A doctor, scientist, and humanitarian named Matthias Rath is not one to shy away from controversy.
On March 8th, 2002 he placed a full-page ad in USA Today with the provocative headline, "Breakthrough in Cancer Research." In it, the German-born scientist explained that a safe, effective, all-natural, scientifically-proven approach to controlling the spread of cancer has been found.
The pharmaceutical industry responded by suing him a hundred times over the following decade.
In 2004, Dr Rath was in the news again, this time on the front pages of the German tabloids for three days running. The press ran a smear campaign, calling for him to be jailed for causing the death of a child -- a charge that was later proved to be entirely false.
His crime, as far as the media and medical establishment were concerned, was to support the boy's parents in their choice to refuse further unsuccessful conventional cancer treatments and use natural therapies instead.
As you can see, he’s our kind of guy. Read on to learn his breakthrough...
This pioneering and outspoken scientist continues to seek out safe and effective natural treatments, particularly for the most deadly forms of cancer, and he doesn't mince words as far as drug companies are concerned: "These economic powers are determined to sacrifice the lives of millions of people for profits."
Associate of Linus Pauling
Matthias Rath researched heart disease in the 1980s and found a link with vitamin C. After reading his findings in the American Heart Association journal Arteriosclerosis in 1987, double Nobel prize-winning scientist Linus Pauling -- best known for popularizing vitamin C -- invited Dr. Rath to join him in the US, which he did three years later.
When Dr. Pauling died in 1994, he went on to form the Dr. Rath Research Institute in California, a 23,000 square foot pharmaceutical grade laboratory with particular emphasis on the benefits of micronutrients in cancer.
Dr. Rath and his long-standing associate Dr. Aleksandra Niedzwiecki believe cancer is no longer a mysterious illness. The key mechanisms by which it develops and can be controlled are now easily understood.
Since nine out of ten patients die because cancer has spread from the primary organ to other parts of the body, they focused their attention on these metastases, as they’re called.
Cancer develops into a life-threatening illness because the tumor is able to escape its confinement. It does so by mimicking a process that happens naturally in a healthy body.
Why tumors grow more frequently in certain organs
Cells are kept in position because they are surrounded by connective tissue made up of various fibers such as collagen and elastin. But sometimes this needs to be loosened to allow cells, fluids or other material to move through.
For instance, during the menstrual cycle a mature egg must pass through the ovary wall and make its journey to the womb. To achieve this, hormones signal the production of collagen-digesting enzymes to momentarily dissolve the connective tissue.
The body also needs to produce these enzymes to allow immune cells to reach their target and when any kind of tissue remodeling is required, such as when breast tissue is prepared for lactation.
Other processes that use these collagen-digesting enzymes include wound healing and body growth. For example, they are highly active in bone growth in the young.
Like an automatic door that opens just as you approach it and then closes behind when you've passed through, in a healthy body this is a precisely timed and tightly regulated process.
But cancer cells hijack this mechanism, using it for their own purposes to digest tissue continually in an uncontrolled manner. The immune system sees this as a normal process and does nothing to stop it, while the body's own enzyme inhibitors are insufficient to stop cancer's onward march.
Drs. Rath and Niedzwiecki believe this process answers the question as to why cancer forms in some organs and systems more frequently than others.
It's because the more vulnerable organs already use collagen-digesting enzymes under normal circumstances. These are the breast, ovary, uterus, cervix, testes, prostate, bones (especially in children and adolescents), and white blood cells (involved in leukemia).
These are more susceptible to connective tissue digestion getting out of control and so are more prone to cancer.
The same collagen-digesting mechanism applies during metastasis. Cancer cells are able to "puncture" the network of small blood vessels (capillaries) that surround them and enter the bloodstream.
The more a cancer cell is able to produce these enzymes, the more aggressive the cancer will be, the faster it will spread, and the shorter the life expectancy of the patient -- unless the process can be stopped.
Natural ways to block collagen-digesting enzymes
Although the body's internal systems are unable to stop ongoing connective tissue destruction by cancer cells, nature itself provides us with substances to slow down or stop it.
The most important is the essential amino acid L-lysine. Our daily requirement is greater than any other amino acid. It comprises 12% of the elastin and collagen mass. A person weighing 155 pounds would have 1.3 pounds of lysine in their body.
Not only is it an essential building block of collagen, but lysine will also – if there’s enough of it -- occupy sites where collagen-digesting enzymes bind to connective tissue molecules to inhibit tissue degradation.
Vitamin C – which we also need to get from our food -- stimulates collagen and elastin production and contributes to strong connective tissue.
Proline, an amino acid the body is able to make in limited amounts, is another important building block of collagen.
Copper and manganese are also essential for collagen formation, while N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), the green tea extract Epigallocatechin Gallate (EGCG) and quercetin, act synergistically to strengthen the connective tissue. The mineral selenium is able to inhibit connective tissue digestion.
Most of these nutrients also have many other anti-cancer effects.
Scientific proof
Dr. Rath and his colleagues carried out a test on human prostate cells in culture to find out whether their micronutrient formula could block the secretion of two collagen-digesting enzymes used by cancer cells.
In both cases, the higher the concentration of micronutrients, the lower the production of these enzymes. In the case of both enyzmes, moderate and higher levels of micronutrients stopped their secretion completely. This was later confirmed in 40 types of human cancer.
The next test was to see if micronutrients could stop cancer cells from penetrating connective tissue.
