Germanium for Energy & Immunity

It was a mere three years ago that Bonnie Kaplan, Ph.D., of the University of Calgary in Canada and her colleagues published a paper asking why studies on germanium sesquioxide (Ge-132), a promising anticancer treatment, had languished. As Kaplan and her colleagues note in the article, published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (1), the organic form of the compound is unique and animal studies have shown it to not only have anticancer properties, but to be safe and nontoxic. It may be a powerful ally to our innate immune system.

There is also abundant clinical data showing that germanium improves energy and immunity. As far back as 1988, Gerald Faloona, Ph.D., and Stephen Levine, Ph.D., published an article in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine (2) offering clinical reports showing that germanium dramatically improved fatigue in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (then often called Chronic Epstein-Barr Virus Syndrome). According to Faloona and Levine, psychotherapist Arnold Horowitz was disabled for 18 months with chronic fatigue, and responded dramatically to Ge-132. A Vancouver physician, Ron Greenberg, M.D., reported that 25% of his severely fatigued patients showed “substantive clinical improvement” with 300 milligrams of Ge-132 per day. A New York physician, George Maslen, M.D., also reported that most of his patients had significant relief from chronic fatigue at doses of 150-300 milligrams a day. As the authors noted, “Organic germanium has many remarkable biological properties. The best studied effects have been on the mammalian immune system on which it has a number of augmenting effects, at least some of which are a consequence of host production of interferon.” Blood levels of gamma interferon increased in animals and humans taking Ge-132.

Also remarkable, notes Levine, is its seeming ability to enhance oxygen uptake or lower the body’s requirement for oxygen consumption. Ge-132 has been used anecdotally for years to treat or prevent altitude sickness and combat fatigue. Dr. Kazuhiko Asai, Ph.D. author of  Miracle Cure: Organic Germanium (3) postulates that Ge-132 plays the same role as oxygen in the body, and can help protect against conditions linked with oxygen starvation, from stroke to Raynaud’s disease. Asai was impressed with germanium’s beneficial effects because he experienced it himself, and he called it a blessing: “I was in a state of virtual disability. Doctors had diagnosed my illness as a severe case of polyrheumatism complicated by arthritis and had given little hope of improvement…I decided that my own illness would be its (germanium’s) first real test…Improvement was slow at first…gradually, I began to feel better and in ten days I was up and walking around the house—at times feeling robustly healthy.”

Asai postulated that diseases like his own were characterized by oxygen deficiency and the accumulation of tissue-damaging positive hydrogen ions. To remove the hydrogen ions, he thought, a large quantity of oxygen was needed. Instead, the germanium itself might be combining with hydrogen to neutralize it and allow the body to eliminate it. In this way, Ge-132 might substitute for oxygen, and allow the body itself a greater supply of naturally available oxygen.

And so we circle back to the original question posed by researchers at the University of Calgary in 2004: why hasn’t this remarkable substance been studied further? The answer is, it is finally being studied. Arizona Oncology Services Foundation is currently conducting an IRB-approved double-blind placebo controlled study on 101 early stage breast and prostate cancer patients receiving radiation, according to Theresa Thomas, M.S., CCRC, Director of Research. The effect of germanium on fatigue is being evaluated. We hope this new research on germanium will trigger further studies.

If Levine is right, this compound can function as the oxygen boost that many people need, because hypoxia is so common in chronic health issues. As the classic medical textbook, Robbins & Cotran Pathologic Basis of Disease notes (4), hypoxia leads to much chronic illness. Germanium may be a promising and safe agent to offset hypoxia. Weaving the themes of this entire newsletter together, antioxidants, oxygen radicals, and oxygen deficiency are all important factors in health and illness. Germanium may be a key player in oxygen and immunity.

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