The Truth About...Those Antioxidants

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Welcome to episode 33 of the cancer pod. the truth about antioxidants is fascinating and it can also be confusing. In this episode. We tell you what an antioxidant is and discuss a couple of popular supplements. So stick around as Lee and I talk about the pros, the cons, and some contra-indications of antioxidants during and after cancer.

Tina 0:20

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

Leah 0:24

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

Tina 0:28

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

Leah 0:32

But we're not your doctors

Tina 0:34

This is for education entertainment and informational purposes only

Leah 0:38

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

Tina 0:43

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

Leah 0:49

Welcome to the cancer pod

Introduction

Tina 1:07

Hey, Tina. Hi, Leah. What are we talking about today? We're gonna talk about a pretty big topic and we're going to try and do it concisely and it's antioxidants.

Leah 1:17

Oh, that's a good one. A lot of people have a lot of questions about antioxidants. Yes. And yeah, it'd be nice to, as part of our, the truth about series is just kind of cover this really in-depth topic in less than an hour.

Tina 1:36

Yes. And you know, the thing about all of these topics that we chose the truth about is they tend not to be black and white. Answers, these tend to be gray and that makes it less than convenient. Cause you can't just go like, oh yes, boom, boom, boom, go this direction. Or no, don't do that. It's more like, it depends on the antioxidant or talking about, so

Leah 1:56

right. And then with cancer people, it depends on the treatment that they're getting. I mean, there's just so many factors that play into it, but we're gonna, we're gonna try to just give a little bit more information. This isn't really like a specific supplement episode, but we are going to talk about, not only what are antioxidants, you know, what do they do, but we're also going to kind of give a couple of examples of a couple of products that patients come to us with because they are touted as being these antioxidant

Tina 2:26

supplements. Yeah. I think anyone listening is going to find that there is party lines out there. There's the don't do anti-oxidants and there's the, my God, you can't get enough antioxidants kind of people. And neither of those are correct in my view.

Leah 2:41

Yeah. So we're going to cover all that. And at the end, we're going to try something a little different. We're going to read a couple of reviews that we've gotten on apple podcasts, because there's some really nice ones and

Tina 2:53

we'll share them. Sounds like a good idea. Great. Cause

Leah 2:55

we're really bad at, um, uh, tooting our own horn. So other people have to toot our horns. And so we're gonna, we're going to play those horns. We're gonna use their words. That's right. To tell y'all

Tina 3:08

how awesome we are.

Leah 3:09

Um,

What does "antioxidant" mean?

Leah 3:11

so, so Tina, okay, so, so antioxidant, what does that mean?

Tina 3:18

Yeah, so I suppose the only way to define antioxidant is to define what an oxidant is in the first place. And then. Talk about the fact that we're having the opposite effect with So an oxidant or oxidation, the process of oxidation has to do with damage to cell membranes using electrons. Ah, okay. Back up. Let me put this in real. So

Leah 3:43

sciency. Oh my gosh.

Tina 3:45

Yeah. So let's not go down into the chemistry of this. Let's just think about this in a real world situation. We know what rust is, right? You've seen rust, whether it's on iron pans or on a car rust happens. That is the oxidation of iron that you're seeing. So an iron pan is black and it's lovely and it's not oxidized. You put water on it, leave it out, whatever abuse it a little bit. It reacts and has rust formation. That is iron oxidation right there that you're looking at. For us in our bodies. It's no different oxidation is a chemical reaction that can result in damage to cellular membrane cellular components. A lot of times it's the fats in and around cells that get damaged. But oxidation happens as a reaction, as a chemical reaction that causes damage to cells. That's really all you need to know.

Leah 4:37

So this oxidative damage or oxidative stress as it's known is caused by things in our environment. Right? So whether it's things that we ingest or things we're exposed to like pollution or, cigarette

Tina 4:55

smoke that is exaggerated. Oxidation, but most of the oxidation is happening due to our process of making energy within cells. That itself is an oxidative process. Okay. And

Leah 5:08

so those are known as free radicals.

