Enzymes

It’s interesting that enzymes are never talked about yet they are so important for health and longevity. I believe because enzymes are found in raw natural foods and because commerce rules the world and companies can’t capitalize them you just never hear about them. Who would pay for a commercial to convince you to go out and buy salad stuff for good health? Another reason is laboratories cannot synthesize or even begin to measure enzymes biological ‘life energy’.

Enzymes are what make life possible. They are needed for every chemical reaction that takes place in the human body. No mineral, vitamin or hormone can do any work without enzymes. They are the manual workers that build our bodies from proteins, carbohydrates and fats. A major problem with the North American diet is we kill our enzymes by cooking and processing our food. Most researchers believe we only have a limited amount of enzymes that the body can manufacture in our lifetime. In order to have a longer life it is our responsibility to help ourselves by eating intact enzymes in raw food to help maintain our enzyme energy.

The majority of mankind’s change in diet from mostly uncooked to cooked foods has put such a strain on the pancreas from being over-worked that they can be enlarged up to 3 times the normal size. What happens is when there are no enzymes to predigest the food eaten the pancreas has to work overtime to produce enzymes for digestion. The pancreas must send out messages to all parts of the body looking for metabolic enzymes it can ‘reprocess’ into digestive enzymes. Not only does this harm the pancreas but when it steals metabolic enzymes from the rest of the body it leaves the whole body in disrepair and open to cancers and all sorts of diseases.

Now...if I still have your attention on enzymes then you’ll find this next article interesting.

Cancer and the Pancreas

Over 100 years ago around the turn of the century Scottish born scientist John Beard, a brilliant research biologist, had a special life-long fascination with the placenta. His discoveries in the early 1900’s were first abhorred by the scientific community and it would take another 100 years before his research would finally be recognized.

The placenta is disk shaped at full term and is about an inch or two thick and about ten inches in diameter. It starts its formation within days of conception. As the embryo (a few dozen cells shaped in a ball called a blastocyst at this point) moves into the uterus it begins to secrete powerful enzymes allowing the embryo to imbed itself into the uterus. A single layer of cells on the surface of the blastocyst that are reacting to signals from the cells lining the uterine cavity, form what scientists call trophoblast cells. These ‘trophoblast’ cells that line the uterus and the embryo quickly establish a foothold. These trophoblast cells ultimately become the life sustaining placenta.

Beard was very fascinated with the appearance of the early placenta cells. These trophoblast cells that were to become the placenta looked identical to cancer cells. Under a microscope cancer cells look different from normal cells because they have what scientist call ‘a lessening of differentiation’. What this means is every cell in the body is identifiable. If you look at a skin cell it is easily identified as a skin cell. If you look at a muscle cell under a microscope it is easy for a biologist to identify it as a muscle cell. But with cancer cells they all have a similarity. So, when a skin cell becomes cancerous the cell becomes less identifiable. When cancer is in its advanced stage the cell is so indefinable the scientist can’t even tell the origin of the cell, another words they can’t tell if it used to be a skin cell or a nerve cell or whatever.

Beard noticed that these trophoblast cells of the early placenta behaved exactly like cancer cells. First, just like cancer cells, they are invasive by producing a host of enzymes that enable them to break down tissue barriers and spread through normal tissue with deadly speed. Second, cancer cells and malignant tissue develop their own blood supply which allows them to grow wherever they choose to grow. And third, cancer cells and tumours, unlike normal tissue, grow without restraint and without boundaries until the tumour jeopardizes the health of the host organism.

Beard discovered that even though the placenta invaded the uterus, began generating its own blood supply and grew with aggressive speed just like cancer, it suddenly stopped growing like a tumour and started to behave just like a normal organ. Beard uncovered a fundamental truth about trophoblastic growth. In every species of mammal that he studied, he learned that the placenta stops growing at a very specific point in embryological development and that it is unique for each species. In the human he realized that the placenta changes from its aggressive to non-invasive form on day 56 after conception. Today, a hundred years later, this milestone in fetal-placental development holds true. This is where Beard took a leap of faith and assumed that if he could find out what stopped the placenta from growing like an out of control tumour he would have the answer to cancer.

