Updates and Breakthroughs!

Is the honeymoon is over?

LEAH 0:00

Tina, is this our third anniversary? No, it's our second anniversary. What is, what's go, what's going on here?

Tina 0:05

This is our second anniversary, but we're kicking off our third season.

LEAH 0:10

There you go. Happy anniversary. Happy second anniversary.

Tina 0:15

Does that mean our honeymoon phase is over? Isn't the first two years Oh,

LEAH 0:18

Yes. Oh, is it, is that how long the honeymoon phase last? This two years. I,

Tina 0:22

In a marriage? I believe so.

LEAH 0:24

and then you get the seven year itch, and then if you make it that far, you're golden.

Tina 0:28

I hope we celebrate seven years someday. That'd be awesome.

LEAH 0:31

Oh, you and me. Yeah.

Tina 0:32

Yeah. I don't have any one else I podcast with.

LEAH 0:37

Well, I have other anniversaries in my life, so, um, yeah, so this is, this is our anniversary episode and. We are gonna do some updates on previous episodes.

Tina 0:48

I'm excited 'cause we're redoing our webpage. We've got more offerings. I'm excited about what's happening in season three. so in this episode we're gonna look at our highlights and talk about some updates.

LEAH 1:01

Yeah. So I get a lot of, newsletters, like medical type newsletters, and. Every once in a while something will come up where there's a new study, there's some new information out, and I'm like, ah, man, that's not in the episode. Like we can go back and add it to our episode like we did with the diarrhea episode, but here's our anniversary episode. Let's just kind of, it's, it's one of those flashback episodes.

Tina 1:27

Yeah, pull from the headlines of things that people might've seen go by from the New York Times or routers or whatever, and then talk about some of those headline news articles and what we think about that. As always, differentiating fact from fiction

LEAH 1:42

Yeah, maybe you saw this in the news, maybe you didn't, and maybe it can help you. So that's what we're talking about today.

Tina 1:48

I'm Dr Tina Kaczor and as Leah likes to say I'm the science-y one

LEAH 1:52

and I'm Dr Leah Sherman and on the cancer inside

Tina 1:56

And we're two naturopathic doctors who practice integrative cancer care

LEAH 2:00

But we're not your doctors

Tina 2:02

This is for education entertainment and informational purposes only

LEAH 2:06

do not apply any of this information without first speaking to your doctor

Tina 2:11

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast by the hosts and their guests are solely their own

LEAH 2:17

Welcome to the cancer pod

Introduction

Tina 2:35

Hey Leia,

LEAH 2:36

Happy anniversary again. I don't know what second anniversary is like with the, the rock paper, scissors. It was paper. No papers first. Anyways, I'll send you a card. I'll send you an anniversary card. So we're doing this, this kind of update episode, anniversary recap over the last two years episode. 'cause I get a, and I'm sure you do too. I get a lot of email newsletters that clog my mailbox, my email box, and sometimes the study will pop up and I'm like, we already talked about this and it's relevant. So instead of rerecording every single episode, we're doing our annual update episode.

Tina 3:21

Yep. almost inevitably about, oh, within a week, maybe four weeks after we have a topic, the New York Times has some article on that same topic. So it's been kind of a funny joke going back and forth.

LEAH 3:32

And there is something that you found in the New York Times that you're gonna talk about.

Tina 3:36

Yes. I'm gonna talk about their article on sugar and cancer today, and my take on their take, which came after our podcast, by the way, by about a week or two after we dropped our podcast, they had an article on sugar and cancer. Mm-hmm. It's, it's a going joke. We do realize the New York Times is not taking cues from us just for the record,

LEAH 3:54

but we like to pretend

Tina 3:55

but that's what makes it funny.

LEAH 3:56

they're not listening the way Siri is.

Tina 3:58

Oh, Sirius always listening,

Aromatherapy for nausea

LEAH 4:00

So the first update, Um, episode seven was our nausea and vomiting episode, and in that we mentioned aromatherapy to help with chemotherapy induced nausea and vomiting. And there was a recent study, and they compared ginger, peppermint, and then like a control, which I think was canola oil. And it was given to patients who were getting bone marrow transplants. So they're inpatient. And so the nurses would administer the essential oil on a piece of gauze that was taped or pinned to their gown, their hospital gown. And there were two different treatments, which are like what it's known as highly emetic, like they really cause a lot of nausea. okay, so it was 21 patients got ginger, essential oil, 20 got peppermint, and 19 were in the control canola oil group. And the ones who had the lowest rate of nausea, were the ones in the peppermint group. So I'm assuming that they also got all of the anti-nausea, anti-emetic medications. I can't imagine that they just purely take them essential oils. But this was just for, you know, any further nausea. So I thought that was kind of a cool thing, that there's more research out there on aromatherapy and, chemotherapy induced nausea and vomiting. I.

Tina 5:19

Yeah. Yeah. And I think in that episode we mentioned the one product that had been used in hospitals prior, and it was called Ease. It's over. The counter can be gotten online or you can just get some peppermint essential oil for that matter. You could reach into your cabinet and get, a muscle rub because peppermint essential oil is menthol. So anything with menthol in it should work in a pinch

LEAH 5:40

What the study used, they did use doTERRA and they mentioned that, um, they used doTERRA and that quality control certificates were provided by doTERRA, which

Kiwi fruit for constipation

LEAH 5:50

is a whole nother episode. So episode 24.

