The Cancer Conflict: Conventional vs. Alternative Treatments

Tina 0:00

Welcome to episode 47 of the Cancer Pod. In this one, Le and I talk about that. Why in the road where you need to choose your cancer treatment path, should it be conventional treatments, alternative therapies in integration of. Our inspiration for our chat is a film called The Cancer Conflict. Join us as we share our experiences and opinions on this crucial decision making moment I'm Dr Tina Kaczor and as Leah likes to say I'm the science-y one

Leah 0:26

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

Tina 0:30

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

Leah 0:34

But we're not your doctors

Tina 0:36

This is for education entertainment and informational purposes only

Leah 0:40

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

Tina 0:45

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

Leah 0:51

Welcome to the cancer pod

Introduction

Leah 1:09

Hey Tina.

Tina 1:10

Hi Leah. We have kind of an interesting topic today and we're gonna launch off a movie that we saw called The Cancer Conflict

Leah 1:18

available on Apple TV and on Amazon

Tina 1:20

Prime. You and I just watched it so it's fresh in our minds and it's not about the movie, it's about what thoughts it's spurred and the topics that we need to talk about because this is important stuff.

Leah 1:32

I know. I kind of wish that we watched the movie together cuz I kept pausing it and saying things to my husband like, wait a minute. So yeah, we gotta figure out how to do that. I know there's ways people can watch movies. Across the country or, from different households together. So yeah, we gotta figure

Tina 1:47

that out. Well, Amazon Prime has a button called watch party. Well, there you go. Yeah. So I think it's that easy.

Leah 1:53

And I watched it on Apple tv, so we needed to have done a watch party. Yeah. Because I think there were a lot of points for us to discuss. And so that's what today's episode is about. We're diving into alternative therapies, which we get a lot of questions from people about, excuse me. So, part of why we're gonna talk about alternative medicine, how it differs from complimentary medicine and this movie interchanges them, which is just really

Tina 2:20

hard to follow.

What's alternative, integrative and complementary medicine?

Tina 2:23

Yes. So the first thing is, what's the difference between alternative medicine and complimentary medicine in integrative medicine? So alternative

Leah 2:30

medicine is what it says. It's in place of like, it's in the name. Yes. So let's say, I don't wanna take something for let. My diabetes or my high blood pressure or whatever I've got going on. Mm-hmm. and I opt for a natural treatment, diet, lifestyle, whatever it may be. That's alternative medicine

Tina 2:53

because it's an alternative to the conventional treatment, whatever that is. Yeah. Usually a drug, right? So you're using it in lieu of the conventional, so it's an alternative to that, and that is very different than complimentary or integrative,

Leah 3:06

and I kind of think of those as the same. Mm-hmm. complimentary and integrative would be, again, hypothetically I have diabetes and high blood pressure. Whatever I've got going on, I'm taking my medications and I'm doing diet and lifestyle and maybe I'm doing some other things to. Enhance the efficacy of what I'm taking as a medication maybe so I don't take as high doses or whatever it may be, to manage side effects that can come about from those prescription medications. Yeah, and that's what we do in integrative oncology is that we are making recommendations for things that support our patients so that they can get through their conventional treatment without any breaks as healthfully as possible. Yeah.

Tina 3:52

with integrative oncology, what we do is try to get people to make the right decisions you know, along the path. So I think we do help with decision making. Should I go left? Should I go right, should I do X? Should I do Y, the third choice, should I do Z? So we help folks decide also when to. Use conventional and integrate some natural medicines with that. Or maybe there is a time period where there's a long wait or they

Leah 4:18

get a break, right. That three month period between scans, like what can you do?

Tina 4:23

Yeah, there's a lot of decision points along the way that I think people who are well trained in integrative oncology can really help people decide and make that decision properly and in their best interest. Because the landscape is not only broad, it's deep of information. So the idea that say, Dr. Google is going to have the answer and that someone who's not trained in medicine can find that answer in a timely manner. That's not gonna happen. Basically, comparing that to someone who just does integrative oncology for 10 years, 20 years, whatever, as a clinician, has seen thousands of patients and already has that landscape in their head.

Leah 4:58

Absolutely right. The Facebook group of people who talk about alternative treatments, and I think that there are some good Facebook forums mm-hmm. where patients talk about like, oh, well this worked for me. Talk to your doctor about it. You know, like that's what they'll say is, you know, well, when I had hot flashes, my doctor prescribed this or recommended this. Mm-hmm. but check and see if it's for you. There's a difference between that and this is gonna work for you and conventional treatment isn't.

Tina 5:28

So the first tip off when you have cancer and you go to any professional, I don't care if they're conventional or alternative, if anyone tells you something works a hundred percent of the time, be wary because. That's not commonly the case. I mean that's nothing's gonna work a hundred percent of the time because cancer's not a monolithic thing. There's so many different cancers out there. But even within a given cancer, nothing works for everybody cuz we're all different and every cancer is a little different. So that's big red flag when someone says, oh yeah, this always works, you know, or I have 90 plus percent success rate. Yeah.

Leah 5:58

And what I find interesting in the movie they talked about, it was the filmmaker and one other guy, and they talked about how people got conventional treatment and also did complimentary medicine. And they attributed their, their being cancer free with, not with the conventional treatment, the surgery, or, you know, whatever it is that they did. they said it was because, The cannabis oil or whatever else that they took along with it. I found that to be a very interesting occurrence, which I have seen.

Tina 6:33

Um, me too. Yeah.

