I am so grateful to D that he posted the Hydrogen article and we can investigate the treatment further. We cannot expect all the answers to our questions to be available soon though at least the conversation can begin.

Something that I am especially interested in is whether Hydrogen therapy will be broadly effective against lung and brain mets. Exposing the lung directly to hydrogen represents a very good route of delivery. This is perhaps the first such inhalation treatment that might be applied to a wide range of patients that we have noted on forum. Perhaps this could be a priority in the research because mets to the lung are reasonably common in cancer and create difficulty in maintaining quality of life for patients. It would be quite a breakthrough if preventive treatment could actually stop such spread. Same observation might also apply to brain mets. Hydrogen therapy might be a powerful way of controlling clinical progression. Brain mets create especially difficult issues in maintaining patients. The clinical research to date suggests that hydrogen therapy might be especially helpful in both lung and brain cancer. 

In D's blog post comments I speculated about the combinations that might be effective. There is the antioxidant strategy and there is also the more direct metabolic focus. I am interested to see how dual metabolic targets could be used with hydrogen. Simultaneously targeting OXPHOS and glycolysis is a common (and quite powerful approach) that we have seen numerous times on forum. The potential for hydrogen therapy to be applied metronomically could provide a particularly strong tumor response.

Hydrogen treatment could give us yet another strong metabolic lever into cancer control.

I have thought of something interesting.

Deuterium depleted water (DDW) has been in development as an anti-cancer therapy for quite some time now. What if Deuterium depleted hydrogen gas therapy could help amplify the effects of straight hydrogen gas? The Hydrogen atom exists in two stable isotopes: deuterium (D or 2H)  and protium (H or 1H). These two different forms have different chemical properties and apparently removing some of 150 ppm D found in water can help in the treatment of cancer. 

Perhaps it would then be helpful to consider how hydrogen gas/water treatment could be changed to protium gas/water treatment. One suggestion for this is to use DDW in the hydrogen machine. One would then expect that this would create lower deuterium hydrogen gas/water content. It might even be possible to separate out the protium and deuterium molecules when the hydrogen is made. There are chemical differences that perhaps could be exploited to cleanly separate the two: possibly by density.     

What could we take to make hydrogen gas even more powerful?

My brother has, unfortunately, progressed while on targeted therapy (crizotinib). We have bought the hdyrogen gas generator from Osmio Water in Great Britain. We have increased inhalation to 6 hrs a night now a couple days ago. 

Would PQQ & CoQ10 be synergistic with hydrogen gas?

- Dng050

dngo050, I am sorry to hear of your brother's progression. It continues to be a great frustration to me to see the enormous potential of metabolic medicine largely go unfilled. Kimster recently posted a new formulation of metformin that with dramatically enhanced anti-cancer effects.

https://www.cancertreatmentsresearch.com/community/breast-cancer/3met-gold-metformin-prodrug-treating-aggressive-breast-cancer/#post-4413

I realize that such formulations are not readily available to patients, nonetheless they offer such large possible reward that putting effort in trying to secure them would seem reasonable. Creative formulations have been shown to greatly improve the safety and efficacy of many cancer treatments.

The right treatment, in the right formulation, with the right combination, at the right dose using the right schedule-- can give truly overwhelming anti-cancer effects.    

I am glad that you have been able to access hydrogen treatment. We have been constantly sifting through the multitude of metabolic treatments: this one clearly has particular promise.

One of the central features that metabolic therapy allows is prolonged dosing -- metronomic dosing. Vitamin C, 2-DG, fasting/ketogenic/diets and now hydrogen offer an opportunity to weaken cancer with extended metabolic pressure. We saw other patients who would have very large responses with conventional treatment and then required extended drug holidays only to see overwhelming tumor rebound during off-treatment time. Cancer treatment then often becomes a roller coaster in which the cancer has the advantage.

Yet, treating metronomically (with a low-toxicity treatment such as hydrogen) would seem to shift advantage to the patient. The ability to direct the treatment directly to the lung using inhalation is an especially attractive aspect for your brother's care. Perhaps one modification to your hydrogen protocol to consider is to use deuterium depleted water (DDW) instead of ordinary distilled water. DDW has its  own metabolic effects. When the hydrogen gas from DDW is produced it should have less deuterium which provide an extra anti-cancer boost. Titrate the DDW down through time. My framing of hydrogen is that it is another treatment in the metabolic class so potential combinations would include the many ideas that we have previously discussed in that framework.  

One especially powerful meta-strategy for cancer treatment that I have become excited about recently is  full genome sequencing of tumor and somatic cells. Up till now the suggestions on the forum have largely been generic. Some cancer treatments are effective for some people some of the time. There are millions of research articles on cancer! It can become overwhelming to try and synthesize this research.

