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Language: en
pound for pound, ounce for ounce,
molecule for molecule. In many cases,
the held their own against the drug.
Some cases more powerfully. Recently,
there was an interesting study that
showed if you actually increase your
level of by an extra serving a week, you
can increase your longevity, your
survival by 4.7 years. So, cancers have
hijacked. So, your regular immune system
is all these soldiers that are
patrolling your body all the time. They
can't see the cancer because they're
completely cloaked. 200 people that had
different types of cancers and they were
all treated with imunotherapy and of
course only 20% had the good response.
So she could not find any difference
between the responders and the
non-responders except [music] for one
bacteria. The people who responded it
had it in their gut. That one bacteria
was
[music]
Wouldn't
it be much [music] better if we could
actually prevent the disease in the
first place? And what's interesting is
the same science that teaches us how to
intercept and tackle a disease using
drugs actually teaches us in some ways a
hell of a lot more about how to prevent
the disease in the first place. How do
we actually, you know, um not just pick
up the pieces after the time bomb
explodes or the stick of dynamite, but
how do we actually pull the fuse out or
disarm the time bomb? Right? So, that's
what got me really interested in
diverting my scientific [clears throat]
um focus from treatments to taking a
look at prevention. Now, if you're
talking about disease, it's pretty
straightforward. Diagnose it, find a
treatment, write a prescription, refer
to a specialist. If you're talking about
prevention, you're really talking about
health. And this brings me full circle
to where you where you started where
we're starting. So what is health,
right? I mean, I'm just like everyone
else. Well, if I'm not are you healthy?
Well, if I'm not sick, I'm actually
healthy, right? So in most people's
minds, including mine, not being sick is
kind of the default definition of being
healthy. But that is very problematic
because the absence of something, the
absence of disease is very is impossible
to operationalize. You can't do
something about the absence of something
else. So that's what I started to ask.
Well, what is health if it's not just
the lack of disease? Well, it turns out
that, and this has been my research,
turns out that health is not just the
absence of disease. It is the result of
our body's own hardwired defense
systems, health defense systems that
we're born with. These are defense
systems are formed in the womb before
we're born. And the moment we appear on
planet Earth, our health defenses are
firing on all cylinders from day one all
the way to our very last breath. And all
of a sudden, that gives us a whole new
canvas to understand what can we do to
support health? What can we do to boost
our body's health defenses? Our body has
five very simple health defense systems
that are um that have now been
discovered. They are number one
something called angioenesis. That's
blood vessels. That's how our blood body
grows blood vessels. Angio means blood
blood vessels. Genesis is how the body
grows blood vessels. We got 60,000 miles
worth of blood vessels packed in our
body. And these are the highways and
byways of our oxygen, our nutrients,
whatever we breathe, whatever we eat in
order for our cells to get the benefits
of the critical elements of life, they
have to be carried by the blood vessels.
So that's so critical for our defenses.
That's healthy. Number two, our stem
cells. You know, when we were kids, we
were told that starfish and salamanders
can regenerate, but humans can't. Guess
what? that textbook's been thrown right
out the window because humans do
regenerate just slowly. And we know that
we gen regenerate because our hair grows
back. Um uh you know, our skin uh can
actually heal and and grow itself back.
But some of the crazy things that we're
beginning to actually discover is that
if you snip a piece of your lung off,
it'll grow right back at the very tip.
If you cut off take away twothirds of
your liver, okay, let's say that you
have a tumor in your liver, you can
remove twothirds of it and that
one-third will grow the rest of the
liver back. Kind of like a salamander's
leg. It's crazy. And of course, our
nerves regenerate. And so biotech
companies have been trying for decades
now to figure out how to inject stem
cells.
>> Well, mother nature's already beat them
to it because stem cells are present in
our body as a defense. And we're
continuously regenerating ourselves from
the inside out, repairing problems. You
know, there's a road crew inside our
body, yours and mine, right here, right
now that are fixing things that are
invisible to us. Third, microbiome. We
can talk more about this. You know, it's
the tip of the spear of a whole new
frontier about the human body that we're
just beginning to understand. But the
important part of it is that we know
that when we've got good healthy gut
bacteria and this microbiome is the
ecosystem of our gut bacteria. I call it
the great barrier reef in our body. You
know, um 39 trillion bacteria all living
inside there. And what we know, the
important part for your your viewers and
listeners is that they help when they're
healthy, they help to lower inflammation
in our body, which then lowers all kinds
of disease. They help optimize their
metabolism.