Leah 6:35

Where a patient will get standard of care treatment for something like a non-Hodgkin's lymphoma say, which can be very, very treatable and curable, um, using chemotherapy. Mm-hmm. and they will attribute. There being no evidence of disease with whatever complimentary medicine that they chose, or complimentary lifestyle

The film, overview: Hey, Tina!

Leah 6:58

choice. So let's rewind a little bit and we'll kind of just set up the movie. And like you said, this isn't really a movie review. We're just gonna kind of bring up points because Yeah, there are a lot of times when I'm watching something or reading an article and I'm like, Hey Tina. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. what are your thoughts? And so this is what, this is gonna be a Hey Tina moment. Ooh, maybe that's what we'll call it. Hey Tina

Tina 7:20

Well, you know, and, and this brings up the whole idea that, you know, people will attribute, like you just said, the success of a treatment to the natural things that they did. I have seen this so many times that I always question it when people tell me, oh, my neighbor had such and such, and they cured it with natural means of some kind. I will always tell them to go back to their neighbor and ask them what they did conventionally as well. Because if there was an alternative medicine that was reliable, I'd be a hundred percent in, I would be there. Wherever it is in the world, I'm still open to it. I still would love to find that. I'm telling you, after what, 22 years? I haven't seen it reliably. I've had cases of regressions, amazing regression, people going all around the world or even my own patients, but I can't say that they can be duplicated over and over again to a point that they can call it reliable. Mm-hmm. So, well,

Leah 8:10

let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and we'll kind of start talking about the movie and all of our questions that we had around it.

Tina 8:17

Sounds good.

Leah 8:25

okay, we're back. We're back. And we are going to use the movie, the Cancer Conflict as a launching pad for us to talk about various alternative and complimentary treatments.

Tina 8:38

Yeah, and really the only thing you need to know as a listener, assuming you haven't seen the movie, is that they take two people. There's a gentleman who is very scientifically minded and eventually brings in alternative medicine into his treatment. And then there is a female patient with breast cancer who right outta the gates, doesn't want any treatment, including surgery for her breast cancer. So,

Leah 9:02

and, and to go a little deeper on that grant, who is the. With colon cancer. He's diagnosed what with what he thought was staged. He was told he had stage three colon cancer. Mm-hmm. and then started experiencing some back pain. And then they did imaging and they realized, oh, we misdiagnosed you, you actually have stage four colon cancer. So he was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. um, surrender was diagnosed with, we don't really get a lot of information other than it's a grade two. They said later on it was P size, so most likely a pretty early stage invasive ductal carcinoma. But, She doesn't opt for any treatment. She thought that, what were her words about the mastectomy? Uh, mastectomies were barbaric and that they only treated the symptom. Mm-hmm. which I found to be an interesting conclusion that she came to, especially because she was diagnosed in 2012. So a lot of advances in surgery had happened. Mm-hmm. but that was her experience. And these were, so this was her choice to not treat it in any way conventionally. And this

Tina 10:12

hearkens back to our interview with the retired breast surgeon, Mary Barnhardt, Mary Barnhart, uh, prior episode where we talked about this briefly. And, you know, there's surgeons who tracked this and, um, women who refuse surgery for early stage breast cancer do not have good outcomes.

Leah 10:29

It progresses. Were you yelling at your T? I mean, I wasn't quite yelling at my tv, but in my head I was like, just get the surgery. Just get the surgery, please get the surgery.

Tina 10:39

No, I thought to myself, I wonder how this movie's gonna end and where along her trajectory it's going to end because I know how it's going to end if she never gets any treatment and

Leah 10:47

kind of skipping around, she just try to get imaging from I think a conventional oncologist. And this all takes place in, um, in England. So a lot of the treatments are different, especially with Grant in terms of choices of medications or what's available. It is very different than what's available in the us. But so she tried to get somebody to follow her with just the imaging as she chose these alternative treatments. So she wasn't doing anything conventional. She just wanted to do these recommendations that she got from a naturopath wherever she lived. And then the doctor was like, no, we're not gonna track you. Mm-hmm. we're not gonna monitor you. So she ends up seeing a woman who. Does thermal imaging, what is it called?

Tina 11:31

Thermal thermography. Yeah, thermography. Yeah.

Leah 11:33

And this woman herself, says that she has managed her tumor naturally. She never had any treatment. Um, she's like, my tumor's still here, you know, still present, but I've been doing this all naturally. So she's followed by thermography, which the movie points out, and I know we've mentioned this before too, this is something that is typically done in conjunction with mammography. This is not something that is a standalone. Mm-hmm. People do it as a standalone or an alternative to mammography, but there's no evidence showing that it's

Tina 12:05

accurate. No. The problem with thermography, I wrote about thermography for the natural medicine journal a long time ago, and basically nothing much has changed since. We'll link to

Leah 12:16

that. Let's put a link so people

Tina 12:18

can read that. Okay. So thermography is looking at the difference in temperature of the tissue and. It's not rigorous enough to differentiate inflammation from cancerous growth. Inflammation and tumors tend to be warm, but there's no studies that are rigorous enough to say where the parameters are, where the cutoffs are. So in this movie that Tomographer said things like, you're, you are high risk right now. And then she comes back, gets a repeat thermogram and she's like, now you're low risk. just like me, I have something that's not growing in my breast. And I'm thinking, what we don't know in that thermo is, did she get it biopsied? Is it benign? she's just assuming any lump in her breast could be something else. We don't know. We don't know her story, neither. Patient who's trusting her with her life. I had a lot of problems around that, including the fact that basically at that point that Thermo is really, at least in the United States, would be really treading some seriously dangerous waters as far as medical advice goes, and acting as a physician at that moment, You can't say that from Thermogram.

