The fact that mutations in certain key human genes are at the root of all cancers has dominated cancer research for thirty years. (1) While the oncogene model recognizes that carcinogens induce and promote the chromosomal-genetic chaos underlying carcinogenesis, it doesn't fully explain why carcinogens are stored and not excreted by the body. The liver is the frontline of all immunological warfare and carcinogen detoxification. It depends primarily on the hepatocyte production of bile and the integrity of portal circulation nourishment to excrete carcinogens safely out of the body.
The focus on single nutrients or antioxidant-type phytochemicals to boost carcinogen detoxification fails to take into account the multiple and paradoxical biological outcomes of detoxification and the excretion of toxins via bile output. Instead, research efforts should be redirected away from single synthetic nutrients and unidirectional phytochemicals to emphasize and address nature's wisdom in Phase I-III liver detoxification and excretion. This multidimensional approach opens a wide window of opportunity for doctors to detect and improve malfunctions in liver performance. The fact that the oncogene model does not fully address these important clinical issues may explains why cancer has remained an intractable problem.
Dr. Peter Duesburg (University of California-Berkeley) stated, "[c]hromosomes, carrying thousands of genes, are severely scrambled (duplicated, broken, structurally rearranged, or missing entirely)" from carcinogen-induced chromosomal chaos. Hence, one can logically conclude that the direct cause and driving force of cancer is strongly linked to the liver's inability to detoxify and excrete carcinogens efficiently. Undetoxified or stored carcinogens cause cells to produce wildly skewed dosages of proteins that disrupt critical teams of enzymes, destabilize hepatocytes and the liver's portal circulation, and eventually give rise to a lethal cancer. (1)
Suboptimal portal circulation and hepatocyte bile production disrupt and weaken a person's immune armament, so it can't optimally thwart and outwit cancer or invading microbes. Indeed, today's polluted world poses daunting challenges to the hepatocyte as it becomes destabilized from excessive carcinogen exposures, portal circulation deficits, and pre-, pro-, and synbiotic malnourishment. (2-4)
Could this missing link in cancer causation explain why many practitioners find themselves treating the end results of carcinogen overload with antioxidants, synthetic vitamins and amino acids and immunomodulators? Clearly, the prospects for success with these fragmented approaches are limited, because they fail to provide the thousands of synbiotic nutrients needed to strengthen innate immunological weaponry against cancer. (3,5-8)
Rather than a magic-bullet approach with marketing attractions of explicit promises for certain antioxidant-phytochemical benefits, researchers need to direct attention to natural ways of strengthening the innate immune system. In regard to the magic-bullet approach, leading scientists are saying the following: "The role of any single anti-carcinogenic phytochemical, no matter how well characterized, cannot be understood except in the context of broader dietary patterns" ... "the disappointing results so far obtained from phytochemical approaches to cancer prevention, and why recommendations to consume single substances are unlikely to improve cancer risk." (5-6)
Boosting the "good" detoxification enzymes while inhibiting the "bad" carcinogen-activating enzymes as popularized by the media with resveratrol,...