Natural Tissue Antibody, Aging, and Cancer
The following is a transcription of the January 1958 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
Also in this issue:
- Tip of the Month (Mononucleosis)
- The Role of Nutrition in Dental Health, by Martin Barr, PhD
- High Points of Collinsonia Root
Natural Tissue Antibody, Aging, and Cancer
The regulators of cell activity are the cell-specific cytotrophins (aggregates of the specific protomorphogens). Natural tissue antibodies keep these factors in control in normal life, so that there is neither too much stimulation of growth and repair nor too much inhibition. Placental hormones, in the case of embryonic development, insulate the embryo from this control, permitting the embryo’s specific type of growth, so different from that of the normal state. (In the absence of progesterone, abortion occurs through the action of natural tissue antibodies.)
In old age natural tissue antibodies become excessive, inhibiting growth and repair. De Nouy found he could predict the exact age of a patient in a military hospital by calculations based on wound healing data.1 He was in fact calculating the amount of available cytotrophins in the patient. We now feel that these cytotrophins progressively become less available by reason of increased amounts of natural tissue antibody present in the blood and that the combined antibody-antigen becomes adsorbed into connective tissue, creating a liability to the body that is dangerous when hormonal or enzymatic influences cause its release. Such release may be accomplished through factors released in trauma, burns, etc., which create the phenomena of shock.
Connective tissue adsorbs, in all probability, both the free cytotrophin and the cytotrophin bound to the antibody. Both are probably released by shock factors. Aged tissue may contain more cytotrophin than young tissue, but the cytotrophin is in an unavailable state in the main because it is linked with natural tissue antibody.
Some hormones have the specific function of releasing cytotrophins. Thyroid is one; it promotes growth and repair no doubt by this effect. It is necessary for the release of cytotrophins from chromosomes, and development is impaired by its lack (cretinism).
Sex hormones earmark released cytotrophins for sex cycle purposes. Testosterone, with thyroid help, releases them and earmarks them for use by the male gonad. They are not available for any other use, such as somatic repair. That is why testosterone aggravates gastric ulcer, whereas it is relieved by the female sex hormone, which is not so exclusive in its earmarking of the cytotrophin. The ovary needs far less of the tissue determinant since it creates far fewer germ cells.
When the connective tissues become saturated with the cytotrophin-antibody combination, there is a loss of normal elasticity, and the characteristic effects of age set in.
Degenerative changes occur because of the loss of cytotrophins from the specific antibody effect. Arthritis is a common syndrome, no doubt, resulting from this reaction. Just which tissue group will react depends on which tissue may be weakest; this goes back to the history of malnutrition.
Arthritis is preceded by cooked-food deficiencies. Tryptophan and lysine are lost in cooking, and the fibrous tissues of ligament and bone are first to suffer. Cancer may develop, certainly the stage is set for cancer when antibodies are destroying the blueprints normally necessary to promote repair. The cancer cell is called a “lawless cell,” but we now see that it has lost its contact with normal “law” and is in the same predicament as any community cut off from its parent government. Its parent has in fact sent out messengers to destroy local files of blueprints, through the action of the natural tissue antibody.
Phagocytes destroy tissue that has accumulated natural tissue antibody. In fact, it seems, phagocytosis depends on the earmarking of protein by such antibody linkage before the protein can be ingested. That is why Metchnikoff reported the phagocytosis of normal tissue in the physiology of aging.
Darwin believed that determinants like the cytotrophins were produced by the various specialized tissue cells and transported to the sex glands for working into the chromosomes of the germ cell, but Weismann refused to accept this idea. Here is Dr. E.A. Rumely’s account of Weismann’s ideas2:
Cancer Cytology Is the Discovery of the Century*
By Edward A. Rumely, MD
One person in every three alive today, on the past record, will develop cancer unless a new and now thoroughly authenticated discovery can be put to the widest possible use quickly. Here follows the story of how upwards of 60,000 and possibly 100,000 individuals in the United States can be saved from cancer death each year.