Leah 13:25

Yeah, because there was that point where her tumor went from pea size to two to three centimeters. And then she had the, the thermogram after that to kind of see what was going on.

Tina 13:38

And at that point, she already knew it was cancer, so it had already been biopsied when it was pea size. So my thought is this, any tumor that grows from a p to two or three centimeters needs to come out. I mean, if someone's gonna do that, if, if someone's gonna leave a tumor in place and like she, she grew up, she's like, I never had med, I haven't taken medicine in 30 years. She had no intention of ever getting conventional. Her whole family,

Leah 14:00

like none of them really believed in or went to conventional doctors, I should say. Her whole family was that way. She also said that she was told mastectomy would be her only option because she was so small breasted and so doing a lumpectomy, you know, I guess that was kind of like my thought in terms of my having a mastectomy in place of getting a lumpectomy was the fact that it would've been a shark bite out of mm-hmm. out of my breast. Right. But yeah, there was no discussion of if there was gonna be reconstruction or anything. She just did not want the

Tina 14:33

mastectomy. And I, I've met those folks who are philosophically opposed tonal medicine and that's, that's her prerogative and I can tell. What I have done with those folks is just let them know what I think is going to happen. I mean, I, I don't really mince words and I would say if someone had biopsy proven breast cancer and they came to my clinic and they were refusing surgery, I might see them for a couple visits thinking that's how long it'll take to convince them to go ahead and get the surgery. And after that, I would say I can't ethically continue our relationship unless they have a medical oncologist as well. We all know what we're trying to do is get them definitive treatment. Uh, I'd, I'd love for her to be right and alternatives to work. You have to get surgery with breast cancer. That's it. End of story. Well,

Leah 15:13

she had such a different perspective even on the cancer. He itself mm-hmm. she saw cancer as a gift. And that is something I've heard from patients as well. And I always find that very interesting and I kind of explore, you know, what does that mean to you? so yeah, her, her whole attitude towards what was happening was just very different than mm-hmm. I have seen patients experience, she did see this naturopath who told her that all breast cancers caused by hormone imbalance, and I thought I heard them say excess estrogen. And so she needed to get these like hormone supplements and she was taking like 32 different supplements a day. Mm-hmm. But yeah, the whole thing, again, I could be wrong, I didn't go back and rewatch it, but I thought she said it was caused by estrogen excess.

Tina 16:08

Yeah, I didn't catch that, but it's very well known have been said. I caught the 32 supplements,

Leah 16:12

and the hormone imbalance part. Right. Like it, she, all she had to do was balance her hormones and she would be fine.

Tina 16:17

Yeah. Which is not true.

Leah 16:21

Yeah. So I am pausing this movie throughout and just turning to my husband and going like, okay,

Tina 16:28

this is my thought on it. Yeah, so maybe we should have a watch party. I actually bought the movie on Amazon Prime, so we could always do that and put it up on YouTube.

Leah 16:36

Oh yeah. Yeah. We can figure once we figure out how to do a watch party, I know Christine McConnell does watch parties all the time, so, um, we'll figure that out and we can do that. That would be fun.

More background on the film

Leah 16:52

so she did get that false sense of security. She went back to one of her doctors and they were told her her lump was stable and she was doing 32 supplements a day. Was that

Tina 17:02

her doctor or, I thought that was a thermo that told

Leah 17:04

her it was stable. That was earlier before she went back for that second thermogram. Okay. So that's kind of introducing surrender and then going back to Grant.

Issues with staging & treatment

Leah 17:14

Grant had surgery, so before he found out that he had stage four, Cancer. He actually had surgery for his colon cancer and was told he was cancer free and then started experiencing the pain and was told that they missed the cancer that was in his bones, lungs, and lymph nodes.

Tina 17:34

Okay. Let's talk about this. This is one of those things that I have seen way too many times. This is a weird anomaly within oncology, and I know these folks are in the UK and it's different than the United States, but wherever people are, and our listeners are around the world, so I don't care where you are, you make sure that they have the proper stage before going through with surgery in particular. So they diagnose 'em with stage three. What they missed were lesions in his bone and lung, possibly. There's no evidence that they actually did scans, and I've had too many patients never get a full body CT scan before they have surgery and a major surgery like his, you know, taking out part of your colon. Especially towards the rectal area as a major surgery, everyone should get staged. Everyone should get at least a ct, maybe a CT and a PET scan so that you know for a fact what you think is stage two or stage three or even stage one is in fact that, and not disseminated to another tissue in the body. The lung, the bones, the liver are the most common places that we're looking at. I've seen this so many times and every time I see it I cringe cuz it's tragic cuz they go through a major operation just to find out afterwards that may have not been the course of treatment had they been properly staged. like we've said,

Leah 18:54

we know the NCCN guidelines or we know where to look them up for treatment here in the states, but we don't know how things are treated, especially with the medical system that they have over there. It seemed like a lot of these choices that were given to him, not a lot, but some of those choices he was given were based on cost. So you can't get this drug because it's expensive unless this happens. You know, he had jumped through loopholes and he actually misrepresented information, which I thought was interesting too, because he goes to Germany to get what I guess is considered an alternative therapy because it's not offered in the uk, but he got tastes mm-hmm. for the lesions in his liver. And that is something that is offered here in the us but I guess it's not offered to patients in the uk. So, you should explain what taste is. Oh, it's, it's putting chemotherapy directly into a tumor that's in your. Um, but then the medication that he got, and I cannot say this name, um, aflibercept, it's typically with systemic chemotherapy and it's a VEGF inhibitor, which is the same as Avastin or Bevacizumab, which he had to kind of fight to get that. So it's really interesting that like, oh, Avastin's too expensive. We can't do that unless you jump through hoops or whatever. But they gave him this other drug that, I don't remember him getting the other chemo regimen that in the patients typically

Tina 20:36

get, and even in that timeframe, cuz he was, this was 20 13, 20 14 that we're talking about when he got his treatments.

