161: Alternative Cancer Treatments + Rising Trend of Cancer in Younger Populations | Dr. Lucas

on today's episode of The Real Fudalgy Podcast. I think that we've gotten to this inflection point in the last three to five years where the exposures have just become too much, especially in our country where we've done a very poor job of regulating a lot of these toxins. And we're getting them not only in the air we breathe, the water we drink, we're getting them in our food, we're getting them in our personal care products, furniture, and our clothing. It's never ending in terms of our exposures to these things. Hi friends, welcome back to another episode of The Real Fudalgy Podcast. I am your host Courtney Swan. And today's guest is Dr. Lucas Timz. I have been wanting to do an episode like this for so long and so I'm so happy that I finally got Dr. Lucas on. He is an integrative oncologist, meaning that he is a oncologist, a cancer doctor, that takes a more integrative approach, meaning that he uses both alternative, holistic therapies and combines them with conventional therapies, like chemo, radiation. And what I love so much about what he does is he takes a more bio individualized approach. And this is often missed in conventional medicine. Often once someone gets a cancer diagnosis, it's lock step, you're in protocol, everyone gets the same thing, no matter what. And of course, this is not always the case, but this is what I really love about integrative oncology because the person is actually seen as an individual, the diagnosis is seen as an individual and your treatment plan is seen as individual. And it's not just, okay, we're just going to do X, Y, and Z because this is the protocol and we can't veer off of this. Not to mention, there's a lot of amazing alternative holistic therapies that can be taken alongside the conventional therapies and these more holistic alternative therapies. For the most part, don't really have any side effects and all they do is offer more support and oftentimes a better outcome. So I really love this approach and we talk all about the alternative approach as well as conventional approaches. We also talk about the rise and cancer that he's seeing and why we think this is happening. It's multifaceted. There's so many different things going on in our environment and our food and we kind of dive really into all of that. Also, we talk about his thoughts about sugar and its role in cancer and God forbid if you or someone you know that's listening gets diagnosed, we give some amazing hope for therapies and things that can be done that are not normally talked about in a conventional setting. Oftentimes what happens in a conventional setting, someone gets a diagnosis, they have the surgery, they get the treatments and then they're sent along their way and there's no sort of protocol at the end about how to keep it from coming back. Again, I'm making a lot of blanket statements. Of course, this is not always the case but I'm just saying quite often this is what happens and then unfortunately we often see a remission, a reoccurrence that comes back and he talks about ways that we can hopefully mitigate that reoccurrence and their tests that can be done, there's things that can be done and it's pretty awesome and gives me a lot of hope because yeah, God forbid if any of us gets a diagnosis, there is a lot of hope for making sure that it doesn't come back. So anyways, I really, really enjoyed this episode and I hope you guys loved it as much as I did. If you could take a moment to rate and review it, it would mean so much to me and if you love the episode, if you could share it on Instagram and tag me at Real Fidology, it would mean the world to me. I appreciate you guys so much. Love you. I love your support and I hope you guys have a great afternoon or morning, but whatever you guys are listening to this, take care. I've been consuming collagen for about six years now. I like to put it in my morning drink whether that's coffee or matcha. I usually prefer coffee but lately I've actually been doing coffee and then having a matcha a little bit later. I love to mix the collagen in with my nut milk that I put in my coffee. It's usually almond milk or coconut milk and I'm so excited to announce that organify has their own collagen now. As with all organify products, it's glyphosate residue free really high quality. It has hydrolyzed bovine, high collagen peptides that are derived from pasture raised cows. 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A lot of you guys listening know him as Dr. G on Instagram and I am so excited to have someone on the podcast to talk about cancer from a more holistic naturopathic lens because I know this is a big concern for a lot of people who are seeing a rise in cancer right now, which I actually want to talk about and especially in younger people, younger and younger, which is really terrifying. So, first of all, thank you so much for coming on and can you give people a little bit about your background and how you got into specializing cancer. Yeah, thanks Courtney. Thanks for having me on and thanks to Dr. G for connecting us. He's connected me to a lot of great people and so happy to be on with you today and talk a little bit about kind of what my career is all about, which is integrative oncology. So, my path for a kind of origin story, if you will, to what I do now is I just happened to during my time in medical school as a fresh, not yet fully trained doctor. I happened to meet the woman that I was later fallen love with and she happened to get diagnosed with cancer very shortly after we started dating and so that sort of set things in motion if you will and going through that experience and that journey with her, opened my eyes and kind of pulled back the curtain on the cancer industry if you will and while there are some things that are done very well in mainstream medicine when it comes to cancer, there's a lot of gaps that are left behind and a lot of shortcomings if you will and so that sort of was how I first became interested in working in the oncology arena if you will but really seeing myself more as someone who can be a disruptor and help to fill in some of these gaps and really swing the paradigm more towards what I would consider a proactive approach rather than a reactive approach when it comes to cancer care and so that's what the last 14 years or the time I've been in practice since have been about really I've practiced in a lot of different spaces I have practiced at conventional cancer hospitals, City of Hope formerly known as Cancer Treatment Centers America I've done several non-profit clinics and now I'm just in the last few months of entering out on my own and and hang in my own shingle and starting it in private practice and so that's that's kind of where we're at today and I'm you know really excited to get the word out really because I feel like a lot of people that are when they're either diagnosed with cancer or they are reading about like you said these these massive increases in cancer incidents they get frozen they don't know what to do and I'm here to try to get the word out there's so much you can't and so you know that's kind of thinking about things a little more proactively and that's kind of my main message with my patients is there are things you can control and let's get into those things yeah that's amazing also I love integrative I love the concept of integrative because for people that don't understand I want to explain this a little bit this is not like a black or white we're only going to do this or we're only going to do that because I know a lot of people get scared about like you know when you start talking about holistic treatments they're like oh no like we're not going to do any chemo or radiation but what I love about integrative is it seems like it's more of like a bio individualized approach and you guys are not in all that you speak to this but it seems like you're not saying like okay we're only going to do like you know I feel like back in the day it was like we're going to be like juice fast and we're going to do it all this and that and that can be really dangerous too and I love the approach