Fungalbionics

Definition of FUNGALBIONICS

The term FUNGALBIONICS was created in an attempt to describe one of the most dynamic microbial chemical factories ever encountered in the history of scientific exploration.

Fungi are masters at producing a wide array of biologically active substances which serve the producing fungus extremely well. These biological metabolites are anti-predatory and pro-territorial-protective and insure the fungus will have a perpetual existence in a quite hostile world. These metabolites are anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-protozoan, anti-insect, anti-animal and, of course, anti-human. These metabolites are referred to as the mycotoxins. The term is derived from the Greek words “mykes” meaning fungus, and “toxicum”, meaning toxin or poison.

Mycotoxins Are Poisons

One could test the validity of this most biologically potent fungal reality by eating a cupful of poison mushrooms, a species of fungus. However, it would be less fatal to simply read about their deadly effect upon humans and all other animals. The name of the game is food for that mushroom because in nature the animal which nibbles on them dies and is consumed by the mycelium (root-like) under the ground which grow up into the hapless and now dead creature.

The term FUNGALBIONICS attempts to convey this remarkable degree of biological activity which these simple single-celled fungi demonstrate. All fungi are so empowered, some less to humans, some more so. While fungi are potentially our enemies, some of their mycotoxins, such as penicillin, are beneficial to humans with bacterial infections and other diseases.

The ‘bionic’ nature of fungi is seen by the magnificent power of penicillin to save human lives from bacterial infection. That is indeed a bionic miracle. Other fungal-derived drugs are just as miraculous, as will be later described.

This series of FUNGALBIONICS books [two were available in 1994 and we are following up on possible remaining ones] provide documentary evidence that fungi and their biological metabolites, the mycotoxins, are the silent and relentless attackers of human health by causing the major “degenerative” and “cancerous” diseases which plague mankind.

FUNGALBIONICS appears to be a most appropriate term to describe the fungal/mycotoxin findings which will be presented in these pages. It is a term which the three physician authors have found acceptable. We hope that the reader will agree with us.

What are Fungi?

Fungi are single cell living forms of life which inhabit the land, air and waters of the earth. They are everywhere. They are more highly developed than [the] bacteria and viruses and there are many more species than are found in the microbes. It is estimated that there are over 500,000 different species.

Fungi have been on earth several billion years and, quite remarkably, have had little genetic change over that period of time. They are survivalists. They can change their form from rapidly growing to no growth for thousands of years, such as seen in their living spores which have been found in Egyptian tombs. They make poisons called mycotoxins. Single fungal cells can only be seen under the microscope but a colony of these cells makes a visible presence in the form of mushrooms, toad stools and molds on food and habitations.

While plants, animals and humans are alive and well, the fungi around us are unable to overcome the natural defense mechanisms which higher forms of life possess. But once death overtakes the living, the fungi are the principle undertakers and managers: they reduce all that have every lived into the molecules from which they were assembled. Biologists call this the carbon cycle while philosophers call it “from dust to dust”. However, there is one exception to this simple balanced equation of life and death and that is that the fungi can attack the living while they are alive.

At its most simplistic perspective, one has many fungi entering the intestinal tract, the nose and lungs, and organs exposed to the world at large. We generally do not develop an infection from these intruders. However, a person might contract a fungal infection such as “athlete’s foot ” or a “ring worm” on the skin.

At the opposite extreme is the patient with AIDS who faces death-threatening major fungal infections because that person’s immune system has lost its effectiveness against fungi. In between the extremes are fungal infections associated with diseases such as diabetes, cancer and other conditions including cross infections among humans. Fortunately, the average person does not succumb to a serious fungal infection [such as Candida albicans] and average life expectancy is into the 70’s.

All humans are colonized by Candida albicans and normal healthy persons do not die from this organism. This organism plays a very little role in causing human diseases. (The concept that Candida causes many diseases is NOT a part of Fungalbionics nor is it supported by the extensive medical literature relative to Candida.)

What are Mycotoxins?

All physicians are familiar with fungal infections and the drugs used to treat them. With the exception of poison mushrooms, which are deadly to those foolish enough to eat them, few physicians are aware that [the] fungi make toxins.

