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Language: en
it it's quite a radical statement you
just made instead of chasing disease
you're trying to think about the common
denominators of health and it's not
something we learned about in medical
school how many of us took that class
creating Health 101 I mean it didn't
exist in class right and and so your
your framework is is a radically
different one it is so unusual in
medicine how did you actually sort of
have that Insight because that's a
that's a pretty big shift from like wait
a minute I don't want to focus on
treating all these 70 diseases I want to
find out the common things that are
underlying them that connect the dots
and pull everything together to allow us
to actually uh create health and as a
side effect the diseases either get
better improve or maybe go away entirely
well look most of us actually don't
think too much about our health when
we're going around you know getting as
we're younger growing up going leading
careers Etc starting families but in
fact you think about health when you
lose it right so that's basically what
we see as doctors when we see our
patients they're concerned when they've
lost their health and and it seems to me
that if we can help more people stay
healthy but really use science not
guesswork not conjecture not um soap
boxing and and I think this is where
science comes in uh you and I have
talked about this before there is good
hard science that can help us understand
the body and yes we were not taught this
in medical school but we should be
because the science of health is really
the future of medicine it's it's it's
really powerful and that's what
functional medicine is and coming from
your perspective you know we've come out
of from the clinical perspective which
is you know we're seeing these common
things we we try to create Health by
changing the diet by optimizing the
microbiome by improving the immune
system by improving your energy and your
mitochondria helping you detoxify
balancing your hormones you know dealing
with your lifestyle factors these are
the ways in which we create health and
it's it's pretty rudimentary I would say
I mean functional medicine is is awesome
clinically but we're just at the infancy
stages of really understanding this and
you come at it from the deep science
point of view and and that and you come
to the same conclusion
which is pretty awesome so let's talk
about uh some powerful new drugs uh that
have been discovered that can affect
angiogenesis and that actually may be
able to reverse many diseases now these
drugs are are are things maybe people
have heard about like kakin genestin
ratol lycopene osip pentanoic acid
glucosinolates isoionic
tannins curcumin met quinone beta kryo
zanthin brassinin camarin or Organo suur
Al Al disulfide this are amazing drugs
and U for those of you who don't
understand what I just said what I was
talking about was green tea and soy and
red wine and grapes and tomatoes and
fish oil and broccoli and oranges and
berries and and pomegranate and curcumin
and green leafy vegetables and papaya
and Chinese cabbage and AR arti jokes
and garlic right these are the new drugs
and you write about this and there's a
beautiful article you wrote it was in
Journal of oncology called tumor
angiogenesis as a target for dietary
cancer prevention now most people are
going to have trouble reading it I I
certainly was was dense for me but what
you did was you mapped out the Deep
science around the power of all these
different compounds and foods to help
reverse
disease so as a scientist you know
what's nice about science is that it is
um truth and we follow truth wherever it
goes and basically the route that I took
is um there's a lot of research that
leads to the discovery of new um drugs
by the pharmaceutical Biotech Industry
I've been there done that still involved
with it actually and it's because we
have more sick people that need better
treatment so that's valuable by itself
it's not either or it's not either or
and you know I'm certainly not one of
those doctors that have sort of rejected
Western biom medicine like it's very
important when you're sick to help save
lives on the other hand what I realize
is that there's a missing opportunity
and and that opportunity is what
everybody sort of intuitively knows
which is that the things that we put
into our body can affect our body and
they affect our cell and food as
medicine is really not a New Concept
it's an old concept and if you go other
cultures whether you're in Europe or you
Asia indigenous uh peoples uh from all
around the world they looked at food as
part of their health keeping scorecard
and they viewed food as a precious
substance not you know they didn't just
eat to survive they ate because they
were doing something good for themselves
we've lost a little bit of that and the
research behind it actually resurfaces
this in a new way that I think that we
can all get behind which is not in fact
it's not really just about the food it's
about how our body responds to the food
how does our body protect its health and
