I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Gabor Somlyai. Dr. Somlyai graduated as a microbiologist in 1982 then he received his Ph.D. He brought his idea of hydrogen-deuterium regulating cancer growth into cancer research in 1990. Read on to learn about how what we eat and drink can affect our deuterium levels, how cancerous cells are affected by deuterium, the normal deuterium levels around the world, and how we can reduce our risk of cancer.
What Does The Name Albert Szent-Gyorgyi Mean To You?
Albert was a Hungarian scientist that discovered vitamin C and the importance of it. He said that if you want to solve the cancer problem you have to go to a submolecular level. We are close to a breakthrough in cancer research because this research started 50 years ago. He was clever enough to know that life is too complex and that it is impossible that it’s organized by big molecules. Where there are protons you need an electron and if there is an electron you need a positively charged proton.
Albert was a huge inspiration to me and in 1976 I wrote down that hydrogen is key in cancer development. After this, I kept this in my mind. Four years later, I was learning about pH entropy and at this time heavy hydrogen was on my mind. I believed that deuterium was key in the molecular biology system.
What is Deuterium?
When we talk about heavy water we think about nuclear power plants that use heavy water. It means that not two hydrogens bind to oxygen but two deuterium. Deuterium is a heavy hydrogen. In the nucleus, there is a proton with mass number 1 and a neutron with mass number 1 so the deuterium mass number is 2. This is twice the mass of the nucleus of ordinary hydrogen The deuterium gives you a different chemical reaction than it would if it wasn't heavy water. If you have two hydrogens behaving in the same way then the chemical reaction does not count. In that case, because the deuterium is having a different biochemical reactions it can count. You can learn more about deuterium in my blog post HERE.
Hydrogen is the backbone for so many chemicals around us, our bodies, water, and protein. It is a fundamental element. -Kriben Govender
Does Deuterium Replace Hydrogen?
During evolution, there was a time where there were a small bacteria that could regulate life on a molecular level. But humans and animals are much more complex. Think about it….
-40 micrometers is the size of a cell
-This is one-millionth of a meter
-In the cell, there is a nucleus with a diameter of 100 micrometers
-Within the nucleus, there is DNA which is 1.8 meters if it were to be stretched out
-DNA is packaged in the nucleus which remember ...is only 100 micrometers
-It is so small and it contains the 1.8 meter DNA
In one single cell, there are 2000 biochemical processes and it works perfectly.
Our body consists of 37 trillion cells and all of them are in harmony with each other and we are fine. The cells can modify the deuterium hydrogen ratio and the molecules will do what the ratio says to do. Having deuterium in our body is normal and it is present in nature as well. We have deuterium in the Earth, in the ocean, in our food, and surface water. The issue is when someone gets cancer or another disease. The question is how can we cure or treat them and whether we can regulate the submolecular system.
You are trying to establish how the cells can regulate this ratio. -Kriben Govender
We published the first paper in 1993 “Naturally occurring deuterium is essential to the normal growth rate of cells.” In this study, I checked how the cell culture behaved and grew with deuterium depleted water. When I put it into the deuterium depleted water the cell growth stopped. We also put human breast cancer into mice and replaced their water with deuterium depleted water. This data suggested that cancer required the deuterium to keep cell growth.
When the growth hormone binds to the membrane that will stimulate the sodium hydrogen which means that the pH goes up as the hydrogen concentration decreases in the cell. This is a signal for the cell to multiply but no one could explain the signal. BUT we said that when the growth hormone binds to the membrane and stimulates the hydrogen transport system that the deuterium level will increase in the cell. The membrane will discriminate between the two hydrogens. If the cell has cancer cells, then the cell will multiply.
The question is where is the brake? The brake system is in the mitochondria. When we are eating food, we then burn it into carbon dioxide and metabolic water. Everyone, every day, is producing deuterium depleted water in the body. This is what healthy cells do. If we compare the cancer cells what is the only difference? The mitochondria. In healthy cells, the mitochondria are working properly. They can produce deuterium depleted metabolic water. BUT we know that with the cancerous cells, the mitochondria do not work properly. The cancerous cells cannot produce deuterium depleted metabolic water. The damaged mitochondria in the damaged cells allows the deuterium and hydrogen ratio to get out of balance and cancer will grow…..
