[Music] so what's vitamin C well there's really many different forms of vitamin C and so what I say is with the real vitamin C please stand up most of what you're going to see out there is ascorbic acid now ascorbic acid is ph3 it's very acidic and most people when they look at cancer they're like well an acidic nature is not good in cancer and that's true but understand it's not the body wide it's actually just in what called the tumor micro environment but ascorbic acid itself is a pH of three and that has a lot of issues poor tolerability it increases the acidity of the of the body of the patient which we don't want so thus we come to what's called sodium ascorbate sodium ascorbate is simply just a sodium salt of ascorbic acid and guess what it has a pH around 7.4 so essentially what we're dealing with with sodium ascorbate is just one sodium molecule that's added to theoric acid molecule but it makes that big a difference in the ph and that it makes that big a difference in treatment because that pH is 7.4 is going to have a huge impact on the tolerability of the treatment by the patient the molar masses are different between the two compounds the melting points are different between the two compounds they are different molecules but they are they are separated by simply one sodium molecule what's interesting about sodium ascorbate it's naturally occurring it's naturally occurring in citrus fruit it's naturally occurring in vegetables scorb acid is not I actually found this interesting quote saying quote sodium ascorbate is an approved food additive I find that interesting because it's naturally present in Foods so when we in a holistic integrative approach to the treatment of cancer introduce therapies we want to introduce therapies that work with the body and so sodium ascorbate is a pH neutral it's going to work better with the body again it's naturally present in food we don't want to introduce uh therapies that work against the body we want to introduce therapies that work with the body and sodium ascorbate is one such example that does that now a lot of people out there may say that vitamin C is not a vitamin now this is a little bit kind of an esoteric debate but I think it's important because you're going to see more of this a Polish biochemist by the name of cmir funk in the late 19th century to early 20th century he TW he coined this term vitamin and it was really coming out of what he thought and what a lot of people thought were molecules that were essential and required to sustain life and they call these amines and they thought that these were critical for life in Latin that's V so they put these together and you got vitamins and so these were chemicals or compounds that they thought were amines or like amines and vital to life sustaining uh properties but the biological function of vitamin C is not defined by a name when you get down to the bare bare Knuckles of it vitamin C is simply a an electron donor and we'll talk about that in a second if you want to go well what is Vitamin C doing it's donating electrons and that acts as a buffer and that actually acts as the means in how Vitamin C can kill cancer cells but not non-cancer cells or normal cells now we we as humans don't make vitamin C we we have inherited a preserved deficiency in a enzyme called gluto latic GL gluto lactone oxidase say that three times fast this enzyme that we don't have dis disables our ability to make vitamin C and guess what we would make it from if we were able to Sugar that's why if you're ever getting IV vitamin C and they check a glucometer or you know check your glucose your your glucose your vitamin is going to be your glucose is going to be Sky High it's not because it's picking up glucose it's because it's picking up vitamin C and I think it's important too here that understand that these word origins have intrical meaning and we need to recognize historically where they come from because these words they really apply the meaning to how we use these therapies today if we lose the meaning we if we lose the historical context of what we're doing here we really we lose that historical Foundation of what we're doing and vitamin C is something that we have to recognize its Origins because it it's going to be an impactful treatment now and it's going to be impactful treatment moving forward so what is Vitamin C well it's a lot of things first it's vitamin C second it is reduced ascorbic acid as I mentioned this is the ph3 when a when vitamin C or acorbic acid loses or donates an electron it becomes the oxid oxidized form called dehydroascorbate a lot of that happens outside the cancer cell What's called the tumor micro environment but understand that cancer cells can take up both that DHA and that ascorbic acid it's taken up differently different uh Pathways will take it up so for example What's called the glute receptors will take up the DHA and the scorc acid is taken up via U the svct or what's called vitamin C dependent Transporters at its basic mechanism vitamin C is an electron donor so if you're looking at this from an organic chemistry or a biochemical perspective that's the answer what's vitamin C it's donating electrons it acts as what's called a Redux buffer so we we think about pH as alkaline acidity and that's a buffer system our body buffers that so if we take in ascorbic acid is pH of3 the body's going to buffer that because a pH of3 is not suitable for life it's going to bring that up to more alkaline of 7.4 likewise Redux and oxidation is a buffering system and vitamin C is intrical in that process and that that is also the mechanisms by which vitamin C kills cancer cells there are those out there that are calling vitamin