Weismann, Successor to Darwin
August Weismann, tall, blue-eyed successor to Charles Darwin in developing heredity aspects of evolution, was one of the greatest and most venerable men I have ever had the good fortune to meet and know. I studied under him for my medical degree at Freiburg. He explained:
“The beginning of all life in the sea was single-celled, for eons of time. The amoeba grows, divides into two; each part again grows and divides into two; and, except for those that are obliterated, its life goes on, unending. Nothing checks its urge toward constant multiplication.
“The volvox (a multiple-celled early form of sea life) is different. Like a hollow rubber ball, it has a set of individual cells, each nourishing itself but giving up a little nutriment to two germ cells. As the volvox matures, these germ cells divide into thousands of tiny cells that break out into the sea and mate. When the fertilized cell divides, one-half becomes germ cell and the other half multiplies into forty-eight cells that make up the body, sheathing and nourishing the germ cells through another generation. When the germ cells break out, the body cells perish. Only the germ cells have unending life.
“Darwin was mistaken in his theory that all the billions of cells, for example, in the human body contribute particles to the egg and sperm to make offspring like the parent. Children are like parents because they both come from the same deathless stream of life—the germ cells.
“Yet there is an even greater mystery. The single-celled life of the sea, for untold eons, knew but one law—to grow and divide and to multiply without restraint.
“But, as higher forms of life, with diversified organs, evolved, some hidden force took control and caused the cells of each organ to know the limits of their growth—the eye cells to form the eye but not to invade the surrounding tissue, the cells of each gland and of the heart and of every member of the body to grow to their allotted limits and to perform the function of the organ they formed but not to go beyond these limits and invade surrounding tissue.
“What inner force establishes this order and assures that each organ will not revert to the habits of the primitive single cell that grows and divides and grows without restraint?”
Cancer: Product of Lawless Cells
Weismann was a biologist, not interested in cancer, but he had pointed out a fundamental fact concerning the nature of cancer, for we now know that cancer is the product of lawless cells that have reverted to the age-old pattern of the primitive one-cell life and thrown off the restraints that hold them within bounds.
All living organisms are controlled by a pattern inherited from their ancestors. The farther back in the age-old evolution of life the pattern reaches, the more deeply grooved and difficult to change. The pattern of the single cell, with its ages of life, its billions of generations as a single cell in the sea, is probably the most difficult of all to change. When more complex cells have reverted to this most primitive pattern of one-cell life, they are dominated by the most powerful inherited forces—hence the difficulty of altering their behavior pattern. So it is with cancer cells, to which it is almost impossible to restore the restraints that control normal organ cells.
Despite decades of research, to which many of the ablest minds in medicine have contributed a lifetime of effort, with scores of millions of philanthropic funds placed at their disposal, the cancer problem remains unsolved, the mystery to which Weismann pointed unrevealed.
*These words of appraisal come from an editorial, “Contemporary Progress,” Medical Times, January 1955.
—The above was reprinted in part from “Spotlight for the Nation,” No. E-323-324.
Since cancer follows, in many cases, repeated local irritation and injury, it is obvious how the formation of natural tissue antibody to the local cells can be created by such irritation and predispose to cancer. The fact that such antibody formation follows constant trauma or irritation is now well established. Dr. Salk of polio fame has been quoted to the effect that he found heart tissue antibody to result in test animals within days of injections of heart protein. Specific antibodies as a cause of constitutional disease have been suspected and in fact demonstrated for forty years.3
The statistically longer lifespan of the female sex may quite possibly be due to the rejuvenating influence of the embryo and placental factors that guard the embryo from the natural tissue antibodies of the maternal blood, or it may be due to ovarian progesterone, which seems to prevent natural tissue antibody from destroying the embryo implant in the uterus.