What Are Mitochondria?
Within the cell, there are many organelles. One of them is the mitochondria. It produces ATP when we eat the energy that is stored in food. The cells can use this as an energy source for other chemical reactions. The mitochondria is covered with a double membrane and on the membrane, there are the ATPase nanometers which is a group of enzymes. This spins 9000 times per minute and it is fueled by the hydrogen ion. It is essential for the mitochondria. And for the ATPase, to discriminate against any deuterium in preference for hydrogen as it will use it as fuel for this process.
The other key issue with the mitochondria is what is the carbon source? Depending on what we eat will determine the deuterium level of the metabolic water. When I went to the supermarket I started looking at different foods including:
-Cottage cheese
-Butter
-Sugar
I took the water out of each of them and saw the deuterium content. It turns out that the carbohydrate contains 150ppm. The PPM means that there is 150 deuterium per a million parts. When we checked the level of the fat (butter and cottage cheese) it was MUCH lower at 118ppm. When we eat a lot of carbohydrates, the mitochondria produce the deuterium water and this concentration is going to be higher than if we were to consume fat. People say that fat is very harmful and 60% of your food intake should be carbohydrates but it means that our deuterium level would be higher than someone else's that has a diet rich in fat. Back in the day, it was normal to consume all of this fat, now many foods are low fat.
What we eat, how we move, and how we think can modify the deuterium level in the body. The cell membrane can increase the deuterium level, then the mitochondria will push down the level. It is a game.
The dietary factors of carbohydrates vs fats will have a major impact on the cells ability to deplete deuterium. Carbohydrates have a higher deuterium load which may result in the cells having a higher deuterium content and consuming fats would lower this deuterium content. -Kriben Govender
TCA Cycle vs Pentose Phosphate? Difference Whether Metabolism Happens One Pathway Vs Another?
All the biochemical processes depend on and modify each other. At the end or the beginning of this process, there should be the deuterium hydrogen ratio. We have run studies where we labeled glucose to carbon 13, the glucose was given to the cells, and then we separated the molecules. The liquid map of the carbon 13 and the different molecules was going with the glucose and that was where we could find big differences with normal water vs deuterium depleted water. We can say that the deuterium level can modify ALL of the biochemical processes that are running in our bodies and cells.
What Does Deuterium Do To The Mitochondria?
We ran a study with athletes:
-One group of athletes were consuming 105ppm reduced from 150-105 for 44 days
-The others consumed regular water
There was a test at the beginning and end of the study. There was a huge difference between the two groups. The group that was consuming deuterium depleted water had their lactic acid appear later during the test. This showed that the mitochondria worked more efficiently. The oxygenation of their glucose was much better. This suggested that the lower deuterium level can help the mitochondria and ATPase synthesise ATP more effectly. AND it has enough oxygen to oxygenize carbohydrates.
The glucose level did not change during the first 5 minutes of the loading test. It reduced the glucose suggesting that the oxygenation could use up the glucose more properly. The ATPase is spinning 9,000 times per minute and deuterium can damage the mitochondria and the ATPase. That is the reason why the deuterium depleted water was very useful to these athletes.
What is The Normal Range of Deuterium Levels?
The normal deuterium level of water is 155ppm in the ocean,. in Europe the water is145ppm, and if you go to the north or south pole it’s lower. If we look at the millimole instead of the ppm in our bodies, the deuterium level in our bodies is 6x higher than the amount of calcium in our blood and 9x higher than the magnesium level in our blood. Since the 1930’s when deuterium was discovered, they found that 6,600/1 was the ratio of the hydrogen and deuterium and everyone wanted to ignore it because 6,600/1 is not that big of a number…..BUT if you check the millimole, 12 millimoles is extremely high. Deuterium is essential and has a very important role but having too much of it can be a bad thing.
Over a lifetime, it's important to wonder what the deuterium level in the body is. If it’s 150ppm we may have a higher chance of getting cancer than if it was 140ppm.
We have recently run testing on water samples in Australia coming from taps, bottled water, and they are all above 150ppm. I think that geographically Australia is the canary in the coal mine. A whole region has a high deuterium level. We are seeing a whole lot of health issues in this country. Hopefully people will consider alternatives in water and something that is lower in deuterium. -Kriben Govender
How is Cancer Related to Mitochondria, and How Does Deuterium Influence the Situation?
