Beyond Aspirin: The COX-2 Medical Revolution

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Beyond Aspirin: The COX-2 Medical Revolution

Healthy & Natural Journal, Oct, 2000

by Thomas M. Newmark, Paul Schulick

http://www.yoogee.com/search/?lt=3 & q=5-HETE

 

Hailed by the Wall Street Journal in October 1999 as the next major milestone in

preventative medicine, COX-2 inhibition was recently acknowledged by the Science

section of The New York Times as a method of preventing cancers of the colon,

skin, esophagus, and bladder. And that's just the beginning of the story, as

COX-2 inhibition is also associated with reducing arthritic pain, inflammation,

and damage, and arresting the development of Alzheimer's disease.

 

The book Beyond Aspirin began its life as a contemplated article on prostate

cancer. We are somewhat addicted to an on-line medical database called

" Medicine, " which is the on-line version of the National Library of Medicine.

Paul, the most seriously addicted, is often on Medline hours at a time,

researching, every nook and cranny of medical and herbal issues, and late one

night Paul called me to breathlessly report a late-breaking medical news item.

For dramatic purposes, the conversation is reconstructed as follows:

 

Paul: " This University of Virginia study demonstrates that prostate cancer cells

only eat one kind of food. They are like children who will only eat peanut

butter and jelly sandwiches, and simply will not eat anything else at all. The

University of Virginia research determined that the prostate cancer cells will

only eat a chemical called 5-HETE. "

 

Tom: " How does that relate to herbal research? "

 

Paul: " Well, the cancer center determined that 5-HETE was created from the

body's 'combustion' of an Omega-6 fatty acid called arachidonic acid. There is

an enzyme called 5-lipoxygenase (or 5-LO for short), and when 5-LO burns or

oxidizes the fatty acid, out plops 5-HETE. "

 

Tom: " Well, this is all very interesting, but where does it lead and why should

I be interested? "

 

Paul: " Tom, the researchers concluded that prostate cancer cells eat ONLY this

food, and that if the 5-LO enzyme is inhibited, and the food is not around, then

the prostate cancer cells experience massive and repaid 'apoptosis,' or cellular

suicide, within I to 2 hours. "

 

Tom: " Paul, I admit that is astounding and probably the most important knowledge

obtained to date on prostate cancer prevention and treatment, but Paul, it's

late at night, and how does this all pertain to herbal medicine? "

 

Paul: " Tom, you've forgotten my research in my earlier book Ginger: Common Spice

and Wonder Drug. If you had studied the book as I have often asked, you'd recall

that ginger is a powerful inhibitor of the 5-LO enzyme. "

 

Tom: " Now I'm starting to see the importance of this call. How effective is

ginger in inhibiting this 5-LO enzyme? "

 

Paul: " I just jumped over to the USDA Phytonutrient Database [created by the

world's leading ethnobotanist, Dr. James Duke], and his database and my resrarch

demonstrates that ginger is the world's most comprehensive herbal inhibitor of

5-LO, with at least 22 proven phytonutrient inhibitors of that enzyme. What is

more, Oriental cultures that regularly consume ginger as a spice, or which take

it therapeutically, experience a fraction of the cancer mortalities compared to

the United States. In other words, men don't die from prostate cancer cells we

die from the growth and proliferation of the cancer. Once we know that ginger

inhibits the process that leads to the creation of the ONLY food the cancer

cells will eat, it gives us confidence that an herbal approach to 5-LO

inhibition is an indispensable part of prostate health. Tom, the cancer cells

only eat 5-HETE, their 'peanut butter and jelly,' and without it they begin to

massively and rapidly die within one to two hours. "

 

Tom: " Paul, we need to do a research paper on this. "

 

And that's how the article on prostate cancer began, and it led us in an

unanticipated direction. Almost every time we found an interesting article on

5-LO inhibition, the research mentioned a " brother " enzyme called

cyclooxygenase-2, or COX-2 for short. This research project began some time ago,

and neither of us had ever heard of this enzyme. After all, there are thousands

of enzymes in the human body, and one major school of pharmacognosy, the

University of Illinois, tracks over 700 enzymes for herbal interactions or

activity. So, we didn't feel totally stupid, but this COX-2 enzyme was starting

to get quite a bit of international medical press, and it also worked by

metabolizing or oxidizing Omega 6 arachidonic acid. We decided to follow the

COX-2 thread for a bit and see where it took us, and to our amazement, it was

literally the mother lode. Three decades of research on inhibiting this enzyme

led to one inescapable conclusion: inhibiting this enzyme would likely prevent

or

impede cancers of the colon, esophagus, skin, bladder, and pancreas, would

reduce inflammation associated with several forms of arthritis, and would also

disrupt the progress of Alzheimer's disease.