that's what the health defense systems
are all about it's true I remember uh
traveling once in Hong Kong and I went
out to dinner with this guy I think he
was part of maril linch I gave a talk
and we had this extraordinary meal and
everything in the meal was medicine
intentionally medicine and I wrote a
article about it called eating your
medicine food is pharmacology and then I
went through all the dishes we had and I
went through the research and I was like
well gko nuts do this and you know this
thing does that and it was a said
amazing kind of uh experience because I
realize that in this culture we don't
think of food that way and yet that's
that's foundational for creating Health
well that's why I wrote e to be disease
uh is that you know while I do explain
the science behind things I actually lay
out more than 200 different foods that
are actually some of them are real
crowd-pleasers or the things that we
actually know that are supported by
science and then figure out how can you
incorporate that because in fact um it
becomes natural to pick the things that
are good for you it's that's something
we've L that we can bring put back into
our everyday lives and for me when I uh
go out to eat or when I prepare a meal
that's what I'm doing I'm actually
assembling things that I know are good
for me absolutely that's why this show
is called The Doctor's Pharmacy with an
f f a r m a c y because that's where you
get your drugs I go to the drugstore
which is the grocery store and that's
where I find all the drugs and I
literally don't know as much as you
perhaps about this because even though
I've been doing for a long time but I
look at all the vegetables and all the
foods now I I didn't know Razer clams
we're going to get into that are so
beneficial I don't know exactly know why
but I love them but you can find out
what are the foods that have various
components that can activate Health
right and how do you eat more of those
things well I think it makes it it's
about having knowledge uh and then
making it second nature right so when we
heat up something on a stove we know
it's going to be hot we don't burn
ourselves so we actually avoid certain
behaviors when we go onto the sun we
know to put on sunscreen it becomes
second nature I think think food as
medicine is something that can become
second nature you have to be exposed to
the basic information and you know the
science is important because that's what
makes it real but at the end of the day
is you know this is something that
school teachers should be teaching kids
that at coaches should be teaching
athletes that doctors should be um
telling patients and so and I think
family members should be uh sharing
among themselves this is the type of
conversation that should be having at
every holiday meal uh in every
schoolyard and and I I think that it's
not so foreign it's informed by science
and we can all do it it's true no the
other thing I I heard you say was at
this conference was you showed a slide
around immunotherapy for those you know
what immunotherapy is is essentially a
way
to um get cancer by activating your
immune system rather than giving a
poison or cutting it out or burning it
out right you literally give something
that's going to help your immune system
get into gear and be like Pac-Man and
eat up the cancer uh and you showed a
slide and and who would have thought of
this but you showed a slide that people
who respond to the KE this
immunotherapy and and these can erase
cancers actually have a certain type of
bacteria in their microbiome in their
gut that makes them respond to the to
this immunotherapy whereas those who
don't actually die and and this bacteria
is called acrania it's one of the you
know thousands and thousands of species
of bugs in your gut and you shared a
story if I may about your mom yeah who
had basically metastatic IND demetrial
cancer which uh was treated with
immunotherapy and was successful but you
added certain things to the treatment to
to make sure that her acromania were
good like pomegranate and cranberry and
these polyphenols which come from food
that seem to be powerful Growers of
these great bugs in your gut so how do
we how do we sort of begin to integrate
these ideas into how we treat these
diseases are we giving everybody like a
a smoothie with all these things in it
and helping them with their
immunotherapy yeah well let's take a
step back to say first of all uh our
bodies are working hard every single day
from the time we're born to our last
breath to defend our health and these
defense systems and I've identified five
of them in uh my book uh is and Genesis
stem cells our microbiome our ability
for our DNA to protect our body protect
itself and our body and our health and
our immunity and all these defense
systems work together in concert they're
like our security force in our body
they're patrolling they're watching out
they're making sure everybody's safe
inside and everything is functioning
smoothly and when you have a disease
like cancer for example and it's not
just cancer it's heart disease it's
diabetes it's Alzheimer's it's obesity