of like okay we're going to do the chemo we're going to do the radiation or we're we're going to do one we're going to do the other we're going to see what your cancer specifically is going to respond to the best but we're also going to do all these other interventions like the lifestyle changes the diet changes everything that can help mitigate the effects of the chemo and also like help your body also heal itself while it's on these other treatments yeah precisely I mean it's I I tell people all the time another one of my common messages is that you know you want to avoid people that are on the extremes right so people that think that you know all natural medicine or holistic medicines are garbage and and contaminated and unsafe and quackery type stuff and then on the other side all the holistic people that say oh all conventional medicine is just pure evil and toxic and you know don't do any of that and so avoid those extremes first of all and and you know there's there's good and bad on both sides there's strengths and weaknesses on both sides I always come at things from a place of I think good medicine is good medicine whether it's a medication whether it's a procedure whether it's an herb whether it's a lifestyle change if if if if an intervention creates the desired response and it has the least amount of risk possible that that's a good intervention and that's good medicine and you see that on both sides but to me it's really about helping people bridge the gap so that they understand that it doesn't have to be all or none and that even when it comes to conventional medicine and sort of that more guideline based treatment approaches that you do have choices and there could be some things that you may decline to do you know there's some patients that you know go the full bore and they do everything that was recommended by their own colleges and that's okay sometimes too but there's some patients that I work with and I'm like okay let's have surgery surgery makes sense but we're going to do all this other testing that's going to help us to make a more informed decision about some of these other treatments they want you to do that they might they might think are just you know this is standard of care and these are necessary for everybody but when you look at it like you said in that bio individualized space you can start to make more informed decisions around which treatments make sense for you versus just falling in line with what we do because you have this type of cancer and this stage of cancer yeah yeah I think that's really helpful for people and so I'm curious to know what your thoughts are on this because I've heard both ends of the spectrum that it seems as though we're seeing a massive rising cancer and especially in young people which I personally believe that and I want to hear the reasons why you think that's happening but also when I share that I've heard from people say like oh no it you know it's not it's about the same but they're just diagnosing it better now or we just have better you know ways of finding it and I'm like I don't that to me doesn't make sense yeah I think I think there's sort of the there's like the big message that's put out there sort of by these these entities whether it's the WHO the CDC the you know national cancer institutes like oftentimes the numbers they're sharing are numbers from like five years ago because it take you know they usually do these kind of consensus type studies of cancer rates and survivors I mean they do them in five-year chunks usually and so you know when you hear something this year that came out it's like oh cancer rates are declining or treatments are improving or whatever that's like that's old data and unfortunately we don't really have a lot of the data on what's happening in real time but I can tell you being someone who was really on the front lines in the last three to five years it's taking it it's gone to another level and not only in terms of just the sheer volume but going from the average cancer patient being in their 50 60 70s to now in their 30s 40s 50s it's people are getting cancer much younger and this was a what I would call a macro trend that we were seeing probably over the last 20 30 years but it's taken a huge jump again speaking from more of an observational standpoint now but also talking with a lot of my colleagues that are seeing the exact same thing it last three to five years there's been a major jump yeah it's wild I mean I've just been hearing that personally in social circles as well as like through other doctors just telling me you know they're like we need to be more careful than ever or exposures of certain things make sure that you're filtering your water you know minimize your exposure to plastic because they're all telling me that the same thing they're seeing a rise in cancer especially among my age group what do you think is causing this I know it's multifaceted but maybe we can go over a couple of things to kind of give people peace of mind of maybe things they can do to prevent yeah it is multifaceted and this is another central theme of sort of my messaging to my patients and my audience is that you know cancer is not bad luck it's well I like to say that it's not just bad luck because I don't like patients to feel like it was their fault obviously some patients you know if you lifelong smoker you know you let yourself go you're not taking not exercising you're eating junk all the time yeah in some ways that is your fault but there are a lot of things that are out of our control but that doesn't mean that it's this mystery and that we don't know that there are actually things that cause cancer and they're called carcinogens okay and so genes and genetic mutations do not cause cancer despite what the mainstream messaging has been and despite what their model is in terms of focusing on how they treat cancer which is really by sort of hijacking these these driver mutations or driver genes of cancer those are real and those do exist but those are not what cause cancer those are more of a downstream effect of how cells become cancerous what actually starts that process are things that are called carcinogens and we have a very long list of well-known carcinogens that you can go to the IARC and look up and what are they they're things like toxins okay which can be the top four that that that I you know kind of preach about are heavy metals molds plastics and pesticides and I think that we've gotten to this sort of critical mass if you will point this inflection point in the last three to five years where it's just become too much the exposures have just become too much especially in our country where we've done a very poor job of regulating a lot of these toxins and we're getting them not only in the air we breathe the water we drink we're getting them in our food we're getting them in our personal care products we're getting them you know in our furniture in our clothing I mean it's like it's just it's never ending in terms of our exposures to these things and then you know so so I think that that's kind of how we've gotten to this this point in time where we're seeing this massive sort of logarithmic jump in cancer diagnosis and in much younger people because again a lot of these toxins are what we call bioaccumulators meaning that you inherit some of these from your ancestors okay so when you know that that's another wrinkle to the the story that we tell people about genetics and they say well you know my my parents had this type of cancer and my brothers and sisters had cancer and so this must be a genetic thing and I would say no it's probably more of an environmental thing actually your your parents are passing guys especially your mom are passing down toxins that have been bioaccumulated in the cord blood this has been tested and then of course you know your most people in a household are going to be exposed to similar types of toxins as well whether it's a mold problem or lots of processed foods or you know poor water quality things like that as well so we need to really start having a bigger conversation around carcinogens and not like oh cancers just bad luck and bad genetics yeah I agree you know it's