Everybody's always worried about their
metabolism. Good gut bacteria helps that
right along. Fight fat. Um help to avoid
um uh insulin sensitivity over uh and
avoid glucose uh surges. All very
important. controls our hormones, you
know, so that our mood and our brain, so
our mood is actually uh healthy as well
and can fight cancer and uh regulate
obesity, all kinds of things. If our
gut, and it, by the way, it's so easy to
disrupt the gut. I mean, think about a
tanker spill uh that destroys, you know,
a coral reef. That's what we can
accidentally do to ourselves by eating
the wrong things. You know, if you were
taking a boat by the Great Barrier Reef
and you were to take a a bottle of of
toxic material and pour it right down on
top of the coral reef, guarantee you
that the fish and the anemies are all
going to be dead. Okay? That's what we
do to ourselves. So, this higher level
of awareness that we have, we have to
take care of our gut microbiome. So
important for for defending our health.
Our gut defends our health. Fourth, our
DNA defends us against the environment.
So, most people think about our DNA as
our genetic code. Yes, it is. It is the
blueprint for our proteins in our body
that we inherited half from our mom,
half from our dad, etc., etc. However,
the the the really cool um unsung part
of our DNA is that it's one of our
body's five health defense systems. What
does it do? It fixes itself. What do I
mean by fixing itself? Well, if we go
out, you know, during the summer and you
go to the beach and you are enjoying
laying out, you know, enjoying the
weather, beach weather, the ultraviolet
radiation is coming in and mutating your
DNA. Now, how come we don't develop
cancer all the time after going out to
the beach? Because our DNA is hardwired
to fix itself when it's damaged by the
environment. And the beach is one thing,
and I'm not even talking about the
tanning slot, but I always ask people
when you're actually filling up your car
with gas, like you're, you know, you're
at the gas tank, do you stand up wind or
downwind of the of the of the pump? And
people go, "Huh? What are you talking
about?" I'm like, "Well, if you smell
the fumes, the solvents, then you're
standing downwind. And if you smell
them, you're breathing in solvents that
can mutate the DNA in your lung. So, how
come we don't get lung cancer?" Because
our DNA fixes itself. an amazing defense
system um uh that that our DNA plays.
And then finally is our immune system
which of course you know after the past
year and a half everybody knows just how
important good strong immunity actually
is. But most people don't know that even
as we get older our immune system still
has the capacity of fighting invaders
not just outside invaders like viruses
and bacteria but inside invaders like
cancer. So we are able to now and and
this is one of the most remarkable
things I've seen in my medical career
give people who have cancer even
metastatic cancer that's spread immune
treatments that by themselves don't kill
the cancer but uncloak the cancer so
that your immune system can go after the
cancer and even if you've got metastatic
disease even brain metastasis it's
possible in some cases now for imu your
own immune system to wipe out all traces
of cancer and put you not just in
remission. Okay, that's what chemo does.
Can put you in remission. But
imunotherapy can actually turn the clock
back and reset yourself so you don't
have cancer anymore. Broadly speaking,
imunotherapy is harnessing your body's
own immune system to fight the cancer,
which is different than inventing a
toxic drug or even a or even a smart
bomb, you know, a targeted drug to
actually go after the cancer. So
imunotherapy relies on your immune
system. It is true what you just said.
There are some very specific kinds of
immune systems where you can remove your
immune system, reprogram it, you know,
kind of turn it from uh, you know, turn
turn it from a an ordinary immune cell
uh into a super soldier, okay? And then
inject it back in the body and it will
go and go after the cancer. But there
are other forms of immune uh uh therapy
where what you're what you're doing and
this is what I was talking about.
