Leading Cancer Researcher: They’re Ignoring My Research, Cancer Patients Must Know This!

Key Takeaway

Cancer and chronic disease stem from damaged mitochondria—the cell's energy powerhouses. When these organelles can't efficiently produce energy through oxygen, cells revert to ancient fermentation pathways, becoming dysregulated and greedy for glucose and glutamine. Protect your mitochondria through traditional lifestyles: eat whole foods, exercise regularly, manage stress, sleep well, and avoid processed carbohydrates and environmental toxins. The solution isn't more treatment—it's prevention through metabolic health.

Episode Overview

Professor Thomas Seyfried presents a revolutionary perspective on cancer as a mitochondrial metabolic disease rather than a genetic one. He explains how damage to mitochondria—the cell's energy-producing organelles—forces cells to revert to ancient fermentation pathways, causing dysregulated growth. This framework explains why traditional societies have lower cancer rates and offers hope through metabolic management strategies focused on protecting mitochondrial health through diet, lifestyle, and environmental factors.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Leading Cancer Researcher: They’re Ignoring My Research, Cancer Patients Must Know This! from Diary of a CEO. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

You have an envelope in front of you there. It's says confidential on the front of it. What is in that envelope? It's a paper that's under embargo because the world thinks it's going to be very important. And it's going to be a lead article in the Frontiers in Science because this is a strategy to manage cancer effectively. And we have a lot of evidence to keep these people alive a hell of a lot longer. We have given hope to the hopeless. And you have a perspective on treating cancer and other metabolic diseases that others don't have.

Yes, but the problem is the field doesn't understand what I'm saying about the the origin of cancer. So, everything comes back to the mitochondria. And all chronic diseases and cancer are the result of damage to this. And the science is telling us this. But the field of cancer has yet to accept it. That is a tragedy. Are you pissed off about this? Well, who wouldn't be? There's 1,700 people a day in this country dying from cancer. That's 70 an hour. And it gets worse every single year.

When is the people going to wake up? So, give me a prescription of how I should live my life to keep my mitochondria healthy. mitochondria healthy. mitochondria healthy. So, it all comes down to what you do to maintain the health and vitality of the mitochondria that reduce the risk. But we are now in a new environment where we have massive amounts of highly processed carbohydrates, inactivity, emotional stress, poor sleep habits, and you chronically damage this organelle. And then if you look at the domestic dog, cancer is the number one killer of the domestic dog.

But wolves in the wild rarely have cancer. But the wolf is out running around eating natural foods. Yet the dog is in an apartment somewhere. Gets a dog walker once a day, right? And the next thing the dog is obese and full of cancer. of cancer. of cancer. And I want to give people actionable things that they can think about. So, this is what's really important. This is a bioenergetic roadmap to health. This is what we call the zone of prevention. It's very hard to get cancer or chronic diseases when you're in these zones.

zones. zones. So, let's talk about that. So, This is super interesting to me. My team gave me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe. And some of you have told us, according to this, that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So, favor to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button if you are regular viewer of this show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number.

So, if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you. Do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every single month we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you want to hear.

I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of the Diary of a CEO and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show. [singing] [singing] [singing] Professor Thomas Seyfried. What is it that you've committed your life to doing, Thomas? Well, we're right now committed our lives to managing cancer effectively uh without toxicity. Which is based on based on the science that I and other others have done in this field. You have a perspective on treating cancer and other metabolic diseases that others don't have.

The mainstream, should I say? Oh, yeah. Well, mainstream doesn't have it for sure. But, it's based on science. I mean I mean I mean I'm my work is based on what Otto Warburg, the famous German scientist, said from the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. He clearly showed that cancer was a mitochondrial metabolic disease. What does that mean, mitochondrial metabolic disease? metabolic disease? metabolic disease? Okay. It means that the origin of the disease resides in the organelle called the mitochondrion. It's it's in the cytoplasm of the cell.

It used to be called, still is, the the powerhouse of the cell. It gives the cell the energy. I think we have a mitochondrion. Can one of my team bring in a mitochondrion? Well, this is you have a a mitochondrion here. Oh, here we go. You've got one each, yeah? Yeah, well, see, this is the little organelle that you see it looks like a bean shape, but it's actually a tubular network. These are tubes. Ah. Ah. Ah. And they respond dynamically inside the cell to uh both internal uh activities as well as external activities.

So, you have to realize that at the time of conception uh all of the mitochondria for the developing embryo are in the cytoplasm from the mother. mother. mother. The cytoplasm? The cytoplasm? The cytoplasm? The mitochondria are not in the nucleus, they're in the cytosol. Oh, outside of it. Uh outside of the nuc- but in the cell at body itself. So, So, So, all of the mitochondria, they determine our destiny. They will determine how long you will live on the planet if if you don't have an an unfortunate accident or something like this.

They have an expiration date. Different species die at different times. You don't find people living 400 years. Y- y- y- mice live about 2 and 1/2 years. Elephants live, you know, as long as we do or whatever. But, that's all determined by this organelle. So, you can see I have wrinkles and this kind of thing. This is from living on the planet. And this is from wear and tear on this organelle, which allows us to make energy efficiently. So, when this organelle starts to falter with age, uh you die.

You die from old age. This organelle has to be protected and respected if you would like to live a normal lifespan. normal lifespan. normal lifespan. But, in diets and lifestyles and way we are today, we we we we damage this organelle. And this organelle then can present itself damage to this organelle, which is a tubular network inside the cell. But, let me say something else. It not only controls the internal environment of the cell, it also controls the neighboring cells, the liver neighborhood, the lung neighborhood, the colon neighborhood, the brain neighborhood, the glial neighborhood, the neuronal neighborhood, but they're all come from the same origin in that cytoplasm.

And they determine the overall metabolic health of your body. It's a systemic. They communicate communicate communicate uh with each other across cells, across tissues. I'll tell you, this organelle controls controls controls [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] a lot of what goes with that nucleus does. It tells the cell when to divide. It tells the cell cell when to slow down. down. down. It's kind of like a brain, but also like an engine room. It's kind of like that. Certainly Certainly the brain part of it is really mysterious uh in the sense of of how it controls the destiny of the cell in the body.

body. body. So, sickness So, sickness So, sickness sickness, disease, cancer what do we know about the role that this little thing plays in these chronic diseases and illnesses and cancers that so many people suffer with? Yeah, well, this is the organelle that becomes damaged. becomes damaged. becomes damaged. Um and it can be damaged in many, many different ways. Uh for cancer is what we [clears throat] have spent a lot of our time um time um time um and now we've moved into the whole chronic disease issue because each each chronic disease chronic disease chronic disease can have different manifestations of ill health to the mitochondria in a particular population of cells.

But, in the case of cancer, which is what we call the most serious of the chronic diseases, creating the most trauma, uh the most emotional distress. But, we have clearly shown based on on many, many works uh that uh multiple things from our environment can damage this organelle in a particular population of cells in a particular organ. For example, when you talk about carcinogens, carcinogens, carcinogens, it's a chemical that causes cancer. How does that chemical cause cancer? It damages the proteins and the lipids. These little squiggles are delicate internal membranes.

They They contain the proteins and the lipids that allows us to generate energy when we breathe. Okay, you're breathing, I'm breathing. I take in oxygen. Oxygen serves as a kind of a final acceptor for electrons that allows ATP allows ATP allows ATP to come out of this little and don't forget it's a tubular network. And ATP is the energy currency. It's the chemical energy currency. It allows us to enzymes to work. It allows allows all the metabolic machinery inside of a cell to work optimally. So just to play this back just so I'm clear.

clear. clear. Oxygen comes in cuz I breathe in. I then eat food. In in that mitochondria, it does a process and it spits out ATP as the energy. the energy. the energy. Well, and the waste products of good energy metabolism would be CO2 and water. So, when we burn gasoline in an engine of a car, we break down the octane, the carbon hydrogen bonds in an octane and it we have an internal explosion that drives pistons. Okay, the exhaust is a lot of waste products from breaking down.

The we're doing the same thing inside the cell. We're combusting carbon hydrogen bonds. And that combustion of carbon hydrogen bonds is a graded process. So, it's not an immediate explosion. It's a you're breaking down the carbon hydrogen bonds in a very precise way producing ATP which then drives the entire machinery of the neurons and the rest of the body. the body. the body. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. It can respond dramatically to energetic stress, emotional stress. Anyway, I gave you an example of a carcinogen. Uh intermittent hypoxia, like people who have sleep apnea, they stop breathing for 30 seconds or more in that general and then they that creates ROS, r o s.

And that's what carcinogens do, ROS. These are called reactive oxygen species. They damage those delicate membranes. And then what happens if it's too acute, too acute, too acute, too stressful, the whole cell will die. The cell loses its energy and we get uh apoptosis or necrosis and cell death. But, if it's gradual, chronic, over years, months, years, this organelle loses its ability to produce sufficient energy, but energy, but energy, but the the cell compensates, interestingly enough, by using these ancient pathways, heirlooms of our evolutionary past.

evolutionary past. evolutionary past. So, So, So, um because all life on the planet evolved in an oxygen without oxygen in the dark, uh these cells grew like crazy. There was no There were single cells. They were unbridled proliferation and all this kind of stuff. They didn't have mitochondria. They had bacteria. And the bacteria, which this organelle came from, was a fusion between one cell uh that had a nucleus and and was was fermenting was fermenting was fermenting through the cytoplasm. And this bacteria, which is the mitochondria, came in.

And now you have two different forms of energy. You have um the energy in the cytoplasm, the ancient fermentation, and then you have this new form, which can take in oxygen and generate energy much, much more efficiently than the aerolumic. Listen, one of our big discoveries, if you can believe it. But you see that space in the middle there? there? there? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's called the matrix. And that's where the Krebs cycle, the TCA cycle, which breaks down the food that we eat. But they have an ancient part of a fermentation mechanism inside because before oxygen came, every all life forms were fermenters.

They They produced energy without oxygen because there was no oxygen. We had to wait for those bacteria to make oxygen through a photosynthetic process. But all organisms were fermenters in the beginning. beginning. beginning. After this organelle came in and was able to take in oxygen, make energy really, really quick. But in that matrix, they have uh in the cycle, there's a little pathway there pathway there pathway there that makes energy without oxygen from the evolutionary past. So, we have it in the cytoplasm of the cell because they can use they can ferment in the cytoplasm.

But this organelle our big discovery big discovery big discovery with the work of of Christos Chinopoulos from Semmelweis University. He's the world leader on that little pathway. When this organelle becomes impaired impaired impaired these ancient pathways of energy through fermentation arise. Okay, they they try to replace the lost energy from the efficiency of this organelle. That space starts throwing out ATP from glutamine. It's another fermentation fuel. fermentation fuel. fermentation fuel. And and it's making it's making ancient energy in the sophisticated organelle that was that was that that evolved to make efficient energy.

So, let me let me tell you. So, you can you asked me what about damaging this organelle and what happens. If the damage to oxidative phosphorylation phosphorylation phosphorylation What does that mean? Which means energy through oxygen [clears throat] [clears throat] [clears throat] is too acute the cell will die. Cyanide is a perfect example of this. You take a mouse or a rat or a person and you drink Kool-Aid, the cyanide laced Kool-Aid, you die. Because what happens is that cyanide binds to the protein that's going to use oxygen for energy.