an interesting time right now because as we're being exposed more and more to all these different chemicals and these toxins like you said in the air in the water we drink and are clothing and our personal care products and our food there's this weird almost like backlash when you talk about it online and I don't know if you've experienced this at all but you know I get a lot of people saying like oh come on you know it's just a little bit of this in here and it's just a little bit of this you know in there but I think what a lot of people are not wrapping their brain around is that like okay yeah if we have like a little bit of pesticides in our food here and there like our body is resilient and we can you know detoxify that get it out eventually but it's we're getting it from all angles all fronts and at a certain point the body is going to be like enough like we weren't designed to detox this much of it and that's what I think the big the big concern is right now yes yes it's coming at us from too many you know it's like you said if one person's you know shooting a gun at you you know you you may have a chance of like dodging some bullets here in there but if you're surrounded by you know oozes and machine guns there's no way I mean it's like it almost feels like that sometimes and so part of the conversation is around the exposures and the inputs that are coming in and that's a big problem the other problem uh that's just as big is uh we're not providing most people are not properly providing their body with the biological requirements needed to process all this stuff and so we've got this heavy accumulation and exposure and then we're not doing the things that help our body detoxify and filter out a lot of this stuff so that we can maintain our our homeostasis and ourselves don't get damaged to the point where you start to see those DNA and those genetic mutations that lead to cancer of cells yeah okay so since all of that sounds a little doom and gloom let's give some people some hope so what are some of those methods that we can implement you know on a daily basis that will help I know one of them is like sweating so like get in the sauna make sure exercising your lymph moving but what are some other things people can do yeah exactly I mean it's it does sound kind of daunting and doom and gloom when you when you look at it but you have to realize that the human body is an amazing uh invention if you will um not sure who the inventor was but it's an amazing uh piece of technology that you that we have uh and if we give it the right things and we are meeting the biological requirements and it's that you don't have to be perfect but if you're if you're doing enough on a daily basis to help support the body it can overcome a tremendous amount of uh of hits even when it comes to things like carcinogens but yes sweating is one um we need to think about things that we call the pathways of elimination so things get in the body and then we have ways that things get out of the body those would be your sweat those would be your urine those would be your stool and those would also also be your breath into a certain extent um your your your your skin right and so not just sweating but like skin that slips off and and things like that as well so uh we want to be supporting those pathways as much as possible unfortunately the the standard American diet and our standard American culture you know in terms of like sedentary lifestyle and eating lots of foods that don't promote good regular bowel movements drinking a lot of uh sugary sodas coffees things that dehydrate rather than rehydrate you uh and then again just um you know being indoors not exposing ourselves to the sun enough which helps to sweat but also helps activate lots of detox pathways doing things that overburden our liver alcohol um other recreational drugs and lots of refined sugars and processed foods and so if we can start to get back to the way our bodies designed to work in terms of getting enough fiber in our diet drinking enough water and and and uh electrolyte rich fluids moving our body in database and it doesn't have to be that much honestly it's i think some people get sort of paralyzed with the fact that they feel like they have to be doing some sort of boot camp exercise every day but really just walking is enough to meet that requirement and if you can't walk if you have some sort of uh you know disability and you can't walk you know i mean do what you can you know curl some some weights in your chair or even yoga type breathing is enough to get blood moving so there are some real basic things you can do you don't need to overcome it's complicated get out in the sun um even if you're not sweating being in the sun will open up your sweat pores and you will have some detoxing effects there and then on the other side you know take as many measures as you can to reduce your exposures everyone's going to be exposed to a certain extent we don't we can't live in a bubble but you know try to buy organic when possible um if you can't buy organic then wash your food really good with vinegar or baking soda something like that that gets a lot of the residues and pesticides off of it that way um filter your water you know you can buy a burky filter like no free ads i'm sure on the podcast here but i like burky filters they're they're cheap and you know you can buy one for 150 bucks and those things last six eight years and then you just got to replace the filters but filter your water um if you can't afford uh ultra hepa filter in your home for your air then try to keep your windows open as much as possible uh try not to track things into your home so take your shoes off in the garage or in the front porch and then as you start to buy new products uh personal care products cosmetics cleaning products for the home you know use some of these databases like environmental working group to search for cleaner cleaner options and as as you run out of things make that next purchase a smarter cleaner option you don't have to feel like you need to go raid the entire house all at once um i mean we've i've been doing this for years and we've probably still got a few things here that we need to like switch out and swap out you know truth be told so and i don't need a hundred percent organic all the time but i make an effort to uh so you have to figure out where you're gonna uh you know like where you're gonna make your changes where you're gonna give yourself a little bit of grace but and realize that you don't have to be perfect doing this stuff you just need to be kind of better than average i would say and you're gonna make a huge dent in the amount of toxins not only that you better coming in but making sure that more going out as well yeah and i love that you kept emphasizing on we can't live in a bubble we're all gonna be exposed to a certain extent we do the best we can because i think a lot of people get stuck in this like perfection area where they're like i have to do everything and they stress themselves out and it's like look you know we can't stress about it we just do the best we can and then we move on we live with our you know we live our life which i think is a really important part of this message to biggest stress also puts a burden on the body a hundred percent yeah stress is another one of those i i consider stress even though it's not listed on that i are sea list of carcinogens it is a carcinogen i mean and what we're talking about is chronic prolonged stress right i mean we all have stress going going for a run or walk is is a stress going to work to stress you know there's there's lots of things that are stressful but acute stress is what allows us to when we overcome it allows us to grow and get stronger but when you have that chronic prolonged stress where you feel like you're running from a tiger every day that's what we're talking about and that's what actually causes leads to chronic inflammation which is another one of my what i call my three root causes of cancer so we talked about toxins the second one would be inflammation which you can get which could be caused by lots of things your diet your lifestyle stress etc medications and then