The genomic approach offers a remarkably powerful way of examining the unique biology of tumors and then selecting treatments that would directly target its weaknesses. Currently full genome sequencing costs ~$300 for somatic cells. It is not clear how much additional cost might be involved due to trying to sequence single cancer cells. Yet, the economics would seem compelling. Knowing the complete genetic blueprint of cancer offers extreme potential.

One could directly consider metabolic genes and find their specific weaknesses versus somatic cells. This potentially could allow for precise targeting of cancer. I realize that there could be some leg work involved in sorting this out, thought there is a large payback. Searching through ~ 100,000 tumor variants would be a challenge, yet one expects that software programs would greatly reduce such a burden. With the vulnerabilities identified one could then choose the right treatment for the specific weakness. This introduces the exciting idea that the right treatment would find all the right patients all of the time.

Here's D's original post about Hydrogen:

https://www.cancertreatmentsresearch.com/community/lung-cancer/brain-metastases-completely-disappear-in-non-small-cell-lung-cancer-using-hydrogen-gas-inhalation-a-case-report/#post-4185

This is an article that shows how hydrogen fits into the metabolic perspective regarding glycolysis etc.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7005324/

Best Wishes, J

Thank you, Jcancom, for your valuable perspectives.

After my brother noticed that crizotinib began to lose effect (due to escalated breathing difficulties), we increased the breathing sessions to 6 hrs a night (from 2 hrs every day in two sessions). He noticed an immediate effect with easier breathing the day after. It has been three nights now, and he feels stable and good. 

We have been blessed because my brother got approved his application for off-label lorlatinib, which our oncologist told us we should not expect to get approved. I hope this will buy us more time to allow for the treatment of hydrogen. Inhaling for 6 hrs every night should have a powerful effect, I would hope. But I am speculating if 8 hrs or even more could be even more therapeutic?

Although the Osmio Infinity hydrogen generator has a low flow rate of only 833 mL/m, the gas comes with "electrically expanded water", which we hope would boost the energy of my brother. We have considered the Chinese machines with greater flow rate, but are concerned about safety. According to the maker of the Osmio Infinity, when the blood is saturated with hydrogen, we will exhale the excess hydrogen. So the "more" is not needed, but the "longer" we inhale the greater effect.

The metabolic perspective of cancer treatment seems convincing. I am a "believer". We will try hydrogen gas together with "mitochondrial rescue" supplements like PQQ, CoQ10, acetyl-l-carnitine, alpha lipoic acid and fermented wheat germ extract. I found this really interesting study on FWGE (one of the authors is none other than James D Watson):

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-71118-3

Dng050

Dng050, this is exciting! Hydrogen therapy might be what we have been waiting for! One of the great benefits of metabolic therapy is that it can work fast! With 3-BP the initial patients felt better within hours of treatment -- wanted to go out for dinner, etc. even while before they were chronically uninterested in food or unable to control nausea etc..

D's article (below) included a fair number of lung cancer patients; a surprising number of them responded and responded fairly rapidly (median time of ~53 days). I am not as clear whether hydrogen could also be an immediate response type treatment. Are you saying that he noticed a symptomatic benefit 3 days after trying hydrogen? !!! That is faster than I would have guessed. Patients want to be better; Now! Everyone takes notice when these types of responses do occur. Clearly one might wonder what the upper limit on daily treatment might be.

The problem of patient compliance is also a concern. Some cancer treatments could be more effective -- if only patients could actually tolerate them. Hydrogen treatment offers one of those almost ideal situations in which patients might actually be positively reinforced to accept treatment. Get treated with hydrogen --> feel better --> More hydrogen therapy, Please! Sometimes with patients they simply can't take any more of a toxic treatment. Even at the molecular level hydrogen seems benign. Hydrogen is an antioxidant, that is neutralizing free radicals. It is an inherently amicable treatment, yet many other pro-oxidant approaches are about being mean to cancer and other cells. However, being nice might avoid problems related to accelerating DNA damage, mets etc. 

D's article url below. D included some combination ideas. D was thinking in terms of autophagy, antioxidants, etc.

https://www.cancertreatmentsresearch.com/hydrogen/

I think that I'll stay somewhat ambivalent on the combinations, as there is quite a bit of research on hydrogen and cancer out there and finding the "right" one could offer a substantial amount of treatment power. The problem as always is that so many of the questions that we want answered probably do not have these answers. There does seem to have been an intensification of the treatment (per day). I will be  very interested to see what the maximal daily treatment might be.

The superachiever treaters on forum have employed what might be best called an omnitreatment philosophy. There are so many metabolic therapies that we are aware that probably does make sense to rotate through using an intensive protocol in order to search out one that is especially potent. One caution is that hydrogen is acting as an anti-oxidant so you want to avoid co-treating with pro-oxidants. 

