Recently Diagnosed or Relapsed? Stop Looking For a Miracle Cure, and Use Evidence-Based Therapies To Enhance Your Treatment and Prolong Your Remission
Multiple Myeloma an incurable disease, but I have spent the last 25 years in remission using a blend of conventional oncology and evidence-based nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle therapies from peer-reviewed studies that your oncologist probably hasn't told you about.
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Baking Soda, Curcumin, Dox. – Int. Myeloma Therapy
“This study clearly shows that curcumin nanoparticles could deliver DOX efficiently…Surprisingly, extracellular alkalization induced a 2- to 3-fold increase in the efficacy of doxorubicin…”
Before I get to the issue discussed in the subject line “Baking Soda, Curcumin, Doxorubicin as integrative multiple myeloma therapy,” I have to establish several key issues. I’ve linked four studies below. I have to explain the importance of these studies…
According to the studies linked and excerpted below:
- Doxorubicin (adriamycin) is cytotoxic to multiple myeloma. Doxorubicin as a Multiple Myeloma therapy is toxic and can cause the patient significant side effects. I’ll address that issue below-
- Curcumin is also cytotoxic to multiple myeloma-
- Curcumin integrates with, synergizes with doxorubicin-
- Baking Soda (sodium bicarbonate) has been shown to reduce the acidity in MM patients-
- Baking Soda has been shown to enhance the efficacy of Doxorubicin as chemotherapy agent-
Let’s be honest with ourselves. I’m covering a lot of territory by claiming the odd combination above as a multiple myeloma therapy. I’m doing this for two important reasons.
- Firstly, conventional oncology can’t cure Multiple Myeloma. If you are reading this post you may be MDR and therefore looking for therapies that may put you into remission once again.
- Secondly, you may have read about baking soda as a cancer therapy or about blood PH (acidity) as a side effect of cancer.
This post is my attempt to address those two issues. Full disclosure. I underwent VAD induction therapy when I was first diagnosed in early 1994. VAD did little for me beyond short, long-term and late stage side effects.
If doxorubicin is going to be effective as a MM therapy, you’ve got to figure out how to reduce the damage this toxic therapy causes. Curcumin and baking soda, according to studies, can do this. Both reduce the toxicity of doxorubicin, both enhance the efficacy of dox.
One more important issue. You will need a conventional oncologist to prescribe doxorubicin. If you’ve been managing your MM for some time now, you’ve probably established a solid working relationship with your oncologist.
However, in my experience, conventional oncologists may have difficulty with concepts like “integrative therapy.” In other words, your onc. may have difficulty working with you to administer the chemotherapy combination of doxorubicin, curcumin and baking soda. Just trying to alert you…
I’ve relied on evidence-based but non-conventional therapies to maintain my complete remission since April of 1999. Conventional oncology is an important piece of the MM puzzle but it is only a small piece.
To Learn More About Non-Conventional Therapies- click now
Scroll down the page to ask a question or make a comment. I will reply to you ASAP.
Hang in there,
David Emerson
- MM Survivor
- MM Cancer Coach
- Director PeopleBeatingCancer
Recommended Reading:
- Multiple Myeloma Diagnosis – A How-To Guide
- Multiple Myeloma Therapy- Sauna to Kill Stem Cells, Detox, Reduce Inflammation-
- Artemisinin as cancer therapy- Myeloma, Liver, and Melanoma
Efficacy and safety of pegylated liposomal doxorubicin for multiple myeloma: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials
“Pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLD) which is an improved formulation of doxorubicin has been used for the treatment of multiple myeloma (MM). We perform a systemic review to evaluate the efficacy and safety of PLD in patients with MM.
Three Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving 1100 patients were included. One RCT evaluated PLD versus no PLD for patients with relapsed or refractory myeloma.
Results showed that PLD
- prolonged time to progression (TTP) and
- progression free survival (PFS),
- but did not confer significant benefit on overall survival (OS).
Patients are more likely to experience grade 3/4 myelosuppression. The other two RCTs assessed PLD versus conventional doxorubicin for newly diagnosed MM. Results showed that no difference was found in OS, TTP, PFS, response rates, although PLD reduced the risks of grade 3/4 neutropenia.
In summary, compared with no PLD for patients with relapsed or refractory myeloma, PLD prolonged TTP and PFS, but did not confer significant benefit on OS. The currently available evidence did not show fewer AEs between PLD and conventional doxorubicin used in induction therapy of newly diagnosed myeloma…”
Curcumin as a Novel Nanocarrier System for Doxorubicin Delivery to MDR Cancer Cells: In Vitro and In Vivo Evaluation
“Curcumin (CRC) has been widely used as a therapeutic agent for various drug delivery applications. In this work, we focused on the applicability of CRC as a nanodrug delivery agent for doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX) (commercially known as Adriamycin) coated with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) as an effective therapeutic strategy against multidrug-resistant cancer cells.
