground is necessary for this therapy.
There are some particular details in the mineral metabolism which characterize the new treatment. First, there is the artificial niacin besides the important potassium. Niacin showed very good clinical results when administered in large doses, six to eight times 50 mg. a day (it is the so-called pellagra preventive factor, also known as Vitamin B8). The theoretical explanation was given later by Dr. W. Beiglboeck, who proved in animal experiments that it is a "potential restorer" and raises the depleted liver stores of glycogen. W. O. Fenn also thinks that it restores the depleted potassium stores in the liver. Niacin is not only a vitamin, indispensable for the protein metabolism, but also is, as Elvehjem and others showed, an efficient restorer of cell energies in a great number of diseases from the common cold to cancer.
Another characteristic feature of the treatment is the liberal use of iodine in the inorganic form of lugol-solution and the organic form of thyroid. Both are strong restorers of the electrical potentials and cell activity. The thyroid gland stores only 20 per cent of all the body's iodine content. The rest of the body's iodine is contained in the skeletal muscles, the liver and central nervous system, but it is also relatively highly concentrated in the pituitary gland and in the ovaries. The thyroid gland takes up about 80 times more iodine than does any other tissue. To help the body in the oxidation power, iodine must be radioactive (I130 and I131). The I131 isotope has the longest half life (eight days).
In cancer patients we observe that the basal metabolism can be very high, up to 68 or down to minus 36. Corresponding is the iodine content of the blood serum above or below normal, and it can be very excessive in both directions, particularly in more advanced cases. With the therapy the high iodine content can be brought to normal or below normal in a relatively short time, from 10-20 days. That means that the body was losing great amounts of iodine at the beginning of the treatment and the therapy reversed this process. A very low iodine content may indicate that the body had already lost most of its iodine reserves and now absorbs iodine during the therapy in relatively great quantities. Not one examination, but the curve decides.
It is generally accepted that the organic iodine of the blood serum is a more reliable index than the metabolic rate, as the latter is not controlled exclusively by the thyroid. Iodine seems to play an important role in tumors themselves. In mouse and rat tumors the iodine concentration was found to exceed that of liver and muscle.
The iodine deposition in tumors is a debated question. It is reported increased by other authors, but only after the onset of regressive changes in the tumor.
An interesting report by Greenstein states that I131 in the blood of normal and tumor bearing mice is the same, but the decreased capacity of tumor-mice in concentration of administered I131 "is probably related to some change in the physiology of the thyroid glands themselves."100 It would be shortsighted, even incorrect, to observe one of the mineral substances alone, or a group of them. Innumerable metabolisms continue to act simultaneously, and many abnormal steps have to be made until a symptom appears. The clinical signs are then uncharacteristic, such as fatigue, weakness, easy exhaustion, more excitability - all these can be due to many different deficiencies or causes. To stimulate the body with one or another vitamin, or a group of them, or a mixture of them with minerals, may help for a short while. It is a difficult decision to determine where to stimulate and where only to replenish the organs. This is a difficult task because the organs may have developed some pathological alterations in the meantime. Alarm symptoms or special infections may be exceptions but these are limited to a short period and require symptomatic treatment.
In most situations, especially in chronic and degenerative diseases, it is much safer and more favorable for the organism to be helped in its totality; this means the entire metabolism must be restored to normal or near-normal functions.
As far as the mineral metabolism is concerned, it seems to be the basis for the active development of a malignancy in a poisoned body. The mineral metabolism in itself is not enough to explain the number of factors involved in that biological situation. It seems to be the general basis on which many different deficiencies occur with serious consequences in the metabolic processes of protein, fats, and, to a lesser degree, in carbohydrates. Under such conditions the digestion and oxidation to the end products are progressively damaged. I will try to give an approximate picture about a conception of normal life and the deviation into cancer.
| Life means: | Cancer means: |
| 1. Maintenance of the normal metabolism, its regulations and productions for hormones, enzymes, co-enzymes, etc., absorption and elimination power. | 1. Slow intoxication and alteration of the whole body, especially the liver. |
| 2. Maintaining the prevalence of the potassium group in vital organs and Na-group mainly outside in the fluids and some tissues. | 2. Invasion of the Na-group, loss of K-group, followed by tissue edema. |
| 3. Keeping the positive electrical potentials of the cells high as the basis for energy and function, simultaneously as a defense against invasion of the Na-group and the formation of edema. | 3. Lower electrical potentials in vital organs, more edema, accumulation of poisons, loss of tension, tonus, reduced reactivation and oxidation power, dedifferentiation of some cells. |
| 4. Maintenance of circulation, tension, tonus, storage capacity, reserves. | 4. Cancer starts - general poisoning increases, vital functions and energies decrease - cancer increases. |
| 5. Reactivation power of vital substances, especially enzymes. | 5. Further destruction of the metabolism and liver parenchym - cancer rules - is acting, spreading. |
| 6. Defense and healing power. | 6. Loss of last defense - hepatic coma - death. |
I would like to say a word about the problem of transmineralization in our body. I know how difficult it is for physicians to take a positive stand on that problem. Von Bergmann hoped that the time will come when we will learn to add the deficient substances therapeutically. I would like to formulate this hope differently, as I think the time will come when we will learn, according to the concept of totality, to add in the right composition, the substances which we find to be lacking. At the same time the other substances and poisons which we found to be antagonistic or counteracting have to be eliminated. The problem of transmineralization is not yet recognized thoroughly enough to show all the therapeutic difficulties which have to be overcome to restore the disturbed harmony in the mineral metabolism, step by step. From my own clinical experiments I have learned that it is not only necessary to change the metabolism in one or another substance, but it is also necessary to change the intake of proteins, enzymes, vitamins, etc., simultaneously to activate all natural healing forces which we need for our therapy.