Oxygen is absolutely vital to our survival, and in turn, our cells can’t function without it. Normal cells generate energy to grow and thrive inside tiny power stations called mitochondria, and they use oxygen to fuel the chemical reactions that take place there.
Cancer cells, on the other hand, don’t like oxygen very much and most cancers cannot exist well in an oxygen-rich environment. That is why you will never get cancer of the heart – the blood is too well oxygenated for cancer cells to grow.
So how do cancer cells get their energy if they don’t like oxygen? There are two ways for cells to harvest energy from food: cellular respiration and fermentation, which both start with a process called glycolysis, which very simply means turning glucose (sugar) into cell energy (HTP). Normal cells use mainly cellular respiration to harvest energy and this involves oxygen to fuel the reactions. But cancer cells are reprogrammed to change the way the cell functions, including how it harvests its energy. They go about powering the cell by a process called fermentation, which does not require any oxygen. In fact, the fermentation process actually removes oxygen. When you make alcohol, the sugars ferment, and when they ferment they bubble. Those bubbles are the oxygen leaving the party.
So sugar is a type of carbohydrate. Remember all that undigested processed food piling up in your digestive system and then making its way into the bloodstream? Most of that food was carbohydrate – corn flakes, crisps, cookies, cakes, white bread, pizza, french fries, candy and sugary drinks. All these half-digested carbohydrates that were sitting in your digestive system eventually get absorbed into your bloodstream and are circulated around the rest of your body, eventually finding a nice resting spot to settle and ferment. As this fermentation takes place, oxygen is burnt off, creating the kind of environment that cancer cells prefer.
On top of that, the white blood cells, which are supposed to circulate as the immune system, become trapped in all this debris. They are meant to be protecting your system from foreign invaders, as well as preventing the formation of cancer cells. This is when slip-ups happen, as your system simply can’t cope with the assault on the natural balance of things.
Poor oxygenation comes from a buildup of carcinogens and other toxins in the blood, which blocks and damages the cells’ oxygen respiration mechanism. Clumping up of red blood cells slows down the bloodstream and restricts the flow of oxygen to the rest of the body. This then allows fermentation in other parts of the body which creates an acidic, oxygen-free environment in which cancer cells thrive.