The PEG–CRC/DOX NPs suppressed the major efflux proteins in DOX-resistant cancer cells. The in vivo biodistribution studies on HCT-8/DOX-resistant tumor xenograft showed improved bioavailability of the PEG–CRC/DOX NPs, and thereby suppressed tumor growth significantly compared to the other samples.
This study clearly shows that curcumin nanoparticles could deliver DOX efficiently into the multidrug-resistant cancer cells to have potential therapeutic benefits…”
Does Baking Soda Function as a Magic Bullet for Patients With Cancer? A Mini Review
“Sodium bicarbonate, commonly known as baking soda, is widely used in the clinic as an antacid for treating gastric hyperacidity, among other conditions.
Chao et al have reported a clinical trial about targeting intratumor lactic acidosis–transarterial chemoembolization. Based on conventional transarterial chemoembolization, the authors added a 5% sodium bicarbonate solution to cytotoxic drugs, resulting in a high local control rate.
The explanation for the antitumor effects of sodium bicarbonate is related to acidosis in the tumor microenvironment…
Chao et al6 added 5% sodium bicarbonate to the cytotoxic drugs (doxorubicin or oxaliplatin) and then performed chemoembolization, which is described as targeting intratumor lactic acidosis–TACE (TILA-TACE). Amazingly, 100% of patients treated with this modified TACE procedure achieved complete or partial remission…
Sodium Bicarbonate “Kills” Cancer Cells
The acidic tumor microenvironment is so closely related to cancer development that strategies targeting this tumor hallmark may be a practical treatment. The utilization of sodium bicarbonate to neutralize the acidity and increase the tumor pHe might control cancer cells progression. Gatenby, Gillies, and colleagues have conducted several in vivo experiments to explore the anticancer effects of sodium bicarbonate (summarized in Table 1).15,20,24–27…
We must emphasize that baking soda alone without any other anticancer therapies is only effective for some cancer cell lines with less aggressiveness, such as breast cancer MDA-MB-231 cell line and prostate cancer PC3M cell line,15,20,24 while mice bearing tumors with more aggressive phenotypes, like B16 melanoma and Panc02 pancreatic cancer, died of a substantial tumor burden after a short time.20
Moreover, the above are the results from preclinical studies, and there are insufficient clinical evidences to support that routine anticancer therapy could be replaced with drinking water containing baking soda…
Methods for Using Sodium Bicarbonate as a Cancer Treatment
Here, a question arises of how to use sodium bicarbonate as a cancer treatment in the clinic. The acidic microenvironment can not only promote carcinogenesis and development but also have a negative impact on various antitumor agents, such as weak-base chemotherapeutic drugs,29–32 some drugs targeting specific molecules,33,34 and immunotherapeutic drugs.35,36 Therefore, sodium bicarbonate could be used as an adjuvant therapy to enhance the efficacy of conventional treatments…
Furthermore, sodium bicarbonate may increase doxorubicin uptake, which may be the crux of the whole procedure…
Surprisingly, extracellular alkalization induced a 2- to 3-fold increase in the efficacy of doxorubicin.29…
Buffer therapy, or targeting the tumor acidity through alkalization, has been a widespread anticancer therapy.40 In addition to baking soda, researchers have found several other buffering agents to manipulate the tumor pHe, including Tris-base,41 2-imidazole-1-yl-3-ethoxycarbonylpropionic acid,42 and free base lysine.43 Similar to sodium bicarbonate, these agents have been confirmed to inhibit tumor progression in the preclinical studies.41–43…
A vicious cycle between acid sensing and survival signaling in myeloma cells: acid-induced epigenetic alteration
“DISCUSSION- Cancer cells acidify their surrounding milieu while they grow; extracellular pH values have been reported to be 6.2–6.8 in cancer lesions compared to pH 7.2–7.4 in normal tissues [14–18].
As expected, we found the actual pH values were around 6.8 inside subcutaneous MM tumors in mouse models.
MM cells stimulate OC formation and activation in the bone marrow; OCs produce a large amount of protons to form resorption pits in which pH values are generally accepted to be below 5.5 [19].
Therefore, MM bone lesions appear to serve an acidic milieu to MM cells where MM cells preferentially reside and grow. We expected pH values in acidic bone lesions in patients with MM are similar to those observed in subcutaneous MM tumors in mouse models (around 6.8) or more acidic at least in close vicinity to OCs in MM bone lesions, although there has been no information about actual pH values in bone lesions in patients with MM because of difficulty in measuring actual pH values in the bone marrow…”