Tina 5:53

moving down the GI

LEAH 5:54

That's right, that's right. Um, moving along, um, we talked about constipation and, the different causes and. Things that can help both medication, over-the-counter medication and, naturopathic integrative oncology wise. There was a study that it totally like, stuck out in my, in my, my email because it was looking at the use of kiwi fruit for constipation So this study didn't look at specifically chemotherapy or cancer related constipation. It was looking at what's known as functional constipation and also at I B S constipation. And I guess the standard of care for those kinds of constipation would be taking cilium. And so the study compared eating two kiwi fruit daily to the 7.5 grams of cilium that is typically given for these patients. And it was found to be just as effective. And what was interesting in this study was they not only supplied the kiwi fruit to the person who was, part of the trial, they provided enough so that the family could also have kiwi fruit.

Tina 7:05

Well, that's a good way to get compliance, right?

LEAH 7:08

that's why they did that. And so the contraindications would be if you are allergic to kiwi fruit or to latex. And the other part that was interesting was that obviously it was, well not obviously it was blinded to everyone in the study except for the participants because you can't really hide the fact that you're eating two pieces of fruit

Tina 7:29

Mm-hmm.

LEAH 7:29

versus having, you know, a glass of fiber. So, and then it was one of those where they did four weeks with one wash out and then four weeks with the other. And so

Tina 7:40

Hmm.

LEAH 7:40

anyways, yeah. And then like how do you know that people are eating kiwi fruit? They check for plasma, vitamin C levels.

Tina 7:49

Oh, well. Can't think if there's vitamin C elsewhere though.

LEAH 7:53

I dunno. I didn't, I didn't look that deep into it, but I just thought that was interesting. These are interesting points of the, of the article is that there were some, there were certain measures that they checked and that was one of them. So, but there was also improvement in stool consistency, indigestion, reflux, and abdominal pain.

Tina 8:13

You know what I thought you were gonna say for compliance and checking that, I thought for sure you were gonna say something about kiwi seeds in the stool.

LEAH 8:19

Maybe they did that too. I just didn't read that far.

Tina 8:22

no, I just made it up.

LEAH 8:23

Oh, do you poop those out? I guess you do.

Tina 8:26

no, I don't know. I just, I'm like, how else would you know that it was kiwi going in unless you saw Kiwi coming out?

LEAH 8:31

I think they checked the microbiome too.

Tina 8:33

Okay.

LEAH 8:34

Maybe they checked the poo. I don't know. I just, what really stood out was that I read that in the morning. I had read the headline and you know, a little blurb in whatever newsletter it was. And then I saw a patient that day who was having constipation and I was like, do you like kiwi fruit? Because you could try some kiwi fruit.

Tina 8:55

Nice

LEAH 8:56

And I'm saying that together because in New Zealand, if you say kiwi, it's a bird. In the US we just say kiwi. And this study was brought to you by the,

Tina 9:08

New Zealand Farm Bureau.

LEAH 9:10

no, it was, it is. It is a study out of New Zealand, so that's why I'm saying kiwi fruit because there is a difference between kiwi bird, kiwi fruit.

Tina 9:20

I thought you were saying kiwi fruit because your dog's name is Kiwi and so as, as opposed to when you just say kiwi, I think you're referring to your dog in general when, in any conversation.

LEAH 9:30

Yeah. And she's named Kiwi. 'cause when she was little, she kinda looked like a kiwi bird. So more, more fun facts. So, Tina, what,

Tina 9:40

Yes.

LEAH 9:41

what, what, uh, what article did you look up?

Ketogenic Diet & steroids

Tina 9:44

Well, I do get the same kind of e-blasts that you're talking about from all these different, services that send us headlines in, in medicine and you

LEAH 9:52

Yeah, it's like Medscape, MD links, um, oncology, nurse advisor. Like all of those things,

Tina 9:59

Medical news today.

LEAH 10:00

all of that.

Tina 10:01

All of them, they all ping, ping pinging. Anyways, there was an interesting, article on the ketogenic diet coupled with corticosteroids. So the headline, fighting Cancer with a combination of Corticosteroids and the Keto Diet. And it was an article that talked about the downside of the ketogenic diet, which you and I talked about in episode 32, we touched on the ketogenic diet and the truth about

LEAH 10:26

Right the truth about the truth about.

Tina 10:28

the keto diet. Um, basically when someone is on a ketogenic diet and they have active cancer, there can be a loss of muscle mass and cachexia, which is a massive. Weight loss. Cachexia itself is loss of muscle, loss of fat. It's when the body mass index goes really low, and it's a bit of a spiral effect physiologically because it has to do with a systemic inflammatory state. So the inflammation state in the body is really high, and cachexia is a result of that. So when there's active cancer and the inflammatory state is very high, which cancer creates some of that inflammatory state, what they found in this particular study was that when you combined the ketogenic diet with corticosteroids, then you could stop that high inflammatory state So their whole premise was adding a little bit of corticosteroid, which is similar to our own, our own cortisol. Um, it can stop the cachexic state, which then can. Allow the kenogenic diet to have some effect in slowing the growth of cancer. When it does do that, if it does do that, and then preventing cachexia as a big goal in all of our active cancer patients. We don't want cachexia. And sometimes it doesn't have to do with total weight. I mean, sometimes cachexia looks more like sarcopenia, which is muscle loss. So you can have a heavy weight but not have much muscle mass. you know, and as an aside, uh, aside from this article, it doesn't state this, but the ketogenic diet actually encourages muscle mass development. As long as your amino acids in your protein intake is adequate and you use the muscle, 'cause muscle is always a use it or lose it proposition. So yeah, that one was interesting because just the idea of adding a little bit of a steroid to stop. Cachexia is, is a novel idea, and doing it alongside the ketogenic diet was also intriguing.