Mycotoxins – Friends or Enemies?… THEY ARE BOTH…

As Enemies

As many as 1,000 compounds, classifiable as mycotoxins, were studied by the pharmacology industry as potential antibiotics in the 1930’s and 1940’s only to be discarded as being too toxic for higher life forms to be of value in treating bacterial diseases in humans. Little, if any of the discarded data was published. Yet what these toxicity studies actually documented was the existence of a large number of fungal-derived toxins which caused serious target organ injury in various animal models.

Obviously, in retrospect, what was being seen was the pathology produced by the mycotoxins. in order to understand this toxicity, one only has to look at what some of these mycotoxins, used as medications, causes in humans:

The mycotoxin cyclosporin used for transplantation causes cancer and atherosclerosis, complete with hyperlipidemia in ALL humans who have received it. Many others develop gout and other diseases.

As Friends

However, to place the matter in proper perspective, the study of such fungal metabolites gave us penicillin at the beginning, quite later on cyclosporin, the most potent immunosuppressant transplantation drug, lovastatin, and the other ‘statins’ which have revolutionized the treatment of hyperlipidemia and atherosclerosis. The latter group is quite interesting in that they were initially developed as anti-fungal agents which just happened to have an effect in lowering blood levels of low density lipoproteins (commonly referred to as “bad cholesterol”).

The members of this group of drugs are joined by another anti-fungal antibiotic, griseofulvin, which is also a remarkably efficient anti-atherosclerosis drug. All of this goes a long way to confirm the fungal etiology of atherosclerosis. This appears to be a quite valid conclusion since all of the other effective anti-cholesterol and/or anti-atherosclerotic therapeutic modalities share nothing in common except that they possess anti-fungal and/or anti-mycotoxin activity.

Diseases Responding to Anti-Fungal Drugs

The Fungalbionic Series of Books present data documenting the fungal/mycotoxin cause of a number of diseases. Equally important, the series also documents that each and every dietary measure or drug found to be effective in treating these diseases share nothing in common except that they are all anti-fungal and/or antimycotoxic.

The importance of this therapeutic responsiveness should not be underestimated. If a cause of a disease is a microbe, it must respond to an appropriately selected antimicrobial agent.

In addition, diseases of unknown etiology which respond to anti-fungal-effective drugs suggest the probability that they have a fungal origin, particularly when there is no other proven explanation as to how the drug is working. Table 1 provides a number of human diseases which so respond and suggest a fungal/mycotoxin origin.

Fungal/Mycotoxin Postulated Disease

COLCHICINE-RESPONSIVE:

Acute Gouty Arthritis, Alcoholic Cirrhosis, Familial Mediterranean Fever. Mollaret’s Meningitis, Bechet’s Syndrome, Psoriasis, Thrombocytopenic Purpura. Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, Amyloidosis North African, Leukocytoclastic Vasculitis, Sarcoid Arthritis, Rheumatoid Arthritis (some), Calcium Pyrophosphatopathy, Hyperlipidemia, Inflammatory Bowel Disease

GRI SEOFULVIN-RESPONSIVE:

Atherosclerosis (Angina), Systemic Sclerosis, Raynaud’s Syndrome/Disease, Shoulder-Hand Syndrome

ALLOPURINOL-RESPONSIVE:

Sarcoidosis, Oxalate Nephrolithopathy, Idiopathic Respiratory, Distress Syndrome/Newborns, Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy

KETOCONAZOLE-RESPONSIVE:

Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, Disseminated Vascular Coagulation, Idiopathic Female Infertility, Precocious Puberty in Boys, Hyper-Low Density, L poproteinemia, Hyperaldosteronism aldosteronism, Prostate Carcinoma. Note: The anti-fungal nature of colchicine and allopurinol has been fully documented.

The Trojan Horse: Mycotoxins in the Food Chain

Most of us know that food itself cannot be considered poisonous. Very few of us know that the toxicogenic fungi and their mycotoxins, which are characteristically present in stored and fermented food, are using our food chain as a Trojan Horse.

How Fungal-Colonized is our Stored Food?