And the whole system shuts down. you basically. you basically. you basically. Yeah, you die instantly. Um and there are other things that can kill can kill quickly, azide and a variety of other chemicals. But for chronic diseases, it's usually it's usually it's usually not an acute stress on this organelle. It's it's a chronic stress. And in cancer, what happens in a particular tissue, whether it's bone, lung, bladder, brain they gradually compensate with these ancient fermentation pathways. So So this thing this organelle this organelle this organelle signals to the nucleus, I'm suffocating.

I'm not getting enough energy. Um So the nucleus turns on the transporters on the surface of the cell to bring in fuels that will elevate energy through what we call oxygen-independent mechanisms. This is an oxygen-dependent organelle. This gets most of its energy because we breathe all of our cells are using oxygen. And the CO2 that we're blowing out and the water that will be collected in the form of urine when you might might put might put might put other other other waste products in there. That's efficient metabolic homeostasis.

This organelle makes not only the cell but the whole body in a state of of metabolic homeostasis, where all systems are working at optimal efficiency. But with chronic disruption, uh smoking, uh smoking, uh smoking, uh lack of exercise, you can go right down the list of all of the different things that can elicit cancer. Any kind of carcinogens, microplastics, forever chemicals, uh uh uh uh uh glyphosate, and any of these kinds of things that would chronically damage uh the ability of this organelle to produce energy, viruses, oncogenic viruses, inflammation.

You have chronic inflammation. Any of those things damage this these sophisticated ability of this organelle to produce efficient energy. That's why That's why um uh the oncogenic paradox, which we solved. solved. solved. What's the oncogenic paradox? That was the paradox that was first put out by Albert Szent-Györgyi, a Hungarian [clears throat] [clears throat] [clears throat] scientist who received the Nobel Prize, I think, for vitamin C. He said He said he was very interested in cancer and living systems. living systems. living systems. He said there's a paradox.

He said We know multiple things in in environment can elicit cancer. We've identified these. Oncogenic viruses, chronic inflammation, carcinogens, intermittent hypoxia, rare rare germline mutations. He said, "We don't understand the common pathophysiological mechanism by which any of those provocative agents would elicit dysregulated cell growth, which is cancer." cancer." cancer." When you talk about cancer, what do people say? "What's cancer?" It's cell division division division out of control. It's dysregulated cell growth. growth. growth. This organelle This organelle This organelle determines when cells should divide and when they should not divide.

It regulates the destiny of the cell. So, what happens when this organelle becomes chronically impaired? It falls back on these ancient pathways, these or or or or these or or uh pathways that existed before oxygen came into the environment, where all the cells were dysregulated in the growth because they didn't have this regulatory system, which is the mitochondria coming from a from a bacteria. So, let me play that back to you in a way just so I, you know, make sure I understand. understand. understand. I I know it can be kind of deep.

Okay, so in this mitochondria here that I have in front of me, there is an ancient um because this came from a bacteria. a bacteria. a bacteria. a fusion of bacterias a long, long time ago. ago. ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That old bacteria about several billion years ago. used to be very selfish and just think about itself. It used to grow on its own and didn't communicate with anybody, had its own way of growing and multiplying that was really not um in cohesion with anything else.

That is still in there somewhere. somewhere. somewhere. And although now in its modern form, because there's been that fusion, it grows thinking about the wider organism, um when it becomes uh damaged, uh damaged, uh damaged, it falls back on that old selfish way of growing. And sometime and that's kind of what can cause cancers. So, if you if there's stresses on this, which could be all the cos- carcinogenic things you described, described, described, then sometimes this falls back on that prehistoric selfish way of growing where it doesn't think about the wider organism.

organism. organism. It's close. Um uh uh uh in in the sense of thinking, we don't know about that. We just know the consequences of what happens when it falls back on those ancient pathways. Now, here's the situation. People knew from what Otto Warburg said, "Cancer is a energy problem in the cell." cell." cell." This Why would the cells start to ferment and produce a massive amount of fermentation waste product, which is lactic acid, even in the presence of oxygen, 100% oxygen? They're still fermenting. Why? That shouldn't happen.

Uh when you and I hold our breath or have a heart attack, let me tell you something, this is really remarkable. And this is another piece of information that got us on this whole thing. When people have heart attacks, uh they stop breathing. The heart seizes. Okay, the bloodstream immediately fills with these fermentation waste products, which are lactic acid, lactic acid, lactic acid, and the other one, which we now know is succinic acid. Okay, wow. These two waste products. Now, if you don't start breathing in a short period of time, you're going to be dead.

Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. And you And what you die because the neurons in your brain cannot sustain this kind of fermentation energy for very long. very long. very long. As soon as you start your heart, you you give them cardiac massage and whatever, the guy's heart starts beating again, the lack the waste products of lactic acid and succinic acid go away. They disappear because you're breathing now. You don't need to ferment when you have oxygen in the environment. And it's And the mitochondria can can utilize the oxygen in the environment.

Cancer cells, too, Warburg said, "It's the weirdest thing. These cancer cells cells cells um um um continue to ferment even in 100% of oxygen. oxygen. oxygen. Why are they doing that? And he speculated that this organelle was damaged. damaged. damaged. Irreversible damage to the organelle happened in these cancer cells. He didn't have an electron microscope at the time. He didn't have the sophisticated tools that we have today. So, he projected that all on biochemistry. At that time, he was a biochemist and he said, you don't should not produce fermentation if you have oxygen should shut that off and these guys should return to a normal metabolic homeostasis.

And he said, that's because there's something there's something there's something irreversibly damaged in this organelle. So, a lot of people attacked him and they said, well, we don't have any evidence for that. Here here's the beautiful thing. Some cancer cells continue to take in oxygen and make ATP. Therefore, Warburg must be wrong. Uh-huh, we showed them that. We showed the cancer cell takes in oxygen, but it's not making energy through ATP in any great amount. It's using it for ROS, react- these radicals that further damage and cause the DNA mutations that everybody is chasing.

It's all downstream effects of damage. So, what does this mean So, what does this mean in simple terms? Cuz I know I'm aware a lot of my audience Well, it's it means I say, okay. So, so I have dysregulated cell growth. That's ultimately what the problem we're dealing with. dealing with. dealing with. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. We can't control how these cells are dividing. We're throwing all kinds of crazy stuff at them. Trying to poison or radiate, surgically remove them. We're trying to do everything to stop this dysregulated cell growth.

Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. So, when we look at this organelle under the micro under the electron microscope, we find these cristae are often missing. You have what they call ghost mitochondria. Got the shell, but nothing inside. Or if they're inside, they're all deformed. So, we know there's a foundational principle in biology, structure determines function. If the structure is abnormal, the function will be abnormal. This is known to all biologists except oncologists. They don't seem to understand that. What's an What's an What's an oncologist? oncologist? oncologist? Those are the people who study cancer.

So, what are you then? I'm a biologist. You're a biologist. Yeah. I mean, when we know that if the organelle is damaged, you're not going to be able to produce energy efficiently by oxidative phosphorylation. Okay? I think you're a bit further down the road, Thomas, than a lot of my viewers are. For me, hearing that there's this energy engine in my cells that and there's there's there's trillions of them or billions of them and they also communicate with each other and when this becomes stressed or hurt or damaged because of lifestyle choices that I make, energy production and efficiency will change and that could cause this to die or malfunction in some way.

That is a For me, I go I've got it. Okay. Okay. Okay. That's That's That's But that's a major step forward. And then how do we build upon that? Yes. Yes. Yes. Now we build upon that. Okay? So, so here's the situation. We've discussed cancer cells, all of them, that we have ever looked at, have defects in the number, structure, and function of that organelle. Okay? I have looked at I published that big paper where I spent over a year of my time going through the ancient the well, the early electron microscopy literature.

War Warburg didn't have that opportunity because that technology was not there for him. So, he speculated that based on the biochemistry. But I went back and I looked at these electron micrographs of mitochondria in various cancers and they're all damaged. There is few of them that risk cristae are gone. I worked with some of the best like Aristimendy Murillo was a world leader in beautiful electron microscopy of of cancer cells and you can see and and all the damage under his magnificently beautiful and one of we have a couple of papers.

But let me tell you something else, Stephen. In the cytoplasm, these organelles are also in contact with other cellular membranes like the endoplasmic reticulum. There's a lot of what we call organelles inside a cell. You have the nucleus, nucleus, nucleus, you have the mitochondrion, you you you have lysosomes. There is intimate contacts between some of the other membranes, mitochondrial associated membranes associated membranes associated membranes we see. And they're also abnormal when you look at them under the electron microscope. microscope. microscope. The ones it's talking to abnormal?

Yeah, the ones you can see. The the mitochondria are abnormal and the membranes that contact them are abnormal. And that intimate contact I'll get into the calcium signaling a little bit later, which controls the destiny of the cell. Why the cell is growing out of control? Well, well first of all, it's fermenting, okay? That means it's getting energy from sources other than oxidative phosphorylation. You can take a cancer cell and and treat it with cyanide or azide or in absence of and still living. It's still growing because it's not using using using the oxygen pathway.

They're not using the oxygen, falling back on on on oxygen independent mechanisms, which are called fermentation. fermentation. fermentation. So, I understand that to be that there's a malfunction in a mitochondria, which means that it no longer uses its oxygen pathway necessarily. pathway necessarily. pathway necessarily. sufficiently as it should. There's always some residual level. And it finds another way to make the energy, which is how it survives. Yes. Yes. Yes. And then it stops communicating with the rest of the cell. Well, it actually communicates with the nucleus nucleus nucleus to open up the floodgates to bring in the fuels that drive this fermentation energy.

energy. energy. It gets more and more greedy. It has to because you're you're taking a an organelle that produces energy highly efficiently, okay? Um like 34 to 36 ATPs. ATPs. ATPs. With oxygen. With oxygen. With oxygen. Uh with oxygen. And now you're you're trying to replace that with fuels that give you two uh ener two uh moles of energy. energy. energy. So, it's inefficient. Very. And then and then you get you get two out of the So, you're getting four. So, you you you have to take in in order to make up the efficiency, you must have a tremendous logistic.

You must have tremendous supply tremendous supply tremendous supply of of of of the fuels that will give us energy. Which are? Which are? Which are? Glucose, the sugar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the amino acid glutamine. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Our bodies are loaded with glutamine. That's the most abundant amino acid in our bloodstream. And evolution provided that for us because if we stop breathing, we use that fuel to keep the cells alive. We our gut is controlled by glutamine. Our immune system uses glutamine. What is glutamine?

It's an amino acid. Okay. Which we make from food. Yeah, which we can make from food through or they call essential and non-essential amino acids. Essentials are from that we must eat. We must have certain foods that provide these. Glutamine is considered a non-essential amino acid. amino acid. amino acid. It's an essential amino acid biochemically called non-essential because we can make it from sugar. But basically, it's the most abundant amino acid in our body. I think I get it now. Okay. Feed me back. Tell me Let me Let me test you.

