Scientists are really smart people…
But some times they lose track of what is the cart and what is the horse.
Nowhere has this been more true than in targeting cancer cells.
The original batch of chemotherapeutics, many of which are still in use were ugly carpet bombs that took the lives of a lot or normal cells. Some of us label cancer survivors as double survivors because they survived cancer and chemo.
The telomere- the Biologic Time Clock of your cell has lately been a target of cancer chemotherapy. The thought is that since telomeres are needed to keep even cancer cells alive, inhibiting the enzyme that does this-telomerase- would “cure cancer”. In spite of the fact that the few drugs that actually do that have proven disappointing in clinical use, the idea still sound like a good one.
The latest idea
Is that since telomeres are exquisitely sensitive to oxidative stress (free radical damage) ramping that up will help cure or at least control cancer and cancer cells
A good idea?
To some.
To me it’s the cart before the horse idea. The process that is cancer seems to always start with a mitochondrial respiratory defect, not a nuclear genetic one the way most scientists have been trying to prove. This has occurred to the point that grant money is more or less exclusively directed towards genetics instead of metabolics, although this has changed a little bit recently.
The next idea is that telomeres and telomerase is responsible for cancer transformation and immortalization (the thing that turns a bad cell into a cancerous one).
Almost every cancer has been shown to have serious telomere shortening (some studies suggest the opposite when the cell samples include cells that have stolen telomere chunks from other cells resulting in long telomeres- this ain’t a normal cell or a normal biologic process!)
Neither is true
And the pirating, hijacking or otherwise pilfering of telomerase for the cancer’s purpose seems to happen closer to the end of the process, not the beginning.
To me keeping the telomeres long enough to keep the cell healthy is the first step to dealing with any disease of aging including any that I cannot name by name because someone out there is watching my every move.
Here is one of the ways I do it. Let me help you deal with oxidative stress in your body!!! Let me help you support healthy telomeres!
Maybe you won’t have to worry about what happens when they get too short for a long long time!
Dr Dave (DD)
PS Don’t forget I wrote a book about this 9 years ago. While the word truth is an absolute, the book is Truer Now than Ever since the science has borne out everything that I was accused of being speculative about!