The Myers’ Cocktail is a much-loved tool in naturopathic medicine. It is a way to propel basic nutritional support directly to cells, by-passing the need to go through the digestive system which is often compromised in cancer patients.

Very often, people with cancer are a like a car where the gasoline tank is about empty. The body needs minerals, enzymes, vitamins, and other nutritional supports to do the basic jobs of repairing and detoxifying. So we unscrew the car’s gas cap and “fill up the tank.”

Myers’ Cocktail

The Myers’ Cocktail is a much-loved tool in naturopathic medicine. It is a way to propel basic nutritional support directly to cells, by-passing the need to go through the digestive system which is often compromised in cancer patients. Also, disease often causes the body to use nutrients at a faster rate, or to require higher amounts for healing.

“Myers’ cocktail” is the colloquial name for a nutrient mixture developed in the 1960s by Dr. John Myers of Johns Hopkins in Maryland. He believed that a mixture of key nutrients given in a single intravenous infusion – literally flooding each cell in the body with nutrition – would improve the body’s performance. Hundreds of thousands of patients have proven that this simple, safe nutritional delivery system helps with a myriad of health conditions, including cancer.

The cocktail’s basic mix contains magnesium, calcium, selenium, vitamin B-5 (dexpanthenol), vitamin B-6 (pyridoxine), vitamin B-12 (hydroxycobalamin), vitamin B complex, and vitamin C. Depending upon the patient, the ingredients are varied a bit. A Myers’ Cocktail is always delivered intravenously.

It has long been known that magnesium deficiency, for example, is carcinogenic in itself. And in the case of solid tumors, a high level of supplemented magnesium inhibits carcinogenesis.[1] Japanese researchers found that an increased intake of magnesium reduces a man’s risk of colon cancer by over 50%.[2]

Did you know B12 is required to make DNA? We use the hydroxycobalamin form of B12 for IVs, not cyanocobalamin which is a cheaper, synthetic form. But cyanocobalamin is not found in nature, and it is a relatively ineffective form of B12. We also do 5 mg of this vitamin, not just 1. You can use a cheaper form and a lower dose, or a more expensive form and high dose – not all Myers’ cocktails are the same.

Let’s talk a bit about one more element in the cocktail: selenium. There is an important interplay between selenium and oxygen. Dr. Raymond Shamberger of the Cleveland Clinic noted in 1966 that patients with cancer had lower than normal selenium levels. He also noted that cancer death rates were lowest in areas with selenium in soils that were very high. Using a whole food source of selenium is as important as using the hydroxycobalamin form of B12.

At Dayspring, we sometimes alternate the Myer’s Cocktail with high-dose intravenous vitamin C that can directly fight cancer cells.

IV Vitamin C

Cancer patients have notoriously low vitamin C levels. When taken by intravenous infusion, vitamin C levels in the blood can reach levels 70 to 100 times higher than when the same amount is taken by mouth (orally).

In addition to vitamin C’s ability to kill cancer cells, we use IV vitamin C to help with scurvy, wound healing, detoxification, and to boost the immune response. Modulation of inflammation by intravenous vitamin C correlates with decreases in tumor marker levels.[3] We use a non-GMO source for our vitamin C.

Poly-MVA

Poly-MVA® is a popular dietary supplement for cancer because of its positive effect on mitochondria and proper cell division. If we remember the lessons of Drs. Otto Warburg and Thomas Seyfried, without the proper amount of energy, a cell cannot be repaired or thrive. It can become cancerous. Poly-MVA is uniquely formulated to deliver energy to cells at their most critical moment of cell division.

When a cell starts to divide, the energy-making process slows down, DNA unwinds, and the cell splits into two. Then the mitochondria of the two new cells need to come back on line, start making energy properly, and get on with their jobs.

Poly-MVA’s secret weapon is the way alpha lipoic acid and thiamine (vitamin B1) have been bonded to the trace mineral palladium by way of an electrical charge. Poly-MVA is therefore available to create an energy and oxygen-rich cellular environment at the start of the normal energy making process. This creates less opportunity for cell division to go awry. When cells are energized, mitochondria and DNA are better supported and protected.

Glutathione

Glutathione is essentially the body’s master antioxidant and detoxifier. It is a protein made in the liver. It works as a potent antioxidant capable of quenching those internal terrorists called excess free radicals which help cancers grow and spread. Glutathione also binds to dangerous toxins; it is crucial in the removal and detoxification of carcinogens, and alterations in this pathway can have a profound effect on cell survival. This protein also is used in DNA synthesis and repair.

Taking it orally usually doesn’t work because the acid in the stomach breaks it down before it can get into the bloodstream.

Salicinium

Salicinium is a plant-based extract, a complexed sugar molecule that cannot be absorbed by healthy cells. The malignant cell, however, sees the sugar molecule passing by in the blood, takes it in, and very quickly an enzyme inside the cell (beta-Glucosidase) splits the sugar away from the rest of the material. This material destroys the cancer cell’s ability to produce an enzyme called nagalase that cancer cells use to “cloak” themselves from the immune system. Salicinium does no harm to healthy cells.

Continued use of Salicinium will allow the immune system to steadily attack remaining malignant cells. Salicinium is administered intravenously at first and then taken orally until the cancer is in remission.

Enzymes

Did you know that a just small percentage of the enzymes in our body are used for digestion? The vast majority are the metabolic enzymes, the worker bees that put vitamins and minerals to work to speed up chemical reactions. These enzymes work systemically; systemic means “throughout the body.” When digestive enzymes are taken when there is no food to digest, they can be directed to other housekeeping chores.

