Kind: captions
Language: en
A tumor that doesn't actually have any
blood vessels cannot grow any bigger
than the head of a ballpoint pen. But
the moment blood vessels can touch that
little tiny microscopic tumor and start
to feed it, a cancer will grow 16,000
times in 2 weeks. And studies have shown
just eating a even one overnight will
start to change your gut microbiome,
favoring more healthy species of
bacteria. Cancer cells avidly use
glucose to fuel their own metabolism.
our bodies are able to take any glucose
and take it down to a sub threshold that
wouldn't drive that cancer cell any
faster than it would a normal cell. If
you got diabetes, it's a different
situation. And so, if you wanted to be
safer, you might want to stay away from
[Music]
[Applause]
cancer. like sharks when they're on the
cover of a magazine it it sells they fly
off the shelf because people are
interested in in this topic and and just
like sharks there's a lot of fear and
and reaction I think to the topic of
cancer and I think this is also true
even in a medical community. So, um,
first of all, let me kind of give my
response to what we do know about the
evidence of sugar and cancer because,
uh, I do cancer research. Uh, I've been
involved with cancer research. I've been
involved with helping to develop over a
dozen cancer drugs that are FDA
approved. And part of my street cred,
Drew, when I speak about food as
medicine is that I've actually helped to
develop medicines. I'm one of the guys
who actually I'm not just sort of like
waving a leaf of kale saying never mind
all the the prescription stuff like I'm
actually helping to develop those
things. So for me it's really food is
really an additional tool in the toolbox
but we can understand nutrition with the
same rigor with the same standards of
evidence that we actually apply for
drugs. So here's what we know about
cancer. We know that we no longer talk
about cancer just in terms of the organ
it's in. The modern uh conversation
about cancer in the medical community
isn't it's a colon cancer so it's a
colon disease and it's a brain cancer.
It's a brain disease. It's a breast
cancer. It's a breast disease. We're
actually talking about uh at the
microscopic level that um cancer has a
micro environment. It lives in a micro
environment. So, just like if you had
fish in a fish tank, um uh how what's
going on around the fish in in your tank
actually makes a big difference in terms
of how well the fish actually uh
thrives. And so cancer, think about
cancer being like in an aquarium. In
that aquarium being kind of
miniaturaturized in our body, there's a
micro environment. Um there's a little
mini terrarium or aquarium around every
tumor, every cancer cell. So uh among
the most sophisticated cancer
researchers and I count myself in in
that group, we now refer to cancer as
very much due to related to cancer cells
and the micro environment. And where
sugar comes in along with other
micronutrients in the micro environment
that feed both normal and healthy cells
um is the fact that glucose is uptaken
by every single cell in the body. But
because cancer cells are revved up, they
are able to actually take that nutrient
and actually fuel themselves. So, what
started as sort of like a
well-intentioned
interpretation by a non-medical
profession has now been really
validated, I think, by the cancer
research world. Now, you know, because
sugar itself sort of quickly goes to
stuff you would add to your drinks or
your your desserts, you know, it all of
a sudden becomes kind of um a flip
topic. But in reality, I think that it's
incontrovertible that to cancer
researchers that that cancer cells
avidly use glucose to fuel their own
metabolism. So, here's where things get
more sophisticated.
In a typical person, let's say you or I
or someone watching this podcast who
doesn't have diabetes, our bodies are
able to take any glucose that we
introduce by our diet and and take it
down to a sub threshold that wouldn't
drive that cancer cell any faster than
it would a normal cell. So in other
words, our endocrine system, our our
body's own ability to process glucose
pretty much takes anything that we
introduce in our stomach and although
there might be a quick spike, we'll take
it back down within a few minutes. If
you got diabetes, it's a different
situation because your hyperglycemic
micro environment that your whole body
represents is probably contributing to
the growth of that cancer to begin with.
