CSP S6E091 - Ep.91, Stop Oversimplifying Cancer

Hi, and welcome to the Cancer Secrets Podcast. I am your host and guide, Dr. Jonathan Stegal. Cancer is like a Has come to steal, kill, and destroy. I have personally seen it wreak its havoc on patients. and even my own family. But I am on a mission to change the cancer paradigm through the practice of integrative oncology. treatment that integrates the best of conventional medicine with the best of alternative therapies. 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. So I invite you to join me on this journey. cancer paradigm together. Hello, and welcome back to the Cancer Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jonathan Stagal. This is season six and episode number ninety-one. 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 spent 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. 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 mutate in order 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 healthier body 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 a most basic level, we can talk about vitamin D status. We can use therapies such as mistletoe, lymphatic therapy.

uh 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.

And we must also be careful when we consider our general approach to cancer treatment. Chemotherapy has been a mainstay of the standard of care and 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, etc. 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 compatible 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 repurpose 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 familiar with them or because they've not been mentioned in the major oncology journals. The overall point I want to make is this.

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 acknowledgement that it is smart. Therefore, we must be smart with our approach to cancer 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 to 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 and 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.

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.