We can thank Dr. John Beard for initially putting enzymes on medicine’s radar. He proposed in 1906 that pancreatic proteolytic digestive enzymes represent the body’s main defense against cancer, and that enzyme therapy would be useful as a treatment for all types of cancer.

For cancer, the big guns are the proteolytic (protein eating) enzymes. The body manufactures trypsin and chymotrypsin. Other proteolytic enzymes such as nattokinase, serratiopeptidase, papain, and bromelain come from food or other outside sources. They are also formulated into supplements.

Proteolytic enzymes break down excess fibrin that has been linked to chronic systemic inflammation which feeds chronic diseases, including cancer. Enzymes are measured in Units of Fibrolytic Activity, which means how much fibrin they break down in a set amount of time.

In colorectal cancer, enzymes were found to prolong survival time and increase quality of life “by reducing both the signs and symptoms of the disease and the adverse reactions associated with adjuvant antineoplastic therapies.”[4] In yet another study, the use of enzymes “stimulated the production of tumor necrosis factor-α in human peripheral-blood mononuclear cell cultures in a time-dependent manner.”[5]

Enzymes also help with a most important issue for cancer patients – quality of life. Clinical studies reported in 2008[6] demonstrated that:

Systemic enzyme therapy significantly decreased tumor-induced and therapy-induced side effects and complaints such as nausea, gastrointestinal complaints, fatigue, weight loss, and restlessness and obviously stabilized the quality of life. For plasmacytoma patients [type of solid tumor developing in the plasma cells], complementary systemic enzyme therapy was shown to increase the response rates, the duration of remissions, and the overall survival times.

Cancer creates its own ecological system and biofilms are one of its survival tools. Biofilms create a gelatin-like cocoon around tumors so they can hide from the immune system’s natural ability to seek and destroy them. Proteolytic enzymes can break down the biofilm and make other therapies more effective.

Digestive enzymes carry very little risk and are easy to take.

Curcumin

Curcumin is the active ingredient in the Indian spice turmeric. It has long been known that the incidence of cancer is significantly lower in areas of the world where turmeric is heavily consumed. Tumeric inhibits inflammatory nuclear factor (NF)-κB and NF-κB-regulated gene products and induces death receptors leading to suppressed proliferation, induced chemosensitization, and suppressed osteoclastogenesis.[7] In simple language, it downregulates the bad guys and upregulates the good guys. And it suppresses inflammatory pathways. Inflammation is associated with poor prognosis and decreased survival in many types of cancer.

Vitamin K2 (menaquinone)

Vitamin K is known to have effects on tissues throughout the body, including most of the steps leading up to cancer. Tumor cells consume vast amounts of glucose (sugar). Tumor cells use up oxygen rapidly, making them especially vulnerable to oxidant stress – much more so than the healthy tissues around them. Vitamin K targets tumor cells for destruction by stimulating oxidative stress, without toxicity to healthy tissues.[8] Vitamin K2 induces differentiation and apoptosis in a wide array of human cancer cell lines. Vitamin K2 has been shown to target prostate cancer, carcinoma ( a common and deadly variant of liver cancer), lung and other cancers. Vitamin K2 is NOAEL (no observed adverse effect limit). It is an oral supplement.

Beljanski

Dr. Mirko Beljanski (1923-1998), a microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute, discovered relationships between cancer and destabilized DNA, and especially how carcinogens act to destabilize DNA. Dr. Beljanski also discovered that RNA changes the DNA of cells – what is now called “reverse transcription.”

Dr. Beljanski found botanical agents with strong anticancer activity that do no damage to healthy cells. He identified herbal alkaloid substances could restabilize DNA, restore healthy platelet levels, and inhibit damage from radiation.

Products based on his research have been used successfully in Europe for more than 30 years, primarily oral supplements made of Pao Pereira, Rauwolfia Vomitoria, Ginkgo Biloba, and RNA fragments.

[1] Durlach J, Bara M, Guiet-Bara A, Collery P. Relationship between magnesium, cancer and carcinogenic or anticancer metals. Anticancer Res. 1986 Nov-Dec;6(6):1353-61.

[2] Ma E, Sasazuki S et al. High dietary intake of magnesium may decrease risk of colorectal cancer in Japanese men. The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 140, Issue 4, 1 April 2010, Pages 779–785,

[3] Mikirova N, Casciari J et al. Effect of high-dose intravenous vitamin C on inflammation in cancer patients. Journal of Translational Medicine, 2012

[4] Popiela T, Kulig J et al. Influence of a complementary treatment with oral enzymes on patients with colorectal cancers–an epidemiological retrolective cohort study. Cancer Chemother Pharmacol. 2001 Jul;47 Suppl:S55-63.

[5] Desser L, Rehberger A, Paukovits W. Proteolytic enzymes and amylase induce cytokine production in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells in vitro. Cancer Biother, 1994 Fall;9(3):253-63

[6] Beuth J. Proteolytic enzyme therapy in evidence-based complementary oncology: fact or fiction? Integr Cancer Ther, 2008 Dec;7(4):311-6

[7] Kim JH, Gupta SC et al. Turmeric (Curcuma longa) inhibits inflammatory nuclear factor (NF)-κB and NF-κB-regulated gene products and induces death receptors leading to suppressed proliferation, induced chemosensitization, and suppressed osteoclastogenesis. Mol Nutr Food Res. 2012 March.

[8] Verrax J, Taper H, Buc Calderon P. Targeting cancer cells by an oxidant-based therapy. Curr Mol Pharmacol. 2008 Jan;1(1):80-92.