200 Achieving pH Balance to Treat Specific Ailments
estrogen, if excessive, is cancer threatening. The trouble starts at con-
ception. The newly fertilized egg, the size of a speck of dust, must be
attached instantly to the uterine wall or it will fall out of the uterus
through the cervix. Once the embryo is attached, its nutritional needs
must be met just as quickly. Trophoblastic cells in the embryo, trig-
gered into action by estrogen, serve this purpose. Multiplying at a tre-
mendously fast rate, they hook the embryo into the wall of the uterus,
create half the placenta (the uterus creates the other half ), and form the
umbilical cord, which attaches the embryo to the placenta, the source
of its food supply. Trophoblastic cells are able to grow like wild in the
uterus because they can generate energy without oxygen. Estrogen
makes this possible by lowering uterine oxygen levels. When the
embryo has been in the uterus for seven or eight weeks, the work of the
trophoblastic cells comes to an end and they migrate to the embryo’s
ovaries, if female, and testicles, if the embryo is male. There, they are
converted by enzymes into germ cells (egg or sperm cells).
This is not necessarily the end of the trophoblastic cells, however. The
germ cells can be converted back into trophoblastic cells any time estro-
gen levels become excessive. What is frightening about this is that tro-
phoblastic cells multiply as fast as cancer cells. In fact, according to
biochemist Dr. Ernst F. Krebs Jr., who studied seventeen thousand
research experiments on the subject, trophoblastic cells are identical in all
respects to cancer cells.^3 Three obvious similarities are the way in which
the fi ngerlike projections of trophoblastic cells invade the uterine wall to
implant the fetus, the speed with which they multiply, and the fact that
trophoblastic cells, like cancer cells, generate energy without oxygen.
When estrogen is elevated, like all other chemicals in the body that
are in excess, it no longer reacts according to the body’s needs. It can
create an oxygen-poor environment anywhere in the body at any time.
If oxygen deprivation is severe enough, it causes cancer, because with-
out oxygen, normal cells cannot generate energy. In order to survive,
they convert into trophoblastic/cancer cells so they can generate energy
anaerobically (without oxygen). If estrogen levels in the blood remain
high with the result that estrogen destroys oxygen, the cancerlike tro-
phoblastic cells keep on multiplying and a tumor forms.
Many studies confi rm the role of estrogen in causing cancer. Dr. Ross
Tr at t ler, i n Better Health Through Natural Healing, writes about a study