Medicinal Mushrooms in Alternative Cancer – AHCC

AHCC – Another “Cancer Killer”

AHCC (Active Hexose Correlated Compound) is a supplement made from medicinal mushrooms that have been fermented in rice bran. It is currently being used in 700 hospitals and clinics in Japan to treat a wide range of health conditions, from minor ailments such as colds and flu, to serious diseases such as cancer, hepatitis, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

Medicinal Mushrooms in Alternative Cancer - AHCC
AHCC works as a Th1 stimulator (increasing the strength of your immune system). The common underlining factor in ALL cancers is a compromised immunity. As a biological response modifier, AHCC turns the dial up on your natural immune response, helping you fight all kinds of threats to your health.

Remember the Key Players of the Th1 Immune Response: Your First Line of Defense

  • Cytokines: Chemical messengers that help immune cells communicate and coordinate an immune response
  • Natural killer (NK) cells: Specialized white blood cells (WBCs) that recognize and destroy infected or abnormal cells by injecting granules into them, causing them to explode
  • Macrophages: WBC that engulf and ingest bacteria, virus, and other cellular debris
  • Dendritic cells: WBC that present foreign substances to B and T cells, initiating an adaptive response

Proven Benefits of AHCC

In vivo and human clinical trials have shown that AHCC increases the Th1 immune response, by:

  • Increasing the production of cytokines
  • Increasing the activity of NK cells by as much as 300-800%
  • Increasing populations of macrophages, in some cases doubling them
  • Increasing the number of dendritic cells
  • Increasing the number of T cells by as much as 200%

AHCC has been used in Japan with great success in cancer patients. Data from the treatment of over 100,000 individuals with various types of cancer have shown AHCC treatment to be of benefit in 60% of cases. That doesn’t mean the cancer disappeared; it means it helped. AHCC has been shown to be particularly effective for liver, lung, stomach, colon, breast, thyroid, ovarian, testicular, tongue, kidney and pancreatic cancers.

One landmark AHCC trial enrolled 269 patients with liver cancer. Following surgery, about half of the patients took AHCC and about half did not. The results were dramatic: At the end of the ten-year study, only 34.5% of the AHCC patients experienced a recurrence in their cancer, compared with 66.1% of the control group that did not take AHCC. Similarly, while 46.8% of the patients in the control group had died at the end of ten years, less than half that amount – 20.4% of those in the AHCC group had. Another study found that AHCC not only prolonged survival of advanced liver cancer patients, it also improved various parameters of quality of life, including mental stability, general physical health status and the ability to have normal activities.

I love AHCC – both in this form AND in Medicinal Mushroom (MM) combinations. Remember, you can’t just use this without being tested, especially if you are Th1 dominant and this and other MMs tend to stimulate the Th1 system. It can be yet another great tool for cancer!