Hi and welcome to the Cancer Secrets podcast. I am your Host and guide,
Dr. Jonathan Stegall. Cancer is like a thief who
has come to steal, kill and destroy. I have personally seen
it wreak its havoc on patients, friends, and even my own family.
But I am on a mission to change the cancer paradigm through the practice of
integrative oncology cancer treatment that integrates the best of
conventional medicine with the best of alternative therapies. Backed
by science and personalized to each patient, you
need a positive voice you can trust. This podcast will share valuable
information to give you practical hope for a better outcome.
So I invite you to join me on this journey as we seek to change
the cancer paradigm together. Hello
and welcome back to the Cancer Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Dr.
Jonathan Stegall. This is season six and episode number
91. In today's episode, we will be talking about a
very important topic. If you have cancer or are supporting someone
with cancer, you need to hear this. If you spend
any time on the Internet, whether that be on social media
or on Google, you've surely encountered various theories as
to what cancer is, as well as how to treat it.
Once one source tells you that cancer is a genetic disease inherited from a family
member. Another source tells you that cancer occurs due to a
poor diet or environmental exposures. Yet another source tells you
that mutations which cause cancer are due to random chance seemingly
out of one's control. Others will say that cancer is caused by a
virus or some sort of pathogen. Who is right?
Well, as it turns out, they all are to some degree. Research has
shown us that cancer can occur due to a variety of causes.
Yes, some cancer can be inherited, although these comprise a very
small minority of cancer cases. In almost all cases,
cancer occurs as a result of persistent damage to an otherwise
healthy cell. This occurs over time. Our
cells have an elaborate network of defense systems allowing them to repeatedly
process damage and stress to which they are exposed.
However, at some point, the cell cannot continue to withstand the damage. And
if the cell is unable to die, a process called apoptosis,
it will be forced to mut to survive. Over time,
these mutations can result in what we know as cancer.
It is important to remember that cancer cells are very smart. They
retain the innate God given intelligence present in normal, healthy,
high functioning cells. While cancerous mutations change the
behavior of cells into more aggressive cells, they do not make them
stupid. This is a critical point to understand because many
people will tell you that getting rid of cancer is simple. Eliminating
cancer is not as easy as changing your diet. Diet is certainly important.
But there is nothing magical about the ketogenic diet, or a vegan diet,
or a carnivore diet when it comes to cancer. I'd like to
delve more into this because there are various communities online telling
you that you only need to change your diet to beat cancer. Let's
take a ketogenic diet for example. The rationale is that because cancer
loves sugar, going on a ketogenic diet which is very low
carb, will starve the cancer of its fuel source, which is glucose.
While it's certainly true that cancer does indeed love sugar, it is vital to remember
that cancer does not only love sugar. It turns out that cancer
cells can easily adapt and use whatever is available for energy, whether it
be carbohydrates, protein, fat,
cholesterol, ketones, various hormones
and iron. Moreover, even if cancer could only use sugar
for energy, eating a low carbohydrate diet does not eliminate sugar from the
body because glucose is the body's preferred energy source,
including by normal healthy cells. When we don't obtain glucose
from the diet, the body has several ways to make the glucose that it needs.
This includes breaking down stored glucose, which is known as glycogen,
as well as making glucose from other sources, including stored fat as well
as muscle. As you can see, eating a ketogenic diet in an effort to
starve cancer by limiting carbohydrates is misguided and it represents an
oversimplification of just how complex cancer is. We
can extend this line of thinking to other dietary approaches as well. While eating
a vegan plant based diet can certainly provide some health benefits,
it's silly to assume that cancer somehow avoids using energy and
nutrients obtained from fruits and vegetables. While fruits and
veggies are certainly healthy for a number of reasons, cancer is more than happy to
use them as fuel sources as well. Again, it's fine to believe
that nutrition is important, especially when fighting cancer. I
absolutely agree that we need to adopt some sound nutritional principles
in an effort to create a health with the goal of having an internal
environment which is less hospitable to cancer. However, we must do
so with the understanding that nutrition alone is incapable of somehow
curing cancer. This goes for a ketogenic diet, a vegan diet,
as well as any other purported anti cancer diet out there.
I'd also like to add that we need to get away from this notion that
an effective anti cancer diet needs to be overly radical. It
might feel empowering to embark on a nutritional program that is highly restrictive,
but such drastic measures are not necessary and can even be
harmful. For example, juicing can be a healthy component of your
nutrition program. But if your anti cancer diet Calls for you to basically
live off of meals made from your juicer, you're not doing it right.