And so if you wanted to be safer,
if you had cancer, you're struggling
with cancer, uh, and and even if your
sugar, your body's ability to process
sugar is fine, you might want to kind of
stay away from added sugars if you can.
But then this is where it gets even
trickier. People say, "Well, then I'm
not going to have fruits because fruits
are sweet and and fructose turn into
glucose in the body." You know, again,
this is the slippery slope where people
who are not biochemists, who are not
research scientists, get into that realm
where they can talk about the topic and
and make themselves more confused. I
will tell you that although there is um
natural fruit sugars in a piece of
fruit, the reality is is when you eat a
piece of fruit, an apple, a pear, a
peach, something sweet, um a grape, you
are getting a lot more than the fructose
in your body. you're getting fiber, you
are getting polyphenols, you're getting
all these other micronutrients,
many of which can actually fight the
cancer itself. And so food is medicine
isn't a pill where you got good guys and
bad guys and cyanide pills and you know
and and cure alls and and magic bullets.
It's really food is really a complex
mix. And what what we're really finding
when you look at the evidence, again,
evidence being really important, is that
by and large, plant-based foods, even
ones that have some natural sugars in
them, actually help reduce the risk of
cancer. Although many people, myself
included, have spent years, decades,
doing drug development where we figure
out a problem in the body and we try to
figure out a targeted therapy like a
smart bomb to hit it. You know, this is
billions of dollars. it takes a decade
or more to develop a single drug. The
reality is and I I've come to this
conclusion after you know um having been
involved with drug development for 20ome
years is that we are not smarter than
mother nature. Humans just can't outwit
the cleverness of mother nature. So most
of these foods that are uh we now know
are good for us, most of them are
plant-based um are are enriched with not
one but and not 10 but hundreds if not
thousands of different compounds. most
of which we haven't discovered yet that
when we actually do study them, they
wind up helping our body activate our
body's health defense systems so that we
can actually better resist disease. If
you don't have enough blood vessels,
your cells, your organs, your tissues
are going to die. How do we know this?
Well, you know, if you've got a disease
like diabetes that hammers on
androgenesis and you can't grow blood
vessels very well, you get a wound in
your leg, it's not going to heal very
well. It's called a diabetic ulcer.
Lease amputation. uh it's really a bad
problem. Uh uh if you have um if you're
older, you've got high cholesterol,
you've got diabetes, and you have a
heart attack, your heart is not going to
grow blood vessels to um repair itself
very easily. And and and so basically
people die because you don't have enough
blood vessels to supply um tissues that
are in jeopardy. Same thing as a stroke.
So, we know androgenesis is critical and
our body defends itself by growing just
the right amount. What is the right
amount? Well, uh it's uh not too few and
not too much. It's just the right
amount. I call it the Goldilocks uh
zone. So, remember Goldilocks, the bears
are like not too hard, not too soft,
just right, not too hot, not too cold,
just right. So, the body knows how to do
this with most of the systems that have
been hardwired into us to defend
ourselves. Um, and so, uh, you get just
enough blood vessels and then there's a
there's like a there's kind of like a a
zone where more can grow. Not too many.
If you get too many blood vessels, you
also get into trouble. You get too many
blood vessels growing your eye, for
example. Those blood vessels leak. You
get blood you get blood coming out that
causes blindness. Diabetic blindness is
due to extra blood vessels, excessive
pathological androgenesis growing in the
back of the eye. You can go blind. Same
thing when older people say, you know,
I'm losing my vision. It's usually
macular degeneration. That's where blood
vessels are growing in the back of the
eye and leaking and causing all kinds of
problems. So too much androgenesis is
also a problem. So how does the body
normally prevent having too much
androgenesis? It's got all these systems
to be able to mow the lawn. So think
about a landscaper that's trying to
create like the perfect lawn in the
front yard, right? So basically, if the
lawn overgrows, you got to get that
lawn, the landscaper to come in and mow
it back down to exactly the right
height. That's what the body knows how
to do when it comes to u to our blood
supply. Now, cancers are forming all the
time. So, right here, right now, my body
and yours, and everybody watching this
podcast, we're forming little
microscopic cancers in our body right
now. Why? Because we got 40ome trillion
cells that are dividing, making more
cells all the time. You make one or two
mistakes in in those cells, bingo, you
got a tiny little microscopic cancer
like a pimple. And like a pimple, it's
harmless because it doesn't have a blood
supply. So then your immune system wings
by, finds it, and cleans it right out.