Leah 20:42

Yeah. I mean, full fox, whatever he would've gotten, he would've gotten some sort of five FU regimen mm-hmm. and he didn't, Yeah, it was really interesting. So he goes to Germany to get both the taste plus r I'm assuming what he got also was rfa. He talked about getting lasers. So I'm thinking it's, um, radiofrequency ablation. Those are things that patients can get in the us mm-hmm. and not have to go to other countries to get. So again, it's just, it's, it's really interesting to see the differences in standard of care. And I've seen that, I've seen that on Instagram and on Twitter with, you know, the people that I follow who are in other countries and they need a certain drug for secondary breast cancer, you know, advanced Yes. Stage four breast cancer. And they can't get that. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, in the states, like we have that

Tina 21:39

It's already approved.

Leah 21:40

Yeah, it's already approved. It's, it's, it's really interesting. Um, and unfortunate, but he did. His oncologist was okay with him going to Germany and getting these other treatments that weren't available to him. So in a way, those are kind of alternative or complimentary treatments, even though they're conventional. Yeah,

Tina 21:58

yeah. So yeah, his, his leaving the country, going to Germany and getting things that are, I suppose are considered more cutting edge, you know, like they're a little bit more advanced and the taste, which is concentrating the chemotherapy directly into the liver was available here, but it wasn't commonly used. Still isn't commonly used.

Leah 22:18

Anyways, um, he had a two month wait to get approved for Avastin. And it's interesting that they would've done the Avastin after they did the other one. They're both veg F inhibitors.

Tina 22:30

They're both inhibitors of new blood vessel development.

Leah 22:33

Right. But yeah, I just, that whole part confused me because I'm not familiar with how, um, you know, the national health system works in terms of who can get what drugs.

Tina 22:45

yeah, it was interesting in this movie, cuz they're in the UK so there's parts of it that were like, what? That's not what would happen here. Exactly. So

Leah 22:52

that was, that was, that was kind of a little, you know, confusing.

Tina 22:55

Okay, let's take a little break. I wanna bring up, uh, what these two people had in common, even though they were very different people. All right, so we're back.

Being in charge of your own care

Tina 23:14

So one of the things I thought was interesting is somewhere along the movie, each of them said something along the lines of kind of being the one to be in charge, which is fine cuz we should all be in charge of our own bodies. She said, I always use my gut and she was also doing research or what I would put in air quotes, research because I don't think it's real research and the rigorous sense of research. She's basically looking online, getting anecdotal evidence and she

Leah 23:43

was fine with that. She was fine. Like she was fine with anecdotal evidence over scientific research.

Tina 23:51

Yes. Which he was kinda the opposite when it came to that. He's a scientist by inclination biologist.

Leah 23:57

Yeah, He had a biology background. Yeah.

Tina 23:59

Yeah. And he said, and I did quote this one, I'm the best person to determine my care, which I completely agree with. I think each person is the best person to determine their own care. The. Issue was he didn't have someone kind of explaining the limits of his own ability to do that. He had no, no one to check like, okay, at this point you've just made these assumptions and that's why this is not a good idea. Or

Leah 24:24

he had that oncologist, he had the um,

Tina 24:27

well, did, did you catch the oncologist as basically, I must placate every patient to a certain degree or else they won't come back? Oh, right. His med onc was like, I'll humor the guy. Yeah. I wasn't expecting him to stop his other treatment. So what happened was his on medical oncologist in the UK said, yeah, go ahead, do the German treatment in addition to what we're doing. I'm fine with that. Mm-hmm. even though you and I agreed that wasn't standard of care in the United States, but in any case, he was amenable to that. The problem came in when they wanted to do what he called lasers in the movie, which we think is radio frequency ablation, which is basically. I guess lasers would be, it's basically gotta do the finger quotes, lasers. it's basically a radiation type that hones in on the tumor itself and does concentrate. It's absent. Yeah. It concentrates the radiation to the tumor itself and, and can destroy them that way. Ablation means destruction. So in any case, the UK doctor was amenable to combining them, but when it came to doing the ablation therapy to the liver, the laser, um, the patient opted to stop the treatment that was probably having the biggest effect. And I think they did that well. In the movie, they conveyed how his treatment back in the UK was working on his tumors in his bone, in his lungs, and in his liver. But much like the other, Patients that they talk to later who give all the credit to the natural stuff. This patient said, no, it's the German treatment where they're only putting chemo in my liver. That's really having the bigger effect. He thought the German treatment was affecting all the tumors in his whole body. And with that, he's like, I'm gonna stop the UK treatment I'm gonna go to Germany. I'm gonna put my faith in these folks, which didn't work. It ended. He ended up having progression of disease everywhere because he traded in a systemic treatment, one that treats his bones and his lungs and his liver all at once with a treatment that only treats his liver. And this is where someone should have been very vocal with him at some point and said, you realize you're getting a local treatment. It's not what caused your other ones to shrink the systemic treatment. Did you need to stay on a systemic treatment? So I feel like that's, that was a little bit of a breakdown. He should be the best person to determine his own care and at the same time, he needs people to check him and say, oh, that is the wrong direction. This is not gonna work. He didn't have that.