Low carbohydrate diet

LEAH 12:27

There was another diet that I came across that has been shown to benefit overall survival, but not breast cancer specific survival in patients with early stage stage one to three breast cancer. they were looking at a plant rich, low carb diet, which we talk about quite often, and by low carb. They were kind of specific to saying like, sweet sugary drinks, that kind of thing. So I think they're not talking about the carbs you get from fruits and vegetables, but this was a huge study. This was looking at. Over 9,000, like close to 10,000 women as part of the nurses health study. And they did a follow-up for over 12 years.

Tina 13:13

So it's a, it's a big study and it's a long study.

LEAH 13:16

Yeah. Which isn't always, the way that it is. So, so they found that the more that someone stuck to doing a low carb plant rich diet, it was associated with a significantly lower risk for overall mortality. So that's death from any cause, but not breast cancer, specific death. And so in patients with early stage breast cancer, you know, we're at a higher risk of things like cardiovascular disease and there's a lot of other things just because of life that you are at risk of. But it, you know, adhering to this lower carb, plant rich diet, has been shown to be beneficial and. They found that replacing 3% of your energy intake from carbohydrates with like fish protein was associated with a 17% lower risk for breast cancer specific mortality, and a 15% lower risk for all cause mortality fish. Um, and so what what they found was that breast cancer survivors would find benefit from really limiting carbohydrates. And what they say specifically is like from fruit juice, sugar sweetened beverages and added sugar and increasing the amount of protein and fat, in particular from plant sources or from fish apparently. So that was published in the journal cancer and the limitations. They did talk about limitations to the study, so they looked. At mostly women who are non-Hispanic, white, and they were also health professionals. And so it may not necessarily translate across other, um, sociodemographic groups, but, but still, it was kind of a, we talk a lot about, increasing those, those fruits and vegetables and grains and plants, you know, healthy, healthy plants so

Tina 15:06

You know, it has me thinking about how. When we look at food, we just need to see whether it has any virtue at all. So really the first thing to leave would be sugary drinks with no virtue, like there's no value in it. Soda pops.

LEAH 15:20

well, pleasure and caffeine. Right? That's why you, when somebody talks about like, oh, I, I need to have these to get my day going. Yeah. So it's just, you know, finding substitutes, reducing the amount even, you know,

Tina 15:31

Yeah. It's a consistent reminder in all of our episodes is avoiding highly processed food and avoiding sugar when you don't need it. I mean, really just avoid sugar whenever you can. I mean, there's no need for sugar in your bread. There's no need for sugar in your peanut butter. There's no need for sugar in the Turkey that you buy from the store. I mean, just look for sugar and go around it if you possibly can.

LEAH 15:55

you're talking hidden sugars like, or you know, like, 'cause I mean,

Tina 16:00

Added sugars. Hidden sugars.

LEAH 16:01

I mean, I'm not gonna tell my patient to not eat cookies every once in a while, you know, or, you know, or have their little bit of chocolate at night or whatever it is that, you know, gives them pleasure. But you're just talking about that, that added well, sugar and peanut butter. I don't understand. I don't understand.

Tina 16:18

Nope, I don't get it either, except that we, our palate is skewed towards wanting more sugar because it's everywhere and if you put it everywhere, then you skew our palate to want it everywhere, even where it's not supposed to be. Thus, the sugar in every deli Turkey out there, they injected it with sugar. So I, I think in terms of virtue because of this, even when you say cookies, you, you go to a potluck and there's desserts and you wanna get one of the desserts and you've got choices. You've got this pink cake with some kind of sweet frosting on it. You've got fudge and you've got oatmeal cookies with some raisins in them. I mean, obviously the oatmeal cookies with raisins are gonna have the most virtue of those three choices.

LEAH 16:55

but I wouldn't touch those with a 10 foot pole raisins.

Tina 16:58

cause you don't.

LEAH 16:59

I don't like raisins. So I would go for the,

Tina 17:01

Okay. That's your

LEAH 17:02

I would, go for the fudge brownie. I would go for a piece of the fudge brownie. I would not, there's no way that I'm going to,

Tina 17:08

but okay. okay

LEAH 17:09

not if it's the last cookie on earth.

Tina 17:12

That's your preference. But what I'm saying is even when you do something that's indulgent, it can still have some virtue in it.

LEAH 17:20

I know what you're saying. I know what, I know what you're saying.

Tina 17:23

Because that's the real world. We have to make these choices. And you don't wanna be antisocial and you don't wanna be anti-culture and you're, maybe you're a guest at someone's house. And so looking at food through the lens of, you know, does it have any nutritional value? Seems like the only way we can survive this without feeling badly about everything we put in our mouths, you know, you can justify it. That's what I'm talking about. You can say, okay, I can still have my sweets, but I'll, I'm gonna lean towards something that at least has a little nutritional value in it rather than none. Like a hoho.

LEAH 17:52

Or do a larger slice of the like, ho, ho, do a larger slice of the more nutritional one and then a small little taste of the other. Okay, so let's take a break and when we come back we're gonna continue talking about updates that we have found in our email box. And we're gonna talk more about sugar. Sugar and cancer.

Tina 18:14

Yep. Never ending.

Topical diclofenac for hand-foot syndrome

LEAH 18:25

Episode 36,

Tina 18:28

Skin changes.