It takes about 4-5 years from that one single cell to be able to diagnose the tumor. By that time the tumor size may be 1 centimeter. It was not that “Yesterday I was healthy and today I got cancer.” That cancer started many years ago….. It is also a big mistake to think the cancer is gone when the tumor is removed and you believe that you are healthy. Within those 4-5 years, tumor cells can leave the primary tumor and those cells can survive. We can never say that the tumor was removed in time, we can only remove the tumor in the early stage or late stage but never in time.
We can modify the probability to have cancer or not to have cancer throughout our lifetime. You need to find the mutation in the genome and find the genes that were in the tumor development. The other idea is that the metabolic system is responsible for cancer growth. We can prove that gene mutations can increase the risk of cancer. The higher deuterium levels can cause mutations, so when the DNA replicates the deuterium can increase the mutation rate and it can increase the chance of mutation in a region.
What Can We Do During our Lifetime to Reduce the Risk of Cancer?
Lower deuterium levels should reduce the risk of cancer. For healthy people, it would be great to consume deuterium depleted water for 3-4 months every year because we can reduce these deuterium levels. The tumor cells cannot tolerate this type of change. Because of the damaged mitochondria and processes in the cancer cells, they require the deuterium. When we reduce the deuterium level from the outside, we are diluting the normal level in our bodies.. Those cancer cells can be eliminated by giving deuterium depleted water since they cannot handle this change.
We have a database of 171 cancer patients that were operated on then started to consume deuterium depleted water to prevent relapse. Our data shows that we lost 11 of those patients. With 7 of the patients that have died:
-They consumed deuterium depleted water
-Had a break
-Consumed again for a couple of months
-5 years later they passed away
That means that those that came back and repeated this process every year we can prevent the relapse of cancer. If we consume this water the cancer cells cannot tolerate them and will die off. We can reduce the risk of cancer AND relapse of cancer.
I am stunned that I have never heard of this type of information broadcasted sooner. If you have been working on this for over 30 years, I am wondering why this information is not more widely talked about. Just in Australia alone, 1 in 2 people will develop cancer. I hope this message gets to the people on the promise that this information holds. Not only to cure but as a preventative measure to have people live great lives to live cancer-free. -Kriben Govender
The pharmaceutical industry is going to find the molecules. They are seeking the genes responsible for cancer. They are spending billions of dollars to cure people. I understand that people are skeptical about why deuterium depleted water would be good to cure cancer but the time has come. The price of cancer drugs is high but the efficiency is low. Even with the drugs, people are dying. Science must find the reason and figure out what is happening with cancer.
In the long term, we need to study different concentrations of deuterium depleted water as a drug. This is the only way that people will be able to get it. We have to educate the oncologists on how to use deuterium depleted water in their therapy. We have to integrate deuterium depletion to the existing therapy. This will help increase the chance of survival.
To be effective as a drug the PPM should be around 105 to start therapy. After a couple of months, you can reduce it to 85ppm depending on the stage of cancer, type of cancer, and following the conventional therapy. Overall we need to pay attention to the deuterium levels in the water for our families. Be careful of what they are consuming.
What Are the Options if You Don't Have Access to Deuterium Depleted Water?
We have two types of products:
-One is a registered product for veterinary use
-For humans, there is a drinking product. We have a facility that produces deuterium depleted water for clinical trials. You can get deuterium depleted water at 136ppm HERE and at 25ppm HERE.
This information is also pertinent to gut health. There are mitochondria in all of the gut cells. If the mitochondria aren't functioning properly and the gut lining isn't functioning properly then it could lead to many problems like leaky gut. These gut cells are replenishing themselves every 24-48 hours. The mitochondria must be functioning properly.
Try to source out the lowest deuterium depleted water you can find. This will starve the cancer cells and prevent them from growing. This will also make your gut happy because the gut cells are functioning more efficiently. Consuming more good fats rather than carbohydrates will put you at an advantage from the start. Focus on healthy fats to lower your deuterium content. Share this with a friend that would benefit from this information.
Great information. How much deterium depleted water should I drink each day to rid myseld of a 11cm tumor on liver?
Great podcast, thanks! I have been trying to understand the words of Dr Jack Kruse…. this information here helps to make sense of it all.
Cheers.