Leah 26:58

then he misrepresented his progression to the medical oncologist who was trying to get him the Avastin. And I thought it was interesting that the medical oncologist wasn't like, well, let's get a copy of those scans cuz he was like, oh no. The scans showed that everything was fine. And based on that, they went through with trying to get the, the next medication. But in the States, they would image you, they would check you, you know, oh, we need to get copies of those records. It just was a very, um, again, that, that was very confusing to me. Like, how did he just go off of what the

Tina 27:33

patient said? I didn't understand that either. It followed on the heels of the medical oncologist in the UK basically saying they create paperwork that's so long and it's encumbering the paperwork itself makes you not wanna even fight for the Avastin drug. They make it difficult on purpose, which I thought was wow. You know, for a medical oncologist to like speak against the machine. I was kind of surprised.

Leah 27:55

And that's kind of when Grant turns towards what would be considered more, I guess, alternative type therapy. Um, we're just on the break trying to figure out what exactly he was taking cuz he says one thing, but I can't find what he said he's taking. So we think it's something that blocks

Tina 28:12

copper. I think that's what he meant. Yeah. Cause he says ammonium tetra something and he, I think he uses the wrong word cause I think he means ammonium tetra lib date, which we abbreviate TTM when we talk about it.

Leah 28:26

Cause it's a long word. Yeah. And then surrender kind of moves from her, you know, taking all of these supplements that she's. Brought in, um, a RI machine. She's doing hyperbaric oxygen. She's juicing and taking some sort of miracle herb. And the bottle honestly says Miracle Herb on it. Mm-hmm. um, there's no, no clue what's in there. Um, and she is reading about how carrot juice cures cancer. Mm-hmm. and something else I had pointed out to you, watching her cut a carrot to juice it cuz she was cutting with a sharp knife towards herself with a carrot in her hand. Towards her body. Towards her body. Yeah. The carrot was in her hand and she's cutting towards herself. And I was like, I cannot watch this. That really was, oh my gosh. So yeah. So they're all, they're kind of shifting their treatments based on, um, on the disease progression. She starts using cannabis rectally. She takes a little capsule and she puts coconut oil and then a little drop of the cannabis oil. Um, and then in the movie, they start explaining like where cannabis is being researched in which cancer cells, you know, pancreatic cancer cells are, you know, but they're, they're using cell cultures. They're not testing these in humans. Yeah. I thought the film did a really good job with clarifying things.

Tina 29:50

I agree. They presented it and I would be anticipating like, oh my God, you can't say that. And then they're like, this is why that doesn't work. You know, like So they, they would follow it up with something that I'm like, okay. Thank you for clarifying that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I

Leah 30:03

did the same thing.

Tina 30:04

Okay. So let's talk about cannabis

How about Cannabis?

Tina 30:06

a little bit. We're gonna do a series on it where you and I are determined

30:09

we

Leah 30:09

have, we have to, yeah. We gotta get our guests together. We gotta, we gotta do this cuz I, yeah. I'm very limited in what I know. Yeah.

Tina 30:15

Cause this is a big one. Well, and you know, cannabis, let's just take it from the top. It's a plant. Like any plant, it has medicinal qualities and medicinal components in it. and it has its proper uses. And there are people on the internet who will credit cannabis or cannabis products with reversing their cancer. But let's not forget, one of the lessons in this movie was people will credit the reversal of their cancer or the lack of progression or whatever, to things that maybe didn't do that they just happened to be doing at the same time. So I have been doing this a long time and I lived in a township that was a very avid pot smoking town. We'll just call it that

Leah 30:52

It was a pot forward town.

Tina 30:54

It was a pot forward. It was a good old hippie town. Let's face it, Eugene, Oregon. There's no shortage of marijuana. People take pride in their, in their plants. I was privy to Rick Simpson Oil right when it came out, you know, so Rick Simpson Oil is a kind of a famous extract of, or infamous, depending of. Cannabis that is very resinous and very high in thc. it's so strong that you do the size of a grain of rice is the therapeutic amount and that's

Leah 31:25

the part amount you start with, you start with a grain

Tina 31:28

of rice. No, you get to a grain of rice. That's the goal. Oh, the goal is to get to a grain of rice. Oh

Leah 31:35

cuz. Yeah. Have you seen anyone get to that goal?

Tina 31:39

Oh, I've seen chronic pot smokers do it and even they are stuy by that time. It's cuz it's super high thc. Yeah, yeah. I will tell you Rick Simpson oil is a good, what we call an al medicine saif. So it puts you to sleep, you get high and then you go to sleep. Um, so it's very good at that. I mean, and in those patients who had trouble sleeping and they were, you know, wanted to experiment with that or dedicated to it, or they have faith in it, I would say, why don't you just take it in the evening, get a good night's sleep. I'm not opposed to using plants for their medicinal qualities. Now we're talking more about C B, D and THC being in balance. Um, long story short, I've never seen a cancer regression due to cannabis in any way, shape or form, any concentrate.

Leah 32:23

And because it is a plant and the THC part is from what I understand is what has more potential to interact with drugs, I've seen it possibly be what causes an interaction with certain, um, cancer medications. So I mean, there's, there was no proof that it was that, but it was something that once that was introduced, it stopped working and it was an oral medication. And so that's the other caution is just because it's natural doesn't mean that it's safe and there is potential for it to interact with drugs. Mm-hmm.