LEAH 18:29

skin changes. So there was a, Kind of a cool thing It was presented this year at asco, which stands for the American Society of Clinical Oncology, which is the big, it's like the Oscars, it's like the Grammys, it's like the, I don't know, it's just, it's the, like the Lollapalooza of oncology. So that happened this past June and it was looking at the skin changes that can happen with, patients who are taking an oral medication called Capecitabine, which is known as Xeloda. And that can cause some pretty bad hand foot syndrome, which is peeling red, cracking skin, and. The study looked at using topical voltarin, which is also generically known as diclofenac, which you can get at drugstore. It's what used to be prescription. It's now over the counter. And they saw that it reduced the incidence of grade two or higher hand foot syndrome in these patients. And it's most likely due to the fact that it's a COX two inhibitor because I think patients taking Celebrex also have less hand-foot syndrome from capecitabine or Xeloda. And so using the topical Cox two inhibitor and that what those do is, COX two inhibitors, they block the release of these pro-inflammatory hormone like

Tina 19:56

Molecules.

LEAH 19:57

molecules, prostaglandins. Yeah. So. They looked at 130 people who used the Diclofenac and 133 used placebo, and it was over the course of 12 weeks and they just used a tiny little bit. So it was just like one fingertip, which was like a half a gram, and they used it on each palm in the back of their hands twice daily. The incidents of hand-foot syndrome in these patients, it was like less than 4%, whereas in the placebo it was 15%.

Tina 20:31

So, Almost four times the amount of hand foot syndrome

LEAH 20:35

Yeah. Yeah.

Tina 20:37

That

LEAH 20:37

and

Tina 20:37

interesting.

LEAH 20:38

they were saying like, it's not quite ready for prime time. but I've recommended it so

Tina 20:46

I don't know why it's not ready for prime time.

LEAH 20:49

well, I often suggest to patients that if they are taking diclofenac orally, that can affect their liver enzymes. And so I recommend that you just get the over-the-counter stuff and use that on your sore knee or your sore or elbow. And if they have it at home, then.

Tina 21:07

Why not try it?

LEAH 21:08

Why not try it like they already have it, or the fact that if they're rubbing it on their knee, then just kind of rub it on both sides of their hands and put it on their feet. So, eh, I live on the edge.

Tina 21:21

that speaks to the idea that you and I often are like, why not use it if it's not ready for prime time? Our questions, why not? The other thing, I think we mentioned it in the episode itself, episode 36 on skin changes is, what causes worsening of that Hand foot syndrome is friction. So anything you can do to limit friction on the hands actually is preventative from getting hand foot syndrome, which is distinct with certain drugs. So if you were told it's a possible side effect, then you know, take measures to reduce friction in your everyday, use of your hands, whether you're doing the dishes or you know, whatever.

LEAH 21:55

And avoiding heat.

Tina 21:57

Mm-hmm.

LEAH 21:57

And my typical recommendation is, like emollient type hand cream that's 10% urea. So that's, that's typically what we recommend. So I don't know, I. I'm the kind of person who'd be like, oh, he is a little urea. And just throw in a little dab of, of voltarin.

Mushrooms for immune support

Tina 22:16

Okay. What else do we have?

LEAH 22:18

the next episode we're gonna talk about is episode 39, which we did on mushrooms. It was one of our supplement 1 0 1, episodes. It's not really an update. It's more of a question that I got through Instagram, and so I will read the note and then we will discuss. So, BC Kicks BC wrote to us, love your podcast. If you haven't already, could you do a podcast on medicinal mushrooms? As it relates to breast cancer, I'm on the lowest dose of Abemaciclib, which is zenio in addition to anastrozole. And my a n C is poop emoji. I don't know that medicinal mushrooms, for example, Turkey tail will do anything to improve my immune system. But I'll try anything at this point. Thanks.

Tina 23:05

So the good news is first we have done a mushroom episode.

LEAH 23:09

I did. I, I told BC that, yeah, go listen. 'cause I could not remember if we talked about this specifically. what it relates to breast cancer or to the A N c I don't remember what we talked about. A n C is, the looking at your, your white cell count, your neutrophils. In neutrophils, your neutrophils

Tina 23:32

And so I'll tell you my take on mushrooms in general when I'm thinking about mushrooms, besides the evidence that we have for, Rishi Mushroom helping with fatigue and you know, specific mushrooms like Turkey tail helping specifically with colorectal cancers, somewhat with breast cancer, a little bit with primary brain tumors, that kind of thing. We have actual human data to show outcomes are better when some mushrooms are taken, or less symptoms like fatigue. but in general, when I think of mushrooms, I think of the intelligence of the immune system rather than the numbers. So it's a quantity quality issue. the quality of your immune system improves with mushrooms. I don't know so much if the quantity does. So the absolute neutrophil count, the A N C I don't know if you'll see it reflected in there, but I do think that if you're taking mushrooms, you have a more intelligent immune system. So this has to do with natural killer cell function and some other, recognition pathways that are improved with mushrooms rather than. Kind of the, the number of white cells out there so much, I don't see it reflected in the white count as much as, the research shows that it's more of a recognition that improves.

LEAH 24:40

um, I did a scan through PubMed to see if there was any recent information. I kinda looked in the last three years and there was a study looking at patients who are undergoing treatment for colon cancer who were taking Turkey tail and there was really nothing seen in terms of their, their neutrophil count. yeah, people are looking at it, so that wouldn't necessarily be something that it would be supportive to specifically bringing up that a n c.