This is a feature that D has commented about in the past. Some cancer clinics actually do combine pro and anti. This would not seem to be sensible on the surface, though it is possible given some treatment rationale it might make sense. D talked about avoiding chemo for days before Hydrogen. 

Might be worthwhile to think of a lactate monitor. We talked about this idea before; might be sensible now. Basically, a lactate monitor could give a biomarker for Hydrogen and perhaps other metabolic therapy. Seeing how lactate values changed due to treatment could allow therapeutic feedback. Treat with Hydrogen; see lactate fall --> treat some more with hydrogen. These monitors currently need a needle prick which can be unpleasant; though having this knowledge might help insight into how the cancer is behaving. For example, it might allow for a chronobiology approach. This idea is somewhat speculatively, yet when you're on the froniter, sometimes there can be paybacks by exploring that frontier.   

Another consideration is that treatment itself could prevent problems from emerging. Often people might only think in terms of the regressions and not in how mets that could have been never developed because of a treatment.

Dng050, do you have any labs that might help us understand how Hydrogen might have helped your brother?

This https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6927257/ article found a lung cancer patient who had ongoing benefit during a year plus.   

There is a great deal of research that has been done on hydrogen therapy in cancer.

Interestingly, this article speaks of downregulating CD47 (The don't eat me signal). So there are as usual a great deal of things happening at the same time. Lowering lactate levels, with less CD47 expression, etc. -- one could see an anti-cancer immune response developing.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32314789/

I am very glad that you have posted this positive experience, so that others can be alerted. Hopefully, others will rejoin this conversation and contribute their perspectives.

Best Wishes, J

Hi J! I always enjoy your reflections.
The idea of using DDW water in the inhalation device seems interesting to me, I am going to consult this point with the Ascleway company, I do not think it is incompatible with the device since in my opinion DDW water is very pure.
Regarding combining and improving hydrogen therapy, it would be very interesting to use a glutamine and glutamate inhibitor.
I especially like sodium phenylbutyrate and chlorpromazine which inhibits glutamate and working the mTOR pathway.
- Inhaled molecular hydrogen (antioxidant, regulates hypoxia, regulates glucolisis, lactate, inflammation and modulates OXPHOS, angiogenesis)
- Hydroxychloroquine (autophagy)
- Sodium phenylbutyrate (glutamine, HDAC, C-MyC)
- Chlorpromazine (inhibits glutamate and mTOR via)
- Adding 2- DG metronomic could be an enormous support to the inhibition of glycolysis.

In my understanding this could be a therapy with enormous therapeutic potential

Kind regards

Hi Manuel, I am from spain, my english is so bad, can DAniel send me your email?

thanks a lot 

@tri-naranjus por supuesto! estaré encantado de ayudarte si está en mi mano 🙂

@tri-naranjus @manuone

I assume this is a positive answer, so I will send the email.

Kind regards,

Daniel

GRACIAS A LOS DOS, os sigo muy atento. Gracias por vuestro trabajo

Thanks a lot for your works. 

@jcancom Very nice to see u again dear J, and I very much agree specifically with this point you made:

"Another consideration is that treatment itself could prevent problems from emerging. Often people might only think in terms of the regressions and not in how mets that could have been never developed because of a treatment."

Kind regards,
Daniel

Hi @manuone

At first, I was wondering why you added Phenylbutyrate and others, but then I realized that make very much sense. The point is that I see Hydrogen therapy as a tool to fight mainly from outside-in tumors and not specifically an inside (the cell) targeted treatment.

In other words Hydrogen is a tool that does not allow the tumor to convert its micro environment into one that would allow its development. From this point of view, we can think of many mechanisms that we could address to support Hydrogen effectiveness.

Along this line, I mentioned here https://www.cancertreatmentsresearch.com/hydrogen/ and here (towards the end) https://www.cancertreatmentsresearch.com/an-anti-cancer-compound-hiding-in-front-of-us-gluconate/ some approaches that could work well together.

These include most of the drugs you mentioned (I need to check chlorpromazine if it is really important in this case).

Kind regards,

Daniel

@daniel

https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-15407/v1 My idea of acting on glutamate and glutamine comes from this article.

Chlorpromazine partially inhibits glutamate uptake and is already being used in clinical trials in gbm

@manuone Interesting indeed. It makes sense Manuel. If Chlorpromazine doesn't fit due to interaction with the other drugs (as you mentioned) I will check and let you know the supplements that may make sense to use on the same line. One that stands out is EGCG and the other was Caffeic Acid as I remember. 

Kind regards,
Daniel

@Manuone, yes DDW could be an interesting enhancer. If you're treating with the water for the hydrogen then why not? The one caution is that it is suggested that you titrate down to lower concentrations gradually.

