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Breast Cancer and Iodine: How to Prevent and How to Survive Breast Cancer

by Dr. David Derry M.D., Ph.D.

110 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); **** 2nd EDITION AVAILABLE NOW ****; catalogue #01-0286; ISBN 1-55212-884-9; US$16.50, C$24.95, EUR16.30, £11.30

About the cause, prevention and treatment of breast cancer. Breast cancer has two phases. The first one, from abnormal cells up to carcinoma in situ reverses with iodine. The second phase, invasion, is controlled by connective tissue thyroid hormone.

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About the book      About the author      Sample excerpt      Catalogue info

About the Book     I have taken my personal experience in practice along with the details of treatment of patient together with published literature and proposed a testable theory of breast cancer. The lack of a theory of cancer and especially breast cancer has made treatment difficult and empirical.     The book is divided into four parts. The first part discusses iodine. From published facts, we can arrive at a proposal that iodine could be the first phase of a two phase cancer defence system. It appears that iodine in the extra-cellular fluid outside of the cells is the main surveillance system for abnormal cells. Iodine also triggers the natural death of normal cells in the body. There are many cells types in the body undergoing a natural death. For example some of the cells in the stomach have lives of only 2-3 days. The name of this process is apoptosis.     Carefully documented descriptions of the cancer process at different places in the body reveals most cancers have similar stages through which it passes. The cancers are not really cancer until the cells start to move by invasion through the nearby connective tissue. Cells develop abnormalities for a variety of reasons and can continue to become abnormal all the way up through atypical cells and to carcinoma in situ. Carcinoma in situ is the dividing line between the two phases of cancer development. Iodine in correct doses will reverse all of the changes up to and including the carcinoma in situ.     The thyroid hormone controls connective tissue function. So connective tissue around organs forms a structural biological barrier to the spread of cancer. Cancer spread to distant organs only develops in the connective tissue of those organs. Therefore, if the connective tissue defence is not strong then the cancerous cell from a distant site can land there and grow. If however the thyroid hormone level in the connective tissue is high enough then the connective tissue will perform its normal defence duties and not allow the cancer cell to enter it and develop.     Using these principles, fibrocystic disease and breast cancer become more understandable. Supplemental iodine in the correct doses will remove all lesions from carcinoma in situ back to just an abnormal cell by triggering death of these cells by apoptosis. Spread of cancer cells in the connective tissue can be arrested by adequate treatment with thyroid hormone to strengthen the connective tissue barrier.     My experience with patients using this approach so far has been successful. The principles are that there are two phases to cancer one controlled by iodine and the other by thyroid hormone. Thus the book deals with the prevention and survival of breast cancer.

About the Author      I was born in Selby England in 1937 and moved to and grew up in Maracaibo Venezuela. It is there I met my present wife while she was still in utero as her mother, a nurse, was looking after me while she was pregnant with my wife. My wife and I are sometimes called oil babies. After getting my MD at University of British Columbia I went on after my internship at the Toronto General to take a PhD in biochemistry and neurochemistry at the Montreal Neurological Institute and McGill University.      After finishing my training I taught pharmacology to Medical students, dentistry students and pharmacy in the Department of Pharmacology University of Toronto. I also became a Medical Research Council Scholar. Due to domestic rearrangements, I suddenly had my present wife (who had grown up with me in Venezuela) and five children under the age of eight. At our wedding the children represented the whole audience. Academic life could not financially support this. I moved back to Victoria, British Columbia to start general practice.      My interest in thyroid started over 15 years ago. Also I became interested in Breast Cancer among other things about 10 years ago. I strongly feel we should have theories for medical illnesses even if they are wrong. It stimulates researchers to test the theories and more advances can be made. Other fields of science have many competing theories such as astronomy and physics and mathematics. I feel that medicine would advance faster if there were more theories to test. Over the last 12 years I have formed a library of 5000 reprints and books on breast cancer, thyroid hormone and iodine.

Sample Excerpt

Introduction

     This book is about cause, prevention and treatment of breast cancer. Over the last century enough data and observations have become available to allow the collection of this material into a coherent, understandable and testable thesis of how breast cancer starts and how it progresses. This monograph therefore is devoted to the exploration of a new outlook towards breast cancer with also a passing mention of related cancers and diseases. When discussing cancer we are talking about a systemic process, which allows the development of predictable sequence of biological changes leading to cancer. This presentation is not meant to be exhaustive and I hope to complete a more comprehensive treatment of this thesis in the future. Purposely, I have addressed this book to women with breast cancer. Since reading some of the stories of personal experiences with breast cancer, I am full of admiration for their knowledge and enthusiasm with which they pursue this disease and the research connected with it.
     Part of the present participation by women is related to the activism which accompanied the AIDS disease outbreak, for the first time women saw that they too had a place in the decision making and began to influence research funding towards projects they instinctively knew needed exploring. This is admirable, because academic research cannot always see obvious holes in the research fields, and they may not be able or interested in filling in those holes. It is hard to get away from breast cancer statistics such as unchanged mortality rates since the records were kept in the 1920s. Also discouraging, are the newly designed detection and screening methods, which seem to still fail in changing disease outcomes. It is even disappointing that old fashion self examination appears not to help with survival. These discouraging results and statistics may only be the result of no coherent understandable theory of the cause of breast cancer so that a clean approach to the disease can be started. Slowly different exploratory approaches to breast cancer are emerging from the periphery of the present established cancer understanding but none yet show a clear opening to crack the mystery of this disease. It is hoped that this little presentation will give food for thought and maybe lead to some further advances.