Tina 32:58

totally agree. And I wanna be clear that cannabis has uses and that, and that could be for. And it could be for anti-nausea, it could be anti-anxiety, it could even be the CBDs can be good for pain. So I don't wanna discount the plant altogether. I just don't think it has anti-cancer properties as strongly or as reliably as it's portrayed

Leah 33:20

and it does in cell cultures. But again, we've always bring up the fact that that's not how it works in humans. I went to, um, a cannabis conference in Portland, and they talked about like the levels to affect a human, a human could not tolerate those levels, if it even would work. So, but I did have patients, um, when I was in Arizona who came from other states where, at the time cannabis products were not legal except for medicinal use. I think. I had one patient with rectal cancer who did control his pain using. The suppositories he got and he was great cuz he didn't have to use a lot of the opioids. And so it can work as an alternative to pain medications. Again, talk with your doctors. You know, if you have a pain management doctor, you know, you don't wanna combine something that has the potential to making you sleepy with a nu with a pharmaceutical drug that will make you sleepy. You gotta make sure that there's, you know, no cross-motion going on. Mm-hmm. um,

Who should you talk to?

Leah 34:24

surrender did end up seeing that oncology nurse and And she actually was a, was a great voice of reason. Yeah. She was somebody that I kind of wish was brought on board initially.

Tina 34:35

That's kind of my point. I think that both of them took a different trajectory and really they both needed a voice of reason right out of the gates. Mm-hmm. right? They needed an integrative oncology practitioner, whatever their training is, wherever they are in the world. Somebody who knows conventional care and alternative care and integrates natural. I don't know. Natural medicine in general, whether it's supplements or diet or eastern medicines or whatever, knows the landscape well enough as broadly and as deeply as necessary. Um, kind of is the person that they're looking for when they're, they wanna be that person themselves, each of them when they're doing their Google stuff. But it's not possible. You can't do that in like two weeks, not even two years, I mean, you only accumulate that knowledge with a lifetime of practice and seeing thousands of patients. Um, and here I sit, I'm not taking new patients. I'm not gunning for us to like recruit people cuz it sounds like I am. It's really not. It, it's, it was a disservice to their own health to not seek someone like that nurse who is a voice of reason and say, okay, I honor what you're saying and I only want what's best for you. And what I think is best for you is to have this definitively treated with surgery. And maybe, you know, maybe it's a UK thing as well, but she was much more gentle and less, I don't know, passionate than I would be at that moment. I would be very much disturbed that someone who is not gonna get treatment in that scenario, when it goes from a p to two centimeters and she still says, I don't want surgery. I would just be like, you know, you know, the worst case scenario in this is metastatic breast cancer and eventually, you know, dying of the disease. In a not too distant future. I would, I would put, I would actually say those words to someone. I don't mince it at that moment because it's a big

Leah 36:22

deal. And I mean, the film was edited and so we don't know. I mean, but she was incredibly polite, incredibly gentle. Um,

Why do we make the choices we make?

Leah 36:29

which, yeah, I mean, even exploring what was so terrifying about the surgery because surrender's mom died when she was young of breast cancer. Mm-hmm. And an interesting component to the movie was exploring the whole, I guess I'll say energetic side, the whole. Mind body aspect and the movie points out that mind body medicine or whatever they called it in the film, has been shown to be helpful for patients who are going through cancer treatment, but it has never been shown to cure cancer. Mm-hmm. and she was trying to heal her family trauma in order to heal her cancer. I think going through all of that and trying to heal your family trauma is really important to all of us, whether or not we have cancer or not. You know, like try to put all of that in its place where it needs to be, which is out of us. Um, but she again thought that that. Make her cancer

Tina 37:33

go away. Mm-hmm. it hearkens back to um, Bruce Lipton's book, the Biology of Belief and how you can change how your cells are interacting and you can change the communication between cells by your belief systems. The issue with this is you are relying on communication between cells, but your tumor is a sociopathic non communicating, not so

Leah 37:57

It's sitting there with, its with its little tiny cell fingers and its tiny little ears

Tina 38:02

going. I'm not listening. Exactly. It does not communicate. That's one of its characteristic traits. It doesn't communicate properly. I mean literally is one of its biological characteristic traits. So I do think there is some validities to some of this, but there's a time and a place where you take the cancer out and go ahead and follow your other path, which is to change your biology through your belief system. And I do think there's some. You know, there's some validity to all of that. The problem is, yeah, that you think you can turn around a cancer, which is not a normal tissue, and I think this is a mistake that happens all the time in alternative medicine. In particular, the assumption that a cancer will respond the way that normal cells do, it doesn't. It's its own thing. It has different characteristics. It is not normal tissue. It's not the normal immune system around the tissue. Much of the immune system has been co-opted by the tumor to do the tumors bidding. And this is why famous book Love the Message in the book, sorry to say, it's not a great read unless you're super squirrely and geeky, but the Society of Cells, which was written back in 1999, cancers as a Society of Cells, and we'll link to that and then show notes. That's basically it. And when I read that, I'm like, oh, if it's a Society of Cells, then it's definitely the maf.

Leah 39:19

I just had this image of them sitting outside of like the social club where I used to like, live near in Brooklyn and like, you know, just sit in there like with their cigars,

Tina 39:26

like, mm. Well, and it is, it's, it's so much like the mafia because, you know, they're loosely related. It's not even a, they're not clones, you know, cancer cells are not a bunch of clones of each other. They're related, they're heterogeneous, we say. So they look slightly different, but where they're clearly related, you know, they're clearly one tumor, but they're slightly different. You know, you got your cousins, your brothers, your nephews, your, and then, and then nearby is the immune system, which would be the police if you were in the neighborhood And those police are supposed to keep 'em in check, but then in fact they're really, they're protecting them. They're part of the

Leah 39:58

mafia. Oh, cuz they're in the pocket. So what we need is someone who's listening to be an animator. There we go and animate that cuz that's pretty cool. often there are patients who talk about, well, so and so cured their cancer using diet. Um, and we talk a lot about diet for risk reduction, you know? Mm-hmm. and also just if you are going through treatment, what you bring into your body That's what builds your blood cells. It's what builds, um, your, you know, white and red blood cells. So diet is incredibly important as one is going through treatment, but is that directly going to kill your cancer, creating the alkaline environment or whatever it is that people are trying to achieve. And there was somebody in the movie who says that it does. And you wanted to talk about it.