um but for specifically for cancer it's
really you know um a few bad guys snuck
in and they figured out how to get
around the security Force you know it's
sort of like you know TSA slip let
somebody slip by and now we have to try
to chase it so in the old days for
cancer what we used to do is just say
well let's you know um take a drug- like
chemotherapy and wipe it out and you
know that that's a blunt instrument
approach by trying to take something
poison to kill something that you want
to kill by the way the rest of you gets
poison too well that's right and so
basically it's it's a toxic approach to
uh uh uh to something that we don't
really it's one bad actor but we don't
want to poison the entire uh body we've
now changed our minds about this and
this is really what's making the
impossible possible we' realized that
it's not about drugs killing cancer it's
about our bodies taking care of itself
and wiping out those cancers so
immunotherapy which is what you were
just bringing up is an entirely new
approach of enhancing our own body's
defenses we don't use drugs to kill the
cancer we allow our bodies we give
medicines that allow our bodies to kill
kill the cancer so immune systems can
find the cancer and reverse the disease
back to health that's what we've always
been dreaming of and it's here but
here's a problem only about 20% of
people actually have this incredible
response to immunotherapy sometimes a
few a little fewer sometimes a little
bit more but the response when it
happens is exactly what we want dramatic
right your Mom it just my mom metastatic
cancer and in 30 days she had no cancer
okay and never had
chemotherapy what about what makes the
difference between somebody who responds
like that and who doesn't respond like
that right that's a that's one of the
Mysteries out there and this is exactly
where we need to consider more than the
typical lab tests that doctors run we
need to think more holistically and one
of the things we know is that our
microbiome our healthy gut bacteria
communicates talks to our immune system
and it and we need our gut bacteria to
help coach our immune system to do the
right thing including getting cancer so
a study done by a colleague of mine Dr
luron zal uh she's in Paris she's a
imuno immunologist who uh works with
cancer patients she looked at 249 cancer
patients who were receiving immune
therapies and separated them into people
who responded versus people who did not
respond this by the way was published in
the Journal of science which is one of
the most prestigious yeah journals and
what she found was that the difference
between people who responded and didn't
respond was one bacteria unbelievable
acrania right so well isn't that easy
you can just maybe take some probiotics
with acrania except that you can't no
there's no acromania probiotic but you
can feed them but you can feed it and
you can actually change your gut to make
your body grow acromania and the way to
do this is the food as medicine solution
so turns out that pomegranates and
cranberries actually have elit tannins
um but pomegranates especially and that
natural chemical in pomegranate juice
and what's been shown is that just 1 8 O
cup of real pomegranate juice not the
flavored stuff but the real stuff
actually over the course of a week or
two will actually help change the inside
of our guts so that that bacteria likes
to grow that bacteria grows in the
lining of the gut talks of the immune
system and that makes the cancer
immunotherapy work better yeah and then
then there's other things too like like
you said cranberries and and green tea
many things can actually feed our
microbiome right so plant-based Foods
you know I think it's completely
accepted now it's not challenged that
plant-based nutrition is actually U the
healthy approach to life I mean it's
kind of eating more plants e more plants
right but it's not just we're not just
feeding ourselves we're feeding our
bacteria yeah right so we're feeding the
you know 37 trillion bacteria in our
bodies and after we extract all the
stuff that we need on The Human Side
we're leaving you know the the leftovers
for the bacteria and this is the fibers
this is the bioactives and what's
amazing is our bacteria can take some of
this fiber and they digest it so it's
kind of like giving a sculptor a block
of wood and say do something with it so
the bacteria our gut microbiome takes
that block of wood and starts making
sculptures there's like these things
called short chain fatty acids or scaas
that our microbiome make and it turns
out that these short chain fatty acids
these little tiny particles that they
make from our food that that we feed
them they're like the fats that fuel the
gut lining help they do that they're
anti-inflammatory they boost our immune
system they help regulate our blood
sugar they lower our cholesterol help
cancer risk they and and they also
suppress cancer risk and they um prevent
blood vessels from growing into cancer
as well all tied together and this is
you know at at the end of the day why we
need to take our food seriously yeah