C A drug now I've I've seen this pattern before where a natural therapy has been called a drug and then the FDA regulates and it no longer becomes publicly available so obviously I'm a little apprehensive or a little biased about people starting to call it a drug it's really not a drug I mean when you look at the word drug from from word origin it actually comes from the 14th century so 1300s angl French it means any substance used in composition or Preparation of medicines well vitamin C is not a medicine in the 16th century it became associated with poisons vitamin C is definitely not a poison and then in the 19th century it became equated to narcotics and opiates and it's definitely none of those so I think when you you look at the concept of how Vitamin C is trying to be labeled as a drug I think this is inappropriate and honestly I think it's nefarious and it's an attempt to regulate it so beyond electron donor what we really have to look at is it's the delivery of hydrogen peroxide to the tumor micro environment and the cancer cells so the tumor micro environment is kind of an environment by which the tumor and the cancer cells interact no longer can one look at cancer as a solid ball of cells it isolates itself from the body there is a zone of interaction and in that zone vitamin c does a lot of great work and produces a lot of hydrogen peroxide so if you want to use that drug analogy which again I don't like but hydrogen peroxide is the pro drug hydrogen peroxide is the purpose of vitamin C this occurs in me outside the tumor cell in the tumor micro environment and that cancer cell takes it up and that is where all the action happens that hydrogen peroxide goes through a series of reactions called fit Reactions where then this process depletes the cancer cell of glutathione it actually downregulates inad it actually changes metabolism within the cancer cell and that triggers cancer cell death it's an amazing therapy but it has to be dosed right it has to be dosed pro- oxidatively and that's what the hydrogen peroxide does now beyond the hydrogen peroxide it's about the therapeutic effect or pharmaceutical ascorbic acid so all of these labels or names are vitamin C so they are all of these but at its basic core it's a prod drug by delivering hydrogen peroxide but it's an electron donor and it's through these mechanisms in which it kills the cancer cells but doesn't damage the healthy cells that's the beauty of it two environments healthy cells cancer cells highd does vitamin C kills the cancer cells and it doesn't harm the healthy cells study after study after study has shown this so this concept how can ascorbic acid which is pH of3 and sodium and scorbite have a pH around 7.4 so neutral how can one molecule one one so one element like sodium change the impact of the molecule that much well guess what when we look at hormones where I cut my teeth we see that same that same consistent um recurrent theme one small change in a hormone in a molecule will have a huge impact so progesterone progesterone is a hormone that women produce men produce a little bit of it not much medroxy progesterone acetate is the drug meant to mimic progesterone there's this Fascination by the way in conventional medicine with drugs progesterone is not a drug it's a hormone well when you look at progesterone versus mroy progesterone acetate I wouldn't give medroxyprogesterone aetate to my enemies it's a bad drug their half-lies are different different their binding and circulation through the buds different I mean medroxy progesterone acetate even acts as a male hormone what's called an androgen it even acts as a glucocorticoid or Minal corticoid so it even acts as a steroid though hormones are steroids so one small one small difference progesterone medroxy medroxy progesterone acetate can have a huge physiologic impact in how hormones will impact the body in many cases the on cancer estrogen same when you look at estrogen we have three types of estrogen here estradi estrone estriol estriol is the estrogen dominant during pregnancy but these three estrogens minor minor differences so for example estradi there's a hydroxy group at the 17 position estrone there's a cabanal group there and then and then estriol is just different in its interaction with the receptors but all three of these estrogens will interact with estrogen receptors different estrad will will benef will interact with what's called ER Alpha higher and that's more proliferative uh ex me I said that wrong um estral is one to one with est with ER Alpha and er beta estrone is dominant with ER Alpha so when when a person has breast cancer and they say er do uh ER positive that is estrogen receptor Alpha so estrone is the estrogen that dominates after after menopause in women and this estrogen gets produced from fat and it is why it dominates after menopause because it promotes breast cancer at that time and how it interacts with estrogen receptors and then estriol actually has a dominant interaction with estrogen receptor beta which is a counterregulatory estrogen receptor to ER Alpha little technical but the point here is one small difference One Small Change in a molecule can have a huge impact in not just signaling but things like canc testosterone dihydro testosterone DHT three Alpha understand di all three of these are male hormones but all three of them have different potency they have different Androgen receptor Affinity they have different doses disassociation rates they have different elimination rates all because they have slight variations not sodium molecule sodium like what you would see in sodium ascorbate but small additions whether it's a carbonal group whether it's a hydrogen