It's like or your immune system is like
a cop on a beat. Okay? Um and it'll take
it right take the bad guy right out.
However, cancers can become dangerous
when they um are able to hijack our
angioenesis system. So, this is really
part of the the nefarious dirty deeds of
of of cancer. um they can they can be um
harmless and sit in the background in
our bodies all the time anytime uh and
and but if they find a way to leak
proteins called growth factors that act
like fertilizer and they hijack our lawn
that that you know that that turf that
we're trying to grow and they grow blood
vessels into themselves and I've done
research on this um a tumor that doesn't
actually have any blood vessels cannot
grow any bigger than the head of a
ballpoint pen the ballpoint thing.
That's it. And it can't get any bigger.
Doesn't have enough oxygen, no
nutrients. So, it's stuck. But the
moment blood vessels can touch that that
little tiny microscopic tumor and start
to feed it, a cancer that is the size of
of a tip of a ballpoint pen will grow
16,000 times in two weeks. So, this is
an explosive trigger when is hijacked
and our body isn't able to control it.
So, that's how that's called tumor
androgenesis. And that's how I got
started in this field because we were at
the beginning trying to set out to
figure out how do you develop biotech
drugs that can starve a cancer by
cutting off its blood supply. Well,
we've done that and and it's actually
one of the main stays of cancer
treatment today. But the more exciting
thing that we found that um when you use
the same testing methods that we that
were used to develop these drugs to test
foods, there's more than 100 foods that
can actually starve cancers as well. Way
back when when I got in this field, we
had a test system where we were testing
cancer drugs that could starve a cancer
by cutting off its blood supply. And on
and one of the things that I did is I
actually dropped some green tea in
there. And you it was shocking how
effective the green tea polyphenols were
in stopping those blood vessels that
were feeding the cancer. Uh, and in
fact, if I didn't tell the technician
doing the lab work that it was actually
a natural compound, um, and I told them
it came from a drug company, they would
have like they would have been super
excited about it and started jumping up
and down. And so, again, you know,
mother nature's really really um, good.
So, polyphenols and T uh, EGCG is one of
them. Um, resveratrol and red wine also
another one um, that's actually really
really powerful uh, in terms of being
anti-drogenic.
Genastine, the phytoestrogen in soy
actually can also cut off the blood
supply feeding breast cancer. So, it's
just the opposite of the urban legend
out there that soy is not good for you.
I I recently saw an article, it was a
cover of a magazine that said, you know,
soy anti-nutrients or something like
that. And I, you know, like I I I my
mind was blown that somebody could
actually say that because most of the
nutrients, including the proteins, but
also the phytoestrogens in soy again,
you know, if you're a scientist, you
take a look at this. Um, and the
phytoestrogens look nothing like human
estrogens. They're not dangerous. They
actually block human estrogens and they
actually are also anti-androgenic and
they cut off the blood supply to breast
cancers. And this has been shown in
human patients, breast cancer patients,
as well. Um, tomatoes have lycopine. So
many of the, you know, the same foods
that we know are good, healthy
plant-based sources of nutrition, we're
now rediscovering that many of the
bioactives in them are also powerful
cancer blood vessel cutting off systems
that cut off the that starve starve a
tumor. So blueberries um are blue
because they contain a natural dye that
is colored blue that is called
anthocyanin. And anthocyanins have been
found to be powerful activators of our
immune system in a beneficial way. So
they don't cause autoimmune disease. Um
they actually elevate our tea cells and
natural killer cells. These are part of
the super soldiers that make up our
immune system. You know, they're they
just kind of like give more weapons to
our immune system to defend against uh
invading armies. And um just by eating
like a cup and a half of blueberries um
uh a day, you can uh elevate your uh tea
cells by like 88%. Okay. Um and athletes
that actually eat uh blueberries
regularly, they just walk around with a
higher level of immunity to begin with.