the third root cause being infections or or sort of chronic stealth-like infections that would be things like parasites viruses bacteria fungus and those types of things oh yeah i feel like that doesn't get talked about enough those infections so i mean would you just recommend that if someone maybe thinks that they might have one of these going at a blood panel done and just check for an infection or yeah i mean i think a lot of the chronic infections they they usually even though that's its own category they usually build up because the body's immune system is not working well okay and so the immune dysfunction or chronic immune suppression which can be linked to things like stress or obesity or not getting good sleep when your immune system suppressed these these pathogens that were being exposed to them and we all have some level of i know it's kind of nasty but to think about but we all have some parasites in our body we all have viruses in us we all have fungus it's but there's sort of a a safe level of these things and then what but when they get overgrown and they become opportunistic when the immune system suppress you get these sort of chronic brewing infections that that can lead to biofilms in the gut and they can lead to they can have a direct path to forming tumors and so you know these are things that have been listed on the IRC list of carcinogens as well human papilloma viruses one that we know of about 80% of the population are HPV carriers but we only see a small portion of those people that actually get head and neck cancer anal cancer cervical cancer right so what's what's going on there well if your immune system is working well it's not going to be a problem once your immune system is suppressed for a long enough time all of a sudden those viruses become problems did you know that you may not be getting all the beneficial probiotic bacteria from some of your favorite fermented foods for example kombucha kimchi sourcrout unfortunately a lot of these probiotics in the good bacteria in these foods don't always survive the trip to your gut this is why in addition to eating those very healthy and nutritious foods i also like to take a probiotic like seed and the reason i really like seed is because unfortunately not all probiotics are created equal a lot of probiotics on the shelf also do not actually make it to your gut so it's incredibly important that you're getting a good high quality probiotic otherwise those probiotics are going to be burnt up in your stomach acid and never actually repopulate your colon that bacteria has a lot of stuff that has to get through digestive acids bile salts and enzymes this is why i really like seeds ds01 daily symbiotic it's nested in a capsule delivery technology that ensures precision entry through the small intestine to your colon i love seed it is well-backed scientifically studied i also have a podcast with the founder if you guys want to go back and listen to that and hear about what makes seed truly stand out above the rest also can we just talk about their packaging for a second is someone who is really concerned about of the plastic in our landfill i am so obsessed with their sustainable monthly refill system they give you a glass jar and a little mini travel jar as well and then every month you keep that jar and they send your new refillable supplements and a compostable biobased pouch that you pour into that jar and this paper is made from algae that would otherwise damage fragile marine ecosystems so all around you can feel really good about purchasing seed probiotics because you are also helping to offset all the plastic and all the waste that we have in our landfills so if you guys want to try seed probiotics today please go to seed.com slash real-foodology and use code real-foodology to redeem 30% off your first month of seeds ds01 daily symbiotic again that's seed secd.com slash real-foodology and make sure to use code real-foodology did you guys know that over 70% of sodium in the us diet is consumed from packaged and processed foods when you adopt a whole foods diet you are eliminating or hopefully eliminating these processed foods and therefore sodium from your diet now the solution is not to reintroduce processed foods in your diet but by not replacing that sodium you can actually negatively impact your health and performance if you guys listen to my episode the salt fix with dr. James Denick we learned that sodium is actually a really imperative mineral for the body sodium helps maintain fluid balance it's an electrolyte so it helps keep us hydrated it also aids in nerve impulses it regulates blood flow and blood pressure it's incredibly important and if you're eating a whole real-food diet chances are you're probably not getting enough sodium also this is probably going to be a shock to hear but if you are just drinking water without adding minerals back into your water you're not actually hydrating my personal favorite way to stay hydrated throughout the day is through drinking element every day that's LMNT it's a delicious tasting electrolyte drink mix that has everything you need and nothing you don't so that means lots of salt there's no sugar in there it's formulated to help anyone with their electrolyte needs and is perfectly suited for people following keto low carb and paleo diets it has a science-backed electrolyte ratio a thousand milligrams of sodium 200 milligrams of potassium and 60 milligrams of magnesium I drink one of these every single morning they have a ton of amazing super delicious flavors I know a lot of us listening are avoiding natural flavors so they also have an unflavered one which is my personal favorite I love to put it with lemon but if you want the flavored ones they have a great variety of different flavors and they have given me an awesome offer to share with you guys so you guys can claim a free element sample pack when you make a purchase through the link the link is drink element that's LMNT dot com slash real foodology and in the element sample pack you're gonna get one packet of every flavor so that you can try all of them and see which one is your favorite I hope you guys enjoyed as much as I do again it's drink element dot com slash real foodology that's drink LMNT dot com slash real foodology another thing I want to talk about that I I believe it was you that just posted about this there was a study that just came out linking sweetened and artificially sweetened beverages to a higher incident of was it liver cancer liver cancer in women oh that's interesting and also I know that the world health organization is about to may have since we've recorded this I'm not sure claim that aspartame or they're gonna say that aspartame is a possible human carcinogen yeah they labeled it as a as a possible carcinogen there's kind of three main categories there's like known carcinogens there's probable carcinogens and then there's this lower category called possible and that's when you know there's certain criteria of studies they need but the problem with a lot of the possible carcinogens is not that there's lack of evidence it's that there are um there are a lot of industry funded studies that have been done that that makes the the evidence very it looks very cloudy because you've got all these studies that are funded by people who are making money on these things to sort of offset the ones that show the danger and the caution and so that's another dirty little secret that a lot of people don't understand they say well you know and I've seen other doctors on social media and they're like you we're blowing this aspartame thing way out of proportion and if you have a diet coke here and there a couple of a day just don't drink 40 a day right and it's just I'm just I'm I'm like how are you as a doctor really really sending that message out to your people and you know even if let's just say let's just say it is you know a truly a possible carcinogen and it warrants that classification throwing out all these industry funded studies that show you know that's really why it's in that category well let's just say it is clear shouldn't we still be warning people hey this is another drop in the bucket because again we talked