Why I Still Read Medical Journals

An epic change is occurring as to how people acquire new information.

Instead of picking up a book or magazine and viewing the table of contents, individuals are glued to electronic screens, which may limit them to only the specific information they request.

The downside of not reviewing scientific publications is that one might miss important discoveries that are not being explicitly looked for.

For this reason, I still read medical journals and am elated when I find new data that tie together concepts on how to better prevent and treat degenerative disease.

Alexander Fleming published findings about penicillin in 1929,¹ but it did not become widely available until 1946.² Millions died from bacterial infections during the 17-year delay period.

Dr. Fleming was not the first to observe that certain molds had antimicrobial properties.

Beginning in 1870, the antibacterial effects of Penicillium mold were observed by several scientists including Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister.^3,4

In 1897, a researcher at Pasteur Institute wrote a dissertation showing a Penicillium mold was an effective antibiotic in animals.⁵

Just think how fantastic it would have been if at any time after 1870, just one individual with sufficient resources had moved these "mold" discoveries forward. Millions of human lives would have been spared.

As it relates to age-related disease today, a similar scenario exists. Thousands of published, scientific studies describe better treatment options, yet remain ignored by mainstream medicine.

Why You Can't Rely on Mainstream Reporting

Herbal therapies are often ridiculed by the media.

Yet many drugs used today originated from botanical extracts, such as metformin from French lilac and aspirin from white willow bark.

Curcumin may be the most exciting botanical extract that researchers are currently investigating. Yet compelling data about curcumin have been available to those who chose to read since the 1980s.

Centuries-Long Delay in Curing Scurvy

As early as 1497, the Portuguese discovered that citrus cured scurvy.⁶

It took over 200 years for the scientific community to examine this reported cure, and even then, storing citrus for long voyages didn't become a standard protocol for another 50 years.⁶

Long after the "citrus cure" was accepted, an 1870s study failed to demonstrate efficacy because it used oxidized lime juice.⁷

Oxidation of the lime juice destroyed its vitamin C content, which was the anti-scurvy nutrient in citrus.

For the next several decades, scurvy once again sickened and killed. It was not until vitamin C was discovered in 1932 that scurvy was fully understood.⁸

The 400-year delay in eradicating scurvy was ludicrous. Yet far more humans perish today because research findings are sadly overlooked.

A Neglected Cancer Treatment

Beginning in 1985, we at Life Extension® began suggesting that certain cancer patients take a drug called cimetidine in addition to standard therapy.

The brand name of cimetidine is Tagamet®. You may have seen it advertised in the past for relief of heartburn.

While most people associate it only as a heartburn drug, cimetidine has several mechanistic anti-cancer effects.

When certain colon cancer patients take cimetidine after surgery and continue taking 800 mg a day for one year, their 10-year survival rates improve dramatically.⁹

Cimetidine enhances the ability of the immune system to kill cancer cells and suppresses an adhesion factor that enables circulating tumor cells to establish metastatic colonies.^10-13

I recommended cimetidine as an adjuvant cancer treatment 34 years ago based on studies showing that along with conventional therapy, cimetidine improves one's chances of long-term cure. Since then, hundreds of studies have been published demonstrating cimetidine's benefits against a number of malignancies.^9-15

Yet not once have I had a cancer patient call and say their oncologist prescribed them cimetidine, which has been sold over-the-counter for the last few decades.

You may wonder how a low-cost drug like this is overlooked by the cancer establishment.

The problem is there is no outrageous profit to be made selling cimetidine. So TV commercials today advertise patented cancer drugs (like Keytruda®) that cost over $100,000 a year and are often less effective in improving survival than cimetidine.

Since there are no financial incentives to promote the cancer treatment benefits of off-patent drugs like metformin, valproic acid, and even aspirin in some cases, cancer patients have to find out about them on their own.

In a small clinical study published in 2018, 10 out of 38 lymph-node-positive (stage 3) colorectal cancer patients were treated with 750 mg a day of cimetidine before surgery and continued taking this dose for about a year.¹⁴

Compared to patients receiving standard therapy alone, those who also took cimetidine had an approximate doubling of time to recurrence and survival (cancer-related mortality).¹⁴

Said differently, the cimetidine treated patients survived much longer without disease recurrence compared to those treated with standard therapy alone.

Although this is a small, uncontrolled study, it nevertheless shows consistency with several other clinical trials suggesting that cimetidine can provide benefits, including potentially increased survival, in carefully selected colorectal cancer patients.^9,15

If you wonder why I keep reading medical journals, it's because studies like this are routinely published, but rarely make it into the news media.

Life Extension Magazine® uncovers these kinds of scientific findings and reports on them each month.

“Nothing in science has any value to society if it is not communicated, and some scientists are beginning to learn their social obligations.”