 

We reached these rather startling conclusions because the research would permit

no other inference. There are more than 20 reputable scientific studies on the

clear relationship between reducing COX-2inflammation and the reduction of the

frequency of colon cancer, and there is a similar weight of authority on the

Alzheimer's front. Here was the common denominator of several seemingly

disparate disease process which can all be understood as inflammation gone

haywire and attacking not an vader, but our own bodies.

 

Pieces of the COX-2 puzzle

 

Here is how science has pieced together the COX-2 inflammatory puzzle:

 

1. Some trauma, injury, or hostile microorganism confronts the body, and the

cells somehow experience this threat. Intelligence is present everywhere in the

body--not just the brain (our central intelligence agency) but also in the

scouts and spies located everywhere in the body. Our cells feel or sense the

threat, and send this impulse to our DNA within the cell.

 

2. The DNA orders the creation of the enzyme COX-2. COX-2 knows it has a job to

do--create inflammation. It goes to the cell wall, the phospholipid membrane,

and seeks out something to burn. The full name of COX-2 tells the story:

" cycloxygenase-2. " The enzyme is able to " oxidize " fatty acids, and those acids

are housed in the cell membrane.

 

3. COX-2 thus oxidizes (the very opposite of " antioxidants " ) certain of the

fatty acids it finds in the cell wall. If it finds Omega 6 arachidonic acid, it

creates the PRO-inflammatory hormone PGE2, which is one of the body's

prostaglandins. If COX-2 encounters Omega 3 fatty acid, like those present in

ocean salmon or other deep and cold-water fish, then it creates an

ANTI-inflammatory hormone called PGE3.

 

4. In a state of ideal dietary balance, our Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratio would be

1:1, certainly no worse than 2:1. Unfortunately, because of our modern dietary

indiscretions and the general unavailability of wholesome food, most Americans

have an Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratio of 40:1 to 50:1! Simply put, when COX-2 does

its job and creates the prostaglandins that control inflammation, we are giving

the enzyme the raw materials to create fire, but not the raw materials to put

out the fire. It's not that COX-2 is a " bad " enzyme. To the contrary, we need it

for life. It's just that our diets and the stresses we live in today create way

too much inflammation, and we don't have the resources to put out the fires.

 

5. We need COX-2 and SOME arachidonic acid. We then need them to go away, so we

need the COX-2 enzyme to stop calling for reinforcements. We need to create

anti-inflammatory hormones such as PGE3 made from Omega 3 fatty acid.

 

6. If the process of inflammation becomes chronic, the collateral damage to

healthy tissue can result in a number of diseases. If the beta amyloid plaque in

the brain becomes unduly inflamed, the brain literally festers in a fire of

chronic inflammation. The fire, the inflammation born of festering plaque, may

be localized, but the smoke damage from that fire is akin to a cloud of

neurotoxins sweeping through the brain, deadening mental faculties. Chronic

brain inflammation leads to Alzheimer's disease. Similarly, chronic inflammation

in the colon, perhaps from polyps that become severely irritated, can lead to

colon cancer. You don't find a normal colon cell suddenly degrade to a cancer

cell. There is a continuum: normal cell, inflamed cell, precancerous cell,

dysplastic cell, and cancer cell. Too much COX-2 inflammation, over time,

creates the ground state for cancer in the colon, as well as other organ

systems. For example, a cancerous pancreas has 60 times the COX-2 enzyme as a

normal pancreas. Rheumatoid arthritis, menstrual migraines, periodontal gum

disease, juvenile onset diabetes--these are just some of the many diseases or

medical conditions that correspond in some way to an overexpression of the COX-2

enzyme.

 

As a consequence of this emerging picture of the body on fire--the body in a

state of perpetual " road rage " --drug companies are looking for ways to

pharmaceutically inhibit the COX-2 enzyme. Let's examine the history of this

process.

_________________

 

JoAnn Guest

mrsjoguest

DietaryTipsForHBP

http://www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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