Progesterone has been credited with the prevention of neoplastic growths in general but probably requires a synergist that is as yet unknown.4
At any rate, the value of antigenic extracts of specific organs (cytotrophic extracts) is of unquestionable value in restoring health to the target organ. Lung cytotrophin (as mucous membrane cytotrophin) is commonly highly effective in bronchitis, colds, sore throat, sinus trouble, and even cigarette cough.
Heart cytotrophin is invaluable in almost all patients of long-standing cardiac disease, and most diabetics get definite relief from pancreas cytotrophin. Here are physiological factors that regulate nutritional assimilation, control healing and tissue regeneration. They open new doors to success in treating the human family, the victims of malnutrition who have been trying to live on refined and synthetic substitutes for natural foods. We must not forget the twenty-eight test animals put on a feed schedule lacking only one vitamin (vitamin E), in which thirteen dropped dead from heart failure as a consequence within twelve months.6 Vitamin E is basically a protector for cytotrophins, which are lost if exposed to enzymatic and oxidative influences and in fact are toxic and a source of irritation without the protecting action of the vitamin E complex.
References
- De Nouy, L. Biological Time, London, 1936.
- Editorial, Medical Times, January 1955.
- Wallis, R.L. The Quarterly Journal of Medicine, Vol. IX, 1915–16.
- Greenstein, J.P. Biochemistry of Cancer, p. 111. Academic Press, 1947.
- Nettleship, A. J. Clin. Path., 13, 349, 1943.
- Annals of N.Y. Academy of Science, 1949.
Tip of the Month (Mononucleosis)
Mononucleosis—here’s another so-called incurable disease that seems to respond to nutritional therapy. Favorable results have been reported with the use of six tablets of A-C Complex [Cataplex A-C] and four tablets of Cytotropic Extract of Liver [Hepatrophin PMG] per day in relatively short periods of treatment (one month to six weeks).
We will be happy to furnish a trial supply free for test cases of this condition.
The Role of Nutrition in Dental Health
By Martin Barr, PhD
Vitamins can play an important role in improving dental health. Complete dental care calls for adequate daily vitamin intake. Nutrition for dental and oral health starts prenatally and continues through old age. Vitamins are essential for proper development of teeth, oral mucosa, and bone, which begin to form early in pregnancy. Continued nutrition is essential as teeth erupt at intervals from infancy through childhood.
In many cases the dentist is in a position to be first to notice a vitamin deficiency in his patients. The earliest manifestations of a vitamin B complex deficiency are frequently found in the mouth, usually characterized by a smooth, atrophic tongue. Some oral abnormalities that reflect vitamin deficiency include dental caries, gingivitis, glossitis, cheilosis, faulty tooth formation, and loss of teeth.
People who wear dentures merit special nutritional consideration. Many of them may not receive adequate nutritional requirements because of impaired mastication. These persons require vitamin supplementation in order to guard against possible vitamin deficiencies.
There is also the problem of the adaptation of the gingivae to dentures by retarding bone resorption.
The proper intake of calcium is an important consideration in dental health. A calcium deficiency may arise in patients who are consuming abnormal diets and during periods of lactation and pregnancy. Such a deficiency may result in an injurious effect to the bones and teeth, since calcium is essential for bone and tissue growth and in the repair of diseased tissue. It is therefore of advantage to have dental patients on calcium therapy if it is indicated.
—Reprinted in part from Oral Hygiene, January 1958.
High Points of Standard Process Nutritional Adjuncts
Collinsonia: This product is indicated in any condition where the vascular system has lost its tone and the blood vessels have been enlarged, such as hemorrhoids, varicose veins, and aneurysm. In severe conditions this product should be used with Rutaplex A [Cyruta Plus] to strengthen vascular walls.
Ostogen Tablets may be synergistic in supplying organic phosphorus to reduce blood viscosity and improve circulation. The raw food factors in Ostogen Tablets will also contribute to the healing and granulation of new tissue because of the complete amino acid pattern it supplies, including the heat labile factors.