I am also wondering about using thermal treatment with lung mets. Could one simply breath in warm air? Cancer cells do not thrive above ~115 F. Might one simply breathe metronomically air at this temperature? That could be an easy one for people to try. It might be best to keep this separate from the hydrogen treatment though as one needs to be wary of potential dangers.

Manuone, you have great suggestions for the combination treatment. I wanted to stay clear from discussing this aspect because there are a fair number of considerations with the hydrogen therapy itself. For example, what might the optimal treatment duration be? etc. Metronomic metabolic treatments can be more effective the longer duration. In other applications (e.g., COVID) I have seen up to 8 hour treatments). The problem is that so many of our questions do not have answers. It can take years for the trials to build up the dosing.

With hydrogen, D has found one of the better metronomic approaches. A dual metabolic combination that combined glycolysis and OXPHOS could offer extraordinary anti-cancer effects. I am glad to hear that some on forum appear to have already derived benefit from this.

Best Wishes, J

@manuone : I really need some guidance for my wife Stage IV Hormone positive breast cancer with mets in liver, lungs, bones, brain.

After the conventional treatment failed in US, I took her to Istanbul where is being treated with Chemotherapy + HBOT + Full Body and Regional Hyperthermia + Metronomic Vitamin C + DMSO and few off label drugs 

We see improvement in overall body but especially for brain mets I am concerned with due to recent stability issues she is facing and getting Image guided radiation therapy.

 I am looking for molecular hydrogen gas inhalation but need some guidance on it.

1) Is Chinese molecular hydrogen with output of 3L/min is a good choice or even devices like aqua cure which generates brown gas with Max output of 800ml/min will be good too and instead output, longer duration is the key ?

2) Can Hydrogen Gas inhalation be done in conjunction with Chemotherapy that my wife is currently on ?

Thanks,

Varun Tyagi

@daniel Could you please send me his email id too. I have queries related to Molecular Hydrogen gas for my wife having Stage IV BC with mets to brain, liver.

Also I read somewhere that if your body has infectious fluid like ascites, pleural effusion , edema in those cases the gas treatment make things worse. Do you have any thoughts on it ?

@varuntyagi86 I'm sorry to hear about your wife's health problems.
The flow of 3l / min clearly makes the difference in therapy, apparently the gradient in the accumulation of hydrogen is an important point. I can expand my personal experience and that of other people I know by email, Daniel can provide it without problem 🙂

@manuone Hey Manuel, how's your mother doing?

Hi dear friend johan....

Sadly my desr mother passed away last 14 september. 

The tumor did not grow in the last 3 years but on the other hand it was impossible for me to avoid recurrent urinary infections (she wore a diaper and was not very mobile) at the end she had a lung infection that we could control but she ended up extremely weak ....

@manuone 

I am so sorry to hear this, Manuel.

You added several years to her life.

My deepest condolences.

Un abrazo

@manuone Thank you so much .

@daniel: Could you please provide his email id.  That will be extremely helpful.

@varuntyagi86 done!

@daniel Thank you so much Daniel !!

@manuone, my deepest condolences for your mother. I hope that some of my suggestions were useful to you in managing her illness.

I am also sorry that I have been absent from thread over the last many months and not here to offer you ideas. Cancer research has taken a hold of me and there is not much that will keep me away.  

You should be very proud of how well you managed such a difficult illness for so long; you have been the most successful of all those I am aware of on the blog. It would be a great service to others if you might post some of your treatment strategies on a thread here so others could learn from your experiences.  

You have been such an inspiration to me and others on the blog. Typically with stage 4 cancer, treatment is never able to produce results; even with skilled oncologists there is often despair. However, your efforts clearly produced results even in the especially challenging context of stage IV GBM. You have pointed the way for all the others that are pursuing metabolic strategies. This feature of people learning from other people is a powerful feature of this blog.       

What is especially noteworthy is that you were able to access treatments that almost no one else has been able to access. My on-going perspective is that there is a wealth of very powerful treatments (including various formulations of 3-BP, etc.) that are unavailable to patients. As patients learn about the power of metabolic medicine as demonstrated with your results, then more will be helped.

My thoughts and prayers go out to you, manuone.

Best Wishes, Jcancom 

@jcancom

Thank you for your kind words and condolences dear friend J.
More than six years have passed since my mother's diagnosis and it seems to me that it was yesterday ...
I have no words to express what I feel. There are many adjunctive cancer comorbidities that are more difficult to treat than the cancer itself. The most ironic of all is that "stopping the disease" was the most difficult thing but I was able to achieve it thanks to God, on the contrary I was unable to handle urinary infections.
Thanks for all your advice all these years! I will continue, I will not go! I will continue adding in my fight against cancer! There are interesting projects that I will let you know!

Kind regards