Anne Roe Simpson (1904-1991), American Psychologist

Disease Prevention and Treatment

Every day, researchers at Life Extension® identify novel ways to better prevent and treat common illnesses.

We publish much of this in Life Extension Magazine and in emails sent to our subscribers.

Most important, we meticulously catalog our findings. This enables us to update our Disease Prevention and Treatment textbook that is used at some progressive medical schools today.

I am pleased to announce an updated, 1,600-page Disease Prevention and Treatment is now available.

This is our 6^th edition and an example of our commitment to bridging the gap between cutting-edge findings published in the peer-reviewed literature and what is not being implemented in mainstream medical practice.

Just one tidbit of underappreciated data, such as the anti-cancer properties of cimetidine, can result in enormous improvements in one's health and longevity. This and many other novel therapies are presented within the pages of Disease Prevention and Treatment.

The expenses we incur analyzing and compiling this information far exceed the revenue we collect on sales of the book.

We nonetheless persist in this money-losing endeavor because of the many lives the information can save.

The retail price of this expansive new edition of Disease Prevention and Treatment is $99.95.

Comprehensive Customer Care

Customer service has deteriorated into a labyrinth of recorded voice messages that force consumers to push a series of "buttons" in an attempt to reach a competent person.

That's not how Life Extension handles customer phone inquiries. We answer directly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with courteous and knowledgeable staff.

An increasing number of you know to call our Wellness Specialists if you need suggestions based on what is published in the medical literature.

What sometimes happens is we get calls about a topic that was recently covered in Life Extension Magazine. When we point this out, the caller often gratefully thanks us and then reads the article that pertains to their personal health concern.

My suggestion to our subscribers is to review our Table of Contents each month. There may be articles that describe improved methods of dealing with your specific health-related condition.

You don't want to overlook vital data, such as what was discovered about the bacteria-killing effects of penicillin molds in the era beginning in 1870.

For longer life,

William Faloon, Co-Founder

Life Extension Buyers Club

References

1. Fleming A. On the Antibacterial Action of Cultures of a Penicillium, with Special Reference to their Use in the Isolation of B. influenzæ. British journal of experimental pathology. 1929;10(3):226-36.
2. Lobanovska M, Pilla G. Penicillin's Discovery and Antibiotic Resistance: Lessons for the Future? Yale J Biol Med. 2017 Mar;90(1):135-45.
3. Gould K. Antibiotics: from prehistory to the present day. J Antimicrob Chemother. 2016 Mar;71(3):572-5.
4. Available at: http://www.brianjford.com/cf19.pdf. Accessed December 14, 2018.
5. Duchesne E. Contribution à l'étude de la concurrence vitale chez les micro-organismes: antagonisme entre les moisissures et les microbes. Lyon, France: Alexandre Rey; 1897.
6. Available at: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8852139/mayberry.html?sequence=2. Accessed December 20, 2018.
7. Baron JH. Sailors' scurvy before and after James Lind—a reassessment. Nutr Rev. 2009 Jun;67(6):315-32.
8. Carpenter KJ. The discovery of vitamin C. Ann Nutr Metab. 2012;61(3):259-64.
9. Matsumoto S, Imaeda Y, Umemoto S, et al. Cimetidine increases survival of colorectal cancer patients with high levels of sialyl Lewis-X and sialyl Lewis-A epitope expression on tumour cells. Br J Cancer. 2002 Jan 21;86(2):161-7.
10. Borentain P, Carmona S, Mathieu S, et al. Inhibition of E-selectin expression on the surface of endothelial cells inhibits hepatocellular carcinoma growth by preventing tumor angiogenesis. Cancer Chemother Pharmacol. 2016 Apr;77(4):847-56.
11. Deva S, Jameson M. Histamine type 2 receptor antagonists as adjuvant treatment for resected colorectal cancer. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2012 Aug 15;8(8):CD007814.
12. Kobayashi K, Matsumoto S, Morishima T, et al. Cimetidine inhibits cancer cell adhesion to endothelial cells and prevents metastasis by blocking E-selectin expression. Cancer Res. 2000 Jul 15;60(14):3978-84.
13. Losurdo G, Principi M, Girardi B, et al. Histamine and Histaminergic Receptors in Colorectal Cancer: From Basic Science to Evidence-based Medicine. Anticancer Agents Med Chem. 2018 Mar 21;18(1):15-20.
14. Ali AH, Hale L, Yalamanchili B, et al. The Effect of Perioperative Cimetidine Administration on Time to Colorectal Cancer Recurrence. Am J Ther. 2018 Jul/Aug;25(4):e405-e11.
15. Pantziarka P, Bouche G, Meheus L, et al. Repurposing drugs in oncology (ReDO)-cimetidine as an anti-cancer agent. Ecancermedicalscience. 2014;8:485.