Reversing cancer with diet?

Leah 40:57

I'm gonna put it on

Tina 40:58

you, Cause I,

Leah 41:00

I now teach patients about, about, we're talking about Chris work. Mm-hmm. and he's the Chris Beats cancer guy. And how he portrays himself and his story are very different.

Tina 41:12

And I'm gonna admit, until I saw this movie, I thought he might have been an upstanding guy who was misunderstood out there. But he's talking himself in the movie. He's saying, oh, I don't think I'm misleading people by telling them they can reverse their cancer with diet. Because whatever, hundreds of thousands of people die of cancer every year and they're doing conventional medicine and they're still dying. So what I'm saying isn't harmful, but he is mis representing himself every time he talks because he lets people think he reversed his cancer with diet and he had surgery to remove his colorectal cancer, which he calls stage three. Now I'm gonna go, I am gonna do this. I'm gonna get on Google, I'm gonna go to the Google Way back machine. Cause my memory and my recall is that it was stage two.

Leah 42:01

Oh see, I seem to recall that it was stage three. And then he said, oh no, surgery is not something you get for stage three cancer. You get it only for stage one or two.

Tina 42:15

Here's the thing, cancer stage two and three for colorectal cancer specifically is a shady little area. In other words, you can have it called stage three, and that's just due to the size of the tumor. And stage two and three have undergone some changes in the last 10 or 15 years the classification has changed over time. Long story short, I remember cuz I looked at it in real time, pretty contemporaneously when he came out with this. And I was like, what's this deal? And you know, how do you do this? cuz that's what I do if I find people saying that they reverse their cancer. I'm like, what'd you do? What'd you do? So I tracked these people down and contemporaneously, I looked online, I looked at his story. I was like, at that time with surgery he had a 50 50 chance of recurring without chemotherapy and chemotherapy just changed his odds to a betterment. you know, it changed it to, so he'd have a 70 30 or 80 20, whatever it was, but he had a 50 50 chance with surgery alone of never recurring. I remember that very well because I was like, dude, he's totally misrepresenting himself. But he did put his story online. So I thought, well maybe he doesn't mean to be rep misrepresenting himself. Maybe people are just taking that information and running with. And he, doesn't have anything to do with it, but in this movie he stood there and said, no, no. Telling people they can cure their cancer with nutrition and diet is perfectly ethical. Yeah. It's not, that's not a quote by the way. That's me summarizing what he was saying. Unethical.

Leah 43:39

Yeah, no, that, that whole part that they actually interviewed him. It wasn't just them filming him speaking. Yeah. That was pretty, um, damning That got a lot of yells at the television. Let me just

Tina 43:49

say, well, that's because you and I know the consequences of that and the consequences of going from stage one to stage four. You know, that's a very different life after that. And you don't, you don't mess around. You do something that's curative and what you need to know. Every person who's diagnosed with cancer needs to get staged properly. Get your scans, get the imaging done, make sure you know that you're stage one or two or three or whatever it is, and ask your doctor, what's the potential that this cancer won't come back. If there is potential, it won't come back. You need to do the treatment, right? You need to do the definitive treatment. And sometimes it's a small window, I think of people with some of the gynecological cancers, and they might have stage two or three before it's diagnosed, and there might be a very small window of opportunity between that moment of diagnosis, and it go into stage four. And you have a small opportunity to actually get rid of your cancer completely with an intensive treatment. And I would say integrative oncology is your best bet to get through it smoothly and successfully. that needs to be said. It needs to be put up front and say, okay, listen, this is your window after this. you don't get another opportunity. I mean, even if it's a 20% chance or 10% chance, if that's your chance, at that moment, it's better than zero, which it, it can be in some scenarios if it goes far enough.

What is "definitive treatment"?

Leah 45:06

and, you know, defining the definitive treatment. That's the treatment That is going to get rid of the cancer. And then as we discussed in another episode, there's neoadjuvant treatment, which is typically given to shrink the tumor, so neoadjuvant chemotherapy for either breast cancer or ovarian cancer to try to get rid as as much disease as you can. Then you go in for your surgery, which is truly the treatment that the goal is to get rid of the cancer. And then sometimes patients will. You know, the post-surgical treatment, the adjuvant

Tina 45:38

treatment, and I, I think with this way, they've got stats on all the conventional treatments, right? So you've got these statistics that say, okay, 20% chance, 60% chance you're gonna have a recurrence, whatever it is. I see that statistic as the worst case scenario. And the person sitting in front of me who's doing integrative oncology, who's doing naturopathic medicine alongside their conventional treatment, I'm like, well, if 60% is your worst case scenario, that's, you know, I'm, what we're shooting for is 70, 80, 90%. Right? We're, we're hoping that we're bettering that. So whatever they're saying is standard of care. We're assuming those people who were in the studies we're not allowed to do anything but the study, which was the conventional medicine. To me, that's worst case scenario statistics right there.