group whether it's a methyl group are changing these hormones to cause drastically different effects throughout the body finally thyroid everybody focuses on T4 lexin synthoid this is the hormone that's most dominant in terms of production from thyroid but T3 is the most potent you're taking off an iodine molecule here T4 has four iodine T3 has three but yet one's more powerful because it has has less iDine and then reverse T3 is just the mirror image of the T3 and it is it is inactive but in cancer what you see is that these thyroid hormones can actually promote the cancer growth but the point here is that one change one small change can have a significant impact in function just as with ascorbic acid and sodium ascorbate and here we're just giving you some some examples of how this already exists in physiology so why does it even matter why does whether it's ascorbic acid or sodium ascorbate why does it bother well because my job as a physician and as medical director of Brio medical is to treat people with all forms of cancer and other variety of autoimmune diseases lime Etc but it's to provide effective therapies efficient and effective therapies and if I can't therapeutically dose because something like ascorbic acid is pH negative then I can't reach tolerability and compliance in my dosing so I've got to introduce a therapy that's going to be pH neutral tolerability thus I'm going to be able to reduce side side effects I'm going to be able to increase the frequency of the dosing the patient is going to be able to comply with the frequent dosing the high dosing and that is where we're going to get the pharmacological uh effect of the vitamin C so when you look at the vitamin C fundamentals mean lus pollings back lineus polling back in the 7 70s really said it well he basically said look as a part of training we we understand how drugs need to be dosed how drugs need to be delivered to the tissue and how we need to monitor that but yet when it comes to something natural like vitamins particularly here with vitamin C it gets thrown out the door it gets thrown out the window what I tell our patients here at Brio is that being in the science reading the research actually forces one to become more natural doing things holistic and natural doesn't imply you throw science out the window in fact being in the science requires you to be more natural so the fundamentals the fundamentals of vitamin C include pharmacokinetics phac pharmacodynamics bioavailability dosing duration frequency pharmacokinetics is simply understanding that the way the body come way the vitamin comes into the body how it's absorbed into the body how it's distributed throughout the body how it interacts with a point of point of action pharmacokinetics is really how something is delivered and how it gets to the point of action pharmacodynamics is just really looking at the side of action the resulting effects and side effects these are the mechanisms by which pharmacology has looked at drugs and utilize this to help patients it also applies to Natural natural therapies and this is where a lot of people out there will use vitamin C and not dose it right because it doesn't get delivered right pharmacokinetically you intuitively know this when somebody's sitting next to somebody that's 6'5 355 pounds and you're 5 foot2 and 120 pounds and you're both getting 50 grams of vitamin C you both have different types of cancer and you're like uh this just doesn't seem quite right to me intuitively you're right it's because of pharmacokinetics that that is the case tumor burden also plays a role there the deficiency of vitamin C in the individual plays a role there the body size plays a role there all of these come together to play a role bioavailability is just what we discovered the late 19 uh 1990s and early 2000 is that when you give vitamin C orally it's not absorbed well in fact the more vitamin C You Take by mouth the more the gut downregulates the absorption of vitamin C so that's why vitamin C failed as an oral therapy with the Mayo studies from Rochester they completely did not understand that there's a difference in bioavailability of delivery of vitamin C by mouth versus IV dose critical we've got to reach a prooxidative dose this begins at least one gram per kilogram but typically 1.5 gram per kilogram and then you must test to make sure that you're achieving therapeutic values then it's not just about dose it's also about duration we we recognize thank you to Dr reiran and others that there's a certain plasma blood level of vitamin C that we want to achieve and the longer we can achieve that the longer we can stay there the more cancer cells we can we can kill so with therapeutic plasmas scorc acid levels that correlates directly with hydrogen peroxide which again is the mechanism by which uh vitamin C kills cancer cells but it's through that prodrug hydrogen peroxide the duration is to keep ourselves there as long as we can frequency when you look at the vitamin C in healthy cells versus cancer cells there's a difference when they looked at research in liver vitamin C in healthy liver cells is going to pretty much be eliminated in 16 hours and the blood it's gone in two hours so in healthy tissue vitamin C is used up it's gone but guess what cancer cells not only do cancer cells have a higher affinity for vitamin C but it holds on to it for up to 48 hours so it's not just enough to use vitamin C one has to recognize all of the intricacies that go into how to dose it how to deliver it how to monitor it and how to maximize it because we can give somebody a dose of vitamin C that should be a high dose say one gram per kilogram of vitamin C which is a lot by the way and