There should be a button just down below here. And if it says subscribe, you're already subscribed. If it says subscribe bar, that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button. It helps to show more than you know. And according to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much. so much. so much. When we fall the mitochondria falls to that prehistoric pathway where it starts making energy in a really really inefficient way without using oxygen in the same way.

It starts relying now on glucose and glutamine um to produce that energy, which is a much less efficient source of energy. So it gets a bit more greedy and it needs much more to make the same amount of ATP, which is energy. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. So these a cancer cell can be very very greedy. It's not responding to oxygen in the same way. And they they're a bit more selfish. They start They start sort of multiplying without thought of the broader organism. broader organism. broader organism.

Yes. Yes. Yes. So the question I have is how does this happen? How does this malfunctioning of the mito- What is it that I've done? You know when I ask these questions these questions these questions Okay. Well, I Okay. It's because children can get these cancers right or an a 90-year-old can get the cancer and it doesn't appear to me that a 3-year-old has necessarily made life choices yet that could that could that could But as I said, when you consider forever chemicals chemicals chemicals uh that are in the environment uh things that we have that we use in our technologically advanced societies can get through the placental wall and get these into the child into these children's uh organs um you know, you have to put it together.

We usually it's a a constellation of things because don't forget I said carcinogens. Some of these carcinogens are fat soluble. Some of these carcinogens can get in and damage those during early stages of development. People always say, "How do you explain brain cancer in a in a 6-month-old baby?" 6-month-old baby?" 6-month-old baby?" Okay, it it what what did he he what what he he wasn't smoking and drinking and partying all the time, but but his the mitochondria in a population of cells in his brain became damaged.

And that damage then led to this disregulated cell growth. Because the organelle controls when cells should divide and not divide. And then and then where is the energy coming from? How do you take a highly you How do you take a highly sophisticated piece of an organelle and making energy so incredibly efficient? And now we're using energy so so so uh this organelle signals to the nucleus called mitochondrial stress response retrograde signaling. retrograde signaling. retrograde signaling. The nucleus acts as a respondent to what this organelle wants.

So, the nucleus then oncogenes which that you've heard a lot about they open the floodgates to bring in the glucose and glutamine that allow the cell to grow in a disregulated way. disregulated way. disregulated way. So So So we've as you said, they go back to these ancient fermentation pathways where there was no regulation because this organelle was not part of the problem. So, that's part of this situation. situation. situation. The regulation is So, is there what are the lifestyle factors that are causing this to drastically increase in the probability of this happening.

It's not necessarily what the person did or all cases, it's what the person was exposed to. exposed to. exposed to. Uh that could have elicited this. That's the oncogenic paradox. So uh we have shown uh that inflammation produces the cytokines cytokines cytokines when you have an inflammatory heat in inflammation. They inflammation. They inflammation. They They damage the ability of this organelle to make energy efficiently. Chronic inflammation is known to be a risk factor for cancer. Chronic inflammation. inflammation. inflammation. Intermittent hypoxia, carcinogens. What's intermittent hypoxia? Uh this like the sleep apnea, that kind of thing.

of thing. of thing. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Uh uh Warburg had clearly shown that intermittent hypoxia on cells would damage the efficiency of oxidative phosphorylation leading to a compensatory fermentation. So you have to compensate cuz let me tell you, if you don't compensate, you're dead. The cell The I mean, the cell dies. When we look at the populations around the world that have the most prevalence of cancer, of cancer, of cancer, it doesn't appear to be some of the countries like Niger, Gambia, Nepal consistently rank at the very bottom for cancer cancer incidence.

Conversely, high-income countries like Australia, New Zealand, and the United States have the highest rates of cancer. Why is that? It's because of our um technology. Uh we are still Paleolithic man. And uh our biology has allowed us to store energy efficiently efficiently efficiently uh uh uh because of times of famine. We are now in a new environment where we have massive amounts of highly processed carbohydrates, inactivity, emotional stress. We have poor sleep habits. You You pile all those together with availab- uh the exposure to carcinogens and whatever, and you chronically damage this organelle.

this organelle. this organelle. And uh uh in [clears throat] some organs, organs, organs, you can get breast cancer if it's a lung, if it's a whatever it is, that organelle becomes chronically damaged in some populations of cells in a particular particular particular in a particular organ. And and you can elicit dysregulated cell growth as the result of that. You know, what I find is and and that in the paper that we have with the chart, if you can keep your mitochondria healthy, cuz don't forget Paleolithic man, our ancestors from 500,000 years ago, ago, ago, or modern men, like you said in these countries, living according to traditional ways with minimal interference from modern diet and lifestyle issues, have lower amount of cancer in general.

And this is what Albert Schweitzer found, the famous humanitarian physician. He was specifically looking for cancer in African tribes, and he said, "Remarkably, it's extremely low." What What are these guys doing where Western society has a lot of cancer society has a lot of cancer and these Africans have living living according to the traditional ways. So, they have a lot of exercise, they're eating all organic foods, they're not under the same kind of stress or exposure to chemicals that modern societies have, and you find out you have very low cancer.

Like for example, dogs are all evolved from the wolf. Wolves in the wild rarely have cancer. The domestic dog, cancer is the number one killer of the domestic dog. What is the dog doing that the wolf? The wolf is out running around eating natural foods. The dog The dog is in an apartment somewhere, gets a dog walker once a day, right? And the next thing the dog dog is obese and full of cancer. So, it all it all comes down to what what you do to maintain the health and vitality of the mitochondria that reduce the risk, the risk, the risk, and that's what this chart I'll show you has.

What reduce the risk of damaging this chronically, okay? So, that can explain in large part why modern societies are struggling with chronic diseases, not only cancer, we have type 2 diabetes, we have obesity, we have high blood pressure, we have a whole even neuropsychiatric problems. If you can protect and keep this organelle healthy, you reduce risk. Now, people say, "Well, cancer has to be genetic because we have inherited genes that put us at higher risk like the BRCA1 for breast cancer and the Li-Fraumeni for a variety of other cancers." Our paper in this pile done by Bob Kaplan, uh he went through uh and looked at all the genetic risk factors.

Which paper is it? Um it's one of the ones published in oncology. oncology. oncology. But, none of these mutations are 100% penetrant, meaning that they're secondary risk factors. A primary risk factor would be every time that mutation is there, 100% of the people. Cuz I work in Tay-Sachs disease, I work in inborn errors of metabolism. Those mutations are 100% responsible for that condition. There's no gene mutation that's 100% penetrant. You have that gene, you're going to 100% get cancer. Uh most of them are are uh um are what they call incompletely penetrant.

penetrant. penetrant. So, what does that tell us about the nature of nature of nature of Well, it tell And then we went back But, Bob did is he went back and he looked at what every one of those gene mutations in some way disturbs the efficiency of oxidative phosphorylation in that organelle. In the mitochondria? In the mitochondria. We we looked at We have all the evidence, all the the risk factors. factors. factors. All the genetic Just the the Just the front page there. I wasn't going to show you the hard data, but you guys So, anyway, the all of them damage this the efficiency of energy through through through this organelle.

So, that's like carcinogens, that's like um viral infections. The viruses that that hepatoma and papilloma, they they their their products will go in here and damage it, or they will replicate inside this organelle, screwing up the efficiency, causing a compensatory fermentation, causing the disregulated cell growth through abnormal calcium signaling, causing cells to no longer be responsive to their neighbors. Is that clear? If I can make you understand this, we can make everybody understand this. this. this. Yeah, so the the reason I spent a lot of time asking why and asking for clarification is because when I do the show, I then go out into the real world and I meet the people that listen.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the groups of people that listens are young offenders. And when I went and visited them, I pointed at the episodes that I thought would help them. And a young one of the young offenders said to me, "I can't listen to that episode cuz you the words you used were too big." too big." too big." And I remember thinking to myself Okay, I then I get that all the time, but guess what? Now we have AI. And you can take the statements and put it into AI, right on the and they'll it'll it'll it'll dumb it down for you.

Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. So so that's a tool that we previously did not have. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. So so I use that all the time. I said, "When you hear me speak like this, don't think I'm arrogant. Don't think I'm just I I These are the terms that we use when you're part of the academy." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, but we can take those terms now and AI can do a wonderful job in in in synthesizing. Oh, yeah, I know what he's talking about now. But without that tool then it becomes like you said, "Well, I can't understand anything." Mhm.

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Big opportunity. I'm not kidding. Give it a try. I really want to just make sure I tick off the box of um cause factors. So, you mentioned stress. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. You mentioned sleep. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. I currently don't have cancer. That's why I'm on my good forbid. Um but I but I want to do everything I can to prevent the probability. And I from what I've understood, that means protecting my mitochondrial function Yes. Yes. Yes. by living a lifestyle where I'm not creating this sort of like crazy oxidative stress on the mitochondria.

Right. Right. Right. So, what give me a prescription of how I should live my life to keep my mitochondria healthy. mitochondria healthy. mitochondria healthy. Well, that's why we developed the glucose ketone index calculator, the first biomarker tool that can allow people to know the level of health in their mitochondria. Because um when you shift from carbohydrate fuel to lip- lipid fuel What's lipid fuel? Fat. Fat. Fat. So, ketones? So, ketones? So, ketones? Ketones are a water-soluble breakdown product of fatty acids. [clears throat] [clears throat] [clears throat] Okay?

So, we store adipose tissue. We store fat. Which is the belly fat? Uh Uh Uh all over. We have fat in our On the outside. Yeah. So, on the outside. That was there because as a species we had to survive in the most harsh environments. And we were um food was not always there. So, we had to survive all kinds of famine, all kinds of absence of food. Our bodies are so our it's a machine that was honed over millions of years to be super efficient.

So, glucose is gold. Sugar. Okay? You either burn it or you can store it as fat. as fat. as fat. Okay? That's that's the key. But when you have you're not bringing in sugar, that stored fat now moves into the bloodstream, goes to the liver. It's like taking a branch and putting it in a chopper. chopper. chopper. And you outcome these little soluble ketone bodies. They're breakdown products of long-chain fatty acids. They can replace sugar for the brain, for the muscles, for most other cells in the body except erythrocytes.

But they can replace replace replace they can replace the energy of glucose. Okay? Okay? Okay? So, So, So, uh and that's how we evolved. But we're now in an environment where we have massive amounts of highly processed carbohydrates. carbohydrates. carbohydrates. And we And we And we we don't want to pee them out unless you have diabetes or something. So, we store them as fat. So, we have an obesity epidemic as the result of our evolutionary ability to store energy which kept us alive as a species.

Because if we were unable to store the fat in 500,000, we would have all been extinct. You and I had conversation would never exist. We would never have existed as a species, except for our ability to store energy. And we burn energy efficiently in these organelles. So, this is all a very highly efficient machine. So, when we lose that ability, when we have so much energy in the environment, stress, no exercise, all this, we can store more and more fat. We produce an produce an produce an an environment that's very damaging to this organelle.

this organelle. this organelle. Well, say that again. So, how does stress impact that? Stress elevates corticosteroids. When you're under stress, you get into a fight, get into an argument, or you're stressed out by business deal going bad, whatever. Corticosteroids whatever. Corticosteroids whatever. Corticosteroids elevate elevate blood sugar, contributing to contributing to contributing to systemic inflammation. It's okay for short period of time to be pissed off at something, but it's the chronic stress, the chronic like looking at the cell phone, doom scrolling, all this kind of crazy stuff, while you're eating the big Twinkie.