Cancers like to h develop these sneaky
[snorts] ways of hiding from your immune
system. They cloak themselves. You know,
like the old Star Trek, the Klingons
would turn on cloaking device and now
you can't the Enterprise can't find the
enemy ship. Okay? Well, that's what
cancers actually do. Some
imunotherapies, all they do is they rip
the cloak off the cancer and the immune
system goes, regular immune system goes,
"Aha, I see you. I'm going to come after
you and I'm going to get you." Because
what keeps you and I uh uh from actually
developing lethal cancers right here,
right now, Tom, is that our immune
system is spotting little tiny harmless
microscopic cancers and saying, "I see
you. You're gone. Okay, you're dead
meat." And they just clear off. It's
like taking an eraser, just erasing the
cancer right off the chalkboard. All
right. So, when you unccloak a cancer,
it allows your immune system to do this.
The best uh example of this is former
president, US President Jimmy Carter.
when he was in his 90s, he developed a
melanoma that had spread to his liver
and his brain. And you know, it was at
that point, this is about 10 years ago
now, almost 10 years ago, a brain
metastasis from a skin cancer melanoma
is pretty much a death sentence. And so
he was hap he happened to be one of the
first people to actually get a treatment
that ripped the cloak off of the
melanoma cells in his brain and
elsewhere. And it allowed his 90year-old
immune system to see that cancer. And
even at that age, even with that spread,
he had all of his cancer cleared out of
his system. And I used that knowledge to
help treat my own mother
>> who actually had metastatic endometrial
cancer. So this is this cameo home to
roost really on a personal level. And
you know, we were able to uh replicate
that kind of finding not from a skin
cancer, but from an endometrial uterus
cancer. So, um, you know, we haven't
beaten cancer, uh, completely yet, but
I'll tell you, I did not expect in my
career, in my lifetime, to be able to
see it's possible to take somebody with
advanced cancer and turn a clock back
and literally erase it off the
chalkboard using imotherapies. And so,
I'm talking about drugs. I mean, I
talked a lot about drugs and and stem
cells and, you know, all that kind of
stuff. But the amazing thing is that
with this hardcore knowledge, now I I've
worked in biotechnology, so I know what
it takes to develop technologies to go
after these um help enhance these uh
health defenses. But what's amazing is
that it's very hard to beat mother
nature. And you can talk about drugs
when you're talking about treating
disease, but when you're talking about
prevention and raising your shields,
amping up your health defenses, you
can't talk about drugs. You got to talk
about something like food. And food is a
medicine we take three times a day. And
that's what I wrote about in my book eat
disease. There are many different ways
to cloak. We're discovering new ways.
And there in cancer there's many ways.
The one that actually has um been
amanable to imunotherapies
uh has been a protein called PDL1. Uh
it's called program death lian one. So
this um PDL1 protein is made by lots of
different cells to help our healthy
cells protect
to to protect ourselves against our
immune system. So why doesn't why don't
most of us have autoimmune diseases
because our immune system is jacked up
and ready to kind of attack anything
that it doesn't want? Well, it can
recognize self or healthy self uh from
disease because our healthy cells have
created this protein called PDL1 and it
basically raises the flag, okay? Like on
the lawn that says, "Hey, you know what?
We're normal. Please don't attack us."
So cancers have hijacked PDL1 and they
make lots of PDL1 all over themselves.
And so basically, your immune system
kind of wings right by. So these these
super soldiers, their regular immune
system is with all these soldiers that
are patrolling your body, our body all
the time. They can't see the cancer
because they're completely cloaked. It's
just wearing another kind of assassin in
a crowd waving a flag and so it ignores
it and yet there it is. It's right
there. So when you actually take that
flag away and you let the body secret
service spot that thing, okay, then your
immune system will find the cells that
are not make waving the flag, that
protein PDL1, say, "Uhhuh,
I'm coming after you." Actually, most of
the bacteria in our body is good.
There's a few bad actors, but most of
them are good. And a lot of the good
ones live in our gut. Okay? And the gut
bacteria um uh as I mentioned a little
bit earlier do all kinds of amazing and
crazy kind of things. One of the things
they do is the gut bacteria talks to our
immune system which connects back to the
imunotherapy. So you need to have a good
immune system that's ready to rock.
Okay, ready to respond to the
imunotherapy that you may be treated
with. That's what's hanging in the bag.
