43 replies to this topic

[niner]

So a telomerase activator caused more cancer in cancer prone rats on a bad diet.... zzzzzzzzzzzzz

You would think that with all the information available on this site alone people would stop shitting themselves about cancer.
I'm about as worried about cancer as I am about a cold.

I'm off to take my Ginkgo, Astragalus etc and Mebendazole and C60oo, Curcumin etc.
And have a cigarette.

I don't think that ginkgo is a telomerase activator of any significance in vivo.

We had a long time member who wasn't worried about cancer. He thought that he'd be protected by his supplements, and smoked heavily. His 40-year-old head is now bobbing in a vat of liquid nitrogen. His death from lung cancer wasn't pleasant... This could be viewed as a cautionary tale.

[nightlight]

It is not a paradox if you recall that this "study" used 'cancer rodents' -- these animals were bred to get riddled with genetically caused cancers from late middle age. All the "study" has "discovered" is the circulatory effects of ginkgo -- the more blood supply in given organ it produces, the more genetically caused cancers they will see in that organ.

The Fischer 344 strain was not bred to be "riddled with genetically caused cancers". It's a general purpose strain. Is there any evidence that ginkgo makes any difference in perfusion? How do you know that increased blood supply wouldn't reduce the likelihood of cancer? There would be more cancer-fighting leukocytes available.

Check the paper -- they are consistently showing increases in cancers & hyperplasias for the test groups vs controls, e.g. p. 52, table 12, M.C. leukemia, 19.2% in controls, 25-46% in different test groups, the same various adenomas, hyperplasias, etc. They're all riddled with rthese pathologies, just to a different degree, as one would expect from any substance that stimulates circulation and angiogenesis. If they had tests with substances that suppress circulation and angiogensis, it would appear protective in this type of experiment (just as chemo and radiation might appear protective, while being harmful to healthy animals).

Hence, they didn't demonstrate anything beyond trivial circulatory effects shared with countles other natural & synthetic circulatory stimulants. Nothing in the experiment shows that gingko is intrinsically carcinogenic. If they really wanted to find that out, they should have sequenced the cancer cells and pointed out some novel/unique mutations or cancer types not present in the controls.

[Logic]

So a telomerase activator caused more cancer in cancer prone rats on a bad diet.... zzzzzzzzzzzzz

You would think that with all the information available on this site alone people would stop shitting themselves about cancer.
I'm about as worried about cancer as I am about a cold.

I'm off to take my Ginkgo, Astragalus etc and Mebendazole and C60oo, Curcumin etc.
And have a cigarette.

I don't think that ginkgo is a telomerase activator of any significance in vivo.

We had a long time member who wasn't worried about cancer. He thought that he'd be protected by his supplements, and smoked heavily. His 40-year-old head is now bobbing in a vat of liquid nitrogen. His death from lung cancer wasn't pleasant... This could be viewed as a cautionary tale.

Oh great; I removed my post after reading your previous post that these were not cancer prone mice...

[nightlight]

It is not a paradox if you recall that this "study" used 'cancer rodents' -- these animals were bred to get riddled with genetically caused cancers from late middle age. All the "study" has "discovered" is the circulatory effects of ginkgo -- the more blood supply in given organ it produces, the more genetically caused cancers they will see in that organ.

The Fischer 344 strain was not bred to be "riddled with genetically caused cancers". It's a general purpose strain. Is there any evidence that ginkgo makes any difference in perfusion? How do you know that increased blood supply wouldn't reduce the likelihood of cancer? There would be more cancer-fighting leukocytes available.

Besides the paper itself, quick google on F344 rats finds this tidbit at the supplier's site:

Fisher 344
F344/NHsd
F344/NCrHsd
Various spontaneous tumors in aged rats; carcinogenicity

[nightlight]

We had a long time member who wasn't worried about cancer. He thought that he'd be protected by his supplements, and smoked heavily. His 40-year-old head is now bobbing in a vat of liquid nitrogen. His death from lung cancer wasn't pleasant... This could be viewed as a cautionary tale.

If I remember correctly, he was also a motorcycle buff, inhaling lots of fumes and solvents while playing with his toys for decades. He also got lung cancer couple years after ending up in prison (on some drug charges) where he was forced to abruptly quit smoking, which is if you recall that famous "Smoking is good for you" thread (TOC), the typical pattern for lung cancer in humans as well as in animal experiments (see especially item #6). It amounts to protective anticarcinogenic and antinflammatory effects of tobacco smoke, which if abruptly removed result in a biochemical meltdown, follwed by cancers and many other problems, at least in those smokers who smoke as a self-medication.