Doom scrolling, eating Twinkies, not moving. All of this creates creates creates stress on this organelle in some population of cells. It makes it work harder. It's damaging because you produce reactive species that damage the efficiency of this organelle to produce energy effectively. energy effectively. energy effectively. And that either will kill the cell gradually if it can't compen- use compensatory fermentation, or pre- predispose you to cancer. So, either way, it's unhealthy. So, we have chronic disease. Cancer is the number one big dog in the chronic disease world.

I mean, it's the one that people fear the most. Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, you know, dementia. All of these are part of damage to this organelle in one way or another. And like I say said, for Parkinson's disease, when that organelle gets damaged, the cells of the substantia die. They are incapable of compensating with fermentation, so they up and die. Cancer is very rare in neurons of the brain. Neurons, the glial cells of the brain form these brain tumors mostly. But, neurons [clears throat] can't compensate with fermentation, so they die.

So, you you either get compen- compensatory ancient fermentation leading to disregulated cell growth, which we call cancer, or we get cell death leading to chronic diseases. What about sleep then? What's going on with sleep that's causing Sleep is a way we can restore the energy efficiency of the mitochondria. If we're well slept. If we have good sleep, yeah. You know, everybody feels good when you have a good night's sleep. Your body feels rejuvenated because you're not you're not stressing out. You're reducing the ability of this organelle to manage the the the the metabolic environment.

Uh if you're up all night and you're and you're like stressed out and you're never giving this organelle in a particular cell in a particular part of the organ of the body, you know, you you get neuropsychiatric problems, you can get digestive problems, you can get cancer, you can get type 2 diabetes. You have a whole and we put it in the paper there all the different stress all the different things that can chronically uh or acutely damage oxidative phosphorylation. phosphorylation. phosphorylation. So, sleep basically gives the mitochondria a little bit of a break.

Yes. It's a it's a it gives your whole body a break. Let's be honest. So, so, but you you pile those things on together. together. together. Lack of exercise Our ancestors, what do you think our ancestors You know how hard it is to run down and kill a big buffalo or a a woolly mammoth? I mean, you're you're exhausted after doing something. As a matter of fact, you chase these animals uh you separate and this is another thing was really interesting came out Israel uh I think it was last year.

They looked at the cavemen what they were eating. They were eating the the strongest members of the herd uh leading to the indirect extinction of these animals. They found out that if you can eat the strongest member of the herd, you'll get the vitality of that uh of that or or buffalo or elephant or whatever the hell they were eating because they knew the marrow and the and the the physiology of that of that organism at that point in its life could provide you with the strength that that had.

Now, when you eat the strongest members of the herd because you want to be tough, you're putting the old and the young at vulnerable to predators, leading to the extinction. And this is what a big paper came out of out of Israel. They looked at these cavemen what they were eating like 500,000 years ago whatever they were doing. So, humans indirectly caused extinction of other species species species in part in not all in part because they were eating the toughest guys in the herd. So, because they felt that if I eat those guys, I'm going to be strong, too.

And in a way they're right, but all of it has to do with the energy efficiency of your muscles, your brain, your ability to be resilient, endurance. endurance. endurance. I'm telling you these guys were chiseled. They They weren't dying from type 2 diabetes, cancer, right? Dementia. They were dying from infections and injuries and child mortality mortality mortality were mostly killing our Paleolithic ancestors. ancestors. ancestors. But when you bring your body back into a low glucose ketone, you're actually going back like you were and this is why we developed the glucose ketone index.

What is in that envelope in front of you? you? you? Well, this is it's a paper that's under embargo because they they think it's going to be world thinks it's going to be very important. And and it is. So, and what it is this is a um um um a way to keep that organelle healthy. So, this is a way to manage to manage to manage uh uh uh um energy efficiency in the body. And this hasn't been released yet? It hasn't been released. Okay, it's coming out.

It's a It's going to be a lead article in the Frontiers in Science. Science. Science. And not only that, we the paper the paper was written uh uh uh for the scientists and then the journal decided to make a second copy for they call young minds. So, letting kids that are like 8 to 12 or 14 years old synthesize it down and and and one of my colleagues said that's probably what most people will be reading. reading. reading. Cuz they don't want to know about the bioenergetics that actually goes on inside this organelle to explain why this chart means something.

And you've been working on this for some time? time? time? Well, I I I built the GKI. So, let me tell you the story. There was a woman uh an American woman, a lawyer, Trudy DuPont, who uh developed um uh a kind of a brainstem tumor. And after I wrote my book that book there, that's my only book. Anyway, Trudy Trudy wanted to use this metabolic therapy. She stayed alive much longer, over 10 years with this We kept the She eventually passed away, unfortunately. But so I was measuring cuz we knew that the tumor cells needed sugar to grow.

War- Otto Warburg showed that and many other people showed that. And they can't burn ketones because because the fatty you need a very efficient mitochondria to burn ketones for energy. Our normal cells can burn ketones for energy, and that gives us tremendous uh we can actually breathe lower oxygen, more energy if you have efficient if you can burn ketones efficiently in this organelle. But if the organelle is damaged, they can't use the ketones. They can't burn fatty acids or ketones, which stores lipid droplets. It's one of these big papers here.

These Uh Stephen, you can't believe how people misinterpret information. They see droplets of fatty acids in the cytoplasm, say, "You see the cancer cell needs all that fatty acid." No, they can't. It's there to protect them. If they try to burn it, they blow this up and die. So, there is a storage of fat. They can't burn fatty acids or ketone bodies. So, I knew cancer needed glucose, and I knew cancer couldn't burn fatty acids or ketones because this organelle is is broken. So, I'm measuring glucose and ketones independently in Trudy.

She's doing the finger prick thing, sending me the information back, and saying, "Oh, here's my glucose. Here's my ketones." Okay, so I have a a ketone glucose reader in front of me. If I put my blood on this strip, it tells me my glucose levels. If I put my blood on this strip, it tells me my ketone levels. Right. Right. But if you if you look at them independently, them independently, them independently, glucose is very volatile, very variable. And this is why I developed the glucose-ketone ratio.

Because Trudy had a parking spot that was for handicapped because she had a cane. Her brainstem glioma was preventing her from walking walking walking as effectively as normal people. So she somebody took her parking spot. She was So she ran upstairs and took her blood sugar and it was 186 mg per deciliter. It was very, very high. high. high. So and I know she was on a keto-ketotic diet. Uh and and she emails me and says, "I'm going to die. My cancer's going to grow faster.

What's going on?" She says, "My blood sugar is like 186 and you know it's supposed to be You told me it was supposed to be 60 or you know, 50, 65 or in that zone." She says, "So I said, "What's your ketone level?" "Oh, it's still, you know, like you just had 0.4 millimolar or I think it was 0.9 millimolar." millimolar." millimolar." I said, "Well, that didn't change, right?" "No, just the sugar changed." So I said to the students that were working with Josh Feinbaum, I said, "Josh, this this trying to measure these two independently of those is a You can't This is hard to figure out." So what we decided to do in millimolar cuz glucose comes out in milligram per deciliter, whereas ketones come out in millimolar.

So we had to convert glucose to millimolar and divide it by the ketone in millimolar and then you get a number that's not all over the world. It's very stable. stable. stable. So So we were able to because of Trudy, that one cancer patient, we developed the ratio of of this Then later on, we realized that this ratio is a statement of how healthy your mitochondria you are. So when you when you have these low ratio, you're in Paleolithic man. You're back in the zone where we didn't have chronic diseases because we didn't have damage to the organelle that would cause those diseases.

So, Paleolithic man, think where they getting their pastries? Where where they getting their cakes and sweets and all this other kind of They didn't have it. They weren't there because of of choice, they were there because of circumstance. So, our new and we learn Paleolithic man was always in some sort of a state of some ketosis because they wouldn't have food for periods. They were very active in their exercise. They had they didn't have chronic diseases, but they had other kinds of diseases. So, so then um my my my my student um Derek Lee, myself, and Christos Chanopoulos, we started to make a ratio chart.

Now, these are the numbers that you get when you divide your sugar by your ketones. your ketones. your ketones. Okay, so my sugar by my ketones. So, if I did my glucose measure now on this little reader here. let's see what your GKI is. Oh, you want me to do it? Okay. Okay, what you had a glucose you you had a ketone of 0.4 millimolar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, what was your sugar? I have I have I have So, we can divide we can do the divi- division right now and tell you what you have.

have. have. You can get these little uh ketone Oh, yeah, it's a KetoMojo. And you can also get them now for for uh Wow, this guy is skilled at doing this. I travel with one of these, believe it or not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I I have one all the time. Wow. Wow. Wow. 90. 90. 90. 90? Okay, so you have to divide You're not divide you have to divide You're not getting the Doesn't this give you the push button and give you the GKI right away cuz the new ones have it?

So, you have to divide 90 by 18 and you get a number. Uh five. Uh five. Uh five. Five. So, divide five by 0.4. 12.5. 12.5. 12.5. Okay, so here you are. 12.5, you're down here in the in the in the prevention zone. Uh nice. Uh nice. Uh nice. so so you This is where Paleolithic man mostly lived. mostly lived. mostly lived. Paleolithic man lived in the yellow green zones because they didn't have access to all of the things that would drive up your blood sugar and keep your key when your blood sugar goes through the roof your ketones are really low because insulin is now is now is now driving it up.

So So that's good. Um 12, huh? huh? huh? Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. So I I did the carnivore diet So I I did the carnivore diet for a week Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. uh eating big ribeyes. You like ribeye steak? steak? steak? Yes, of course. Okay. Ribeyes, bacon and eggs, lamb I I So I did it for a week. And um I was able to get down to 10. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. And I could get lower but I was loving the ribeye so much I ate too much of it, right?

You have to be have some level of discipline. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So [clears throat] uh So So uh but people people This is what we call the zone of prevention. It's very hard to get cancer or chronic diseases when you're in these zones because you're keeping this organelle quite healthy. healthy. healthy. When you live in these zones consistently consistently consistently You You don't have to live consistently because humans we we evolved as a scavenger species. We would engorge ourselves because we knew it wasn't happening every day.

Modern man is liv- is living in the feast every single day. And that's why we're we're have an out- all the chronic diseases. This is the red zone red zone red zone is the zone of risk for chronic diseases and cancer. and cancer. and cancer. And when you look at the obesity epidemic, you look at all these things, these guys are uh And it's it's like we can visit the red zone. We don't want to live in the red zone. zone. zone. So if I was to visit the red zone, it would look like meeting a high carbohydrate diet, lots of sugar Yeah.

No exercise. Yeah. And basically modern man. And also eating five meals a day, like snacking all the time. Yeah. Oh, then you'd be You know, we have these documented cases. We have them up to 500. You can get You're joking. Oh, yeah. GKIs are 500. You have people with you know blood sugars about 4 500 mg per deciliter. I mean you could do the and zero ketones. I mean you you do the math. It's it's the you do the math. It's it's unbelievable. unbelievable. unbelievable. You're basically saying I want to keep my my blood glucose levels And you want to have some And you want to have some level of ketones.