It's kind of a performance um
maintainer, not an enhancer. It's a
maintainer because your immune system is
also firing at at peak. Now what's also
interesting is that the same anthocyanin
lowers inflammation. So this is a
classic dilemma that is out there in the
wellness world like yeah we want to get
rid of inflammation so we want to make
sure our immune system isn't overactive.
Well look look inflammation is a subset
of immunity. We want good strong
immunity to protect us from invaders and
we want to also lower inflammation at
the same time. Blueberries can actually
do that. Another great um u uh way of
actually elevating uh immunity is with
broccoli. Now broccoli contains uh a
natural compound called sulforophane.
It's actually a family of different
natural chemicals that kind of give its
give broccoli its kind of unique taste.
It's also in kale uh chardred all these
other kinds of um you know salad
vegetables honestly but broccoli is is
particularly strong in uh and it's been
shown if that actually you can actually
boost your tea cells again the the super
soldiers of your immune system by just
eating broccoli. But here's like a
little pro tip um and a little tiny
hack. If you want to get as much as you
can out of broccoli
um uh you you should eat uh normal adult
broccoli. Uh uh but here's the thing.
The tree tops are good, but the stems
have twice as much of the sulforophane.
So don't throw the stems away when
you're cooking it. You know, if you you
don't want to sauté the stems. There's
plenty of recipes you can use with
stems. You can put it into a blender,
turn it into a soup, a little broccoli,
oregano soup. Amazing. Put a little
vegetable stock in there. It's like a
really tasty way of actually using
broccoli and getting more of these
sulforophins. But if you really want to
like rock it with your broccoli
sulforophanes, you eat broccoli sprouts.
These are the 3 to four day old baby
broccoli. And it turns out that the
broccoli sprouts have a hund times more
sulforophane than the grown-up broccoli.
So um and actually the study's been done
looking at the people getting the flu
vaccine. These are 20-year-olds, healthy
20-year-olds just getting the flu
vaccine. And it was found that if you
gave the flu vaccine and gave somebody
broccoli a shake made out of broccoli
sprouts, you could ramp up their uh
immune response by 22 times. So like
really just amp up your immune system
without causing inflammation. I'm like
most people I think uh when you tell me
not to do something, my brain goes, well
maybe maybe I'll do it one more time,
you know, maybe I'll try it. And so
there's a lot of human nature to um how
we respond when somebody says something
to take something away from you. And
human nature abhores deprivation. And so
one of the things is you know I think
most of us like to have our quote cake
and eat it too. And so I always felt um
when I was you know taking care of
patients and trying to counsel them on
things rather than tell them to remove
things uh from their diet because that's
really easy to do and there's plenty of
people out there you know um scolding
people you know fear guilt and shame is
sort of like the the building blocks of
traditional counseling about nutrition
you know and it makes you feel bad
actually uh when somebody tells you you
know like you're a bad person for eating
junky food. What I try to do is empower
people because I think people love to
feel justified in what they love like.
And so in my book, I read about 200
foods that all activate the body's
health defenses. And I used to say, I
dare you to find in this 200 foods
something like like that. I dare you to
find uh review the foods and tell me
that there's nothing that you like. And
most people actually find something in
200 foods that they actually like. And I
say, well, look, start with this because
what you like is already good for you.
So you're already way ahead of the game.
And if you can start add keep on adding
things that you like and just understand
this is that education knowledge piece.