It's analogous to taking anticoagulant away from someone who needs it, then blaming the resulting strokes and heart attacks on the anticoagulant (R. A . Fisher said something of this sort way back in 1958, pdf pp.12-13, check also some humorous passages on pages 10,11).

Edited by nightlight, 15 May 2013 - 11:09 PM.

[xsiv1]

I'd like to see the studies that support increased blood flow or blood supply increases the rate that cancers would present. You realize that there are many things that actually improve blood flow/circulation aside from GB? I'm not convinced. The inference cannot be right and the analogy is also flawed.

It matters of course. Anything that promotes angiogenesis or circulation will increase the number of cancers. Consider analogy of human organism with social organism. Improving angiogenesis & circulation is analogous to improving roads and traffic flows. That is normally good for the nation. But in case of war or insurrection, it becomes liability since enemy can use the same roads to conquer the country more quickly. E.g. in WWII, the well developed nation France fell to Nazis in weeks, while backwards Balkans were never fully fell under control beyond the main cities. The argument against ginkgo here is then analaogous to arguing that nations should remain backwards and not build roads since in case of war enemy can conquer them more easily. Cancer, like war, inverts the values, what was good (circulation) becomes bad, what was bad (toxic chemo) becomes good in case of cancer.

[majkinetor]

I'd like to see the studies that support increased blood flow or blood supply increases the rate that cancers would present. You realize that there are many things that actually improve blood flow/circulation aside from GB? I'm not convinced. The inference cannot be right and the analogy is also flawed.

Increased blood flow when you have disfunctional immune system is surely going to be good thing for the cancer. With normal immune system situation is opposite. On the other hand more blood means more sugar around cancer so more food - rats are typically fed high carb diets. So, the context matters.

So far, I am not convinced that those mices had so many cancers because of vascular effects. The more believable reason is that the ginkgo dose was to high and that plant is simply poisonous in such dose.

Edited by majkinetor, 16 May 2013 - 05:18 AM.

[nightlight]

I'd like to see the studies that support increased blood flow or blood supply increases the rate that cancers would present. You realize that there are many things that actually improve blood flow/circulation aside from GB? I'm not convinced. The inference cannot be right

The interest in the connection is usually in the other direction, such as using angiogenesis inhibitors to suppress growth of tumors, not to speed them up. You have heard of that, I suppose.

The above direction of the connection is usually found only in the agenda driven psudo-science, such as the above "study" where a non-carcinogenic substance is targeted for a scare tactic (so something else can be sold to consumers instead, at a higher price by the big pharma & the rest of 'sickness industry' which have honed these kinds of scare scams into an artform). Telomerase upregulators and various growth factors, when provided by an inexpensive supplement or a medicinal plant and are gaining in popularity, are among favorite alternative targets of such campaigns. For nearly anything there is always a contrived setup where something beneficial can be made to appear harmful to uninformed public.

and the analogy is also flawed.

It's actually not merely an analogy, which would be much too weak a connection, but more of a translation between the manifestation of the same phenomenon in different realms, since social organism is an adaptable, intelligent network of the same kind as brain or, at the next level below that, the cellular biochemical networks.

[dislocation]

is this why people with cancer who do take angiogenesis inhibitors to suppres tumors but limiting blood flow to the areas almost always suffer from long term cognitive decline after therapy ? must do with lack of blood oxygen to the brain areas

[blood]

Interesting article on Nutraingredients - folks in the herbal supplements industry have expressed concerns on the strength and composition of the gingko extract used in this study:

http://www.nutraingr...e-observers-say

Ginkgo cancer results flawed because extract used is not representative, observers say

... The ginkgo used in the study was said by the authors to be representative of products available in the market. Of the study material the authors said:

“The Ginkgo biloba extract used in the current studies was procured from a supplier known to provide material to United States companies and contained 31.2% flavonol glycosides, 15.4% terpene lactones (6.94% bilo-balide, 3.74% ginkgolide A, 1.62% ginkgolide B, 3.06% ginkgolide C), and 10.45 ppm ginkgolic acid.”

The nature of this material forms the basis of the objections raised by those who reviewed the draft study. This material from a Chinese supplier has been manipulated to increase the concentrations of its active compounds to levels well in excess of all other ginkgo extracts for which data is available, said Steven Dentali, PhD, chief scientific officer of the American Herbal Products Association. This supplier, according to Dentali, was intending to use this extract as the basis for subsequent drug development...

In a letter from AHPA to NTP commenting on the draft version of the report, Dentali had presented a visual aid, a graph showing how different the material used in the long term studies used to generate the data in the report was from products available in the market. Most ginkgo extracts plotted on the graph had a 30% or lower concentration of flavonol glycosides and none, outside of the test material, had a terpene lactone concentration that exceeded about 11%. The study material, at 31.2% and 15.4% respectively, was in a category by itself, with values that were literally off the chart, Dentali said.