And high and my ketone levels somewhat as high as I can. Well, it's you don't want to go because people that have the physicians listening they go oh he's going to go into ketoacidosis. into ketoacidosis. into ketoacidosis. People give me a break. Ketoacidosis is like when you have ketone levels of 15 to 20 millimolar. Are you kidding me? What is your 0.4? That's called nutritional ketosis. That's how we evolved. When you have type 1 diabetes where you can't control sugar or or or insulin, you have no insulin unresponsive.

You're going to get high levels of sugar and ketones. This is this is a pathological condition. Most of type 2 diabetes, these are all pathologies based on damaging oxidative phosphorylation. So, what this chart does does does is for the first time and we put it together because we did all the and the paper discusses the bioenergetics. What we're finding in cancer is that if you can get into the green zones where your blood sugar is low and your ketones are elevated, you hammer the hell out of these tumor cells because they they they you're taking away one of their two primary fuels driving disregulated cell growth, okay?

And as the and as the ketones And as the and as the ketones go up, the rest of your cells in the body are getting super healthy. The tumor cells can't tap into the value of a ketone because the organelle needed in the tumor cell to do that is corrupted structurally and functionally. Is am I clear about that? Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. So, ketones will make you healthy, the normal cells of your body, but cannot be used to help the cancer cell because you need a good structural functional organelle to burn them.

So, they become marginalized. And if the ketones go up, they're actually toxic to that to that cell to some extent. So, but they're still alive. Uh the cancer cells are now incapacitated. incapacitated. incapacitated. They're uh we we showed you get rid of the abnormal inflammation. You get rid of the angiogen the abnormal blood vessels. You're taking an angry tumor and making it much less angry, much less inflamed, uh inflamed, uh inflamed, uh uh more indolent uh kind of a tumor, but it's still there. It's not because the other fuel other fuel other fuel that's keeping this cancer cell going is the glutamine.

Okay? So, now when you have the patient in this green zone, this is for management now. Steven, this is Prevention is is never having to deal with what I'm talking about. If you're living in the yellow zone, yellow zone, yellow zone, the probability of getting cancer or chronic diseases is already reduced. Okay? Okay? Okay? But now you have some poor guy out there. He's living in the red zone his whole life. He wants to manage the cancer that he has. He He has to get down in the green zone and try to stay there as long as he can.

But the cancer will still grow because it has access to glutamine. Okay? And glutamine is always Here's the bloodstream. Look at Look at You have this much blood. Cancer needs that so you always have a surfeit of glutamine. So, you have to come in now with drugs. And the drugs like repurposed drugs to target the the glutaminolysis. This one here, this BMC big paper here. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Okay. This paper in the new one we have with the ketogenic for the I I childhood um high-grade glioma for kids.

So, once once you get down here, you come in with drugs that target glutamine. I've looked at one and that's mebendazole. Okay? How did I come to that realization? People knew that mebendazole had some therapeutic benefit about cancer, but they don't believe until they show the mechanism. That paper shows the mechanism. It targets glucose and glutamine. Now this one targets glucose and glutamine, the two fuels driving the disregulated growth of the tumor. Okay. So, here's the here's the mitochondria. So, it's getting the glucose in the cytoplasm from the sugar uh and making and it's fermenting that and then also the the amino acid glutamine comes in.

You have to block the glycolysis and the gluco- these two pathways, you have to restrict availability of glucose and glutamine together at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I speak only about things that I have tested in my lab and published papers on like this. So, you have to read the cancer field doesn't understand that the cancer can't grow without glucose and glutamine glutamine glutamine and can't switch to fatty acids or ketone bodies. ketone bodies. ketone bodies. That's still not going to kill the cancer though, is it?

It's just going to Yeah, we don't ever use the term cure because some of these tumors now let me tell you we we have a people like Pablo Kelly from Devon, England. He had the glioblastoma. Uh he didn't take any radiation or chemo. He just did metabolic therapy. He lived for 10 years. He was diagnosed with an inoperable glioblastoma. inoperable glioblastoma. inoperable glioblastoma. They wanted to irradiate and poison him with the drugs. He said no, he was one of these naturalistic kind of guys. And um um um he he lived for 10 years and the tumor became operable.

He had four debulking surgeries on an originally described inoperable cancer. Cut out four times because once we put the metabolic therapy, the circle the demarcation of the tumor well there are there are surgeons who say I think I can get this out. But he never never got rid he lived with it for 10 years, had a couple of kids. He died from a cerebral hemorrhage on the last debulking surgery. He never died from the tumor. But you're saying you're saying that the two work together in in tandem.

You're saying that the chemotherapy works in The Now that's where that's another thing. So, what we do um now this is very interesting. So, what if you put the patient in nutritional ketosis, the the ketogenic state of nutritional ketosis facilitates the delivery of drugs to the tumor cell. It actually makes You can use lower doses of drugs and you and and you get and you and and you get bigger effect. The therapeutic benefit increases with lower dosing. So, you want to be in ketosis when you do these chemotherapy radiation therapy?

and then you use much lower doses. This is what we're doing in Istanbul clinic. We're taking pancreatic cancers. These guys living four and five years. What are we doing and advanced breast cancer and all these terminal cancers? We put them into some level of ketosis and then you come in with the standard drugs cisplatin, carboplatin, whatever you want to do, but you cut the dosages down big time. big time. big time. And then they have tremendous and you put it the keep the the uh and this is what the title of the paper is.

Ketogenic diet Ketogenic diet Ketogenic diet uh as a metabolic vehicle uh for enhancing therapeutic efficacy. The current body of research suggests that being in a state of ketosis can act as a helper therapy enhancing the cancer killing effects of chemotherapy while simultaneously protecting healthy cells. Yeah. Yeah, right. Right. Progressive oncologists are currently using ketogenic diets alongside standard chemo to maximize its efficacy. That's right. That's what we're doing in Istanbul. Istanbul. Istanbul. And and and also in in in in Greece, we're doing we're doing those same things.

So, you you can use this. When you enter a fasted ketogenic state, your healthy cells essentially go into bunker mode. They slow their division, conserve energy, and build up their defenses. Cancer cells, however, do not have this evolutionary off switch. They continue trying to rapidly divide. When the toxic chemotherapy hits, your shielded healthy cells survive it it much better much better much better while the exposed rapidly dividing cancer cells take the full hit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh okay. Uh okay. Uh okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. In other words, you make with the tools you have work better. The problem in the field of cancer today is they're not using the tools in the correct way. Now, let me give you another example. another example. another example. If you take immunotherapies, you hear about these things. Chimeric antigen T receptor PDL PD1 PDL1 inhibitors, they're called precision medicines, right? So, look at they're designed designed designed to attack a molecule on the surface or stop that cell from being resistant. being resistant. being resistant.

If you would try to attack and what they do often times they come at after you failed chemo and radiation, they then come at you with an immunotherapy. The metabolic pressure shrinks down your tumor, makes it very indolent, non-aggressive and the rest of your body is healthy, you're not going bald, you're not bleeding gums, your microbiome isn't blown to hell. So, and then you can come in with low-dose chemo, immunotherapy because whatever's left in that remaining residual mass, they may all have something in common for having survived all this, right?

So, now you can come in with a precision medicine and possibly resolution. I thought this was fascinating. It says chemotherapy creates massive oxidative stress, i.e. damage inside the tumor. To repair the damage and survive, the cancer cell requires massive amounts of glucose. So, if the patient is in ketosis, the tumor's glucose supply is essentially cut off. It can't the cancer cell can't repair the DNA damage caused by your chemo leading to faster tumor death. death. death. Um Um Um yeah, interesting. yeah, interesting. yeah, interesting. Well, don't forget also listen to this.

And there's another thing, people go in. What protects the tumor cell from chemo and radiation is the waste products of fermentation. The lactic acid and the succinic acid that are dumped out of this raging beast prevent these other therapies from working. working. working. So, if you want your therapy to work, you got to target those two fuels together at the same time. And when you do that, now this cell the shield is off. These things are super vulnerable to even low doses of chemo and radiation.

And the immunotherapies, look at if you have an immunotherapy, you try to attack the beast when it's at its strongest, uh you're not going to win. And this is what happens, you get only partial response. They in the field of cancer today, they think living an extra 6 months is a major breakthrough. We're talking about living an extra 5 and 6 years. This is what's really important. important. important. I just um I was reading some research to figure out if oncologists, so cancer doctors, are currently recommending the ketogenic diet.

And it says the vast majority of mainstream oncologists do not recommend the ketogenic diet to the to their newly diagnosed patients. diagnosed patients. diagnosed patients. Um in fact, if a patient brings it up, many doctors will actively advise against it. And the reasons for that, number one is the fear of cachexia? cachexia? cachexia? Cachexia. Cachexia. Cachexia. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cachexia. Cancer cachexia is a severe wasting syndrome where patients rapidly lose muscle and fat. It is a massive problem and a leading cause of mortality in cancer patients because the ketogenic diet suppresses appetite and often leads to weight loss.

Oncologists are terrified that a strict keto diet will accelerate cachexia and weaken the patient. patient. patient. Well, that's because they they have not heard what I just said with respect to the biology and biochemistry. Okay. Cachexia, Cachexia, Cachexia, there's two ways you can lose in cancer patients. Cachexia is the ability of the tumor cell to mobilize energy out of the muscles. It's taking the glutamine out of your muscles and feeding This is one of the two fuels that's driving the beast is glutamine. Where are they getting the glutamine from?

They're getting the glutamine not only from the bloodstream, but they dissolve your muscles as a as part of that, part of that process. So, when you put a patient in nutritional ketosis, nutritional ketosis, nutritional ketosis, the weight loss is therapeutic weight loss. Cachexia is pathological weight loss. Now, the other way you can lose weight, you could take a high dose of chemotherapy. chemotherapy. chemotherapy. I travel all the time. So, I made a rule in my life that I'll only travel with a cabin bag. The problem with this is not much space, and here's the solution.

It is called an Ekster 1% travel pack, and I teamed up with Ekster to make this. Typically, I can only bring some of my black shirts, and it's a trade-off of which black shirt should I bring? How many of these do you think I can get in here? So, let's try 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14. Let's try 15. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24. Okay, so that's 24 black t-shirts. Here's where the magic comes in.

Zip it up. Make sure it's nice and sealed, and then use this little contraption. Stick it on there. I can now take more than 20 black shirts with me, which will last me 3 weeks. So, if you travel frequently and you want to get one of these so you can save more space and be away for longer, go to ekster.com and use code DOAC for 10% off our collection. collection. collection. And I think some of the background context here is that mainstream oncology operates on the sort of somatic mutation therapy, which is the belief that cancer is fundamentally a genetic disease driven by DNA mutations.

And because their training focuses on genetics, their treatments are designed to target DNA and cell division, like chemo radiation targeted genetic therapies, rather than manipulating cell cellular metabolism. And lastly, as mentioned, I think we talked about this earlier, mainstream medicine requires massive multi-center double-blind phase three clinical trials before a protocol becomes the standard of care. So, dietary interventions rarely get the level of funding. So, oncologists lack the institutional green light to prescribe them to patients, and they tend to say to them, "Eat what you can." can." can." I I don't blame them.