Beard studied for years trying to find the secret that turned the tumour into the placenta on day 56. He realized the signal could be coming from the mother or the fetus. He checked the nervous system, endocrine system, immune function, blood supply and many other means with no avail. Until...he considered the embryonic pancreas. The pancreas is a complex organ that is really two organs in one, both endocrine and exocrine. The endocrine side of the pancreas secretes glucagon and insulin to regulate blood sugar. The exocrine side, the bulk of the pancreas, manufactures the various digestive enzymes which are secreted into the small intestine during and after a meal. Scientists have identified three main classes of pancreatic enzymes. The proteolytic enzymes such as trypsin and chymotrypsin which digest proteins. Lipases, which break down fats and the amylases which digest starches. Even in Beard’s day the major classes of pancreatic enzymes and their functions, were well known.

After his years of research and his many false starts, Beard had come to a pivotal conclusion. He believed that the very day the placenta stopped growing, stopped invading and turned from an aggressive tumor-like tissue to a life-sustaining organ, was the very day the fetal pancreas became activated. The more he studied the problem of placental growth in animal models, the more convinced he was that some product from the fetal pancreas ultimately signaled the placenta to slow and eventually stop its growth. Based on further animal studies, Beard concluded that the primary signalling factor must be the protein-digesting enzymes, particularly ‘trypsin’ and ‘chymotrypsin’.

Recent research confirms that the fetal pancreas does begin manufacturing and secreting digestive enzymes very early on in development. As a matter of fact it is on day 56. This is an interesting finding in itself because theoretically the fetus has no need for an activated pancreas or for pancreatic enzymes, until it takes its first meal the day of its birth, nine months after conception. The fetus receives all the nutrients it needs for growth in a perfectly pre-digested form from the blood supply of the mother. The growing embryo really has no need for digestive enzymes, yet they are being produced.

Since the fetal pancreas seemed to produce enzymes for one reason, to control the placenta growth, Beard suspected that all cancerous growths grew because of inadequate pancreatic enzymes.

Beard may have been the first to recognize what we today call stem cells, though he didn’t use that term. In many respects one of Dr. Beard’s greatest achievements was his recognition that each tissue in every species that he studied contained nests of primitive undifferentiated cells. Obviously, Beard was quite skilled in microscopy and in his writings argues convincingly that such cells exist, in every tissue. He further proposed that these primitive undifferentiated cells, which to his eye resembled none other than the primitive trophoblastic cells, were actually residual placental cells left over from early fetus development. Beard claimed these cells migrated from the primitive yolk sac of the developing fetus and ended up in every tissue of the body. He wasn’t sure why these cells were present but he found them wherever he looked.

Beard claimed further that contrary to what researchers believed at that time—and what many still believe today, cancer tumours did not arise through some process of ‘de-differentiation’ whereby mature, specialized cells suddenly changed into primitive, immature, aggressive, dividing, uncontrolled tissues. Instead he maintained that all tumours, whether originating in the brain or the skin of the foot, arose from these misplaced placental cells, which had been deprived of proper control. In the final summation of his life’s work he said that this ultimate controlling signal, this factor that determined the behaviour of these misplaced placental cells, were the enzymes from the pancreas. Beard thought finally that all cancer developed from placental cells left over from our embryonic stage and that these cells would normally be kept under control by circulating pancreatic enzymes. However, these cells could quickly grow out of control should the pancreas fail to manufacture or release adequate amounts of digestive enzymes. Unfortunately Beard was 100 years ahead of his time and it would take scientist decades before they would understand what is now called stem cells and if not properly controlled would become malignant.

To Beard, his greatest frustration was that there was no mystery to cancer at all. It was just misplaced placental cells, growing without restraint because of inadequate enzyme production.

Now, a century later, the ‘laetrile’ clinics in Mexico claim they have a 100% cure rate for cancer, although, they do post a disclaimer. The 100% cure rate only applies to those patients that have not undergone chemotherapy or radiation and only to those patients that take pancreatic enzymes.

One final note...
If cancers are really misplaced out of control placenta cells, then cancer would mimic pregnancy in other ways. All trophoblast cells produce a unique hormone called ‘chorionic gonadotrophic’ (CGH) which is easily detected in urine. If a person is either pregnant or has cancer a simple CGH pregnancy test will confirm either or both. And it does...with high accuracy.