then you check plasma vitamin C levels and they still need more so you can't just give a dose and expected to hold you have to monitor it because that demand will go up and down so when we look at the concept of vitamin C it really comes down to these four critical parameters bioavailability you can't treat cancer with oral vitamin C in fact there's research that suggest inadequate vitamin C can actually promote cancer stem cells let me repeat that because it's important inac inadequate dosing of vitamin C via the oral route actually could promote cancer stem cells so this is why it's important to use vitamin C or get vitamin C if you're a patient by somebody who is using it therapeutically by design by the science by the evidence for a purpose then we want to dose it right you start off by dosing it by weight then you want to dose it for duration we want to achieve a therapeutic level in that blood we want to monitor it and we want to stay there as long as we can because we need this vitamin C to penetrate the tumor to pen to produce hydrogen peroxide and here's another thing there's areas within the tumor that are hypoxic that lack oxygen and those that have normal oxygen the vitamin C is not going to penetrate all those areas the same those areas that lacks lack oxygen the vitamin C is not going to penetrate that well so you need higher doses of vitamin C and then we got a frequently give the dose so if cancer cells will hold on to it up to 48 Hours a bare minimum is three times a week so if you're getting vitamin C 50 grams one time a week and you're dealing with cancer that is a therapeutic dose that is a non-therapeutic dose that I would gauge may even be actually promoting the cancer so why is Vitamin C important well I hope that I've been able to tell you that it kills cancer cells but that can only happen with the right dose the right dose is going to be different for each person it's not necessarily going to be a word or phrase low dose high dose therapeutic dose or pharmacological dose the right dose is the dose that elicits the effect that we're after which here it's to kill cancer cells so if you have a small individual 120 you 120 pounds 5 foot2 it might be that you can give them 100 grams vitamin C their plasma scorc acid levels achieve 350 to 450 nanograms per deciliter and you're going to see significant prooxidative effect and cancer killing effects but if you give that same dose to somebody like I said 6'6 335 pounds that right dose in that small individual is going to be the low a low dose in the other individual idual so what we have to do is understand all the different parameters that come together to help us to achieve the right dose which could be a low dose could be a high dose but it's to achieve a therapeutic dose but primarily it's here to achieve a pharmac pharmacological dose which is the production of hydrogen peroxide see vitamin C it's a natural therapy it's a holistic therapy but we're using it very differently we have to use it big we have to use it scientific we have to use it is Guided by the Evans because otherwise we're not going to get a therapeutic effect and we may actually hurt the person that is helped the cancer so if we don't use it right the oncologist will say see it doesn't work but if we use it right there's actually research that shows that highd do pro oxidated vitamin C helps in chemotherapy and helps in radiation the Tide's turning on vitamin C the science is showing that many doctors aren't up to speed on it but if you you're going to use vitamin C in the treatment of cancer please go to somebody like here Brio where where we're going to treat you as a patient with cancer we're going to follow the science in that so why does it matter well it's about dose it's about duration it's about bioavailability should be frequency a little bit of a typo there because what we're going to do it's going to create oxidative stress within the cancer cell again that hydrogen peroxide that gets produced outside the cancer cell gets taken up into the cancer cell preferen ually and within that that's where you get what's called oxidated stress you get this burst and it actually depletes the cancer cell of glutathione it downregulates glutathione which is a key detoxifying molecule that is a mechanism by which it kills cancer cells so if you're if you're a patient with cancer you have a loved one or family member with cancer you're a doctor treating cancer you do not want to give them glutathione you're actually potentially propagating the cancer we want to deplete the cell of of glutathione to kill it via vitamin C through hydrogen peroxide we got to deliver it all through the tumor there are different areas within the tumor some with oxygen some without and that vitamin C has to be dosed to penetrate all of it all of it and we have to saturate that entire tissue if we're going to kill a tumor if we're going to shrink a tumor we need to make sure we use the scientific the bench scientific research behind vitamin C and really use it otherwise the oncologist may be right but when we use it right we're right and that's the science that shows that and here's just a few studies here and again these are studies in people these aren't studies in animals these are studies in people the the last one let the Phoenix fly is more of a review article that it's reviewing a lot of different articles and notice the one there from the um Frontier of oncology it's 2021 a lot of the research on vitamin C has been really prominate prominent and propagated over the last 10 years or so so really excited time exciting times of vitamin C but there's a lot of misinformation and and and information out there that people aren't