Tina 25:09

Yeah. And, and if I was in the clinic and I'm looking at this, if it's a worrisome number, if the absolute neutrophil count is below say 2.0, then I would be looking at things that support the bone marrow specifically. So, things like broth, if someone's willing to do some broths, 'cause that has some of the bone marrow constituents from the animal in the solution. And also astragalus. I think astragalus is one of our tried and true immune tonics. and I think of astragalus as just one step away from being food. Kinda like mushrooms, you know, mushrooms are a food stuff and then they're medicinal, so they're not pharmaceutical per se. I don't think of them as, as a strong.

LEAH 25:48

And it's not an extract that's coming out of the astragalus. It's like it's the root, which can be done as a tea or as part of cooking.

Tina 25:57

I'll often have people just get astragalus as a raw herb and put it in their soups, their stews, their broths, if they're making homemade broths, or you can even put it in the background of rice. If you're making rice, whatever you're boiling. Astragalus root will be extracted with boiling water tastes a little sweet.

LEAH 26:14

So mushrooms is, they're more tonifying like. They're more like in the adaptogen category where it's just kind of doing this overall immune system hug and then astragalus you see as more specific for addressing low white count.

Tina 26:31

I do, yeah. I think of it as more of a bone marrow tonic, you know, like you're actually supporting the production. Of white cells. Mm-hmm.

LEAH 26:39

You'd also be supporting all blood cells if you're targeting the marrow.

Tina 26:43

Exactly. A blood builder of sorts.

LEAH 26:44

Okay, well, we love getting questions and, feedback and stuff, so that's awesome.

Tina 26:51

And since this is our anniversary episode, season three has a new website and what will be on there, hopefully by the time this episode drops is a spot where you can voice your question, and we will play it on our podcast and answer

LEAH 27:04

You could leave us voicemail

Tina 27:06

Mm-hmm.

LEAH 27:07

basically. Do we have to leave like a, thanks for calling. Sorry, I'm not here right now. Leave a message after the beep. Well, I, I don't know. I haven't checked it out. Maybe we do. Maybe, maybe we have to record something.

Tina 27:18

We might, we might, we can just reuse that one from like the 1980s when we had, I'm sure people don't remember that infomercial. Wait for the beep. You gotta leave your name. You gotta leave your number. No.

LEAH 27:29

I don't remember that. I think it is. I I don't remember that. I was thinking more, we do one of those things where it's like, hi, this is Leia and this is Tina and we're not here right now.

Tina 27:43

Yeah. I don't know if I could do that.

LEAH 27:44

Okay. Anyways, let's move on.

Tina 27:46

Onward.

LEAH 27:47

okay, Tina, so here's

Sugar and Cancer

LEAH 27:50

the Big Sugar Talk, episode 58, sugar and Cancer. What's the truth about it? There were a few articles on this, this past, I don't know, this past year,

Tina 28:02

Yes. so our episode dropped in June, I believe. In any case, the New York Times had an article on July 10th that was entitled, does Sugar actually Feed Cancer? And it says the subtitle, many patients say they avoid sweets to help fight the disease, but while a healthy diet is important, you can't quote starve a tumor. So this is an interesting article. It has elicited hundreds and hundreds of comments, which were kind of fun to read too. You know, there's a lot of, Double speak in it. And I'm a little bummed. The New York Times in general isn't the most authoritative place to go for the latest and greatest and integrative oncology, I would say 80 plus percent of the articles are negative on natural medicine for whatever reason. I won't even speculate on air anyways, so yeah. 'cause they're listening and I don't wanna ruin our relationship where they use us for their inspiration. so they did talk about, but they didn't name Otto Warberg. You know, their Sugar feeds cancer narrative goes back to the 1920s. And we talked about this in our episode where actually the foundation of the idea that cancer cells take up more. Sugar, and they do take up more sugar. And that's the whole premise of a PET scan, p e t scan that actually uses a sugar molecule that's been tagged with the radionucleotide. And that is how we see cancer light up on the scan tagging a sugar molecule it gets taken up by the tumor. And so the tumor has more of that sugar in it than the cells surrounding it, so it lights up. So anyways, so it's, it's very clear that sugars are taken up by cancers. the problem with this article is they start out with a dietician, an oncology specialist who talks about the fact that this is a question that they get constantly And then they, I'm gonna quote the article again. They talk to a doctor who says Every cell requires glucose. Our brain requires glucose. That's a quote. unfortunately that's not a hundred percent true because of course your brain. Likes glucose. It uses glucose, but it can run on ketones as well, which is the whole basis of, of a ketogenic diet for primary brain tumors is that our normal brain cells can run on ketones while glioblastoma lacks an enzyme to do so. So that, that's the metabolic approach to a primary brain tumor. It's not, you know, this is not a silver bullet, but it does look like lower glucose levels in your bloodstream correlate to better outcomes with primary brain tumors. So let's just say that one quote is not completely true.

LEAH 30:27

It's a generalization.

Tina 30:29

it's a nont truism. If a doctor says brain requires glucose, that is untrue. It does not require glucose. I have issues when they say untruths because now you feel like you're being tugged into a direction. There's no reason to say an untruth in an article that you're trying to inform people.

LEAH 30:45

Right. Instead of saying, our brain uses glucose,

Tina 30:49

Or prefers glucose or

LEAH 30:51

has a hankering for.