Leah 46:19

There are those calculators online that oncologists can look at and say, this is your benefit of receiving treatment. A this is your benefit of receiving treatment A plus B. You know, this is the survival benefit. and for all of us who have been diagnosed, our oncologists have talked to us about that. You know, what is the benefit of me going on an anti hormone treatment when I'm done with chemotherapy? What was the survival benefit of getting the chemotherapy on top of the surgery? You know, that kind of thing. Um, those are conversations that. That should be had with your oncologist.

Tina 47:00

Yeah. And, and that leads into a whole lesson and something I have to repeat at least five different ways because there's at least five different ways of understanding it. And that is relative risk reduction versus absolute risk reduction. Um, I've spoken on this topic, I've even spoken with professionals and it can be very confusing when you're looking at the information. but it's, it's important to understand the difference between relative and absolute benefit of a, of any given treatment. I don't care if it's a statin drug for cholesterol. knowing the difference in making an educated decision for yourself based on that, um, is important. So I'll, I'm, I'm gonna have to do. YouTube videos or something to that needs visuals.

Leah 47:44

Yes. Yes, it does. You do need to do some YouTube videos. We gotta get our YouTube channel up and running.

Tina 47:50

Yeah, it's there. It's, it's got some, some of your nice shorts on it. Yeah. But that's not good

Leah 47:54

enough. That's not good enough. No, I agree. I agree. So, um, was there anything else you wanted to add, add about the, the movie? Did you cry Tina, did you cry at

Tina 48:03

any point? The only point that I probably shed a tear is when the couple had their moments

Leah 48:11

they were such a beautiful couple, they loved each other so much and the things that they said Yeah. Like to each other, about each other. It was just so

Tina 48:23

beautiful. Yeah. Because, you know, the writing's on the wall and, and you, you know, just by looking at the gentleman that he's progressing and. Telling you he's progressing and they've gotta deal with this. And they kept the cameras rolling in some pretty intimate moments. Yeah. So, yeah, that choked me

Leah 48:39

up. Yeah. That got me. And then, you know, you think the movie ends and then it goes a little farther. And, um, when it goes to that next part, I definitely shed tears. I mean, this wasn't like a boohoo balling kind of a movie, but it was like Yeah,

Tina 48:55

just I'm, can I, I'm gonna give a spoil and if some people don't hear it, they can hit this fast forward button. Ready? Okay. They both succumb to their disease in the end. Okay. Did you, fast forward, are you back? Okay.

Leah 49:08

Spoiler.

Tina 49:09

no, the only other thing I wanted to mention before we're done is Theri

The Rife machine

Tina 49:12

machine has been around a long time. Theri machine is this and is this machine that puts out. Electromagnetic or energy waves that are supposed to influence your entire body and be anti-cancer. And the easiest way to understand this is to picture what is a sign wave, you know, an up and down wave and it kind of cancels it by doing a counter sign wave. Um, alright. Someday, mark my words, maybe not in my lifetime, but we probably will harness energetic medicine to treat cancer, I mean, we're doing it, we're, we're scratching the surface. We've got this product called Optune for glioblastomas. So it's a kind of a cap that people wear that gives off electromagnetic energy um, so we do, we're scratching the surface, we're getting there, but maybe not in our lifetimes, but maybe someday we will actually be able to treat some cancers with physics instead of chemistry, is how I think of it. Right? Right now we use a lot of chemistry. We use drugs, we use compounds, What they're using when they use this optune is more akin to physics. but uh, maybe someday they'll be something that works. Like the RI machine is supposed to work,

Leah 50:20

alleges to work

Tina 50:21

as Yeah.

Leah 50:22

anyway, um, so yeah, we're gonna pick up on the next couple episodes on alternative and complimentary treatments. And if you like this episode, write a review, leave a rating, send us an email if you have questions, the cancer pod@gmail.com, we'll read your question on the air. I don't have any questions. I haven't checked our, oh, I'm really bad at checking email. I didn't check our email to see if we had any questions this week.

Tina 50:51

Yeah, reach out to us via email, pass us on to friends or family that you think might be interested in the topic. And, um, if you do have someone that you think is doing themselves a disservice by not getting conventional medicine, well in that scenario, this movie is worth it. The cancer conflict. Um, otherwise, I don't know if it's worth much if you already of our mindset, but if you do wanna watch the movie and be convinced yourself. Um, and I don't think they were out to convince anyone. I think they just, they, they tracked these people in real time. It wasn't retrospective. They wanted to really know how this is gonna go. Um, as far as I could tell, So, yeah, I would recommend it for those folks who might be doing themselves a disservice by going all alternative. again, I can't recommend enough finding someone to help co-pilot the decision making with you. whoever that is, an integrative cancer person of some kind that's well versed

Leah 51:47

and not somebody who is trying to sell a product or an agenda. Making sure that it is somebody who has a medical background. And I mean, that's not even gonna guarantee you're gonna get somebody who's supportive. So I don't know. I don't know if there's a network out there of people who are cancer doulas or coaches or whatever the word is that, that we're looking for. But yeah, if the person is selling something, That, that would not be the person, whether it's a service like. Thermography or a supplement or whatever, that might not be the person that you wanna be. Your voice of reason? Mm-hmm. All right. So on that note, I'm Dr. Leia Sherman.

Tina 52:28

And I'm Dr. Tina Kaser, and

Leah 52:29

this is the

Tina 52:30

Cancer Pod. Until next time. Oh my God.

Leah 53:11

What a piece of ship. You put that in there. What a f*^iing piece of shhip. Holy f*^iing piece of shit. Okay. Don't put that in.