understanding so when you look at the mechanisms of actions of vitamin C it's really Broad and all of these are evidence-based reproducibly in the data in the science it's epigenetic so it induces genetic expression changes in the cancer cells it's directly cytotoxic to cancer cells but not to healthy cells this is key it doesn't deplete the healthy cells of glutathione it'll kill cancer cells and it won't it won't it won't hurt the healthy cells it blocks the cancer cell growth it's anti prolifia of it actually turns off inflammation genetically how it's transcribed what's called nfca B it's a transcription factor for inflammation vitamin C turns it off it blocks angiogenesis and lymphogenesis angiogenesis is the process by which blood vessels form for cancer and support it with its growth for nutrients and blood vitamin C blocks that it triggers apoptosis and I kind of mentioned that with the depletion of glutathione it's much broader than that but that's one mechanism it actually is what's called imom modulatory it can stimulate natural killer cells it can increase the number of natural killer cells and their activity and do the same with cytotoxic T lymphocytes both of these I call them the marine and the armies of how the immune system attacks cancer but it can also it can also suppress things that suppress the immune system in the tumor micro environment so what's called Milo deprived Malo deprived suppressor cells and transforming growth factor beta these are things in the tumor micro environment that suppress the immune system that allow the cancer to turn the immune system on the immune system really interesting but vitamin C will actually suppress that process it is antiviral I mean we're coming out of the covid pandemic vitamin C is antiviral you take a look at your viruses uh whether it's sepsis or whether it's just viral infection alone it's antiviral Broad in how its effects are we don't have time to talk about that but very evidence based it actually inhibits the mitochondrial membrane potential which destroys the cell membrane potential which destroys cancer cells but it doesn't do that to healthy cells I mean is there a therapy out there that actually will kill cancer cells and not hurt healthy cells it's vitamin C it's actually anti-cancer stem cells it'll kill cancer stem cells combine it with doxycline it'll kill cancer stem cells that's the backup you want no part of it's antimetastatic so metastat metastasis is how cancer cells spread and cancer cells when they're circulating they surround themselves with a ball of platelets it's called a cancer cell platelet Aggregate and that that protects the platelets so me the cancer cell with those platelets it buffers it from the immune system and this just sheer stress of the blood and vitamin C comes in there and it inhibits that process and it allows natural killer cells to penetrate that cancer cell platelet aggregate it does damage DNA when it's prooxidative so if an oncologist tells you that vitamin C is antioxidative if you take 2,000 milligrams by mouth he'd be right but because of the difference of bioavailability that that the Rochester studies misunderstood that Linus polling even misunderstood we now know when you dose vitamin c pro oxid pro oxidatively high dose to deliver hydrogen peroxide to the tumor micro environment and in the cancer you will not only induce DNA damage for cancer cells that kills them but you will augment that with radiation chemo therapy that's listed down below it's a Redux buffer that it's that's its primary mechanism of how Vitamin C is killing cancer cells it's donating electrons it actually is changing what's called metabolomics now new research in in terms of where cancer is going it's epigenomics it's genomics it's proteonomics and it's metabolomics metabolomics is just the collection of the metabolites vitamin C induces metabolomic changes in the cancer cells cancer cells are addicted to sugar and vitamin C comes in and turns enzymes off so it's addicted to sugar and now can no longer use it it actually targets hypoxia which is the low oxygen it actually promotes collagen some of the original research in in cancer and vitamin C is that vitamin that collagen or depletion of collagen was playing an intrical role in how V in how cancer was spreading and so adding vitamin C in helps The extracellular Matrix is involved in the tumor micro environment vitamin C is critical in preserving The extracellular Matrix and preserving an anti-tumor environment in the tumor micro environment I could talk for hours on the tumor micro environment because that's where all the action is it's a co-actor in many enzymatic functions again it augments chemotherapy it reduces side effects of chemotherapy it augments radiation and reduces side effects of radiation it augment surgery surgery suppresses the immune system that's why you see local recurrence and you see spread by the way chemo radiation surgery all spread cancer they will shrink a primary tumor and spread it so if we cause cancer to spread which is why 90% of cancer mortality morbidity exists what have we really done vitamin C is a therapy that can actually with surgery help to reduce that recurrence locally and spread um throughout the body vitamin C is intrical in hormone metabolism and it's great as an as an immunotherapeutic alone but it's great as working with conventional imun therapeutic drugs today like what are called immune checkpoint Inhibitors that that conventional medicine uses and vitamin C has been shown to augment those therapies so it's a therapy that stands alone but it's a therapy that also works with conventional medicine so it's a therapy that works everywhere n [Music]