Bombshell: Explosive Medical Secrets That Will Redefine Aging (44 page)

SS:
But here’s where I see a problem. Our aging population is all “pilled up.” They can’t think through the disastrous haze of pharmaceuticals. Plus, they are eating chemicals and drinking diet soda. Older people seem to love their sugar, and generally, they don’t realize that the bags of cookies and candies they get from the supermarkets are loaded with brain-killing chemicals. As a result, they may care less about learning.

SB:
And that’s why the percentages of demented and Alzheimer’s patients are so high with older people in America; too much TV, no exercise, chemicals, bad-quality food, not reading much—it’s all a horrible combination. These nonactivities are eating up the brain and deteriorating it along with the rest of the body.

In other countries where people are maintaining activity until they are quite old, you don’t see much of this phenomenon. You don’t see abuse of diet soda or abuse of watching too much TV. People in other countries try to stay active all their lives. Unfortunately, here in our country, the bottom line is that we are creating a population of people who are getting more and more stupid.

SS:
It’s sad but true.

SB:
And it leads to more cancer. Memory is a very active process. During twenty-four hours, a person needs to construct completely new circuits of neurons. This is very extensive and requires involvement of numerous genes. If there is abnormal function of these genes (an inactive brain), and if this system becomes disorganized, you will end up with useless cells in your brain, which can form a brain tumor.

We talked about the genetic switches. You can keep the cancer-protective genetic switches turned on by implementing simple
changes. You must have a proper diet of (preferably) organic food, and that includes adding herbs and spices that provide antioxidant protection such as turmeric, curcumin, and Indian spices. My wife and I eat at an Indian restaurant once a week, because it tastes very good and also I like to get all the important spices they use in their cooking. There were studies done on this that found significant differences between people who eat a diet high in herbs and spices versus those who don’t. And there was clearly less cancer in those who used spices on a regular basis.

Exercise is important: at least one hour a day. Supplements and antioxidants are all helpful, avoiding chemicals is important, getting proper sleep is important, and managing your stress is important. If people would just do these things, the cancer rate would go way down.

And then you have to make an effort to learn. It may be difficult, but try to learn for at least one hour a day. You could learn poetry or a foreign language, or try to read a more difficult book. But those who don’t try to change their lifestyle and diets will likely decline.

At the moment we are approaching the biggest paradigm shift in our approach to illnesses in the last 150 years. We are switching from categorizing the illnesses based on what we see under the microscope to categorizing the diseases based on different genomes. For instance, there is a genome for one type of breast cancer and another genome for another type of breast cancer. Of one hundred thousand different varieties of cancer, each will have different genomes. The right way to approach disease is to identify the changes and use proper molecular switches. I believe in the next ten years very few doctors will be using an optic microscope because they will be looking primarily into genomic characterization of various illnesses. This could be the answer to numerous problems like cancer (obviously), Alzheimer’s, and even bacterial infections, which is important because we are running out of antibiotics due to overuse; they are just not working anymore. And infections in the future will be deadly because of this. So hopefully these new changes get here in time. We are now learning how to turn on the genes that produce antibiotics in our body.

SS:
So what are they going to call this other direction?

SB:
It will be called
synthetic biology
, which means proper identification of proper circuits, proper switches, and inserting them into
normal cells so they can turn on the switches that are silent and direct the cell in the right way or develop it.

SS:
I have a lot of friends who are developing memory problems; can’t remember the end of the sentence type of thing. Will this happen in time for them?

SB:
Some of them could reach the point of no return. You see, once you destroy too many neurons it’s too late, especially for the neurons involved in the initial phase of memory. These are the neurons that concentrate your attention. Without these neurons you won’t be able to remember simple things because you’ll have lost your ability to have attention recall. On the other hand, those who have partial decline of memory may still have time to replenish them.

SS:
What can they do?

SB:
Sounds simple, but, make drastic changes in their diet. It’s about the fuel they give their bodies. Nutrition is fuel. The brain needs proper fuel.

SS:
Amen. I say this over and over. You have to give your body high-quality fuel, high octane.

Let’s talk about methylation, because it is one of the factors that cause us to age. Lots of supplements have the word “methyl” or “methylation” in them, but I don’t think the average person really understands what methylation means and why it’s important.

SB:
Methylation is one of the processes by which genes are expressed. Our cellular DNA requires constant enzymatic actions (called
methylation
), for activation, silencing, maintenance, and repair. Aging cripples youthful methylation, causing DNA damage that can manifest as cancer, organ damage, and brain cell degeneration.

SS:
So methylation controls the gene activity, such as turning switches on or off?

SB:
Right. Methylation is like the ignition to turn the gene “off” and “on.”

SS:
And we want to keep “on” our cancer-protective genes.