Here the scientists used a vial with a membrane of connective tissue in the middle. Below it was a solution that mimicked human body fluid. Above it was the same fluid containing human cancer cells. Other vials were prepared, identical to the first, except that different levels of micronutrients were added to the upper chambers with the tumor cells.
While all cancer cells successfully penetrated the connective tissue in the first vial, as micronutrient concentrations increased, so did their ability to prevent cancer invasion until -- at the highest concentration – cancer cells were totally blocked, with none found in the lower half of the vial.
For some types of tumor this total blockade was achieved at low micronutrient concentrations. For others it took moderate or high levels to achieve the same result.
Altogether, Dr. Rath and his colleagues demonstrated this effect in all of the 40 different types of human cancer tested.
In their ebook Victory Over Cancer, Drs. Rath and Niedzwiecki write, "Some chemotherapy proponents may argue that the solution to cancer cannot be that simple. But it can – and we know why: All cancer cells use the same mechanism to invade the surrounding tissue and metastasize. Since micronutrients are capable of blocking this universal cellular mechanism, they can inhibit the invasion of any type of cancer cells irrespective of their origin."
It works in animal studies
After injecting a group of mice with melanoma cells, they were divided into three groups. The first were given a normal diet only (control). The second had micronutrients added to the diet. The mice in the third group were given micronutrients by injection into the bloodstream.
When the researchers measured metastasis to the lungs, they found it was reduced by 60% in the second group compared to the controls. This increased to 80% in the intravenous group.
To take this research even further, the scientists carried out a study that more accurately reflects how cancer progresses in humans.
This time they injected melanoma cells into the spleens of two groups of mice, one eating a normal diet and the other the same thing with micronutrients added.
The result was significantly less tumor growth in the supplemented group. When the researchers checked the liver -- the main target for the spread of melanoma -- they found metastases reduced by almost half compared to the controls. Melanoma is generally a very aggressive form of cancer.
Micronutrients block four mechanisms
While metastasis is the Rath team's main focus, cancer cells also grow by multiplying, forming new blood vessels (angiogenesis) and by not responding to normal cell signals to self-destruct (apoptosis).
So they repeated the previous tests and found supplemented mice had significantly smaller tumors. The scientists wrote that "the results were amazing." Growth was inhibited in ten human tumors tested, with reductions ranging from 36% in liver cancer to 78% in breast cancer over a period of just four weeks.
Tumors as little as 1/25th of an inch cannot grow without forming new blood vessels to provide their own blood supply. This process is dependent on the use of collagen-digesting enzymes. For this reason the scientists were confident that angiogenesis could be inhibited.
They were right. Exposing cultured human endothelial cells to increasing amounts of micronutrients, they found the more that were added, the less capillary structures were formed. At the highest micronutrient concentration the process was completely blocked.
According to the authors, "This study is irrefutable scientific proof that micronutrients are powerful anti-angiogenic agents that can be immediately applied to help control cancer."
Next they tested whether micronutrients can induce apoptosis. L-arginine was included in the micronutrient mix because it is a precursor to nitric oxide. A deficiency of arginine can limit the production of this molecule, which has been shown to act as an inducer of apoptosis.
Here again they met with success. The higher the concentration of micronutrients added to melanoma cells, the more they underwent natural death. At the highest concentration, virtually all cells died naturally. This means -- if it applies not only in the lab but in the human body -- that micronutrients can reverse existing tumors.
According to Dr. Rath, this mix of natural compounds works at a genetic level to convert cancer cells that are immortal to ones that start dying. Micronutrients go to the core of the cancer cell -- to its DNA-- essentially “giving orders” to function properly or die.
Results in cancer patients
In Europe, where Dr. Rath now lives and is much better known, more than 10,000 patients have used or are using his synergistic micronutrient program. If cancer has progressed too far or if patients have been subject to intensive chemotherapy -- which cripples the immune system -- then recovery may not be possible.
However, many patients have now survived 15 years beyond their predicted death. Dr Rath has medical documentation on many of them.
One of these is Werner Pilniok, who was diagnosed with a fast growing lung tumor in 1999 at the age of 68 and given six months to live. After reading about Dr. Rath's research, he canceled surgery and opted for large quantities of the recommended micronutrients instead.
Six months later he had a CT scan. The cancer was gone. His oncologist was astonished. She could not believe her eyes. Mr Pilniok celebrated his 80th birthday in 2011 and was still known to be alive in 2015.
Another remarkable case was Ilona Schmidt, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Her conventional doctors administered radiation treatment and prescribed cortisone. She said, "I wanted to die at that time, I felt so terrible." The treatments did not help and the doctors gave her no hope of survival.
She started following Dr. Rath's protocol in April 2002. Shortly after this she was taken off cortisone. In September of the same year, an MRI scan confirmed that the tumor had vanished.
In an interview, Dr. Rath said, "There is no program that we are aware of in the field of natural health that is more effective in controlling cancer."
To sum up, the ten nutrients are l-lysine, vitamin C, proline, copper, manganese, NAC, selenium, quercetin, EGCG, and l-arginine.
Dr Rath produces his own supplements and all ten can be found, in his recommended dosages, in the Healthy Cell Growth Synergy Formula. It can be purchased at https://shop.drrath.com/. Neither he nor his products are associated with Cancer Defeated or myself in any way.
Best regards,
Lee Euler,
Publisher
