By Dr. Royal Lee
Summary: In this brief but poignant passage, Dr. Royal Lee observes that cancer tends to develop only in people with a weakened or imbalanced endocrine system. Healthy thyroid function in particular, he says, is critical in defending against the disease. This includes optimizing the effect of the gland’s hormone thyroxine by ensuring adequate levels of vitamin F, a complex of fatty acids that was recognized in the early days of nutrition as an essential nutrient in food but is inexplicably unacknowledged today. While vitamin F works synergistically with thyroxine to help prevent cancer, Dr. Lee says, one substance that should be avoided is anterior pituitary growth hormone, or “human growth hormone” (HGH). This compound, popular among bodybuilders and athletes today for its performance enhancement, is a “most potent stimulator of cancer,” he warns, and any product that might contain it should be categorically avoided in treatment of the illness. Published by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1955.
Factors Favorable and Unfavorable to Cancer[spacer height=”20px”]
1. Endocrine: It seems that cancer only becomes possible after the endocrine system becomes unbalanced or weakened. Thyroid function is essential to defense against cancer; the thyroxine acts to release determinant factors (protomorphogens) from the adsorbed reserves in connective tissue; X-ray treatment of cancer may act similarly, though the X-rays also break down the chromosomal reserves of these same determinants, and their damaging effect over thyroid is no doubt because of their failure to select the adsorbed reserves alone as sources for release. (Murphy at Rockefeller Institute proved 30 years ago that X-rays stopped cancer not by the effect on cancer tissue but because the X-rays stimulate the resistance of normal tissue to invasion. Small doses were proven more effective than destructive doses. This philosophy is unknown to most radiologists.)
The function of the vitamin F complex to cooperate with thyroxine—to make it acceptable to the tissues (we feel by reason of the F effect of catalyzing insulator films to protect the determinant, without which the release of tissue poisons, histamine, etc., by ever-present tissue enzymes occurs)—can be seen to be all important. This is the basis of the well-known anticarcinogenic effect of the F complex. (See section on vitamin F in the 1949 issue of the Annual Review of Biochemistry and Professor Aviles’s article on the treatment of cancer with vitamin F.)
The first indication of thyroxine deficiency in many patients is constipation. That is significant in that many cancer authorities blame cancer on constipation. Thyroid weakness or regression that occurs after a deficiency of vitamin F may be the primary cause. (See Lee Foundation Report #1, where blood iodine—thyroxine, no doubt—increased 100 percent or more after a few doses of vitamin F.)
It is obvious that tolerance to thyroid is dependent on vitamin F presence to wrap the released determinant that is otherwise reduced to histamine, etc. Anti-pyrexin [aka Antronex], the liver hormone that promotes the elimination of histamine, is also a weapon to use where the thyroid effect is attended with histamine reactions.
The most potent stimulator of cancer in the endocrine category is the anterior pituitary growth hormone. No anterior pituitary products should be given to the cancer patient if the presence of this factor is possible.
Dicalcium phosphate causes constipation [and] opposes thyroxine. The cancer patient needs the raw bone meal as a calcium source because its associated enzymes (phosphatase, in particular) release inositol and phosphoric acid from cereal phytates. If any constipation is caused by its use, 1/10 grain of thyroid should be used with each meal—or as much as required to keep the bowels open.
Doctors who treat cancer in the main reduce the animal protein intake to a minimum. It is likely that this is by reason of their experience that meat poisons overload the thyroid and vitamin F functions. Their patients do well for a while but tend to lose their vitality and die from apparent starvation. The proper use of fresh meats and thyroid substance with the proper vitamin reinforcement may be a more sensible system.
The thymus gland supports phagocytic activity, and its activation by thymus protomorphogen has been found very useful in combating chronic infection. Since thymus hormones have been found useful in cancer treatment, it is probable that one of the glandular defenses against cancer is the thymus. The cancer invasion can only be controlled and eliminated by phagocytic activity. (Note the activation of phagocytes by natural vitamin C.)
By Royal Lee, Elm Grove, Wisconsin. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, Form 3-55, 1955.