Tina 5:11

Yes, but I want to be clear because when we talk about oxidation, it's not always bad without oxidation you and I wouldn't be standing here talking either. Oxidation is the product of the combustion of fuel in ourselves. So when a cell chews up glucose and makes energy from that glucose, or it chews up a fatty acid, it makes energy from that fatty acid in the process of doing that, it's an oxidative process. I'm saying that because inherent to living is oxidation. So we can't live without.

Leah 5:42

So these free radicals are formed daily. They're not necessarily about thing. They're

Tina 5:49

not necessarily inherently bad. No, because they're necessary for life. And a free, radical is an oxidative molecule. It's a molecule that has this way word electron. That's why we call it a free radical.

Leah 5:58

Yeah. I think people hear that a lot, especially in certain products that are marketed, they use the word free, radical. They use the word oxidative stress. Um, so these are things that happen all the time. They aren't necessarily bad, but when they are bad and they cause cell damage that can lead to other issues,

Tina 6:19

right. When things are going well. And the amount of oxidation in ourselves is balanced with our antioxidant mechanisms, whether that's directly nutrients like vitamin C and vitamin E or it's intracellular inside the cell enzymes that are actually turned on due to the oxidation. So our bodies are amazing that way. So if we make oxidation within a cell, our cell then goes, oh, there's some oxidation. We have to create more antioxidant enzymes, like glutathione and negate it. And so it actually always is going back and forth like a teeter-totter right. Oxidation antioxidation in that flow. That dynamic flow is what keeps us healthy. Okay.

Leah 7:02

I think that's a pretty good explanation. So

Two systems of anti-oxidation

Leah 7:05

if our body makes these antioxidants like glutathione, then why do we need to get them from the outside? Why do we need to get external antioxidants?

Tina 7:18

Two different antioxidant systems. One is those enzymes. Glutathione is the one that people might be most aware of, but there's other ones there's, superoxide dismutase and others. That is a system of antioxidants that are strong. They're very potent. Think of the enzymes as the most potent antioxidants we have in our bodies. We don't ingest those. We produce them in response to oxidation. And then on the lighter side, we have actual nutrients, vitamin C vitamin E are the ones most people know about that will take that extra electron and they'll squelch the free, radical on their own.

Leah 7:54

So when you say vitamin C and vitamin E, I'm going to kind of speak for you, you're talking about foods. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's, that's the big thing. So do we want antioxidants as foods? Yeah, well, we'll take a little break and then we'll come back and we're going to talk about the difference between antioxidant foods and antioxidant supplements, which, you know, it's the supplements that may be more of a concern when it comes to cancer and cancer treatments.

Tina 8:23

Definitely. So we'll be back. If you're not sure which foods are richest and antioxidants, Look for the rainbow. The pigments are, would have antioxidant effects, For example, carotinoids are yellow to red and anthocyanins are in the blue to red spectrum.

Leah 8:44

All right. We're back.

Food versus supplement

Leah 8:45

one of the most common questions that I hear from patients, you know, are questions about taking any oxidants during treatment. I think that, you know, it's such a catchphrase in the cancer world that, you know, people hear any oxidants help to reduce your risk of cancer and, help with reducing the risk of getting other diseases. And I think the big thing that's left out is that the studies that show the benefit show the benefit when it's foods. I don't know if they're actually having. Studies that have definitively shown that supplements are better than food when it comes to, antioxidants and, and reducing the risk of chronic

Tina 9:28

diseases. I would say no, the majority of the research is on food and foods are so complex. so yeah, even, you know, even something as simple as lutein that people think for their eyes. you know, and even Bosch and long, the large company has that a reds product. That's very popular out there. And there is a study on a reds. Don't get me wrong, but all the information on lutein, if you look it up is really not on a supplement so much. It's mostly, they found that when people ate greens specifically, because unbeknownst to them, they're eating a lot of lutein when they ate collards or kale or any kind of leafy greens. So you can't see the yellow lutein is yellow because it's hidden behind the chlorophyll. But anyways, that was, are very high in, in, in the, and you're right, almost all of them for cancer care. It's a similar thing where they looked at ingestion of high plant based diets. And that seems to be risk reduction.

