If you have cancer, here’s how to protect yourself against radiation and make it work even better
Not long ago, I reported to you on a remarkable study showing how taking the hormone melatonin can protect you from the dangers of radiation. Where do you get radiation exposure? Two ways. One, doctors often use it as a treatment for cancer. Two, CT scans have an unusually high amount of radiation. But melatonin is not the only protection you should be using if you have to be exposed to high doses of radiation. There’s another treatment you need to be using as well.
Recently scientists published a study showing the remarkable results that occurred when patients were “pre-conditioned” before exposure to radiation. Pre-conditioning is the new medical term that is making all kids of news and could completely changing the face of preventive medicine.
How is that? It’s because until this concept came along, all of the efforts of modern medicine have been focused on treating diseases after they have occurred. Pre-conditioning changes all that. Pre-conditioning is when people are treated before they get sick in order to prevent them from becoming sick. Wow, what a concept! Wouldn’t it be great if there already was a profession dedicated to doing that very thing – oh wait – Chiropractors have been doing that since 1895. Isn’t it funny how when they finally saw the light, they come in and try to make it all their idea.
Okay back to the story…
The researchers knew that radiation damages tissues through the action of free radicals. They also knew that the most effective way to combat free radical damage is to increase antioxidant levels. And so they did a very simple thing. They pre-conditioned a group of rats with ozone therapy which is one way to increase antioxidant levels) for five days. Then they exposed them and an unlucky group of rats that had no ozone pre-conditioning to a single whole body dose of 6 GU (Gray units) of radiation. This is a huge exposure. Keep in mind that acute radiation poisoning happens at doses over 0.1 Gy. This dose was 60 times this upper limit! After the exposure, the researchers measured the effects of the radiation in all of the rats.
Not surprisingly, the radiation in the untreated rats caused a significant increase in the levels of free radicals and a significant decrease in the levels of the enzymes, such as SOD (superoxide dismutase), which the body uses to protect itself from free radical damage. And what happened to our little pre-conditioned critters? They did much better. In the words of the authors, “The results demonstrated that the levels of free radicals in liver and small intestine tissues in irradiated rats that were pre-treated with ozone were significantly decreased, while SOD activities were significantly increased.” But that’s not even the most amazing part of the study.
When they looked at the actual radiation damage that happened to the livers and small intestines of the pre-conditioned rats, the ozone “reversed all histo-pathological alterations induced by irradiation.” This means that there were absolutely no signs of any damage at all in any of the pre-conditioned rats. This is simply astonishing.
One reason is obvious. If you have cancer and are regularly getting radiated with either CT scans or radiation therapy, you can protect your body from all of the negative effects with heavy duty antioxidants. But will this therapy somehow protect the cancer cells in the same way it protects healthy cells?
Absolutely not. This is because, as this study clearly shows stimulating your body to make antioxidant enzymes like SOD is what gives the beneficial effect. And while healthy cells can make these enzymes, the beautiful thing is that cancer cells can’t!
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