       The monograph is divided into four parts.
        1. Iodine its evolution and role in the cell
        2. Iodine and thyroid hormone and its relations to the patient's constitution
        3. Cancer in general as a process.
        4. Breast cancer fibrocystic disease, its prevention and arrest.

     The first part is information on iodine and its relation to the body and thyroid gland. Iodine appears to be the least understood important element making up the body fluids and cells of humans. Iodine has not been neglected as huge amounts of research have not uncovered any other function of iodine than that it makes thyroid hormone and it serves as an excellent antiseptic, which we have known for a hundred years. In spite of all the research we do not know what biochemical processes it participates in or what part it plays in the overall metabolism of the body other than its role in the formation of thyroid hormone.
     I propose primarily that iodine is the trigger mechanism for apoptosis (the natural death of cells) and the main surveillance mechanism for abnormal cells in the body. Iodine triggers the death of cells which are abnormal or which have normal programmed death as part of their life cycle. This is part of a general thesis that iodine and thyroid hormone act as a team to provide a constant surveillance against abnormal cell development, chemicals that are carcinogenic and the spread of cancer cells within the body. Iodine appears to have several more roles in the body. In the stomach iodine protects against abnormal growth of bacteria in the stomach (of which helicobacter pylori is the most clinically significant). Iodine can coat incoming allergic proteins to make them non-allergic, which likely also applies to the internal equivalent called autoimmune disease. Iodine binds softly to the double and triple bond of lipids to protect these bonds while they are being transported to synaptic sites in the brain and blood vessels of the body. As well iodine in the stomach deactivates all biological and most chemical poisons. All of these new proposed testable functions of iodine are discussed. There is a discussion of the possible role of iodine in evolution in relation to development of multi-cellularity and maturation of vertebrates The general thesis of this book is that there is a specific dose of iodine intake above which is preventative of several disease processes including those related to fibrocystic disease and breast cancer.

     The second part is related to the thyroid hormones and the thyroid gland. In both of these first two sections some suggestions as to the evolutionary source of iodine and thyroid hormone are outlined. From here we can understand that tissue levels of thyroid hormone are just as important if not more important than circulating blood levels. It is proposed that thyroid hormone has controlled the genome(Nuclear DNA sequences etc) since the beginning. Because of this, control of intracellular low levels of thyroid hormone would tend to let genes, which can cause disease escape and express themselves. Therefore thyroid hormone's main purpose is to run each of the cells in relation to each other and also to permissively allow other hormones to act.
     Thyroid hormone came well before any of the other hormones and has taken up the position of the most important hormone. Since iodine came before thyroid hormone then iodine is more important than the hormone. Some of the clinical aspects of thyroid hormone treatment are discussed in relation to disturbances in the receptor mechanisms and its relation to thyroid hormone resistance.

     The third part deals much with the findings of the intensive cancer investigations of the last 60 years or more. The late Dr. David Clarke Jr. wrote some detailed thoughts on the biological development of the cancer process. Now along with findings by Dr. Sampson of the Mayo clinic in the 1970s it becomes evident that perhaps cancer is a biphasic process (two phases). More clearly stated, cancer has two phases the first is controlled by iodine up to the phenomena called "carcinoma in situ" or "occult cancer" and thyroid hormone seems to control the second phase namely the spread of cancer within connective tissues.

     The forth and last part concerns the application of the first three parts to breast cancer. Much of the material in this part seems to fall into place if the postulates put forward are legitimately representing what is happening in this disease. With these concepts we can relate the risk factors and epidemiological studies on breast cancer to prevention and treatment.

     On a personal note I want to explain briefly my route to this book. Having become highly trained and qualified to do basic research, domestic re-arrangements made pursuit of this career a financial impossibility. Hence I had a complete career change in 1972, from academic halls to the front lines of general practice. It was my over-riding philosophy when I entered general practice that I would learn and practice to listen to the patient. Sir William Osler said it clearly but Syndenham said it first that if you listen to the patient they will tell you the diagnosis and if you listen even more closely they will tell you the correct treatment. I have tried to hone my skills in this one area of medicine and found it to be a gold mine of interesting new concepts.

Catalogue Information