SB:
Correct. If you remove these methyl groups, it’s like removing the plastic cover from around the gene, and the gene will become active again. I am talking about methylation of the part of the gene that is responsible for the activity of the rest of the gene. Methylation is like blocking the ignition key of the gene.

SS:
So methylation is
not
a good thing.

SB:
Well, it depends on what you are methylating. It’s bad when methylation turns “off” a gene that is important for the function of your body, like a well-working brain, but it’s a good thing if methylation turns “off” the gene that is causing cancer.

SS:
If the methyl group is removed, then the enzyme can reach and activate the gene?

SB:
Right. Let’s imagine a car with the ignition key. You want to turn on the car, so you put in the key and turn it and the car starts. If you block the keyhole, then the key can’t get in and you can’t start the car. Over time the gene promoter (ignition) is covered with methyl groups, which prevent enzymes from reaching it and activating it. As a result, the gene is “silenced.” Increased methylation throughout life silences important groups of genes. Some of the genes that are silenced are the ones that inhibit inflammation and cancer, which helps explain why there is more cancer among the elderly.

This is actually the body’s master clock.

SS:
Do you mean that the defects of methylation are why we age and the number of silenced genes dictates how long we are going to live?

SB:
Yes. The master clock theory unites what we know about stem cells, telomeres, and methylation. The telomere’s gene in the normal cell is silenced by methylation, after approximately fifty cell divisions, allowing the cell to die. In the stem cell, the telomere’s gene is not silenced and the cell lives.

SS:
I like to try to simplify things, so is methylation like internal “resting”?

SB:
Yes. Methylation is a chemical process like making a plastic. You put together a bunch of these methyl groups and something like a plastic is formed. What’s underneath this plastic is the gene, which can’t be active because it’s separated from the rest of the machine. So it’s
resting
. You are correct.

SS:
I like to be correct! [Laughs.]

SB:
This resting gene is now silenced. It’s been put to sleep. Now, it’s not working in your favor.

SS:
So this isn’t good. Here’s a gene that is supposed to protect us from cancer, but it’s silenced, asleep, or resting. Not doing its job.

SB:
Right, but it’s not damaged; it’s still in good shape. Yet when it is silenced, this is the first step in the development of cancer. The gene is no longer protecting you against the development of cancer, so if you have poor eating habits and bad lifestyle habits, you don’t have
a gene that is turned “on” to protect you. This is methylation. If your bad habits continue, they will lead to further abnormalities because a turned “off” cancer gene is unstable. So instead of just silencing the gene, you end up with mutations, which are a permanent change in the structure of the protective gene. Now that cell is not being destroyed, and if the process continues, it will produce a number of cells that are abnormal.

SS:
Okay, then that person is in trouble, possibly has cancer?

SB:
Yes, and you can also see how this would affect aging. As we age, the stem cells decline, in part due to increased methylation.

SS:
This means the body isn’t able to renew itself as rapidly, which increases the risk of diseases and promotes aging. So how do we stop the methylation process?

SB:
As I’ve been saying, good nutrition, improved digestion, managing stress, good lifestyle habits, daily physical exercise, and the duration of your sleep is important, seven to eight hours. Avoid chemical carcinogens, minimize free radicals with antioxidants, get sufficient exposure to sun for vitamin D intake. And restoring missing hormones is also crucial, the ones you write about, Suzanne, the bioidenticals. In other words, the choices we make every day affect the tempo of our biological clocks, which in turn affects the pace of our master clock, meaning how fast we will die. As the master clock accelerates, we are at an increased risk of cancer as well as other diseases.

SS:
But you can offset disease, and lengthen your life, by changing your life and seriously utilizing your suggestions above for healthy living. So it’s actually very simple: You can avoid most cancers and other serious diseases by keeping your protective genetic switches turned “on.” And you do this by good diet, lifestyle, avoiding toxins, eating organic, getting sleep, managing your stress, and I imagine other factors like happiness and love in your life.

SB:
Correct. I am a scientist. What I have described above is in its simplest form.

SS:
That’s what I want. I want my reader to walk away from this discussion with you, a great and famous cancer doctor and an innovative scientist, telling us that
we are in control of not getting cancer
!

And that control is dictated by the diet and lifestyle choices that we make. That heredity has very little to do with it, that chemicals and poor food have everything to do with it.

What else will keep us alive longer? Let’s talk about royal jelly and honeybees. I’ve heard some interesting things about them recently.

SB:
Honeybees are very interesting, and through them we have made some incredible breakthroughs at the Burzynski Research Institute. Honeybees have identical genomes; you take sixty thousand honeybees and each of them is like a twin because they all have identical genomes. Why is it that some of these honeybees survive sixty times longer than others, the worker bees? The workers live only five weeks, but the queen may live two to six years. What is so different?