about all those other things that are potential carcinogens were being exposed to right and it's not necessarily that one thing in a vacuum is the problem it's all these things we want to make people you know make people aware that hey yeah if you just had a few diet coke today is that enough to cause cancer I don't know probably not but when you add that to all the other hundreds of things you're being exposed to on a daily basis look if you can swap that out and do something healthier why not right and so that's the message we should be sending out there not this oh you know these influencers are blowing this out of proportion and aspartame's only a problem you know if you drink you know a gallon of it a day kind of thing it's just it to me that's not the right messaging 100% and that's why I get so frustrated because I I'll share this on Instagram and I can't tell you how many messages DMs comments I get from people and they're like oh I saw they were talking about this on the view and they were saying you have to drink like 80 a day and it's totally fine but what the people are missing about this is exactly what you just said it's like okay if you are just having one aspartame sweet and beverage a day and that's the only thing you're being exposed to fine I'm not that worried about it it's the problem like for example women on average are being exposed to 168 different chemicals every day before they even take a bite of food and then you add in okay the diet coke a day and then you add in the non-organic food that's covered in pesticides and all of a sudden it's adding up and that's where I think that we have a missed opportunity for a conversation that's really being fought right now and what's sad and scary is that there's so much influence from these industries that have a lot of money to be made or lost depending on you know how the conversation is is had that's what's really frightening about it and I wish more people understood this because I think we would have a lot we'd have like a revolution of people pushing back on all of this stuff in our food yeah I couldn't agree more and this is where we need you know the whole system as you know Courtney it's it's it's so effed up and we've got little to no regulatory bodies that are acting in the real interest of the public anymore and they've all been you know sort of captured and bought and paid for by by these big corporations you know it goes back to I don't I do you see the movie the seward no I don't think so I'm gonna write this down it's a good one I and I'd recommend everyone watching this to go watch it it came out a few years ago it's narrated by Morgan Freeman so it's it's it's very well done but a big a big point that's made in that is you know historically speaking around the middle of the 1980s what we saw happen was big tobacco companies bought all the big food companies okay and that's really when you go back and look at these macro trends of of cancer and chronic disease really taking off and going like going you know vertical on that on that line is around the middle of the 1980s and there were other things happening around them too and like I said everything's multifactorial but the fact that we've got these corporations that that were initially their biggest their biggest interest was tobacco and selling tobacco and then all of a sudden you put them in charge of food I mean that's just a recipe for disaster and so you have to think from that point forward you have to kind of follow the money follow the interests of these corporations and look at how much of I mean I you do great videos when you go and you do the grocery store kind of take downs and stuff I love that stuff but look at I mean go down those aisles and look at how much is that is actually even food anymore I mean that's the thing and that's kind of my point in all those videos is to remind people that even though it's advertised to us as food the majority of that could not even really be considered food I joke about this all the time I tell people because people ask me oh do you ever like cheat and eat fast food and I cheat in what I consider my own way you know where I eat like you know junkier like processed foods is still are made with cleaner ingredients but to me like I haven't put fast food in my body in 20 years probably because I literally view fast food as play do we do not play put play do in our mouth maybe kids try to but they don't know any better but like we should not be putting this kind of stuff in our food or in our bodies because I don't even consider to be food so and I wish that we could you know have that as a general message to the public but unfortunately yeah there's a lot of corporate capture that's confusing so many people on it's so frustrating because a lot of this stuff you know like we've talked about in this episode we know a lot of this I mean you've been doing this for you said 14 years as a cancer doctor you're warning people and there's still people that that think that you know these food companies are creating these foods with our health in mind yeah it's you know it certainly is a title wave and there's days where I feel like it's you know it's like it's too much right it's too big of a burden to try to try to warn everybody and educate everybody but you do what you can I mean you've got a great big audience and you put on great information and I think that there is a a paradigm shift happening where people there are people that are waking up that people that are wanting this type information they're wanting to sort of have more control there's people that are one of the good things I think came out of COVID actually was that more people I think started preparing food at home the ones I guess they didn't go directly to door dash but yeah but I've known more people in my circle that you know before they used to eat out maybe three four days a week and now it's like once a week because they got used to you know preparing foods at home and once you get comfortable certain recipes and go to's and you've realized how much money it saves you too I think that was one of the good things that came out of that you know eating more real food and avoiding the the package box and bag stuff and the fast food right that's where you can I think you can make a huge dent in your risk of getting cancer there I mean it's not going to be you know the whole puzzle but if you're looking for one area where you can focus on eating more food that you can say okay that came out of the ground or off a tree or off a bush versus reading a label that has 18 different ingredients on it if you can start to shift more of your consume food consumption to those foods and less of the processed things knowing this history and the corporations that are behind the foods in those boxes and bags I think I think you can make a huge dent there yeah yeah absolutely I do want to say one more thing that I meant to say earlier that I find so fascinating about that big tobacco buying up all the big food companies so many people have compared the tactics of big food it was basically copy and paste from the playbook of big tobacco and I just you know it's just all these connections where you look back and we knew at the time that cigarette well we didn't know it first but then one week once we knew that we could connect tobacco and cigarettes to cancer they fought tooth and nail to keep people from still finding that out yeah that's true and now they're just doing the same thing with big food and once people understand that I think they'll start to you know want to do better for themselves because for me there's like this rebellious side that's in me that I'm like oh I don't want them to win you know so like me like buying whole real foods in their natural state is almost like an FU to that industry that I don't want to win you know it's it's it's it's it's a rebellious act and it's one that we need every button to kind of start jumping in on and yeah I mean the like you said the playbooks for big tobacco has been the playbook for for big corporations across the board not just food but you know they they just they they have so much of the market share and so much money that they know that