Leah 10:18

I have a, I don't know if I've mentioned this before on previous episodes, but I have a little lutein, um, not a lutein teen story, but egg yolks. Contain a really high amount of lutein. And I see a lot of people, especially elderly people who don't eat egg yolks out of fear of cholesterol. And so I always think of that. I think of people cause macular degeneration is something that is, you know, it's, the onset is later in life. And so I think of people eating their little egg white omelets or egg white scrambles, and they're missing out on that

Tina 10:53

lutein. Yeah.

Color, color, color on your plate!

Tina 10:56

Yeah. That's a really good point. I mean, it goes back to color, right? I mean, you can't go wrong with colors, from nature, almost everything we're talking about. You can't go wrong with a colorful plate. and that means if you're having a. Uh, you're having, hash Browns next. What you some purple potatoes. I mean, you can really just up your color anti all the time and make sure when you look down at your plate, it's not monotone white or monotone off-white. Yeah.

Leah 11:20

And there's a bit of a backlash that I've seen about people, you know, not, not liking when, you know, people like you and me are like eat the rainbow. And they're like, well, there are certain foods that are traditional foods that, you know, maybe they are brown. And I think that's great eat those foods that are traditional foods that might be on that brown and beige scale, but add in some rainbow colors too, like you said, you know, try it with a purple potato or maybe instead of using like a, a green cabbage, he's a purple cabbage. I mean, it might have a different flavor profile, but you're getting a little bit more of that color. So there are ways to continue eating, you know, The comfort foods that we love. You know, one of my favorite recipes for Mac and cheese is to throw in a can of pumpkin or butternut squash into that mix. So it's still the comfort food and it's just got a little extra.

Tina 12:11

Yeah. Yeah. Even if you're making meatloaf, you can put shredded carrot into your meatloaf. So I think that it's really an important concept because you don't need to know much There's no science need that you need to understand for that. You'll still get the net benefit.

Leah 12:23

So in summary food first,

Tina 12:27

always, you know, because you know what, we still can't do it. Like, I always say this, like, you know, we don't have all of the answers we'd like to think we do. You know? And, and I think, honestly, I think that back in the forties and the fifties, when somehow the. Paradigm and medicine became better living through chemistry. We thought we could do everything in a pill, right. That still resonates people still are looking for pills in place of food and in place of exercise and in place of good sleep. You know? So that's why we still have so many weight loss gimmicks out there. It's like, no, you're not going to get it in a pill. It's just not going to happen. it's not a very fun truth, but that is the truth. There's no fast track.

Juice Plus, good idea or not?

Tina 13:11

I

Leah 13:11

think that's a really good lead in for, one of the products that we were going to talk about it initially was touted as being this sort of replacement for, oh, you don't like fruits and vegetables. Well, you should have this product instead. And that's juice plus. Oh yeah. I mean that product, it, it kind of has its, its popularity waves. It comes and goes. It is a multilevel marketing product and. I mean, they got in trouble, they got in trouble for their advertising claims, but it used to be advertised as being this like kind of whole fruits and vegetables product. All you need to do is take, two of each, one of these types of pills, there's a vegetable, there's a fruit blend. And then there is a Barre blend and you don't really need to eat fruits and vegetables and do people who don't, who have never really acquired a taste for fruits and vegetables. It just seemed like this is awesome. All I have to do is take six pills a day. And I mean, honestly, the appeal of that, of

Tina 14:13

taking six pills a day,

Leah 14:15

there's really no appeal in my mind, but I guess it's easier. It's easier than trying to figure out the fruits and vegetables that, that you might enjoy or finding ways of preparing them so that

