Every moment of every day, every cell in your body is under attack by chemical and biological weapons with the potential to cause cancer. Carcinogenic compounds include not just artificial chemicals (such as persistent organic pollutants (POPs)) in the form of organochlorine pesticides and other chemicalas that we continue to allow to be dumped into our water and air), but ancient, and even naturally-occurring, cancer-causing substances, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), heterocyclic amines (HCAs), fungal toxins (such as aflatoxin), and even excess levels of the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone.
•Evolution has created intricate detoxification pathways to process xenobiotic and naturally occurring toxins. One of the most important such pathways is glucuronidation, in which UGT enzymes neutralize carcinogens by binding them to a molecule of glucuronic acid.
•Glucuronidation renders potential carcinogens less hazardous to the cells of the body.
•Glucuronidation also makes many such chemicals easier for the body to excrete through the urine or the bile. The vital neutralization of toxins by glucuronidation can be undone by an enzyme known as beta glucuronidase. This enzyme frees up the original carcinogen from its glucuronic acid “handcuffs.” Beta-glucuronidase is present in the body’s cells and is also produced by some fecal bacteria. The activity of beta-glucuronidase increases with age.
•Impaired glucuronidation has been linked to susceptibility to many cancers and other diseases in humans and in other species. Human research reveals links between toxic environments, glucuronidation, and beta-glucuronidase; and also between glucuronidation, beta-glucuronidase activity, and cancer and other diseases.
D-Glucarate is a substance made in small amounts by the body, and also found in some foods – most notably oranges and cruciferous vegetables.
•D-Glucarate reduces the activity of the killer beta-glucuronidase enzyme in tissues all over the body, including key organs like the liver, spleen, breast, lung, and prostate resulting in higher net glucuronidation activity. This boost to your body’s glucuronidation capacity helps to ensure that those pollutants and toxins that have been neutralized by UGTs will stay neutralized, and be safely passed out through the urine or the bile.
As you’d expect from a nutrient that is used up in the detoxification process, people exposed to a toxic environment, have abnormal levels of D-Glucarate in their tissues and biological fluids. Cancer patients also have disrupted D-Glucarate levels.
•Studies in animals have found that D-Glucarate supplements provide powerful, effective support for the body’s natural defenses against many kinds of cancer. In one study, giving animals access to D-Glucarate supplements during exposure to the carcinogen DMBA but then had the supplement taken away, the brief intevention still managed to reduce the number of breast tumors the animals formed by 18% compared to animals who never received the supplement. More strikingly, if the scientists waited until the cancerous cells had already formed in the animals, and only then allowed them access to D-Glucarate, breast tumor formation was cut by 42%. And best of all, supplementation began from the first day of chemical exposure, and continued on throughout the study, D-Glucarate cut tumor formation neatly in half. The results of another study were even more impressive: after the animals were exposed to DMBA, those consuming D-Glucarate supplements developed 70% fewer breast tumors than those that did not.
The failure of the glucuronidation machinery is also closely associated with prostate cancer. UGT activity is reduced in prostate cancer cells when they are exposed to high levels of dihydrotestosterone (DHT), the form of testosterone most responsible for promoting prostate cancer. Men with prostate cancer are three times as likely as healthy men to have the gene for a weakened version of the UGT enzyme that glucuronidates DHT.
•D-Glucarate suppresses the killer beta-glucuronidase enzyme in the prostate just as it does in other tissues.
•Scientists at the AMC Cancer Research center now report that D-Glucarate supplements causes a 30% inhibition of the growth of prostate cancer in animals with existing prostatic tumors.
In addition to these gender-specific cancer threats, scientists have also piled on evidence that D-Glucarate supplementation protects animals against “equal-opportunity” cancers, such as those of the colon the lung, the skin, and the liver, and have found elevated beta-glucuronidase activity in the tumors of human victims of lung cancer. And beyond supporting the body’s detoxification systems, D-Glucarate supplements also appear to make the cells of the body themselves less prone to carcinogenic stimulation.
Preliminary studies in humans show that D-Glucarate supplements are safe, and have the same effects on beta-glucuronidase in people that they do in animals. Studies on D-Glucarate supplements in women at risk for breast cancer have begun.
References
i. Tukey RH, Strassburg CP. “Human UDP-glucuronosyltransferases: metabolism, expression, and disease.” Annu Rev Pharmacol Toxicol. 2000; 40: 581-616.
ii. Walaszek Z, Szemraj J, Narog M, Adams AK, Kilgore J, Sherman U, Hanausek M. “Metabolism, uptake, and excretion of a D-glucaric acid salt and its potential use in cancer prevention.” Cancer Detect Prev. 1997; 21(2): 178-90.
iii. Heerdt AS, Young CW, Borgen PI. “Calcium glucarate as a chemopreventive agent in breast cancer.” Isr J Med Sci. 1995 Feb-Mar; 31(2-3): 101-5.
iv. Abou-Issa H, Moeschberger M, el-Masry W, Tejwani S, Curley RW Jr, Webb TE. “Relative efficacy of glucarate on the initiation and promotion phases of rat mammary carcinogenesis.” Anticancer Res. 1995 May-Jun; 15(3): 805-10.
v. Maroni M, Columbi A, Antonini C. “D-glucaric acid urinary excetion as a tool for biological monitoring in occupational medicine.” In Brown SS, Davies DS (eds). Organ-directed toxicity: chemical indices and mechanisms. Oxford; Pergamon Press,1981:161-8.
vi. Walaszek Z., Hanausek M., Szemraj J, Adams A. “D-Glucaric acid as a potential tumor marker.” In Hanausek M, Walaszek Z (eds). Methods in Molecular Medicine, Vol 14: Tumor Marker Protocols. 1998; Humana press, Totowa, NJ: 487-95.