they can they can drag things out and you know once they've made their billions or trillions or however much might they're making you know people you know it's almost too late for them right but if we start to make these changes one interesting things if you actually look at we talked about earlier some of these reports that you know sometimes you'll see ones that actually look good and they say oh you know like these some of these cancer rates actually are improved you can go back and about I mean the overall majority I would say 95% of the cancers that have improved over the last 20 years have been directly related to people smoking less and so once we did get over the hump and we really educated the masses on the harms of camp of smoking yeah you still see plenty of people smoking but it's far less and that's where we've really seen a huge drop in some of these incidences of certain cancers so if we can repeat that and use that as our playbook on our side with food maybe we can see an even bigger drop in some of these rates moving forward I've been in therapy often on since I was eight years old and this is why I'm super excited to bring better help on the podcast as a sponsor therapy changed my life many of you who have listened to my podcast for a while know that I went through a really traumatic event when I was eight years old I lost my sister to a very tragic accident and therapy has helped me so immensely throughout the years that I want to tell everyone that I think therapy is so incredibly important for all of us life is hard life is really hard and regardless if you have a clinical mental health issue like depression or anxiety or if you're just a human who lives in this world who's going through a hard time or maybe you've been through something traumatic like me therapy can give you the tools to approach your life in a very different way throughout the years it's helped me to really see my role that I play in my own suffering and it's helped me to get out of my own way it's helped me to see different things in a different light and of course it's helped me to process and deal with the trauma that I went through as a kid but again I really just want to reiterate that you don't even have to have any trauma in your past to have therapy help you I honestly think everyone could benefit from being in therapy I think it's an amazing thing that we have access to and this is why I really love better help their mission is to make therapy more affordable and more accessible and this is an important mission because finding a therapist can be really hard especially when you're limited to the options in your area so it's a platform that makes finding a therapist easier because it's online it's remote and by filling out a few questions better help can match you to a professional therapist in as little as a few days and I want to tell you guys as someone who has gone through many therapists since I was eight years old not many but I've gone through enough to know that finding a therapist can be kind of like you know finding a friendship that jives with you so if you don't jive immediately with your first therapist definitely make sure that you give some other therapist a chance because it really is about finding someone that you feel safe and comfortable with it is so simple to get signed up all you need to do is go to better help.com slash real foodology that's better help as an h-e-l-p.com slash real foodology clicking that link helps support this channel and it also gives you 10% off your first month of better help so you can connect with a therapist and see if it helps you I hope this helps you. All right so I want to I want to talk a little bit about if someone God forbid is diagnosed with cancer I want to talk about some of these treatments that may not be very well known in the conventional realm that have been found to be really helpful and then I also want to talk about some like tests and stuff that can be done because I know I know when someone just goes through through the traditional conventional route typically it looks like surgery and then treatments and then you know send you on your way and I know now from you know digging into this a little bit that there are other things that someone can do and it's not just surgery treatment okay buy and then oftentimes it comes back years later I've been told that there's certain like tests that you can do there's certain things that you can do in order one to way lower your risk of it coming back and also to give you a lot more information into what is actually happening in your body and I know one of them that you and I talked about was the signitaritas so can we share with people a little bit about that because I don't think a lot of people know that this exists. Not enough for sure even though it is it is starting to gain more acceptance and awareness even amongst the conventional oncology community but we're still way off and I still run into patients and other clinicians that have been in the space for years that they've never heard of it or they say oh yeah well it's that's not that test isn't ready for prime time yet we need more studies but essentially it's a test and I've got some posts I've done on this on my social media that go into a little more depth but essentially it's a circulating tumor DNA test so they take a blood sample from the patient and they match that with some they have to request a little bit of tissue so you have to have had either a biopsy or a surgery done where there's been actual cancer's tissue that's taken out of the body and these these places that do the surgery they have pathology departments that hold on to that tissue for usually 10 years and you can request little samples of that to do testing on and so signitaritas sample that they build a personalized assay out of those what are called the clonal mutations of your cancer which are even though cancer can evolve and mutate the longer it's in someone's body it always holds on to these this clonal signature of mutations so they can track it even years down the road and match that in the bloodstream what they're looking for the bloodstream is the circulating tumor DNA that has that same signature and so if you've had a surgery that you know you and you've been told well you know margins were clear and you you had a scan afterwards and there wasn't any sign of any activity we know that sometimes those people six months later they come back and they've got a recurrence so right so it's like well you told me I was clean right you said the margins were clear and you got it all out I did everything I was supposed to why do we miss that so signitaritas especially done after a surgery when the there's curative intent that can tell you is there anything residual in the body on more of a microscopic level okay so it just it zooms in farther and can pick up things in a much more subtle way than a scan can or even some of these other traditional blood markers they use and so to me number one reason to get a signitaritas is if you've had surgery to answer that question did you truly get all the cancer out of the body number two reason would be if you did let's say you did have that surgery or you had another surgery and they didn't get it all out and the signitaris elevated then they'll recommend that you do some kind of treatment and that could be chemotherapy or radiation or immunotherapy or maybe some integrative therapies that that we can talk about things like IV vitamin C misalto herbal therapies diet strategies anyways you can use signitaritas okay we knew that we after surgery there was a signal there let's say it was at 15 every month that you start on these treatments you start to repeat that signitaris and you know if that's coming down you know what you're doing's working versus if it's going up you got a problem you got to change your approach the goal is to get that down to zero and then the studies they've had on signitaris show that whether you start with zero right out of the gates on your first test after surgery or whether you get it to zero through further treatment both of those both of those groups of people have the same long-term survival and prognosis okay so