They're good Many of them are good people. The problem is the system doesn't train them to understand the biology and biochemistry of the disease they're treating. Uh some of them become very resistant. It's They say get angry because I if I Why didn't I why wasn't I told this? Well, first of all, they're not reading these papers. these papers. these papers. Uh you ask them about it. They I never read it. Well, how are you going to know anything if you don't read the literature? Um listen to this.

The National Cancer Institute, the NCI, on their website, says on their website, says cancer is a genetic disease caused by what you just said. Okay. They Well, I said, "Why don't they put the articles in there showing all the tumors they can't find any mutations?" The somatic mutation theory says that cancer is caused by random genetic mutations. So, now now now new sequencing of normal people like you and me are finding mutations in all these driver genes and cells in our body that aren't in disregulated cell growth.

So, we're calling them wild type cancers. What do you mean a wild type cancer? cancer? cancer? You lost me. Okay. The nucleus of a tumor cell, a raging tumor cell, Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. what's causing him that cell to grow? Is it the mitochondria in the cytoplasm or is it the mutations in the nucleus? Okay. The So, according to the somatic mutation theory, it's the mutations in the nucleus that are causing the disregulated cell growth. You take that nucleus and put it into into a enucleated normal cell.

Yeah, and there's no cancer. No can- There's no disregulated There must be something else. Then you take the nucleus of the normal cell cell cell and put it into the cytoplasm of a tumor cell cell cell and you get disregulated cell growth. So, it must be something other than the nucleus. nucleus. nucleus. Yes, the mitochondria. Interestingly, it says So, mitochondria controlling our destiny. destiny. destiny. And and and the field the field of cancer has yet to understand it, accept it, and then say, "Well, we can't do any of this until we double line cross." Well, that's just What do you mean to tell The science is telling us this.

That's your way of protecting a broken system. broken system. broken system. Are you pissed off about this cuz you do seem pissed off about this? Well, who wouldn't be? Stephen, Stephen, Stephen, there's 1,700 there's 1,700 there's 1,700 people a day in this country dying from cancer. I don't know what the English is. is. is. Listen, that that comes out to 70 an hour and it gets worse every single year. And the last time I was on the show, you guys use some old data. Look it up today.

It's 2026. American Cancer Society says this year in 2026, we will have 626,000 have 626,000 have 626,000 souls leave the planet from cancer. Okay, this 2026. And every year it gets worse. So, when you hear all the breakthroughs breakthroughs breakthroughs We have We have television ads in Boston for the cancer breakthrough after breakthrough after breakthrough. All these different They come on and and and and all we do is get more dead cancer patients. Raise money for cancer. Where's the Where's the accountability for all the money you're raising?

When are the world When is the people going to wake up? You don't make someone healthy by irradiating and poisoning them. You've got to understand the biology and the biochemistry of the disease. I have the concepts and the the proofs, but the physician who works with the patient on a clinic basis, they're the ones that must apply this to the clinic. So, there's two different things here. There's the hard science that's the that's the bedrock for this and then there's the clinical person who has the practice so that practice does that.

Together, you get great success or better I say say success better than anything that's out there today. there today. there today. The American Cancer Society recently released its latest projections for 25 and 26 and the data paints a fascinating dual-sided picture. More people are getting diagnosed with cancer. Um new cases the ACS projects over 2.11 million new cancer diagnoses in 2026. This translates roughly to 5,800 new cases every single day. Approximately 626,000 Americans are expected to die from cancer in 2026. Right. Right. Right. About 1,700 deaths per day.

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death projected to cause more fatalities than than than colorectal colorectal colorectal colorectal and pancreatic cancers combined. I also just want wanted to pick a whole point we were talking about earlier, which is about the metabolic approach to cancers. It says here, and this is going to the point about, you know, people telling you to just eat whatever you want while you're, you know, managing cancer. Um because the primary goal of the hospital dietitian is to prevent weight loss during brutal chemotherapy regimes, patients are frequently told to eat whatever they can and eat whatever they can keep down.

It is incredibly common for cancer patients to be handed meal replacement shakes, which are often packed with corn syrups and refined sugars, ice cream, and high-carbohydrate comfort foods just to keep their calorific intake up. From a metabolic perspective, perspective, perspective, this is a tragedy. While it keeps weight on the patient, it simultaneously floods the bloodstream with glucose and insulin, directly feeding the tumor. Um and while keto is not the standard of care, the landscape is beginning to slowly shift. There is a growing minority of integrative oncologists and specialized metabolic clinicians worldwide that actively prescribe therapeutic ketosis alongside conventional treatments.

Those doctors use the keto diet and fasting protocols to protect healthy cells and um and sanitize tumors before administering lower, more targeted doses of chemo. Yeah, actually we developed that's our that's our plan. That's that's what we're doing. Okay? We we we do that because we understand the biology and biochemistry. And that's why we developed we're developing the new society called More, the Metabolic Alliance, Metabolic Oncology Research and Education. This is bringing uh together what you just mentioned there, an illogical approach to manage cancer. This is a logical approach based on the hard science of decades of research, initiated originally by Otto Warburg and then continued by our group at Boston College.

The American Cancer Society says that breast cancer is increasing, prostate cancer is increasing, pancreatic cancer, melanoma, HPV-associated oral cancers are steadily increasing in the incidence of severe of severe of severe um cancers. um cancers. um cancers. Yeah. There has been no major advance in managing glioblastoma in 100 years. What's glioblastoma? What's glioblastoma? What's glioblastoma? That's the the the deadly brain cancer, okay? That killed uh Teddy Kennedy from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, John McCain, President Biden's son, Beau Biden. Uh it's killed a lot of various people and it's considered a death sentence.

So, no, no, no, no. We we we're keeping these guys alive. Okay? We're not saying we cure the cancer, but we can certainly keep them alive a lot longer. Pancreatic cancer, always considered so bad. We're getting very excellent results in managing pancreatic cancer using metabolic therapies. We know what to do and we know how to do it. I have clinicians that work with me, dieticians that know how to manage cancer effectively. We can do it right now, today. If someone were to say, "Seefried, get your get your group together.

Let me see what you can do." I will put up our metabolic therapy against any trial from any of these pharmaceutical companies. We can keep these people alive a hell of a lot longer to participate in our society. We're not doing that. If you were made president today Of the United States? Of the United States. Don't go there. I'm going to go there. Those guys are uh uh uh not Let's put it this way, they're not scientifically literate. scientifically literate. scientifically literate. But you know Well, I would have to be.

Yeah, right. You Professor Thomas Seefried, you're now president of the United States and your sole primary objective is to bring down this 1,700 Americans that are going to get cancer a day. Um Is it a Is it get cancer or die from cancer? cancer? cancer? No, they die from cancer. 1,700 a day dying from cancer in the United 70 an hour. Think about it. You you can put in place policies to stop this happening and to also help people manage it better. What is it you do?

do? do? First of all, we wouldn't throw out everything. Just like I said, we have a strategy now to manage cancer effectively. effectively. effectively. Okay, so you also want to going to We're not going to get rid of the drugs that are making billions and billions of dollars. We're just going to use them at lower doses and a different different different different But we also want to prevent it in the first place. first place. first place. Well, preventing it that that that comes back to our chart.

I'm going to write down the manifesto. So what is what do we do to prevent the 71 people an hour dying of cancer? Well, that has to come from government policies. policies. policies. Okay, you just got promotion. You're now the king of the United States. So you don't even need to ask anybody. What do you do to prevent the 71 people a day dying of cancer? It's going to be education. Education number one. Okay. Okay. Okay. You have to let people know that those And now, let me tell you another thing that's really important.

It should not be any government or government official government official government official telling anyone what they should or should not eat. Okay? The the power of this chart is um personal you're emboldening the patient. They have to know. We're not going to tell somebody oh, if you continue to eat bad food, you're going to have you're at high risk. And that person I don't care. I'll smoke cigarettes and I'm going to Well, the government's not going to come into this guy's house and take away the bad food.

No, no, no, no. That should never happen. happen. happen. Those foods are there because they give us pleasure. us pleasure. us pleasure. But they should be the the knowledgeable person would be to say, I like to have it every now and then, but I can't live in that environment. And the other thing we do terribly in this country the poor people in these food deserts where you only get crap food and and that's a tragedy in itself. They're they to go to Whole Whole Foods where they have the expensive ribeyes and all this stuff, stuff, stuff, that's much more expensive.

A lot of people can't afford the kinds of foods that will put them in these better healthy zones. healthy zones. healthy zones. So we're going to make food healthy food more cost cost effective, cheaper. those are easy words to say, but in practicality it's not. And what kinds of food should people be eating? eating? eating? Well, I I think they should just try to avoid the highly processed carbs. Okay, you don't Listen to this. You and and exercise. There's a lot of things we can do that would mitigate the the inflammatory conditions put on this chart.

The goal here is we know what keeps us healthy. It's the efficiency of that organelle. We want to do everything possible to keep that organelle healthy. We will reduce dementia. We will reduce diabetes. We will reduce obesity. And they say, "Well, GLP, why don't I don't want to do" And human beings are are the kind that I want a quick fix for everything. everything. everything. Right? Right? Right? Ozempic, how about some Ozempic? Is this What is this GLP? Yeah. Okay, we don't you know First of all, we haven't done any research yet to know where a GLP would put you on the chart.

We do know one thing, it lowers blood sugar. sugar. sugar. How level How high of a level would it bring to ketone? Cuz it's the ketones that keep the organelle healthy. So, I'm lowering blood sugar, but am I raising the ketones that enhance the bioenergetic efficiency of the organelle? I don't know what number and it hasn't been done yet. I don't I haven't seen any papers coming out. Okay, so we'll keep the Ozempic off the table, but you're saying exercise number three. So, I've got I've got education.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kill the food deserts, so people can get healthy food. healthy food. healthy food. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um stay away from the ultra-processed stuff. Number three, exercise. We're going to give everybody free gym memberships and we're going What else is there? Reduce stress, emotional stress. You got to do that. And there's a lot to You got to do that. And there's a lot of ways, music therapy. There's a lot of different ways you can achieve that. Meditation. Meditation. Meditation. Friends, happiness, all of those reduce stress.

So, I had I had a guy from uh Korea. Korea. Korea. He I think it was Japan or Korea. We had a big meeting one time. And he he didn't tell me what to do. He says, "Um you want to get cancer If your job and if your goal in life is to get cancer, you got to eat crap food all the time. time. time. You have to terrible sleep. Make sure you never un-ass the couch, sit in front of the TV all day, look at doom scrolling, do all that kind of stuff.

Make sure you never exercise, and make sure you don't have any friends or be happy. happy. happy. You're on A FAST TRACK FOR for not only cancer, but all these other chronic diseases. So So that's the what I just said is you need to not do that. that. that. You're doing a great job. You know, you're There's not many people are going to be measuring their GKI every day. But there are people who love to measure that kind of stuff. Um now I I would say another thing.

So they put these things on your arm, these continuous sugar monitors. They're making continuous glucose ketone monitors. So apps are coming out now, believe me. There's apps I have my Lucas Lu and some others are making these apps in my lab, and and um you can take your cell phone and and photograph a particular food item. And and the food item immediately you put places your the food item on the chart. So you'll know eating that will give you what zone you'll be in if you eat it.

