The Dog Cancer Survival Guide (25 page)

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poptosis, nature’s way of clearing the body of old or damaged cells, is often diminished when cancer is present. Restoring normal apoptosis levels is an important goal in Full Spectrum cancer care.

In the normal course of events, cells are born, grow, live, and finally die to make way for new cells. Apoptosis genes activate when the body no longer needs the cell or when the cell has reached the end of its usefulness – when it is time to create what scientists call “programmed cell death” and occasionally “cell suicide.”

Apoptosis is not only a completely normal cellular process, it’s also vital for a normal life. One of my favorite examples of how apoptosis helps us on a grand scale is the human finger. When you look at images of babies developing in the womb, you can see that they have flipper-like hands early on. Later, they have fingers – and that is because their apoptosis genes activated to carve out the excess tissue and separate the flipper into five digits.

Apoptosis can happen when a cell reaches the end of its natural lifespan or when a cell sustains irreparable damage. If the cell cannot repair the harm caused by, for example, radiation, oxygen depletion, infection or DNA damage, the apoptosis genes direct the cell to die. In other words, the cell kills itself if it can’t repair itself.

Apoptosis happens on a regular basis; it’s estimated that somewhere between fifty and seventy billion cells undergo apoptosis every day in the average adult human body.

Apoptosis is a very controlled cellular process. A detailed description of the complicated series of steps apoptosis genes take to shrink and finally disintegrate the cell is beyond the scope of this book; the important thing for our purposes is for you to understand that once a cell’s life is over, the body disposes of the waste debris quietly, naturally and safely.

There are other ways for cells to die. For example, another kind of cell death is called necrosis, which is uncontrolled death, as when the body is injured accidentally. This traumatic cell death can lead to inflammation, especially when many cells die at the same time. Apoptosis, on the other hand, does not usually create inflammation in the body.

A consistent hallmark of cancer cells is that they evade apoptosis: instead of dying a natural death, they divide, divide again, and divide some more, and keep on proliferating. If we could get apoptosis levels back up, we might be able to manage cancer.

Dr. Robert Gerl and Dr. David L. Vaux said in their paper
Apoptosis in the Development and Treatment of Cancer,
“One of the few areas in the cell death field that everyone does agree upon is that having cancer cells undergo apoptosis would be a good thing.”

You may have never heard of apoptosis before you read this book, because it usually gets about two paragraphs in high school biology texts. I like to think about it because I choose to take a wide-angle view for problems like cancer. Apoptosis is a clear pattern we can examine for clues, as most normal body cells undergo apoptosis, most cancer cells evade apoptosis, and most experts agree that getting cancer cells to undergo apoptosis would be a good thing. For these reasons, boosting apoptosis levels in the body is an important theme in Full Spectrum cancer care, no matter what the diagnosis or tumor location.

The idea of using apoptosis to fight cancer has been around since the late nineteen-nineties and it is beginning to gain real traction. Pharmaceutical companies are starting to research synthetic apoptogens (compounds which cause apoptosis), and according to a pharmaceutical market research report from the United Kingdom, the apoptosis market is already worth billions of dollars. In a few years, most people will know about apoptosis, as they now know about DNA.

While programmed cell death was first described nearly two hundred years ago, it wasn’t called apoptosis until 1972, when a landmark paper was published in the
British Journal of Cancer.
The paper’s authors wanted to make a clear distinction between natural programmed cell death and cell death that results from trauma, so they consulted a Greek language professor to help them find a new name for cell suicide. He suggested the word apoptosis. The first part,
apo
means from, off, or without, and the second part,
ptosis
means falling. In the original Greek, the word is used to mean the “dropping off” or “falling off” of leaves or petals from plants or trees (the dropping of leaves from trees in the autumn is
apoptosis
). The researchers used it in their seminal paper, and the name has stuck. The image of petals falling from flowers or leaves drifting from trees is certainly lyrical, and a good metaphor for this normal, natural body process.

The traditional and most correct pronunciation is the Greek, which features a silent second p: “ay-po-TOE-sis,” although many people pronounce the word in English as “ay-POP-toe-sis.” I prefer and use the original pronunciation.

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s you have probably gleaned by now, it is nearly impossible to untangle a dog’s history and get down to the one single cause of cancer. Even the idea of a single cause for cancer – just like the idea of a single cure for cancer – is probably a myth. Cancer is more complex than that; it’s a living system.

We can plant an acorn in the ground; whether it grows into a towering oak depends upon soil conditions, the rain, the wind and other factors. The same is true for cancer: to grow, it must have the right conditions.

This chapter will cover a few of the most implicated causes of dog cancer: carcinogens, chronic inflammation, bad breeding, spaying and neutering, excess sunlight, and viruses. Stress, depression, and improper sleep patterns, plus, a much-hyped cause of cancer – free radicals – and their much-hyped cure – antioxidants, will be discussed, too (the story beyond the hype is more complicated than what’s in the media and on vitamin bottles).

A carcinogen is any substance capable of causing cancer by damaging healthy cell DNA. Carcinogens can be found everywhere: in our food, our water, our air and our soil. Familiar examples include: tobacco smoke, asbestos, industrial chemicals and certain pesticides.

In general, the more industrial development anywhere, the more carcinogens are present, which naturally leads to higher cancer rates. For example, it has been shown that canine cancer rates increase in an urban, industrialized environment. It’s interesting to note that some researchers who study the impact of the environment on human health are paying close attention to the health of dogs and other pets because they can be sentinels (warning signs) for human disease. In other words, they look at our pets, whose shorter life spans can give more information faster than our own longer life spans, for warnings about what we might be facing ourselves.

Not every exposure to carcinogens causes cancer, of course, but, every exposure could increase the
risk
of developing cancer. There is also evidence that the DNA in cancer cells is unstable, or prone to changing in unpredictable ways. Because of this, carcinogen exposure may worsen existing cancers by increasing mutations, possibly causing them to change into more aggressive forms. This is
why reducing your dog’s exposure to carcinogens is critical – and the place to start is his food bowl.

There is an organic compound found in poly-carbonate plastics called Bisphenol A, or BPA for short, that can leach into food and water. BPA, once in the body, acts like the hormone estrogen, interacting with cells through a lock-and-key process (in which estrogen is the key, and receptors on cell walls are the lock). Because of its similarities to estrogen, BPA can enter estrogen receptors, causing those cells to start multiplying. There is a theory that low levels of BPA and other estrogen-like compounds may promote cancer through this mechanism.

Many plastics manufacturers no longer use BPA in their polycarbonate products (for example, baby bottles and water bottles). However, BPA can still be found in food and beverage containers, carbonless shopping receipt paper, the lining of canned goods, white dental fillings, and more. It could also be in your dog’s plastic food and water bowl.

There are Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limits on the amount of BPA used in these products, of course, but according to the most recent safety studies, even exposure within what is considered safe parameters might be disruptive.

Public concern about BPA and other estrogen-mimicking chemicals found in plastics has shifted us away from using plastic for food storage and children’s toys and other items. It’s logical that we do the same thing for our dogs: use ceramic or glass food and water bowls, and avoid plastics in general.