Tina 30:52

something. The same person the quote, sugar isn't a carcinogen, same doctor says there's no evidence showing that eating sugar will cause cancer itself. Besides quote, many, many cancers prefer to use fat as their primary energy source. So even the idea that cancers preferred glucose isn't quite true. Well, sure some tumors, many tumors can use fatty acids or even amino acids as their fuel. This is something you and I keep revisiting over and over again, and the whole metabolic approach to cancer, which is keeping your glucose low, has more to do with your entire physiology, including what your hormones do, what your insulin does, what's going on physiologically, when you lower your. Glucose in your bloodstream and your immune system functions better 'cause it doesn't function so great when your glucose is high. There's a lot of other reasons. So as I feel like they were trying to sway us in that direction of like poo-pooing the idea of sugar and cancer, but it does change its tone. Okay, back to the article. Excess sugar consumption has been shown to spark chronic inflammation in some people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. so sugar in cancer patients, they go on to say that for the most part, outcomes are poorer in hormonally driven cancers like breast and prostate cancers when sugar is high. I feel like there was a little bit of one step forward two steps back in this article. 'cause the take home point, and we have this in our episode as well, is control your blood sugar as best you can. There's no requirement for sugar in the human diet.

LEAH 32:21

You're talking refined sugar or.

Tina 32:23

no, I'm saying sugar in the human diet is not it's not an essential nutrient. We have essential fatty acids. There are essential amino acids, so we have essential fats and enough essential proteins. There's no such thing as essential carbohydrates. the reason for that is our bodies can actually make glucose. We have several ways of making glucose in our body, so if we need it, we can make it. I'm saying because nutritionally, when people are looking at food, everyone wants to make sure they're not deficient in anything. I don't have any problem with naturally occurring sugars. Of course, that's fine. Eat fruit, You can eat some, carbohydrates that are naturally occurring in whole food forms is ideal. But there's no reason There's no essential reason to eat sugar in our diet. nutritionally you could survive without it, which is why ketogenic diets exist. You know, young children with seizure disorders grow up on ketogenic diets to control their seizures and they're fine. They still develop normally. So you wanna get the calories you need, which could be easier to do when there's carbohydrates in the diet. But it's not an essential thing. And low blood glucose will only do you favors. It will never be a detriment for any cancer outcome. this article unfortunately didn't lead you in that direction. This article didn't do a complete look at, nutrition and ketosis and the whole bit. It basically just glossed over and said, sugar doesn't feed cancer, don't worry about it. So I had, I had some qualms with it, but that's usually the New York Times kind of skews that way in general, unfortunately. Ever since, Jane Brody left,

LEAH 33:45

We've talked about how sugar, it's not like I eat cookie cancer grows. I mean, we've talked about that, and how Yeah, it's more about blood sugar control.

Tina 33:54

and it may even be more about insulin,

LEAH 33:56

Yeah. And that's kind of what we talk about in that episode. So

Aspartame (Nutrasweet) and Cancer

LEAH 34:00

to kind of take things in the other direction, there was also, there are headlines everywhere, everywhere about aspartame causing cancer. And Aspart team is NutraSweet super popular. When it first came out, it was a non saccharin type of, artificial sweetener and it was put in everything. It is in a lot of stuff.

Tina 34:21

Yeah. You know, the story about aspartame goes back way back to its original. I guess approval for use. And I was intrigued at that time. One of our colleagues, went through the names of, who worked for the company, who made aspartame and who approved it. And you wouldn't believe the revolving doors at the top between people who were in the the companies that developed aspartame and are our very own F d A that approved it. they were a lot of the same people. And so since then, you know, whatever that was, 20 plus years ago, I don't know,

LEAH 34:54

We've, we've lost track of time. It's all a blur.

Tina 34:58

It's all a blur. but since then I've always been a little skeptical about it. And over time, sure enough, research has come out, and this is, research has been coming out for a long time, showing that at least the one I think of, and I think the strongest evidence is, is for lymphomas. And I'm sure there's other cancers as well, but. I've always advised people not to use it if they can. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, I A R C is the arm of the World Health Organization that comes up with these lists. They look at agents and then they, they look to see whether it could be carcinogenic. And in the case of aspartame, they saw that it is possibly carcinogenic to humans. So they listed it as such. There's another arm of the World Health Organization that then looks at dosing. So their job isn't to look at doses at the I A R C. Their job is to just say yes or no. Is it possible? Is it probable, is it definitive? You know, so that's, that's how they list it. And then there's another group that says, if it is, how much does it take for a human to ingest for it to be dangerous? They found, or they guesstimate that between 12 and 36 cans of diet soda

LEAH 36:07

Daily,

Tina 36:08

daily and 132 pound person.

LEAH 36:11

and I have had patients who consume 12 cans of soda a day. I don't know if it's diet or whatever, but I mean, that that's, that is something that is doable.

Tina 36:21

Yeah. And I don't know how many little, the little packets that they have, you know, they put the little packets out. I dunno how many packets that is,

LEAH 36:27

Oh, like if it, like if one packet is equivalent to like a can of soda or something, or whatever, that kind of, yeah.

Tina 36:33

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what the equivalent is there. But in any case, there are better ways to sweeten things, even if you're a diabetic. And I I would say a packet of sugar is better than a packet aspartame, for people who are otherwise healthy, if you're diabetic, then you might have to do something else that's stevia based or glycine. The amino acid glycine can be, um, very sweet and you can use that one-to-one ratio just like sugar.

LEAH 36:58

And Monk Fruit is another one, right? Monk fruit.

Tina 37:01

Yes. If you don't mind the taste of monk fruit. I don't, I don't particularly like the taste of stevia and monk fruit myself, but some people don't mind it at all.