The first question which must be answered in order to support a fungal/mycotoxin approach is just how much fungal-colonization of our food chain has been actually documented. Could our food be the source of that much toxic fungi and their multitude of mycotoxins? If food is loaded with fungi, then the mycotoxin concept is fully operative and the disease-producing potential is more than obvious.

ThisiImportant question of how much fungal colonization of food exists is answered by a most recent reported mycological study of some quite representative foods; corn kernels, peanuts, cashew nuts and copra (dried coconut). Table 2 demonstrates the remarkable degree of fungal colonization of the INTERIOR of corn kernels, peanuts. Humans who eat these foods are ingesting both the toxicogenic fungi and their mycotoxins. These fungi are capable of surviving in the intestinal stream where they may continue to produce their toxins. Similarly, animals fed fungal colonized/ mycotoxic feed are not only at risk for developing mycotoxicoses, their meat and their fat, constitute another vehicle for human exposure to excessive mycotoxin intake. Animal fat is increasingly being documented to be a major risk factor for a number of human cancers and atherosclerosis.

Table 2: Food from Farmers, Middlemen, and Retail Outlets in Bangkok.

Note: Surface was sterilized prior to fungal study.

Source: Pilt JL, Hocking AD, Bhudhasamai K, Miscamble BF, Wheeler Ek P: The normal mycoflora of commodities from Thailand 1. Nuts and oilseeds.
International J Food Microbil 20:211-226, 1993

Mycotoxins have been documented to cause a number of specific types of diseases and very specific organ lesions both in animals and in humans. Table 3 provides a summary of some of this documentation.

Table 3: Mycotoxicoses in which Experimental and/Epidemiological Data Suggest Human Involves

Table 4:
Natural Occurrence of Mycotoxins in Foods

This table provide a listing of many mycotoxins and the food containing them.

The fungal fermentation processes, such as making bread, beer, wine, cheese, smoking/chewing tobacco, aging/curing meats, etc., constitutes yet another part of the human food chain which places humans at potential risk. Bread has been recently epidemiologically incriminated as a cause of breast cancer in Japan and atherosclerosis in the United States.

Alcoholic beverages correlate not only with cirrhosis of the liver, but a wide range of other diseases which includes brain damage, cancers, fetal injury, etc. Alcohol is a fungal-produced toxic metabolite and the conditions that it produces are as mycotoxicotic in nature as ergotism or aflatoxicosis.

Cured mutton consumed by women at the time of conception results in the birth of diabetic infants. This is a fact not yet taken into consideration in efforts to find the cause of the markedly increasing incidence of this disease in some parts of the world. [we wonder if this has not something to do with the introduction of Faciolopsis buskii (the human sheep liver fluke) into the mother’s body to seek its most fertile place in the organism – remember, the presence of the fluke in the liver spells CANCER, the fluke in the pancreas spells diabetes].

Mycotoxins Found in Breast Milk and Blood

In respect to the presence of mycotoxins in humans, it has already been documented by several of our collaborators that over half of German adults have ochratoxin in their blood, that leukemic children have aflatoxin in their blood, that patients with urinary tract cancers have ochratoxin in their blood, that patients with Crohn’s Disease have aflatoxin in their blood, and finally, 18 to 90 % of nursing mothers have mycotoxins in their breast milk.
Obviously, the problem of mycotoxins in human health is quite real and requires full elucidation, particularly since we all know that food is in some way connected to the major disease of humans.

Dietary Choices Increase or Decrease the Mycotoxin Connection

Public awareness is particularly important in that the major means of preventing the development of these diseases rests most significantly upon the informed/intelligent selection of what the public eats and drinks. A person’s dietary choices play the critical role in the causation or in the prevention of all of the mycotoxin-caused diseases, not only for himself, but also for his offspring.

The selection of foods for children is going to determine the life expectancy and quality of health for these adults-to-be. The dietary choices required for controlling the degree of mycotoxicity are all based upon documented facts found in the scientific literature. The diet must reduce the intake of mycotoxin-containing foods, not feed the fungi living within us, and decrease the toxicity of the mycotoxins which do enter our body.

