HEALTHY ALTERNATIVES
407 North 36th Street ~ Fort Smith, Arkansas 72903
Phone 479-782-4446
Lon Schultz D.N.M Dr.LonSchultz@sbcglobal.net
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Selenium and Cancer
According to Richard Passwater Ph.D.[1]:
Selenium was discovered in 1817 by J.J.Berzelius. It is a trace mineral that is necessary for health. It is involved in the making of hormones, enzymes, catalysts, and in 50 – 100 different proteins. It is also involved in the making of CoQ10, and is a powerful antioxidant. Selenium is the least abundant of all the minerals in the soil, but it still finds its way into the food chain, although often in less than optimum amounts.
In the late 60’s and early 70’s Dr Richard Passwater was doing research on the cancer preventing effects of selenium. Then in 1976, Dr. Raymond Schamberger and Dr. Charles Willis found a significant correlation between selenium levels in the soil and the cancer rates. In low selenium areas, the cancer death rate averaged 516 per 100,000 people and in high selenium areas the death rate was 392 per 100,000. This resulted in an 11% increase in low selenium areas and a 20% drop in the death rate in higher areas.
In 1983 The National Research Council advised that “The results of a few epidemiological studies suggest a correlation between exposures to high levels of selenium and the reduction in the risk of certain cancers.” Numerous other studies
(The Chinese, Clark, Horvath, Finish, and Milner, to name a few) show that supplementing our diets with selenium will cut our risk of dying from cancer by 50 %.
In December of 1996, the Journal of American Medicine (JAMA) published a study by Dr Larry Clark. This study showed that supplementing with 200ug of selenium reduced the over all death rate from all causes by 17%. More importantly, Selenium dropped the cancer death rate by 50% and dropped the cancer rate by 63%. There were no cases of selenium toxicity!
Unfortunately JAMA recommended that “These effects of selenium require confirmation in an independent trial of appropriate design, before new public health recommendations regarding selenium supplementation can be made.”
You would think that they would shout this from the house tops and it would be on TV!
That was ten years ago and no new study was forthcoming!
The problem is that our medical system is glacially slow in implementing new natural methods to prevent or treat disease. A discovery of an apparently effective cure for cancer using enzymes was made over one hundred years ago by Dr John Beard at the University of Edinburgh. It is just now being tested in a clinical trial at the National Cancer Institute. So at this, point ten years later, JAMA still doesn’t recommend taking selenium.
At an annual death rate of over half a million, in the last ten years over two and a half million(2,500,000) people have died who could have lived had JAMA recommended selenium supplementation and not continued to drag its feet.
I am confident that in another 50 or 100 years JAMA and the medical authorities will get around to recommending selenium supplementation - but maybe not!
Are you willing to wait? I am not! I have been taking selenium for the last 14 years.
Dr Lon Schultz