So um it's really interesting, and and these things are coming. We're using AI to So but it's purely patient empowerment. Okay? The patient themselves, the person themselves make the choices. No government, president, or king, or whatever you want to say, should ever tell people what and how they should eat. The patient should be familiar with this and have the knowledge to know I'm going to test what I think. So people say to me all the time, "What he What Just tell us what you can eat." That's all they say to me.

Okay, eat whatever you want. You figure out where on the chart you're going to be, and then you'll know. So people say, "Why can't I eat ketogenic diet?" Well, our our group in in Greece, now you tell me. They got the brain cancer tremendous success in keeping brain glioblastoma guys alive. What was the diet? It was a calorie restricted Mediterranean diet. Salmon, Salmon, Salmon, sardines, sardines, sardines, olive oil, olive oil, olive oil, avocado, and exercise. That Is that like oh man, that's that's the worst diet.

What about the carnivore diet? What about the about the about the ribeye with a little sauce béarnaise on top of it? This keeps your your blood sugar low and elevates your ketone. If you want to do it with plants, plants, plants, everything you got fish, plants, you you got the got the got the vegans and all these kind of people. This is a bioenergetic road map to health. health. health. Let me just give some specific examples. What about What about high fructose corn syrups and refined Oh man, that's the worst kind of crap.

You don't take that. What about What about industrial seed oils? oils? oils? Well, you know, people talk about seed oils. oils. oils. Canola and soybean Yeah, I don't know. PUT IT EVERY THAT WAS ANOTHER THING, TOO. Uh Uh Uh You and I are different. Uh we have an individual metabolism. individual metabolism. individual metabolism. Uh age, race, sex, all all the religion, all kinds of stuff determine what and how you live. And I can't be sure uh what you eat and what I eat or what you exercise and where it's going to put put us on the chart.

Synthetic pesticides. I was reading here that it in- increases the chance of lymphoma by a staggering 41%. They all damage the oxidative phosphorylation, phosphorylation, phosphorylation, putting the cell at risk for compensatory fermentation, dysregulated cell growth. cell growth. cell growth. The problem The problem the field doesn't understand what I'm saying with respect to the origin of cancer, how it happens mechanistically, happens mechanistically, happens mechanistically, how this organelle controls the life of the cell. the cell. the cell. Uh they don't know enough about the biology and biochemistry of the mitochondria.

You want to get guys on here like Nick Lane. He he from England. I mean, these guys like uh Doug Wallace and some of these guys, they're mitochondrial biologists. They they they understand this kind of stuff. I want to give people actionable things that they can think about. So, um that's why I was asking you this question about you becoming king. Fasting protocols. Well, okay. Well, okay. Well, okay. fasting? fasting? fasting? let me let me talk about that just briefly. Do you ever try it? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. What do you think? You liked it? It depends how long you're talking about. about. about. Okay, let's go a week. Uh I know I've not fasted for a week before. before. before. Okay. You know what is the call the wall? This guy I he just sent me his book it's coming out a very nice guy, Valter Longo. Simak. He said people share things with me. The wall is after about 3 days of not eating just drinking water you hit this wall and it's like, "Oh man, I'm just I can't deal with it anymore.

anymore. anymore. It's just a terrible feeling in my body. I can't sleep at night. I got the Jimmy legs. I got all kinds of problems. Screw it. I'm not doing this." He found out if you sip just tiny amounts of a grape juice you can get get through the wall. What we do for the cancer patients in the way we design our clinical procedures with my clinical friends we do a zero carb diet for about a week while the body is readjusting getting getting bringing them out of the red zone getting into the yellow zone.

You can't believe the power of glucose is an addictive drug on the brain. It's unbelievable. It's like cocaine. It it's it's and you know that when you start you start shaking and you go So, but if you don't eat carbs and just eat meat or whatever to keep you in a low GKI um then when you jump off to the water only fasting it's much less traumatic to the brain. You've gone through the wall of the gate so to speak. So, once you know how to get through the gate you make this whole process a lot a lot easier and that helps people enormously especially those people that want to get rid of their chronic disease, okay?

Because or some you know, we have a lot of people out there that just like to do all this stuff, you know, you ever get these these people that go overboard on everything. But, you know, right now we have have have an obesity chronic epidemic cancer epidemic all of these epidemics are the result of an abuse of that organelle in one way or another and we have a a plan to mitigate that abuse and at least people have it at least they're empowered to do it with the help of knowledgeable physicians.

knowledgeable physicians. knowledgeable physicians. I want to just keep on this point of actionable feedback. So, um Dr. Valter Longo's who's Dr. His extensive research clinical trials prove that fasting-mimicking diets drastically lower IGF-1 lower IGF-1 lower IGF-1 which triggers cellular autophagy and actually makes standard cancer therapies up to three times more effective by removing the metabolic shield of cancer cells. cells. cells. Yeah, which is the glu- the waste [clears throat] products of of of glu- which is the lactic acid and the succinic acid. That all goes down.

Would you recommend again, if you're king, would you recommend that every I would never recommend any I have to just give them the knowledge. Then the person has to make the decision themselves. themselves. themselves. think it could be beneficial? Of course. Of course. Of course. were king to um have everybody wear a CGM, one of those continuous glucose monitors at least once. least once. least once. No. No. No. Never. Never. Never. No, I I think if you have cancer and you really want to stay in this green zone to know to know to know right?

Listen, I was down in in Mexico not long ago. I was talking to one of the head physicians down there. He wore one of these things, right? Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. He said, "Every time I wanted to go out and have a party, have a good time, this damn thing would be beeping." So, what he ripped it off and threw it in the trash. So, trash. So, trash. So, he said he You don't want somebody barking in your ear when you're having a good time. That's why what you're doing right now with this you're choosing to prick your finger.

You're the one making that decision. There's not something on your arm saying, "Stephen, don't do that. Don't do that." do that." do that." But you know what? It was useful to wear it once or twice because it even I could I suddenly realized that things I put in my mouth my mouth my mouth Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. had an impact on my blood sugar and my blood, which [clears throat] was also I realized it had an impact in 10 minutes. Yeah, all fits. And then and then also when my blood sugar came back down and crashed Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I thought, "Oh gosh, I feel I could suddenly pair my behavior to my feelings." feelings." feelings." Yes. Well, that that now I'm I'm not I I know I I've I've seen that. And not like that Andrew Scarborough from England who who has been doing this for for a year that stage three glioma. Uh he's like 15 years out. He's done this so many times with the finger prick and all this. He knows already when his body is in these zones from the feeling that you just described.

But for the people at the beginning and who are given a terminal diagnosis, they want to get into these green zones and they want to use the things that are going to keep them alive on the planet for a longer period of time with a higher quality of life. That is important. That thing on your arm can help you stay in that zone until you have this thing managed, at which time you can choose when to do that. So this flexibility in this whole process, it's not one Like for example, we have the standard of care, which is written in granite for crying out loud.

They get all they they owe you if you do anything different from the standard of care, you could lose your license as a physician. Metabolic therapy is is patient driven. It's driven on the patient. What about hyperbaric oxygen? There was a study in 2013 that demonstrated that while a ketogenic diet alone significantly slowed tumor growth in systemic metastatic cancer mouse models, combining the diet with hyperbaric oxygen therapy listed a profound synergistic decrease in tumor growth and drastically increased survival times. Yeah, we we published that paper with Dominic D'Agostino.

So we we put my So listen, hyperbaric oxygen will create oxidative stress in cells that do not have efficient oxidative phosphorylation. Uh cancer cells. Cancer cells. So you can kill cancer cells by oxidative stress by irradiating or poisoning them, or you can put a patient into a nutritional ketosis and then put them in hyperbaric oxygen and the cancer cells are selectively killed. When you irradiate somebody, you're damaging the whole body with all kinds of stuff. And there's another thing, Stephen, you got to listen to this and you listen carefully.

carefully. carefully. When you go to these treat these standard of care, it it standard When you use standard of care, radiation, chemo, whatever they give you, immunotherapies or whatever. So the patient comes in and he says, "I've been really working hard on this." The doctor says, "Oh, no, that doesn't work, right?" Gives you some radiation or gives you get you're flying up into the red zone. The treatment itself puts so much stress on the body that the body itself starts going you go into the red zone from the very treatments that you're giving to the patient, which is making strengthening the tumor cells.

You don't against chemotherapy, do you? No. I'm I'm I'm positive about it, but it has to be used in the right context. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It has to be used when your body is in this new state of nutrition. And you can use low doses, so you don't force the tumor cell to become even more resistant to the treatment. The next thing, which is actionable, is what you talked about earlier, which is these microplastics and forever chemicals. In late 2023, the International Agency for Research on Cancer officially upgraded these forever chemicals, which are used in nonstick pans and food packaging, to a grade one carcinogen.

carcinogen. carcinogen. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. In humans. Cancer causing in humans based on strong mechanistic evidence that it induces epigenetic, which is gene alterations, and suppresses the immune system. So, you'd ban the forever chemicals. chemicals. chemicals. Okay. Okay. Okay. Uh this is beautiful paper. I went back and I took what all of Otto Warburg and meticulously went through all of his work, showed where he was absolutely correct, and where he just didn't have the the new information that would make him I talked about the forever chemicals, microplastics.

Guess what? They damage the organelle. They get into They break They cause Ross and damage They It reduce the efficiency of oxidative phosphorylation causing a compensatory increase in the utilization of glucose and glutamine and disregulated cell growth. Everything comes back to this organelle. Chr- All chronic diseases and cancer are the result of damage to this organelle. That's why having this little thing here is so important. Uh it's a great prop. I ought to get one for my class. You can keep it. Um Um Um the next thing is purifying the water supply.

Um heavy metals are found in local water supplies to run off and ultimately are carcinogenic in some cases. The IARC classifies arsenic and cadmium as group one carcinogenics and they're frequently found in unfiltered public water infrastructure. So you clean up the water supply as well. well. well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, all this stuff is coming into our water supplies. People flushing down all these chemicals into the into the which then leach back into the water supply. And every one of the chemicals that we have looked at that has been linked to oncology disregulated cell growth all damage the oxidative phosphorylation chronically.

So we're bringing the entire focus back to things what can I do to keep this organelle healthy organelle healthy organelle healthy even if I'm exposed to these chemicals. If I can do get into these zones like you're trying to do so even if you are exposed to these this organelle has an incredible healing power in itself. What is the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about Professor Thomas? Well, I mean you you've covered a lot. One of the things I want to talk about is metastasis.

is metastasis. is metastasis. What's that? What's that? What's that? That's the spread of the tumor throughout the body. Okay. So if you were to have a cancer that's just localized in one spot. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. You know, the probability of developing a therapy that would be long-term is highly increased. The problem that kills people is the spread. So if the tumor is in the breast and it spreads to the liver and the lungs and the brain, you know, you've got a problem. Lung cancer spreads to the brain, the liver.

Most of these cancers that spread to the brain or other organs become difficult and that's why you use systemic chemotherapy. You're trying to stop stop stop What we have found is that you have a stem cell. People love stem cells. If you ever hear the term stem cell tumor. Wow, stem cell tumor. Stem cell tumors cannot metastasize. How do I know? Because I had stem cell tumors diagnosed as stem cell tumors with stem cell markers. I've grown them. They grow very angry. They get a lot of blood vessels, but they can't spread.