What you like is good for you. Then you
can love your food and love your health
at exactly the same time. And then this
whole idea of anti-deprivation is that
if you spend more time
thinking about what to add to your body
that's good for you, you'll spend less
time thinking about the bad stuff. And
more good things in your body uh kind of
push out room for bad things. And if you
spend most of your time fortifying your
body's health defenses, those five
health defenses, angroenesis, stem
cells, microbiome, DNA protection, and
immunity with foods. Honestly, every now
and then, you're going to fall off the
wagon. You're going to eat something you
really like or you really want to or you
know, everybody's eating it around you
and and it's not that good for you.
That's all right. Your body's got you
covered. Your health defenses are there
as a shield. So again, you know, like I
I think that there's just a healthier
way to navigate through your life. These
strict diets don't work for a long time.
They're unsustainable. So I'm all about
how do you actually get people to feel
like they're in control and what they
like to do already is actually good for
them. Kiwis, right? So these sort of um
I don't know, baseball shaped little
smaller baseball furry little brown
things. You cut them open, they're
beautiful and green with seeds,
starburst on the inside. Um, I didn't
used to I I always liked kiwi, but I had
never really ate them very much. But I
started doing the research on them, and
kiwi is pretty amazing. First of all,
it's a great source of vitamin C and
fiber. And the vitamin C actually has
tremendous antioxidant effect and it can
protect your DNA. And studies have been
shown that actually if you eat one kiwi
a day, it'll protect your DNA against
damage by about 60%. If we ate three
kiwis, it would actually help your body
build any damaged DNA back um by about
60%. And so here's something simple that
you can peel, cut up, chop it into a
yogurt or just eat plain. It's
delicious. Um you can put it into a
smoothie that actually has this amazing
ability to actually protect your genetic
material. Like you know, that's that's
so fundamental and it tastes great and
not too sweet and it's got a little
citrusy flavor. Then the other thing
that's great about kiwi is that it's got
it's packed with fiber. Now fiber as a
is basically a kiwi is essentially a
prebiotic food. Its fiber feeds our gut
microbiome. And studies have shown
there's a study done in Singapore that
show that just eating a kiwi even one
kiwi overnight will start to change your
gut microbiome favoring more healthy
species of bacteria. And so, you know,
like I I always tell people like if I
tell you something like that and you try
a kiwi, uh uh you know, you can't
unlearn what I just told you. Every time
you see the kiwi, you're going to say,
you know what, I know there's something
good about it. And then if you remember
what that is, that's really what I try
to do with my my with my course is
really try to teach people how to make
it second nature to make great choices.
I learned about acromancia
because uh one of my colleagues, Dr.
Laurance Zitvogle in Paris was studying
cancer patients. So we're back to cancer
again. And she was studying like 200
different 200 cancer patients with
different types of cancers and they were
all being treated for their cancer um uh
using imunotherapy. So these are the
treatments that are biotech given to
cancer patients. The treatments don't
kill cancer cells directly, but what the
treatments do is they rip the cloak off
of the cancer that's trying to hide from
your own immune system to allow your own
immune system to tackle that cancer.
Remember that health defense property of
our immune system to fight the bad guys
inside our body. And we know from immune
therapy as a as doctors that, you know,
they can be an amazing uh win. uh
meaning that some cancer patients are
able to literally have their cancers
completely disappear even if they're if
it's metastatic cancer. My mother was
one of those people, but President
Jimmy, former President Jimmy Carter was
another one who had metastatic cancer.
It spread to his brain on imunotherapy.
All went away. All doing well today. No
sign of cancer. We don't like to use the
word cure because it is such a loaded
word, but it's about as good as you can
get um from a you know as a doctor and
as someone involved with biotech but
that only happens in less than about
less than 20% of people right and so Dr.
