ABC Radio National

Life Matters






Date/Time 29 Mar 2017 8:55:08pm
Stress is often called a 'fight or flight' reaction. In fight or flight the blood vessels to tissue essential to a sudden burst of energy, i.e. heart, lungs, brain and skeletal muscles are dilated or expanded to allow more blood flow. Heart rate and contraction increase to enhance blood flow.

Alternatively, in 'fight or flight' the blood vessels to tissue not essential to a sudden burst of energy are constricted or narrowed thus allowing more blood flow to tissue essential to attacking or running from attack. This constriction is primarily in the entire gastro-intestinal tract, including organs directly connected to same, as well as kidneys, but must include breast tissue although not mentioned in books of physiology I've read. Can't run and breast feed. All up this is all fine for a short duration and actually boosts immunity against infection in preparation for injury should it occur.

However, when the stress is persistent, as can be in the CONCRETE JUNGLE for a whole range of cultural and social reasons, it reduces immunity to infection and creates hypoxia or oxygen starvation in these tissues, as well as the vasoconstriction to the intestines impairing the absorption of iron (anaemia) essential for oxygen transport and oxidative reactions in cells. (It was my suggestion that hypoxia was an inducer of cancer, at the very first Lorne Cancer conference I attended many years ago, that led to research into, and the discovery of, the hypoxia genes and their product HIF (hypoxia induction factor.)

Now look at the effects of activating HIF by hypoxia. (Semenza PDF, brackets mine.) Hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) mediate adaptive physiological responses to hypoxia. In human cancers that are accessible for O2 electrode measurements, intratumoral hypoxia is common and severe hypoxia is associated with increased risk of mortality. HIF activity in regions of intratumoral hypoxia mediates angiogenesis (growth of blood vessels to support tumor), epithelial-mesenchymal transition ('rounding up' from a single layer of cells, as in the lining of a breast milk duct to multiple layers), stem-cell maintenance (prevention of differentiation), invasion (of surrounding tissue), metastasis, and resistance to radiation therapy and chemotherapy. Switch from aerobic metabolism to anaerobic metabolism.

Fifty years ago Otto Warburg subjected normal body cells to hypoxic conditions in petri dishes and they TRANSFORMED (to cancer cells.) That's ALL he did. That makes hypoxia an INDUCER of cancer. Add very high levels of estradiol and you've got the PROMOTER of breast cancer.

Semenza PDF again. A growing number of drugs have been identified that inhibit HIF activity by a variety of molecular mechanisms.

Drugs to inhibit HIF? Why not meditation or biofeedback to take away the stress that causes the vasoconstriction. But then wh