Dietary Avoidance of Mycotoxin-Containing Foods

Reduce the intake of fungal toxins which are present in stored grains, nuts, seeds, meats, grain-fed animal products (meat, animal fats, butter, whole milk) and fermented foods such as beer, bread, cheese and wine.

Dietary Control of Mycotoxin-KProducing Fungi in the Human Body

Fungal toxins are constantly being absorbed from toxin-producing fungi living in the host, particularly in the gut. An increased fungal growth/toxin production is caused by diets high in sugar, fruit, oils, fats, and fermented foods such as beer, wine, bread and cheese.

A decreased fungal growth/toxin production is due to the anti-fungal action of fish/ fish oils, garlic, onion, herbs, spices, soya, yogurt and green vegetables.

Dietary Control of Degree of Toxicity Caused by Mycotoxins

Toxicity caused by mycotoxins is significantly reduced by increasing the amount of fiber in the diet. This is done by increasing the amount of vegetables in the diet. While fruit is also a source of fiber, the high sugar fructose content of fruit stimulates fungal growth (fructose increases blood cholesterol and uric acid levels which are associated with increased risk of hypertension and atherosclerosis).

Medications

Unlike the other dietary approaches to the prevention and treatment of human diseases, the mycotoxin concept does not exploit the adverse effects of drugs in an attempt to support a diet-only attitude. It should be noted that almost all medications are plant derived or chemical derivatives thereof. Aspirin derives from the bark of the willow tree. Colchicine derives from a plant. Both aspirin and colchicine possess significant anti-fungal activity as do most plant-derived drugs. (They protect living plants from the fungi.) [Might this be the reason why the medical fraternity advocates the taking of an aspirin a day to prevent heart disease and strokes?]

Similarly, all of the other anti-inflammatory drugs possess significant anti-fungal activity. These drugs are cyclo-oxygenase inhibitors and fungal survival is dependent upon the competency of their cyclo-oxygenase-related metabolic pathways. Interestingly, corticosteroids not only significantly reduces the toxicity of mycotoxins but are also anti-fungal against a number of fungi.

Actually, all of the medications proven to be effective in the treatment of the mycotoxin-induced diseases possess anti-fungal and/or anti-mycotoxic activity. It is a point overlooked by pharmacologists.

Conclusion

What is the Bottom Line for a Longer Life with the Enjoyment of Good Quality Health?

The Fungal/Mycotoxin Etilogy of Cancer

INTRODUCTION

Lee (1993), in his recent review of the food connection to cancer, notes that the concept of diet and nutrition having an important influence on health is an age-old one. its link with cancer was mentioned in Chinese medical writings in the Twelfth century.

Recent interest in this subject started in the 1930’s with animal studies which progressed to extensive investigations of dietary factors implicated in various human cancers both from an etiology and a protective perspective.

The belief that diet is related to cancer is now generally accepted. However, the studies are confusing in that some show increased cancers associated with a particular food, while other similar studies show no such relationship. The only logical explanation to such conflicting reports is that the particular food itself is not the cause but is associated with a variably present co-factor. Thus, the first question becomes:

What is Variably Present in Food Which Causes Cancer?

Cancer Risk is To Unnaturally Occurring Carcinogens

Scheuplein (1992) of the Food and Drug Administration has recently reviewed the relationship of cancer to diet, particularly the dietary carcinogenic risk to the specific classes of foodstuffs, food additives, pesticides, etc. These are typically regulated by the FDA. Scheuplein indicated that virtual all of the calculated cancer risk can be attributed to “naturally occurring carcinogens” in the diet. Thus the second question posed becomes:

What “Naturally Occurring Carcinogens Cause Cancer?

The major “naturally occurring carcinogens” present in food which are well documented to cause cancer are the fungi and their toxins. Furthermore, they are variably present such that the involved food correlates with cancer when fungal colonization and mycotoxin contamination is maximal, and does not when it is minimal or absent.

There are two other “naturally” occurring items which must also be addressed, nitrosamines and viruses. However, viruses are not proven to cause any type of cancer in humans and the nitrosamines are increasingly being shown to be produced by a number of fungi, particularly in stored, cured and fermented foods.