it doesn't matter how you get it down but we we goal is to get it to zero and make sure you're watching it close enough to make sure what you're doing is actually getting it to zero and then the third and final way we use it is once you've gotten it to zero then it will be likely the early if you you know you keep measuring it maybe every couple of months for a while in that survivorship phase but if it is going to come if there's going to be a distant recurrence it's going to show up on that test and some of these studies they've done with signitaris with large scale studies they've shown that up to 10 months earlier it'll show up on the signitaris test before you would maybe feel lump somewhere or before it would show up on any other type of study that that your doctors would be doing like a stand or another type of blood test wow is this something that people could do preventatively like let's just say someone's a little bit extra nervous about getting a cancer diagnosis could they maybe do this blood test like once a year unfortunately not like I said you have to have had tissue taken out of the body that's right okay so you had would have had to have had not only a diagnosis but you would have had to have had some tissue available somewhere and sometimes we do run into these situations where because there's other testing that's buying for some of this tissue and sometimes there was just a small piece that was taken out and it's already been used up so unfortunately it's like well we either got to get some more tissue or you know we can't run this test but to your question it's not a screening tool unfortunately so there are other screening tools out there like the gallery test it's called the multi detection multi cancer detection blood tests not quite as pinpoint as signitaris obviously not as personalized because you're not asking it to the tissue but that test is more of like this screening tool for people that either are at a high risk have a you know big family history of cancer or maybe are working in a occupation where their risk is high firefighters are a big one shift workers I think people you know hairdressers people like that as well so gallery tests would be where I would say focus on more screening tool signitaris once you have a diagnosis and you have tissue that's the test that I think is the best one out there what are some of the more non-traditional type treatments that help like I know the high-dose vitamin C drips uh mistletoe can we go over those a little bit? Sure yeah those are those would be the top two that I've seen in my practice then I think are the most well studied well established more sort of what I would call integrative oncology therapies and so you know mistletoe therapies been around for years and years and has actually improved therapy in most European countries has been for a while but you know we're we're slow to adopt things like that over here in the US you know we tend to be very very closed off to anything that's not a drug that was made in the lab do you think that's kind of scary? Big pharma capture probably a lot of money it is I mean you can look this up this is completely straight facts but you can look it up at 70 percent of the FDA's budget is provided by big pharma so tell me how that's not a not a a conflict of interest but anyway so the FDA is the one that's betting all these other therapies and saying oh well you know this is this is approved and doctors can prescribe it and insurance has to cover it and all that so right now you can go and look at all of the things that have been approved for cancer treatment by the FDA there's not one vitamin there's not one supplement there's not one herb there's nothing out there besides drugs and radiation you know the standard of care stuff those are the only things that have been approved by FDA and so to me it's like you'd think every once in a while you know we'd sneak one in there but it's a pretty close shop so anyways mistletoe is a therapy that really helps us to we were talking about the problems with the immune system and how that kind of leaves you open to chronic infections and and and also the immune system itself gets rid of cancer cells but that's not working well how do we restore that mistletoe is one of the best ways you can do that and so this is a therapy that's either given by a subcutaneous injection or IV and it's actually starting to get some momentum here Johns Hopkins published a phase one study with it just a few a few months ago it was a bit of a long time in the making but they're moving on hopefully to phase two phase three study so I can foresee in the next five to ten years maybe mistletoe does become a mainstream therapy here IV vitamin C is kind of a similar story it's been around since you know the 50s and 60s line is polling a lot of people are familiar with with him being a two-time Nobel Prize winner and sort of the godfather of intravenous vitamin C did a lot of studies with it back in the 60s and 70s fell out of favor for a while when he passed away and then the Reardon clinic was is a former employer of mine that I used to work for they've done a lot of studies with it in cancer patients and developed some protocols what we're really seeing happen with IV vitamin C the real magic is that it can kill cancer cells on its own so it has sort of a chemotherapy like effect but the kicker is that it doesn't have all the collateral damage of chemotherapy it really just selectively kills cancer cells by build up a hydrogen peroxide in these cells which the cancer cells can't really deal with and so so it's a very safe therapy it also can help it can be used alongside most chemotherapies and actually shows that it improves the efficacy of the chemotherapy while decreasing the side effects in toxicity so it's a great adjunctive treatment for patients to do alongside their conventional treatments there's very few reasons or safety considerations with IV vitamin C obviously you need to go work with a doctor that knows what they're doing but it's a very safe treatment so is mistletoe and these are treatments that can only help improve patients outcomes they're not going to you know really take anything away from the conventional approach these are more things you can do to set yourself up for success stack the deck in your favor the real downside to them is that not a lot of patients know about them or have access to them and they're not covered by insurance so it's big out of pocket costs for a lot of these things which is really unfortunate I know that just really it kills me that's so unfortunate because these are what I love so much about these kind of treatments like you said is that there's there is not really any sort of downside you know like you they can be taken in conjunction with their other treatments and there's no side effects you know all it all it can do is improve and if it doesn't do much okay fine you know like at least it doesn't have any sort of like hard side effects on the body and so why are we not why is the FDA not approving these I don't I mean we know why yeah but we kind of touched on this a little bit with the sugary beverages but what do you think the role that sugar plays in cancer as well is there a pretty big role in it like we've heard I know doubt I think so but you know we need to do some sort of definitions here right when we say sugar obviously you know some people are gonna nitpick that and say well glucose is the building block of everything you're up glucose then you're gonna you know all your cells are gonna die so naturally occurring sugars sugars you get in the fruit sugars you get in you know potatoes sugars you get rice I mean we're not really talking about those sugars unless you're really like they're really marvelous right when we're talking about sugar we're talking about refined or added sugars right these are the sugars that are cooked up in a lab these are sugars that have been stripped that have been refined that have been heavily processed and and there's such mass amounts that you wouldn't ever find that much sugar in our body doesn't know what to do with it and so essentially what happens is it puts a huge load on your liver and your