We must also be careful not to reduce cancer to an
immune system problem. I see many things online Mentioning
cancer occurring Only due to a weak immune system, and that if
we can just strengthen the immune system and boost the immune system, that
cancer will magically go away. Yes, while the immune
system does sometimes have a problem seeing cancer, that's less about the
immune system somehow being weak, and it's more about the nature of cancer
itself. We know that cancer likes to cloak itself to hide from the
immune system. You can strengthen the immune system all day, but if
cancer is still able to hide effectively, it doesn't matter how strong your
immune system might be. Yes, we do need to make sure we're
optimizing our immune function. There's a lot of ways we can do that. On the
most basic level, we can talk about vitamin d status. We can use therapies
Such as mistletoe lymph therapy, Even a host of really good
supplements like beta glucan and some mushroom based supplements. These things
are all very important, and they're an important aspect of our treatment approach.
But we can't assume that just strengthening the immune system Means that cancer
magically goes away. We must also be careful when we
consider our general approach to cancer treatment. Chemotherapy has been a
mainstay of the standard of care in the treatment of cancer for decades, and it's
a valuable treatment. I use it regularly in my office. However,
we must be careful not to assume that chemotherapy alone is enough.
While chemotherapy does an outstanding job Targeting the nucleus of cancer
cells, where the genetic material lies, we must remember that it
only damages Actively dividing cancer cells. Cancer cells
which are not dividing, which we know can comprise a significant portion, if
not a majority of cancer cells in the body at any given time, Will not
be harmed by chemotherapy. If we're restricting our treatment to
chemotherapy alone, we're likely failing to target a proportion of the
cancer that's present. This is why I'm a big proponent of an
integrative approach to cancer treatment, which incorporates a proven standard
of care treatment plan with chemotherapy, but also utilizes
other treatments which provide different angles of attack against cancer.
Knowing that chemotherapy addresses the nucleus of the cancer cell, we can
tailor our therapeutic choices to also include therapies which address other
aspects of the cancer cell, Such as the mitochondria,
antioxidant Reserves the cell membrane, et cetera. We
also must target the stem cells, which we know are very difficult to treat with
chemotherapy and other standard of care treatments alone.
And this is where the idea of repurposed medications comes into play. We
know that there are dozens of existing medications which are FDA
approved for non cancer purposes, but do have notable research
showing unique anti cancer activity as well. Does
it not make sense to include these therapies in our treatment plans as well,
especially since they are generally safe and comp with other elements of
the protocol? I think it does. Again, if we were restricting
ourselves to an oversimplified view of cancer, we would not even consider
things like repurposed medications. The same goes for nutritional
supplements, which, like repurposed medications, allow us to attack other
aspects of cancer aside from the work chemotherapy is doing.
This also gets back to why I strongly caution you not to restrict
yourself in the types of treatment you're willing to consider. This goes for
people who are typically very conventionally minded, only valuing the standard of
care, as well as those who are more natural and alternative minded who do
not have much use for modern medicine. We need both, which is why
an integrative approach to cancer treatment makes so much sense to me.
Do not refuse a standard of care treatments such as surgery,
chemotherapy, immunotherapy or radiation therapy simply because you
don't like them, or perhaps view them as less than ideal. There
are other ways to make them safer and better. And likewise,
do not assume that therapies outside of the standard of care are worthless or hocus
pocus just because you're not feeling with them or because they've not been mentioned in
the major oncology journals. The overall point I want to make
is cancer is very complicated. It arose from
what was once a normal, healthy, highly functioning cell,
and due to repeated damage, it was forced to mutate into a more aggressive
type of cell which retains its innate intelligence. I
don't tell you this to scare you, but to remind you that cancer must be
respected. We cannot underestimate it. And that starts with an
acknowledgment that it's smart. Therefore, we must be smart with our approach to
as well. This should inform our treatment choices.
There is potential value in a wide range of cancer therapies.
Please be willing to learn more about all of them and incorporate them as
thoroughly as you can, with the understanding that an effective treatment protocol
is likely to be quite complex when you drill down into the details.
In other words, don't try this at home. Seek help from a highly
trained qualified and experienced team of professionals who also
acknowledge that cancer must be taken seriously with a treatment protocol
that is appropriately thorough, detailed. And remember, we
must always apply my approach of open minded skepticism.
We must be open to any treatment which we think can possibly help us,
regardless of whether it comes from conventional medicine or alternative
medicine. But we also must balance that with a healthy level of
skepticism. We must rely on science and clinical experience
to help guide us in terms of the treatments that are worth considering and those
that are not. Well, I've really enjoyed this episode, and I hope you have as
well. Thank you again for being a faithful listener of this podcast. Until
next time, bye bye.