It therefore appears that the answer to the two question posed above is:

Fungi and Mycotoxins are the Naturally Occurring Carcinogens which are Variably Present in Food

Food additives and insecticides have for too long enjoyed a place amongst the popularly believed causes of cancer. However, there is little, if any, documentation to support that belief.

Doll (1992), in his keynote address to the Nutrition and Cancer Conference, noted that there has begun to emerge a consensus that diet is responsible for 30-60% of cancers in the developed world.

Doll also re-enforces the position of Scheuplein that food additives and pesticides, while constituting a popular belief that they play a major role in causing cancer, simply have not been documented to do so in humans. He states the very small effects, if any, can be attributed to food additives and to trace pesticides.

Dietary Changes Do Prevent Cancer

Doll (1992) also noted that it was generally agreed that the principal dietary changes to prevent cancer are:

1. A reduction in the consumption of fat,
2. An increase in the consumption of fruit,
3. Increased green and yellow vegetables,
4. An increase in dietary fiber,
5. Improvement in “food preservation”.

Lack Of a Unitarian Explanation For Dietary Prevention Of Cancer

Interestingly, these five dietary measures described to prevent cancer share little in common except that fiber is also present in fruits and vegetables. This lends further support to what everyone knows; the cause of cancer has escaped elucidation.

Conversely stated, once we know the cause of cancer, we will then be able to explain just how these four dietary measures protect against cancer. Of course, that same explanation will also show us why some particular foods are variably linked to cancer.

The Fungal/Mycotoxin Etiology Of Cancer Provides a Unitarian Explanation: The fungal/mycotoxin etiology of cancer does provides a Unitarian explanation for each of the dietary factors which has been documented to either cause or to prevent cancer.

Conclusion

With the exception of the cancers caused by cut/cured/ fermented tobacco leaf, the cause of cancer is generally stated as being unknown. That statement is made invalid by the published research data collected and presented here which documents that fungi and their mycotoxins cause virtually every type of human cancer in either animals or humans or in both. The viral etiologic concept of cancer in humans is unproved and therefore no longer acceptable.

There is a food connection to cancer but only to its connection with contaminating fungi and the mycotoxins which those fungi produce. A future volume of the Fungalbionic series will present data proving the beneficial aspects of each dietary item which prevents cancer.

Each item will be discussed with the appropriately cited references which support its benefit. These dietary facts provide the basis for a tasty and high quality food intake which should become one’s personal Garden of Eden where cancer is non-existent.

THE AUTHORS

A. V. COSTANTINI, M. D.
Head, World Health Organization (WHO)
Collaborating Center For Mycotoxins In Food
Division of Clinical Chemistry
Department of Internal Medicine
School of Medicine
Albert Ludwigs University
Freiburg, Germany
and
Clinical Professorial Faculty (Retired)
University of California
School of Medicine
San Francisco, California U. S. A.

HEINRICH WIELAND, M. D.
Medical Director, World Health Organization (WHO)
Collaborating Center For Mycotoxins in Food
Division of Clinical Chemistry
Department of Internal Medicine
School of Medicine
Albert Ludwigs University
Freiburg, Germany
and
Professor and Medical Director,
Division of Clinical Chemistry
Department of Internal Medicine
School of Medicine
Albert Ludwigs University
Freiburg, Germany

LARS 1. QVICK MD, Ph. D.
Co-Medical Director,
World Health Organization (WHO)
Collaborating Center For Mycotoxins In Food
Division of Clinical Chemistry
Department of internal Medicine
School of Medicine
Albert Ludwigs University
Freiburg, Germany
and
Medical Director,
Pharmacia AB Stockholm, Sweden

Source: Please refer to introductory note by The Preventorium Institute shown above.

The book “Fungal Bionics” – the fungal/mycotoxin etiology of human disease
Volume 2 – CANCER and other volumes related to the involvement of fungi in other disease processes are available from:

Johann Friedrich Oberlin Verlag
Am M’hlbach 13
79114 Freiburg, Germany
ISBN 3-930939
In Germany: Fax 0761-809140
From International: Fax: +49 0761-809140