liver all it can really do unless you're like consuming the sugar while you're simultaneously running a marathon it's gonna have to get stored because it's too much for your body just to burn in the bloodstream and so it kicks up insulin it kicks up insulin like growth factor other potentially harmful growth factors that drive cancer cell growth but more importantly it puts a heavy burden on our liver which is already being again as we talked heavily burdened by all these other toxins we got coming in right and so these added sugars that deliver all it can really do is store it and what it does is exchange is fat for lip for for the sugar and that's how all these people are showing up with fatty liver most people that I send to go get an MRI or an ultrasound or whatever there's always a comment about fatty liver disease there's that you know non-alcoholic fatty liver disease it's like this is another you know real epidemic of of the standard American diet and culture that that we're seeing manifest into a lot of metabolic disorders is and it all goes back to too much sugar yeah yeah and unfortunately it's really addictive too so it's and it's in everything right now well is there anything else that we didn't cover that you think is really important for people to know as far as cancer anything that we talked about you know another another theme that I talk about quite a bit is you know as much as we focus on the physical stuff I think that there's also a big component when it comes to the mental emotional side of cancer and so I think we'd be you know a little bit remiss not to just at least mention that and you know we do see a lot of patients where you know it might not be the the smoking gun but a big piece of their puzzle is working through past traumas and suppressed emotions unresolved grief for abuse or you know these we talk about these ACEs these adverse childhood events you know there's a lot of that work that needs to be done as well and I don't think the conventional communities really set up well to deal with those things tend to be kind of the sweep it under the rug kind of approach so so I think that you know there's a lot of everyone's different but some people that's their biggest underlying problem they need to deal with is their mental emotional and they're resetting the nervous system and resolving some of those past like I said traumas or abuses or wrong doings whatever it was but those things those can think things can be just as toxic as the plastics and the pesticides. Yeah and I'm so glad that you brought this up because I I've talked about this on a bunch of my episodes and my podcast but I went through something super traumatic when I was eight and I realized it wasn't until my 30s and I won't tell the whole story here just because I've told it many times of podcast now but basically I had a really profound psilocybin mushroom journey that brought out so much of me and I mean I think I was like 32 and made me realize that I had not actually dealt with this thing that I went through when I was eight and I went through the majority of my life thinking oh it's fine I resolved it I'm good like but all I was doing was repressed repressed repressed repressed repressed until finally it exploded out of me and I had I was forced to face it and thank God I did but it's just a great reminder that these things can really really impact you even when you don't realize it and so I do want to encourage people to you know if you've been through something that maybe even you think that you've resolved but you know that it you know it must have had some sort of impact on you I encourage people to seek out help with that whether it's EMDR which really helped me a ton you know having a therapist that specializes in whatever trauma that you went through and it doesn't even have to be like a hardcore like you know capital T trauma it can just be something that really affected you as a kid you know that you need to be resolved yeah I know art again our mutual friend Dr. G he's doing a lot with that emotional release stuff too and so there's lots of whether it's psychedelics or you know a lot of my patients really cling to Joe D'Spenza and his type of work as well he's amazing you know there's lots I think there's lots of pathways to that you got to find what resonates with you but yeah I that's that's a big piece of the puzzle too yeah for sure okay so I have one question for you that I ask all of my guests before we go and there's a personal one so what are your personal health non-negotiables that you do either daily, weekly, both that that are important to you to to maintain your health well I that's a good question I don't have any non-negotiables but I would say that bell curve of the time that the practices I try to do would be that I do a 24 hour fast once a week I've been doing this for probably five or six years now and so I you know Sunday night dinner I eat as early as possible and I don't eat again until Monday dinner and I've just done that and I feel like it is just a great reset once a week a lot of you know cultures religions have that kind of thing built into them I think forget reason I try to move my body every day I try to plant my bare feet on the ground every day I do have a little bit of a morning ritual that I do I don't won't get into it too much but I would say the other thing that really is key for me is I've gotten into the gratitude journal practice I use the five minute journal again I'm not shouting them out or anything but I find that one really easy there's a lot of good girls out there but but yeah I think that those things are I found to be really important for me in order to put my best self out there every day and I mean I you know there's days that I'm like I miss things or I don't do it or whatever but most of the time those are kind of my my routines that I think helped keep me tilted you know sort of more towards health and disease yeah that's awesome well I'm sure after listening this episode everyone was like waiting waiting with Bated Breath for your non-negotiables because they're like what is the cancer doctor so cool well where can people find you if they want to reach out so your social media maybe your website all that yeah social media would mainly be on Instagram at doctor Lucas doctor is spelled out and and then the websites pretty similar www.doctorlucus.org and you can request I'm doing telemedicine visit with visits with cancer patients all over the country and we can help guide you through your journey if God forbid you are on that journey or a loved one is you know check out the website you can request a consult through there or you know follow me on Instagram I put out I try to put out a lot of information there and you know connect there if you like as well amazing thank you so much this was an amazing episode really enjoyed it thanks for having me Courtney thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Real Photology podcast if you liked the episode please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know this is a resonant media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Mike Fry the theme song is called heaven by the amazing singer Georgie Georgie is spelled with a J for more amazing podcasts produced by my team go to resonantmediagroup.com I love you guys so much see you next week the content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only it is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship I am a nutritionist but I am not your nutritionist as always talk to your doctor for your health team first looking to build a more robust foundation in your health and well-being from the producer of the real foodology podcast comes one of the most popular alternative health shows on Apple podcasts the doctor Tina show doctor Tina Moore is a natural pathic physician and chiropractor traditionally and alternatively trained in science and medicine the show features exclusive interviews with experts such as Sean Stevenson Mike Mutzel Mark Groves and even solo episodes covering metabolic health pharmaceuticals chronic diseases long hauler syndrome and pain management dr. 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