Shark and Bovine Cartilage Arthritis Therapy, Cancer Hope

Cartilage therapy has fomented a lot of debate, not only from its critics, but among its competing advocates, too. Though it almost certainly helps treat inflammatory conditions such as arthritis, it fans the flames of controversy as a cancer therapy.
Proponents of alternative medicine generally consider cartilage to be at least somewhat useful and occasionally essential. Among truly dedicated advocates of the treatment, a more hotly contested issue is which of the two kinds is better, bovine cartilage or shark cartilage. Each has a different story.

Bovine Cartilage

The first cartilage product that was used clinically, based on the work of John Prudden, MD, bovine cartilage initially demonstrated its medical worthiness by improving wound healing for people who were taking the drug cortisone. It strengthened the quality of newly forming tissue and speeded up the healing process. He found that bovine cartilage extract applied directly to a surgical wound was a potent accelerator of its healing. Dry socket, a painful complication that sometimes occurs following a tooth extraction, is one condition that bovine cartilage helps dramatically.

Next Prudden discovered that bovine cartilage was a powerful anti-inflammatory with a certain value in alleviating pain from both osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. The treatment decreased pain and increased joint mobility. In 90 per cent of seven hundred people involved in one of his studies, 60 per cent considered the overall results to be excellent. Critics, however, want independent studies to confirm Prudden’s claims that bovine cartilage, in doses of 9 grams a day, can completely cure cancer of the prostate and pancreas. He also has reported good results against lung, renal and colon cancer, as well as a form of brain cancer called glioblastoma. According to one of his studies, bovine cartilage benefited nearly all of the thirty-one cancer patients who took it, with 35 per cent reportedly cured.

Shark Cartilage

Although better known and publicized than its bovine competitor, shark cartilage also lacks independent confirmation of its reputed anticancer capability. Its foremost advocate, William Lane, PhD, claims that his research, done in Cuba and Mexico, proves its effectiveness. However, I have not seen any reports of a high percentage of long-term successes. In a few instances tumours have shrunk in size, according to lab evidence that, Lane says, came from Cuba. Of perhaps greater interest, though, are Lane’s slides that show sheets of fibrous tissue invading the tumour. This is a typical bodily effort to control an illness. Though the tumour remained, this fibrous scar tissue had replaced the cancer, rendering it unable to grow.

As a tool for healing inflammatory conditions, both cartilage preparations – in fact, any cartilage product – have impressive credentials. After all, they are major sources of chondroitin sulfate and glycosaminoglycans and therefore share their capabilities for success in arthritis and myriad other inflammatory conditions. Unpublished reports of dramatic successes of patients with the autoimmune skin-tightening disease scleroderma suggest that an extract of shark cartilage may prove to be its most effective therapy.

Supplement Suggestions

I can’t pick a winner between the two cartilage competitors. Each seems to work impressively about 20 per cent of the time, I’d estimate, based on my own observations with Atkins Center cancer patients. Because I treat cancer with twenty or more biological substances almost simultaneously, isolating the impact of one can be difficult. I’d like to see comparative analyses done, but I’m not willing to hold back any effective treatment for a patient in order to learn something.

Treatments like cartilage – bovine or shark, both readily available in health food stores – make a major contribution to the overall quality of our fight by helping us achieve a goal generally rejected in mainstream circles: fighting cancer to a prolonged stalemate without even trying to cure it. Many practitioners say that bovine cartilage works better, although I believe shark cartilage may have the edge. We often make the decision based on how easy it is to administer and how much it costs. For fighting cancer or scleroderma, my personal favorite is frozen shark cartilage extract. All you need to do is place 1 teaspoon a day under your tongue. Shark cartilage powder requires a very large daily dose – at least 1 gram for every 900 grams of body weight, consumed orally or inserted rectally. Bovine’s effective dose, per Dr Prudden, is 9 grams per day, whether inflammatory or malignant disease is the problem.