“I had to add a quadrant just to fit it in. This is an outlier,” he said.

Edited by blood, 16 May 2013 - 11:52 PM.

[blood]

Epidemiological study, so take with a grain of salt... gingko consumption correlates with longer life in elderly French folks:

http://www.ergo-log.com/ginkgo4.html

Ginkgo prolongs life

If elderly people took ginkgo daily their chances of death would decrease, researchers from the French Université de Bordeaux found when they followed a group of 3500 elderly people for a period of 13 years. The researchers were looking for the effects of medication against dementia.

So they tested 3534 elderly people in south-west France from 1988 to the beginning of the 21st century. Of these, 225 used ginkgo, and 888 used medication to slow down the decline of mental abilities. The researchers found that those who used medication as well as ginkgo were slightly more likely to have dementia then those not using anything.

That does not mean that the elderly people were suffering from dementia because they were using these substances. It was the other way around: because these elderly people were suffering from symptoms of deterioration of their mental abilities, they used medication more often.

The table above shows the chances of dementia, the 95 percent confidence interval and the P-Value in the three groups. We will spare you the statistical mumbo-jumbo, but the results are not very shocking.

However the effect of ginkgo on the chance of death is spectacular. The chance of ginkgo users dying in the 13 years of the study was 46 percent. The chance of users of medication against dementia dying in those 13 years was 62 percent. For non-users the chance of death was 50 percent.

Edited by blood, 17 May 2013 - 12:00 AM.

[dislocation]

so basically buy from high quality manufacture of gingko extract. thats true for any drug, supplement out there.

[niner]

Interesting article on Nutraingredients - folks in the herbal supplements industry have expressed concerns on the strength and composition of the gingko extract used in this study:

http://www.nutraingr...e-observers-say

Ginkgo cancer results flawed because extract used is not representative, observers say

... The ginkgo used in the study was said by the authors to be representative of products available in the market. Of the study material the authors said:

“The Ginkgo biloba extract used in the current studies was procured from a supplier known to provide material to United States companies and contained 31.2% flavonol glycosides, 15.4% terpene lactones (6.94% bilo-balide, 3.74% ginkgolide A, 1.62% ginkgolide B, 3.06% ginkgolide C), and 10.45 ppm ginkgolic acid.”

The nature of this material forms the basis of the objections raised by those who reviewed the draft study. This material from a Chinese supplier has been manipulated to increase the concentrations of its active compounds to levels well in excess of all other ginkgo extracts for which data is available, said Steven Dentali, PhD, chief scientific officer of the American Herbal Products Association. This supplier, according to Dentali, was intending to use this extract as the basis for subsequent drug development...

In a letter from AHPA to NTP commenting on the draft version of the report, Dentali had presented a visual aid, a graph showing how different the material used in the long term studies used to generate the data in the report was from products available in the market. Most ginkgo extracts plotted on the graph had a 30% or lower concentration of flavonol glycosides and none, outside of the test material, had a terpene lactone concentration that exceeded about 11%. The study material, at 31.2% and 15.4% respectively, was in a category by itself, with values that were literally off the chart, Dentali said.

“I had to add a quadrant just to fit it in. This is an outlier,” he said.

Meh. It's the herbal supplement industry- they're going to have to find something to hang their hat on. When people do dose ranging studies, the doses are usually varied by a factor of two to ten between steps. Here, the ginkgo extract used in the study was 1.2% more concentrated in flavonol glycosides, and 4.4% higher in terpene lactones, as compared to the most next most concentrated product. I find it hard to call that an "outlier". If they want something to pick apart, they should probably look at the dose, but if you use the usual interspecies scaling rules, the dose isn't all *that* high, either. They might be able to say that rodents aren't people, but it's a somewhat ugly result.

[Luminosity]

Here's an intelligent critique of this study, which says the dose is so high that the study obviously never was intended to find the truth. No one would ever take a dose anywhere near that. The writer also states that this is an effort by Big Pharma to look for reasons to regulate this valuable medicine so it is no longer available. Write to your elected representatives and tell them what you think about that.

Article:

http://www.greenmedi...n-ginkgo-biloba


Government Contact Information:

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

To find out who your Senator is and/or their mailing address go to:

http://www.senate.go...enators_cfm.cfm

If you know his or her name you could also write to them at:
United States Senate
Washington D.C. 20510

To find your Representative in the House go to:

https://writerep.hou...p/welcome.shtml

If you know his or her name you could also write to them at:
United States House of Representatives
Washington DC 20515

Edited by Luminosity, 12 June 2013 - 04:47 AM.