So if you hang something in the bag, the
antibodies that go into your bloodstream
that rip off the cloaking device, you
still need the other half of your immune
system. The other half is the immune
system has got to be good enough to go
after it. Now, it turns out the
microbiome pretty much is the trainer
for the immune system, one of the
trainers, one of the caretakers, one of
the um housekeepers of the immune
system. And so if your microbiome isn't
in good shape, your immune system is not
going to be in good shape as well. Now,
um here's what's kind of crazy. Um most
doctors that are out there in practice
now, when we were in school, we were
told that um our immune system, like
where's your immune system? It's in our
lymph nodes. It's in our spleen. It's in
our thymus. You know, people kind of
like had we we had a checkbox of places
that the immune system is located,
right? You get a lymph node after you
got like a sore throat or flu or
something like that, bronchits. That's
not where the immune system is. Now, we
we know that there's some there, but
actually 70% of our immune system lives
inside our gut. So, think about your
intestines, right? It's a big long tube,
like a sausage casing,
>> a garden hose. Cut a garden hose in
half, it's got a layer.
>> Inside that layer, think about the jelly
rolls. Think about it like a jelly roll.
Now, inside the middle of that layer is
70% of our immune system inside our gut
wrapped like a like the jelly in a jelly
roll. Now, where is the bacteria? The
bacteria is inside our gut. That
ecosystem is inside our gut like inside
the the tube. And then the jelly rolls
where the immune system is 70% of our
immune system. So what happens? What's
the con connection? What's the
collaboration?
Our gut talks to our immune system like
college roommates living in a dorm,
right? So you go to college, paper thin
walls, right? Some guy wants pizza. What
are we gonna have tonight? You know, you
just pound through the wall and shout
through the wall and the guy knows what
you want to order, right? That's the
same thing. Your gut bacteria can talk
to the immune system through the walls
of the bacteria and help to prompt them
and give them commands on how to
actually get in good shape. Drop down
and give me 50. You know, like that's
actually what our gut bacteria is able
to do for our immune system. Now,
there's one bacteria that's actually
there different bacteria that are
important for different things. We're
just beginning to discover this. There's
one bacteria that seems to be
particularly important. It's called
acromancia
mucinophila. Acromancia mucinophil. I'm
going to come back to the name in a
second. So this um imunotherapy cancer
therapy. I mean it's truly remarkable
what it can actually achieve in its best
form. Okay. But yeah only about 20% of
people are the kind of responders that
we wish we all would be, right? The
Jimmy Carters or my mother's for
example. And so um one of my colleagues
in Paris um Dr. Dr. Lance Sitbogal is an
iminooncologist. Okay. And she took 200
people that had different types of
cancers, breast, colon, pancreas, right?
And she um and they were all treated
with imunotherapy and of course only 20%
had the good response, the beneficial
response. The other one were so soy
response. Okay? And and she looked at
everything that made the difference
between responders and non-responders.
Right? That's a typical thing that an
analyst would do. What makes the good
one? what makes a bad one? What are the
differences? She could not find any
difference between the responders and
the non-responders except for one
bacteria. That one bacteria was
acrimancia mucus mucinaphil. The people
who responded it had it in their gut.
One bacteria and the people who didn't
respond to imunotherapy had a bad
outcome were missing it.
>> That's so interesting.
>> You're so crazy. Okay. So she took the
so she she replicated that in the lab
and found that if she had mice growing
cancers and she gave them imotherapy if
she gave them an antibiotic to wipe out
acromancia man the cancer just grew grew
grew grew. They didn't respond to the
treatment. If she put acromancia back in
their gut the tumors responded they
shrank shrank shrank shrank. It
disappeared. Amazing right? Um uh and by
the way she got the acromancia from
human patients. She put it back into the
mouse. So, all right. So, what does it
have to do with um how to boost
acromancia, right? Because it's very
sensitive. You have, if I were to give
you a Zpack, okay, to treat a
bronchitis, uh uh that would wipe out
acromancia. Your body will eventually
grow it back slowly but surely. But if
you had cancer and you're getting this
treatment, you cannot afford, you don't
have time. Time's not in your side,
right? So,
>> we cannot eat acromancia right now as a
as a supplement. There doesn't exist.
It's not a probiotic. Okay? um not yet.
The only thing that we can do is
actually grow acromancia. So we have to
be our own gardeners of our microbiome
to grow the acromancia so our immune
system is in good shape so that the
acromancy can talk to the immune system
so that that part of it in good shape to
respond to imunotherapy. How do you do
that? Well, it's all in the name. Okay.