Okay. How do you get spreading tumor cells in your body? The immune system comes in, recognizes that as an unhealed wound, and then fuses with the stem cells. And then you have these hybrid cells. They are programmed to move around your body. So, they are a macrophage tumor cell hybrid. So, and they're very hard to kill. But, we found they're remarkably sensitive. They're glutamine driven. driven. driven. So, we know they're glutamine driven, and they need the glucose, and that's why That's why metabolic therapy done the right way can nail nail those metastatic cancer cells.

Purging them with a little little bit of immunotherapy to go along with it, you might be able to to get what we call resolution. Don't forget, my colleagues and I, Dom D'Agostino and Joe Maroon, we built the press pulse therapeutic strategy. I mentioned that on your previous show. That's the way you you you press down the glucose of the tumor, and then you pulse to kill the glutamine, which will which will uh target the metastatic cancer cells, enhancing the help and vitality of the organs already infiltrated by the tumor.

I looked on our previous conversation, uh Professor Thomas, and um it's quite heartbreaking because the comment sections are all people that are ei- either struggling themselves with cancer, or I love one of theirs, their wife, their husband has just been diagnosed with cancer. Is there anything for those people that have clicked on this video cuz I imagine they are in the millions? Yeah. The millions. want them to hear? Well, the thing of it is is why Well, this is a bigger issue. When you have the science, and you have the strategy to manage cancer effectively with minimal toxicity, not to say we can cure, but to say we can manage it, why is it not being done?

That's the question. But to them to them who've tuned in okay. okay. okay. So these kinds of conversations that we have have have are allowing the populations to realize that there is their loved ones do not need to be sacrificed for the good of industries that are generally considered profitable. They In other words, the profitability of the industries are based on your sickness. Uh Uh Uh And and a lot of those comments came, "Oh, you can't you can't do anything." Yes, you can do something about it.

When you're armed with the knowledge and people ignore the knowledge, then there's a problem. Do people need to sort of self-advocate to some degree? so. so. so. With that with uh care providers, what do they do they do they Yeah, I I I think that's a very delicate question. question. question. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The the oncologist never heard of this stuff. stuff. stuff. They have never read these papers. They were never trained in medical school to know the biology and biochemistry of cancer. It was taught to be a genetic disease.

Theories are so important in science. For 1,800 years people thought the work of Aristotle, his comments, and the mathematics of Claudius Ptolemy said that the Earth was the center of the solar system solar system solar system and all the planets uh and sun revolved around the Earth, the geocentric theory. Right? Copernicus struggled with the Ptolemy mathematics and realized that if he put the the sun in the center of the solar system and made Earth just another planet, a lot of the mathematics made sense. Kepler comes in and says, "These aren't circles, they're ellipticals." Galileo takes the telescope, sees the moons of Jupiter, and was able to look at and quantify where where predict where planets would be at a certain period of time.

Then they took poor Giordano Bruno. You know about this guy, Bruno? Oh, Stephen, you got to know Bruno. Your job is to know about the poor Bruno, who was burned alive by the Catholic Church for challenging for challenging for challenging the the the geocentric theory, and he became a martyr of science. So, when you have established power structure, whether it's whether it's whether it's a religion, or whether it's an industry, or whatever, challenging that can be very very hazardous. Has it been hazardous for you? I I listen, no.

I mean, I do what I do because I like I just collect more and more data to support. Hazardous for me would be getting blindsided. Blindsided would be somebody coming at me with a piece of new data that I have never considered. I don't sleep I I think about this stuff all the time to avoid the blindside. My students are on the on the alert for any paper that comes out that says cancer Oh, cancer cells can burn fatty acids and ketone bodies. Oh, really? Let's go back through and dissect out their control experiments, and you find that every case there was always some glucose and glutamine in the media making it look like the fatty acids.

So, so that's what bothers me. What bothers me is getting hit with a piece of data that undermines what we're what we our knowledge base is. And so far, we haven't had that. Okay, it's we're standing on the shoulders of Otto Warburg, a a giant in the field of biochemistry. He was thrown under the bus when everybody thought cancer was a genetic disease. genetic disease. genetic disease. My this paper goes back and shows exactly where Warburg made his mistakes and where we have rectified some of that, bringing the whole field back on where it should be.

It is a mitochondrial metabolic disorder, and we can account for all of the phenotypes and characteristics of that disease, knowing that. Now, with that knowledge, logical people, and people interested in helping others, will will take advantage of that. We're not throwing out all these toxic chemicals, we're learning how to use them in a different way. And that's where the success is going to come. come. come. So, let's let's conclude with a actionable takeaway for people who are suffering themselves with with cancers, or have someone in their family right now that is suffering from cancers.

What is the actionable take away? Well, I think the actionable take away once this paper comes out, they can start taking action if they are motivated enough. motivated enough. motivated enough. They can read about this. They can read about it and then try to like just like you're doing. No different. Get into these zones and then work with their oncologist, knowledgeable people to to to treat them with standards of care as long as they can remain and then we do non-invasive imaging, PET scans, see MRIs.

So specifically, what what you're saying is this paper, I will link it below in the comments section for anyone that wants to read it. This graph will be on the screen throughout this episode anyway, so people can screenshot it if they want to have a look. And the way that they test what what their GKI index is is they can buy one of these Keto Mojo things which you can get on Amazon for $20, for $20, for $20, you prick your finger, it gives you the glucose reading, you divide it by 18.

the the new machines have the button. You So even the people only have to do that. that. that. Okay, fine. And yeah, as you can see on here, this is an interesting way to sort of increase your your management, improve your management of of some of these Yeah, and then there's a challenge to get into those zones. Um, you know, I'm not saying this is easy stuff. easy stuff. easy stuff. GLP-1 inhibitor, man, that's a hell of a lot easier than than than doing this. And I should probably say always consult with a medical professional.

Yeah, um, I I think uh because you know, a lot of people they have a lot of comorbidities. They have diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension, cancer. They have a It's not a perfectly healthy person with cancer. cancer. cancer. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. So before you go into challenge that, you need to have what you look like you you might look, you know, you might have to be adjusted in some way. That's why the people who the physicians that are working with this can do all that. I I'm I'm not in the clinical thing.

And there are some people who respond poorly to the ketogenic diet and it's the high states of ketosis cuz I've I've received DMs before from a woman who said, "My My husband did ketosis and he collapsed unconscious." He took him to the hospital, he had some comorbidity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, the other thing, too, is you got to be cuz some people have carnitine deficiencies. Carnitine prevents fatty acids from being made into ketone bodies. Ah. Ah. Ah. So So So they can be carnitine supplementation can help them.

But you need a physician to know this. We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next. And the question left for you is on the subject of energy. What in your life has brought you the most energy? most energy? most energy? And what was the biggest energy drain you've ever experienced? Well, this is bringing me the biggest energy. energy. energy. This? This? This? Well, that this, the whole concept. The idea that you have found uh Mother Nature has allowed you to look into the depths of of of what we consider the biology and biochemistry of how bodies work.

And knowing how to take that and apply it to people that are suffering from all these different chronic diseases, and giving them the opportunity to change that. Because before that, it was mysterious. Oh, I'm do I mean keto, I What's your GKI? I I don't know. Well, now you have a quantitative opportunity. That gets us So we have a lot of evidence. I think people should be feeling encouraged. I think we have given hope to the hopeless. And And I think that's empowering. And the goal here is not to make a billion dollars, it's just to know that you've kept all these poor souls alive longer than they were projected to be to be.

And I think this power that And that keeps us going. Because when we see more and more people coming to me, I get emails back from people three or four years ago. And I said, "Gee, I thought you were a goner." And he says, "Oh, I'm doing really well. Just came back from a vacation with my wife." Well, that's empowering. I said, "Well, that's good." And don't forget, Steven, all of our research money comes from private foundations and philanthropy. philanthropy. philanthropy. So So So So is that a way that people can help?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And where do they go to help? Uh uh Travis Kristofferson's foundation. So, we In my papers, they we have the foundations that support uh our work, private foundations. private foundations. private foundations. So, I'll link And there are occasionally Yes, please link. There are occasionally people I know I I I when I give kits of information to people, uh I say, "Please consider making a donation only if it works for you. Yeah. Don't charge them anything or ask them to pay something if it's not going to help them.

If you were told to be dead in 6 months and you 6 years later you're alive, maybe you throw us a few shekels into the private found into the foundations supporting our work." I'll link that foundation below in the comments section. comments section. comments section. Yeah, we have a couple on breast cancer, on on on general general uh um support on the metabolic approach that we have. So, we have a lot going. We're very excited. You can see all the papers we've published. Uh and it's not like um uh some of these are in top journals.

Some of them are in new journals, but but the issue is we're we're we're we're we're publishing this. My thing is, you know, I great great great respect for science and and doctors in the medical profession. Go go go get your information. Speak to medical provider. There's so many tools out there now. Go and check for yourself. yourself. yourself. Yeah, well, I think in the oncology field, that's where we have this vast wasteland of misinformation or misunderstanding. Let's put it that way. They don't understand these concepts where, you know, people who have done heart work and bone work and replacements, those people are at the state of the art with this kind of stuff.

stuff. stuff. Well, the last conversation we had has reached about 15 million people. So, on YouTube it's got 10 million views and then across all the platforms it's got another five or so million views. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And when I went read through the comment sections, it's just it's so heartening for two reasons. One is you're giving people tools and science that they can think about and research themselves and speak to the medical practitioner about, but also but also but also it actually just creates a community of people in the comment section where, you know, this is a community of people that are searching for hope.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And as some of them read through the comment sections, they actually commented saying it was so nice to to speak to other people in the comment sections about what I'm going through and how it feels from an emotional level. So, this is something I actually wanted to say in this episode was if you're if you're listening to this conversation and you've gotten to this point, do you feel free to go into the comment section and just offer some support and some love to other people um who are struggling because, you know, it can be a very lonely experience the minute you find out you've got a diagnosis and off you go into the internet, into podcasts, into AI trying to figure out what you can do.

So, yeah, do share things that have helped you, point at different resources that are rigorous and offer emotional support to those that are in the comment section. That would be a wonderful thing. Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, thank you so much for all that you do. Um you're you're an absolute warrior for pushing science the science into the world and for fighting for these people that don't have the tools. And if you I mean, I don't think I've ever seen a comment section quite like it in terms of the gratitude that people have for the work that you're doing.

It is remarkable work. Long may you continue to do it. Thank you very much and you you know, you play a very important part on this because this information is not disseminated to the population and it is the population of people that will eventually make the change. So, they're going to want this especially when we keep publishing more and more case reports of successful cases. And the change the system will change. And we just have to modify what we have to make it better and I think that's what keeps us going.

So, I have no plans of stopping this anytime soon. My students are all excited about this. They they're learning about it at Boston College. So, this is a big emphasis that we have and we continue to do it. Again, scientific literacy is so important uh for uh how you um navigate through life. And um thank you very much for your show and we'll we'll keep uh pushing this as as hard as we can. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior.

And the algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now. Check this video out, I bet you you might love it.