LEAH 37:07

And the thing with monk fruit is it's sometimes mixed with sorbitol and so, Taking it back to cancer patients. If somebody's having diarrhea and they're doing things that are sweetened with monk fruit, just check and make sure that there's no sorbitol on there. 'cause that can exacerbate diarrhea. So,

Tina 37:24

Yeah, erythritol and sorbitol can lead to some of those, GI upset and looser stools. they're sugar alcohols. So yeah, you do have to be careful about that. But anyways, back to the aspartame. I'm not a fan. I've never been a fan. The very least you can do is cut down if you're a very high consumer. And if you can find another way and do something else, I would highly recommend it because, I don't know. From a naturopathic perspective, it's not a natural molecule. It's not a natural substance, and so I just have this idea that rather than wait for the research to prove that, chemical compounds are bad for you, why don't we just avoid them if we possibly can and, not have to deal with researching it at all.

LEAH 38:01

I was, no, I was looking to see what, aspartame was. I remember when it first became popular, people were like, well, it is natural because it's derived from, and I can't remember what it was. Derived from, it's two amino acids. It's a spartic acid and phenylalanine, yeah, I just, for some reason I thought maybe it was something else. you know how like Truvia is from Stevia? Stevia is a plant. Like, I thought there was some sort of thing, like some sort of rationale that people had, why aspartame was fine. 'cause it was just two amino acids.

Tina 38:28

Mm. The, the issue with that is when we metabolize those amino acids, when we break it apart, we actually produce methanol. you're basically producing methanol with it inside your body.

LEAH 38:40

So let's leave it at that and let's take a break. And when we come back, we're gonna talk about some crazy breakthroughs of 2023 that you discovered. you didn't discover these breakthroughs, Tina, but you found them in an article. And then we're gonna read a letter because we got an email from a listener. And I wanna share it

Tina 39:01

All right, let's do that.

Recent Breakthroughs in early diagnosis

LEAH 39:11

Tina, what are these crazy breakthroughs that you, that you read about?

Tina 39:14

Well, I dunno if they're breakthroughs so much as super intriguing ways that we might be able to find cancers earlier. And so there was, there was a few, one had to do with, it was the B M J. British Medical Journal came out with a, a headline called Ovarian Cancer Loyalty Card Data Could Help identify cases sooner. So what they did was they looked at data from, a grocery store, loyalty cards at over the counter purchases of medications were tracked on these loyalty cards, and they noticed it could help diagnose ovarian cancer cases earlier. And so what they did was they, they found that purchases of painkillers and indigestion treatments like antacids, were higher for the months before ovarian cancer was found. And so what they're saying is, they could take this data and send out a little notice that says, you know, we see you're buying these, please. make sure you saw your gp. I thought that was kind of cool.

LEAH 40:12

A little Big brother-ish, but you

Tina 40:14

yeah, a little creepy. But they're already doing this, and they already did something similar with pancreatic cancer in the past where they found that people were more prone, and I feel like Google might've done it. They looked up, they were looking at keyword searches and stuff, and people with pancreatic cancer had searched things like, abdominal pain and certain types of words that they used, like stabbing midsection, pain, or whatever they were looking at. And Google associated that with a higher risk of. Associated pancreatic cancer in the following year. But, so there are ways of using this. It is all Big Brother-ish. Another article that was, these were all in the same news, flash from the week, a UK publication, but another one that was kind

Ants can sniff out cancer?

Tina 40:55

of cool in that article from the week is Ants Can Sniff Out Cancer.

LEAH 41:00

So it's not just dogs.

Tina 41:02

that's the lead in to the entire article. Dogs have been trained to sniff out cancer. Now it turns out that ants can do it too. So apparently they don't have noses,

LEAH 41:12

so they're not really sniffing.

Tina 41:15

they do have olfactory receptors on their antenna and so they have a good sense of smells. But maybe that's not sniffing per se.

LEAH 41:24

Oh.

Tina 41:25

And they can detect volatile organic compounds that are released by tumors. And so this can be in anything that we excrete. It can be in our sweat, in our urine, in breath. So we've had dogs doing this for quite some time, to the point where it's kind of interesting that we haven't taken more advantage of that. I feel like dogs pretty reliable in this sense, but it's not standard anywhere that I know out there.

LEAH 41:47

So you can get a dog scan and a CAT scan.

Tina 41:53

Nice. So this study was published in the Royal Society. And anyways, they showed that transplanting cancer cells from a human being into mice and they let them develop in the mouse, and they trained the ants to associate the smell of cancer in the urine with a reward. And sure enough, when they tested them, the ants lingered longer around the cancerous mouse's urine, hoping for that reward. So it actually used the smell to gain the reward, just like you would train a dog. They train the ants and they mentioned that of course, ants don't live as long and it's a lot faster. So you could train ants, much more quickly than you can, train a dog because dogs take a lot more time. Obviously they're much cuter and much cuddly and probably a better experience for the patient 'cause you get to pet the dog.

LEAH 42:41

Ideally

Tina 42:42

The last one in that same article had to do with fingerprints, and they called it fingerprints. All of these, all of these article titles are a little misleading, but basically a simple test for breast cancer. What they did, and this is again, someplace in the uk, they took 15 women and looked at the sweat on their fingers, and the sweat contains proteins that are early detectors for breast cancer. And it was highly accurate. And so what they did was they analyzed fingers smears from patients with benign breast disease, early breast cancer, or metastatic breast cancer, and using machine learning, the technology was able to predict the category of cancer with an accuracy of almost 98%.