Acromancia mucusil mucin. This bacteria
loves to grow in mucus. Loves to grow in
the mucus of the gut. Our gut normally
secretes mucus. So the more mucus we
have, it's like fertilizer. The more the
more acromancia will grow. So how do we
grow the mucus? Well, you can eat foods.
Pomegranate, pomegranate juice, the
elagitanins, natural chemicals and
pomegranate actually one of the few
things that can stimulate our gut,
natural gut, natural substance in our to
our gut naturally to secrete more mucus.
So you can grow back your acromancia. So
that's basically what we're doing now
with some of these cancer patients is
making sure before they get imunotherapy
that they're actually growing back their
acromancia. So when we were in our mom's
wombs, okay, and sperm met egg and
started to form a little ball of cells
that didn't look anything like a person
yet, but started to create little organs
and start to create shape. The first
organs that get created are blood
vessels. Our circulation is the first
thing that gets created. So our blood
supply, our circulation is very much a
part of who we are. And I mentioned that
we have 60,000 miles worth of blood
vessels. Just to give you a sense of how
extraordinarily big that is. If you were
to pull out all the blood vessels from
from you or me and line them up end to
end, that would form a thread um that
would go around the earth twice. Huge.
Okay, it is insane. Now, um our every
single cell in our body, every organ
require relies on just the right amount
of blood flow. So, they're getting fed
with oxygen and nutrients. Um uh if they
don't need more than just the right
amount and but if they don't have
enough, our body has to be able to grow
more. Okay, this having just the right
amount, I call it the Goldilocks zone.
So, Goldilocks, remember the the the
story? Um, you know, the bears went in
there and it's not too hot, not too
cold, not too hard, not too soft. Well,
our health defenses, including
angioenesis,
is exactly the same way. Not too much
and not too little, but just the right
amount. So, this just right zone exists
for our blood vessels, our stem cells,
our microbiome, our DNA kind of balance,
as well as our immune system. It's all
about homeostasis, the term you used
earlier. Just the right amount. Now,
that means our body knows how to grow
more when it's necessary. And then when
there's enough, it stops. And if there's
too much, it's kind of like a a
gardener, you know, that sees your lawn
over growing. It ms the lawn, just mows
it right back down till it gets to the
right height. Okay? Our body's health
defenses when they're working at their
best is like a perfectly manicured lawn.
Not too much, not too little, just the
right amount to be able to to to go
around like playing like rounds of golf
on a perfect course. Now, um what tumors
do is they hijack this process and so
they like a tumor is sitting on a golf
course and just grows extra weeds and
grass right just for itself. So that's
what gets targeted. Your body tries to
fight that off, but sometimes we need
some extra help for it. That extra help
can be a smart bomb drug that we um
designed to target those extra blood
vessels or we can help our body mow the
lawn by eating foods that have
anti-androgenic
or blood vessel mowing capacity. You'll
never be able to get rid of them all.
It's just back down to the body's set
point. So, what's an example of um a
drug that can actually do this? There's
monoconal antibodies that are designed
like smart bombs to take out tumor blood
vessels. But foods can actually do it
too. Now why can drugs and foods target
a tumor blood vessel and not take down
your aorta or the blood vessels feeding
your brain like your corateed artery?
It's because when we build healthy blood
vessels, we take our body takes great
care to construct them to be very very
strong. It's like building a skyscraper.
Okay, the architects and the contractors
and their craftsmen, they make
everything perfect, as perfect as they
can. But when a tumor does it, you know,
it doesn't it's not careful contractor.
It's like a lousy contractor. Just
throws it the the thing up. And so the
blood vessels that are grown are flimsy.
They're fragile. They're unstable. And
so think about, you know, a hurricane
like Eric and Ida sweep through the
area. And the strong, sturdy structures,
our healthy blood vessels are going to
stay up even when the wind is there. All
the ones that are not well constructed,
the wind blows them right down. And
that's why a tumor blood vessel is much
more vulnerable to either food or drug.
All the research, scientific research
has been done and the epidemiological
the public health research shows that
eating a plant-based mostly plant-based
diet that that's pretty broad. You know,
um uh fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts,
healthy oils, good for you. you should
eat most of mo mostly. That doesn't mean
and by the way plant-based could be
tricky because a lot of ultrarocessed
foods also have plant materials in it.