Zipog goal was doing this research. I I
helped to convene a conference called
rethinking cancer. Like how do we
rethink our whole approach to cancer
fresh kind of a fresh start and she
found that in 200 consecutive patients
with different types of cancers all
getting immune therapy. If you looked at
if you split them up into groups that
responded and did really really well
with their imunotherapy, had their
immune system, you know, attack and wipe
out the cancer versus the people who
didn't do well where their body didn't
respond the right way. The only
difference between the responders and
the non-responders was one bacteria in
their gut and that one bacteria was
acrimancia and it's acrimancia
mucinophila. That mucinaphila actually
says it all. This bacteria which is
considered now to be a guardian of our
microbiome. It's one of the guardians of
our health loves to grow in the mucus
membrane in the mucus inside our gut. So
our gut actually most people don't know
this but actually our gut has mucus. You
know this if you have diarrhea it's very
mucousy but that there's some mucus in
there all the time and that mucus um is
is sort of like um top soil for
acromancia. It loves to grow in there.
That's the garden of the acromancia
where the this guardian bacteria loves
to grow. So, um, if you take
antibiotics, you can wipe out your
acromancia like that. Okay? Then they
got to grow it back. And so, what what
she was finding is that people who were
not responding to the immune therapies,
you need a good immune system that they
were missing their acromancia. And many
of them had been taking antibiotics, you
know, as a matter of course as a cancer
patient, you might get sick. man, you
take like a Zpack, man, you wiped out
your acromancy. Now you got to grow
back. So this was like a brand new
discovery was published in the journal
science. For me, when I saw that and I I
saw it before it was when it was
embargoed. I saw the original data. It
like the light bulb just like went like
blazing in my brain like
holy cow, we have got these guardians in
our microbiome that we have to take care
of. And the reason that I got involved
in this food is medicine is that you
cannot eat an acromancia
um probiotic. So you can eat a lot of
other bacteria and probiotics. You
cannot eat acromancia. The only thing
you can do with acromancia right now is
to grow it yourself. This is a DIY kind
of um bacteria. And the way you grow it
is actually by creating more healthy
mucus, that top soil that it likes to
grow in. So how do you do that? You do
that with food as medicine. So,
pomegranate, cranberry,
uh, uh, conquered grape, the juices, you
know, you only need eight ounces of a,
of a glass of cranberry ju pomegranate
juice, and, you know, you'll be able to
actually grow back the sacriman. I had a
cancer patient, by the way. This was uh
a couple of years ago who um had
multiple myoma was going to get an
imunotherapy
uh and uh her doctor was really gung-ho
to get her imunotherapy or oncologist
and um she had she her kids had a cold
so she had got a bronchitis and got a
Zpack. Okay. And so before we started
this imunotherapy I basically said let's
check your stool. Sent out her stool for
acromancia. zero, which you would expect
from the Zpack, okay, and the
antibiotic. And um so we're I said, "No,
no, no. Let's put the brakes on here."
So we skidded to a halt before actually
giving her the imunotherapy. I'm like,
"We we do not want to waste this shot on
gold." Like this is her shot. And so uh
I gave her cranberry uh cranberry juice
and pomegranate juice and we had her um
drink for three weeks straight every
single day. And then we tested at the
end of three weeks. So we delayed her
treatment for three weeks. We tested her
stool again. She had six times above the
average population of acromanc. She so
she really killed it and got a ton of
acromancia. She got on her imunotherapy
and um within three treatments she
responded to the upper 1% of responders.
So like she was like super responder and
just completely recovered from her
cancer like completely wiped it out. And
again, this is sort of me learning from
research that had been done and
published in the research and evidence
thinking about how food fits into it and
actually using our body's own defenses
to really help itself. This was not food
versus medicine. This was food and
medicine. And I think that's something I
want your viewers to really take away
from like, you know, we're really not
talking about food versus medicine. Like
we're way beyond that. Honestly, you can
still have that battle, but it really is
about this totality, you know? uh we
want to be able to figure out how to use
all the tools uh at our disposal to be
able to to win this battle, you know,
which is called our life as we journey
through it. And if we can enjoy
ourselves with food along the way, you
know, then then it that's really having
our cake and eat it, too. Hey, if you
like that video, then you're going to
love this one. Check it out.