LEAH 43:26

that's crazy.

Tina 43:28

That is kind of crazy because then it implies if they could perfect this and really scale it up and prove that it's true, then a simple fingerprint could be used to at least tip off who should be undergoing more imaging. obviously you, could do a fingerprint at any age. Right? So, so one of the issues we have right now with finding breast cancer early is, you know, we have screening mammograms, but they don't start until either 40 or 50, depending where in the world you live. There's two different ages there that, that are standard. But we don't have anything for young people There's no screening before that time that's routinely done unless somebody has a known genetic predisposition. So a fingerprint would be, you know, that means everyone all the time. I mean, you could just, whether you're 25 or 35, and unfortunately I see a lot of patients with absolutely no genetic. Risk known and no family history, but they're still under 40 years old. So something like this in our future, and this is just breast cancer, I'm gonna guess that this may be true for other cancers as they expand this research. So that one was probably the most like, wow, that would be a game changer. They could perfect this.

LEAH 44:31

that's some crazy stuff right there. Crazy. In a good way.

Tina 44:33

Mm-hmm.

A listener wrote in...

Tina 44:34

All right. So, and you mentioned you had a letter that we received.

LEAH 44:38

Yeah. Yeah. So Alicia wrote to us and said, the following, I have learned so much from listening to you two and really enjoy the laughter. then in parentheses, she says, I don't have many words right now. I'm in active treatment at the height of chemo brain. I came across this podcast on Spotify a couple weeks ago and have done some binge listening. From listening, I am focusing on some light strength training rather than trying to walk in the muggy Indiana heat and not being so hard on myself about getting my steps in and just trying to keep moving. I listened to the podcast on chemo brain and almost cried. No, I did cry. Good tears. Like there is hope. There is hope for sure. Absolutely. And lots more. Like with nutrition, I was diagnosed in late 2015 and have had multiple recurrences in lines of treatment. Right now it's CarboTaxol. For the third or maybe fourth time in hindsight, I would've traveled to a cancer center. There are none in my area. I really like and trust my oncologist, but no treating the whole person is the way to go. Once I have more of my brain functioning, I'm gonna check out

Leah_raw-audio_e67_anniversary_episode_2023-jul-18-0400pm_tina_& leah only — Edit) 3 45:45

the

LEAH 45:45

links on finding help via telemedicine. Is that a word? That's her saying that not me. and then she says, thanks so much for sharing your knowledge and experience. So that's awesome. I responded to her through email and just said, that was awesome. And yeah, there is hope with chemo brain it will come back as I did experience this last week, under a lot of stress and had a little brain shut down. But no, there definitely is hope and I love the fact that she's trying to keep moving. I mean, there, you know, it's like just those little things can really help you feel better going through treatment.

Tina 46:23

Yeah. Yeah. And I really appreciate taking the time to write to us and, anyone else who wants to write to us about anything, feel free. I mean, we really are at the receiving end. We don't have machines taking care of our email or some distant staff reading things. It's, it's just us.

LEAH 46:39

Yet, that's our goal. It's all gonna be AI in the

Tina 46:43

We, it'll all be, No, no, no. It, it's really appreciated because we do do it to help people. And so it's nice to know that there are people on the receiving end who are actually putting some of the advice into action, although we're not your doctors. some of the things that we talk about that are consistent about high nutrition and keep moving and sleep well and take care of yourself kind of stuff, yeah, I'm glad it's helping folks and it's nice to hear because, uh, a lot of times it's on faith that we assume people are deriving some benefit and so it's nice to know that useful.

Wrap up

LEAH 47:17

And if there's something in an episode that you found useful, share it with a friend because they may find it useful as well. know, spread the love.

Tina 47:25

And my naturopathic colleagues who I just saw at a conference in Toronto, many of you said to me, oh, I didn't even think of sharing this with my patients. Well now think of it. Share this with your patients. that's what we make it for. We make it for a broad audience, and it is cancer focused and some general information here. But you know, the idea is to help people who are affected, whether it's patients themselves, or their caregivers, or their naturopaths or their doctors. I mean, I think there's something for everybody in our, podcast, so hopefully as year three evolves, we will have more offerings and, you know, maybe even more in-depth offerings that people can learn more about, topics that they're interested in. So let us know.

LEAH 48:05

And I think what Alicia said in terms of like where she is, there's not a specific cancer center where there would be other offerings. She's seeing, her oncologist and she would have to travel far to, and so that, I mean, that's kind of why we're doing this because not everyone has access to a cancer center and not everyone has access to an integrative cancer center. So I just, yeah, her letter, I really, really appreciate. I appreciated reading it. and oh, I think when I read it initially, I think I texted you and said it made me cry.

Tina 48:39

Yes, you did. Yeah.

LEAH 48:41

I just, I don't know. Anyways, so

Tina 48:44

Good tears though.

LEAH 48:46

it was Yes, good tears. Just like Alicia. So, yeah. so on that note, I'm Dr. Leah Sherman,

Tina 48:52

And I'm Dr. Tina Kaser.

LEAH 48:54

and this is the Cancer Pod.

Tina 48:56

Until next time.

48:57

Thanks for listening to the cancer pod. Remember to subscribe, review and rate us wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates, and as always, this is not medical advice. These are our opinions. Talk to your doctor before changing anything related to your treatment plan. The cancer pod is hosted by me, Dr. Lea Sherman. And by Dr. Tina Caer music is by Kevin McLeod. See you next time.