>> Processed soy, all kinds of other
things, all kinds of unhealthy oils made
from plants.
>> However, it's whole plant-based foods.
>> It's kind of stuff you'd find in a
grocery store or farmers market. Okay?
Like I would say mostly go for those.
Mostly go for those. Okay? Um uh seafood
has been shown to improve survival and
decrease the risk of death if you eat
two or three servings of of seafood.
Shell it could be fish or shellfish. Um
you get healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Two
to three servings per week. And the
amount you would eat uh which I write a
whole chapter about food doses.
You would eat is about three ounces. So
people like well I'm not a human scale.
I have no idea what three ounces is.
What I would say it's a lot less than
you think. It is a piece of fish about
the size of a deck of playing cards. You
can put it in your palm and it's about
yay. It's about as thick as a deck of
playing cards. Not that big a deal. And
you know um and and people who love
seafood can can get a lot of it that
way. Recently, there was an interesting
study that showed if you actually
increase your level of omega-3s by an
extra serving a week or two from
wherever you are with your starting
point, you can increase your longevity,
your survival by 4.7 years. So, an extra
serving of of of omega-3 rich seafood,
you increase your survival by lifetime
survival by 4.7 years. Now, you can get
if you're a vegan or a vegetarian, you
can get omega-3s from plant-based foods.
So, chia seeds, flax seeds, some of the
nuts, you can get those as well. But
what in plant-based foods, you get a
different kind of substrate to make your
omega-3s. So, you got to eat a lot more
of it. So, you know, um I I I like
diversity. So, um plant whole
plant-based foods, seafoods, if you
actually eat fish. Um if you don't,
explore it if it's not for some ethical
reason. Um, and then you know, look, uh,
and dairy, by the way, you know, when it
comes to food and health, there's no
universals, okay? Some dairy products,
you know, like honestly cheeses are good
for the microbiome because many
traditionally made cheeses, not in large
quantities. They've got saturated fats
and a lot of salt, but some cheeses
actually have lactobacillus and other
healthy gut bacteria that we can use as
a probiotic food. Yogurt, a dairy
product, probiotic food. And so I'm all
about the science. Wherever the science
takes me is where the evidence takes me.
There was a great American novelist
named El Dotoro and he had this great uh
quote. He once said, "Writing, he's a
novelist, writing is like driving at
night. Um you can't see beyond your
headlights, but you can make the whole
trip that way." And that's what science
is like. You just can only see where
your headlights are going and you're
focusing on the evidence and ignoring
all the darkness that's out actually out
there. So, what about meat? Okay. Um, I
can tell you that most of the research
has been pretty convincing that if you
eat a lot of red meat, okay, which was
really only done for the last 70 years
or so, like, you know, since the 1950s,
um, before that, most societies didn't
have we're were not prosperous enough to
have a ton of meat around. Okay? And and
now we have an abundance of meat and
we've industrialized meat and all the
things that are not so good for us. But
um all the studies show that eating a
lot of red meat and all the studies have
shown that eating processed meats, we're
talking about our sausages and the
pepperonis and all kinds of other hot
dogs, all that kind of stuff. Um that's
been classified by the World Health
Organization as a carcinogen by the way,
processed meats. You know, once in a
while, especially if that's something
you really enjoy, don't worry about it.
Knock yourself out, enjoy it, but do not
do it all the time. And if you can cut
it down or cut it out, more power to
you, better for you. And so this whole
idea about, you know, life is for the
living. Got to enjoy our how we do
things. You know, some things we enjoy
aren't that good for us. You know, some
people like to roll down the windows or
take the top down and drive really fast
on a on a road faster than the speed
limit. Just don't do it all the time
because one of these times you're going
to actually get into an accident, right?
And so I think that idea of moderation,
but if you're informed by science and
you can actually then listen to your
body, if you feel like crap after eating
something, don't go for it. Don't eat it
the next time or eat less of it. The the
science is just so rich at this point in
time in history that you know, anybody
that wants to get into food as medicine,
as a science, not as a trend, but as a
real science, has a huge future ahead of
them.
>> Hey, if you like that video, then you're
going to love this one.
Check it out.