Tangent: Tina talks taste buds

Leah 14:27

you do enjoy

Tina 14:27

them. Yeah. And this might be a good time to mention that your, your palette. Is trainable, right? I mean, finding a way to like fruits and vegetables is one it's easier when you eat them in season, because that's when they have the most flavor. eating things out of season, or sometimes just when they're shipped in from a long way away. I mean, I go to trader Joe's just like anyone else, but I can tell you that that's very different than my local market. Right. And so the romaine lettuce at the local Saturday market tastes better to me than what I get at trader Joe's. And it just has to do with flavor profiles. All right. Or the apples. Yeah. Apples and fall from up the road. Right. As

Leah 15:03

opposed to like one that is not an apple season and it's just been in a warehouse and it's mealy.

Tina 15:08

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So first of all, quality counts is when you're eating it naturally. And. If you do things that are extremely salty or extremely sweet and that's generally processed food, right? So if you're eating fast food or you're drinking soda pop or whatever, your palette then thinks that that is sweet. So when you go to bite into an apple, it has less of a sweet profile because it's only relative to what you've been eating for the last, you know, couple months or so. So just kind of in the grand scheme, the less you eat processed food, the better natural food tastes over time.

Leah 15:40

And I think, you know, going back to our, our first movie reviews, growing your own food also can help. So whether you have a garden in your backyard or some, pots of plants on your window, sill and doors, just that, that process of growing your own. Food or herbs, I think also can, can help with expanding that, that palette.

Back to Juice Plus...

Tina 16:07

Yeah. Yeah. And so back to the juice plus thing that started us on this little tangent that I took us. Oh yeah. I know. Cause

Leah 16:13

we're going to end up talking about food and it's like, wait, we're talking about any oxidants here. Okay. So, so, so juice plus now it's being marketed as sort of that bridge, that bridge between like what you eat and like what your body needs. There was a controversy years ago that when analyzed, it was found to contain actual synthetic type vitamins in it that enhanced its, quote, antioxidant profile.

Tina 16:41

That's now

Leah 16:41

listed on the label. I couldn't find the information about how those. We're added in. But when I looked through, I think I, I kind of showed you where the labels were. It did have the mixed tocopherols, it had beta carotene. So it did have added added

Tina 16:59

nutrients, right? So it's not just whole food.

Leah 17:02

You're saying it's not no. And it, and it, I mean, they, they've got the words plant-based on the website and I'm sure they've got like whole food. I mean, they just really try to like, make it seem like this is the perfect substitute for fruits and vegetables. The really interesting thing is when you look at the ingredient list, all of the supplements have less than one gram of fiber in the capsules. And so I'm not sure how this product can be talented as. You know, a fruit and vegetable bridge when it doesn't even have the fiber and all of those other nutrients that have been shown to be beneficial.

Tina 17:42

Yeah. That's an interesting point because the fiber obviously is needed We recommend what, 25 to 30 grams a day, at least. Um, and that can only be gotten through whole foods, like actually eating the whole beans, whole vegetables, whole fruits, whatever. so yet I didn't realize juice plus had no fiber in it. Do they, do they offer a fiber substitute to round that out for people or, no, I didn't.

Leah 18:03

I didn't see anything on their website. I mean, now they're going to be like, oh, well maybe we should have our fiber pills too. And it's, it ends up being like star Trek, right. Or one of those like space age, maybe it's with the Jetsons where you just kind of like. Push a button and then your pill comes out and that's your meal

Tina 18:20

for the day? That was the Jetsons. Yeah. the

Leah 18:22

Jetsons versus star Trek. You know, it's all, it's all in my mind.

Tina 18:27

Well, here's, here's the thing, like anything that we use as a supplement, it's relative to the state of the person taking it in the first place. So I know juice plus puts a lot of clinical research on their website. Um, I notice it's dropped off of late the last five years. Not much, but back, in the early two thousands, especially they had quite a bit going on on there. whether you see a change in someone's antioxidant status in their blood, depends where they started. So you and I eat a lot of vegetables. Let's just get that out there. Cause that's what we do. If we take juice, plus there's probably not a measurable benefit in our bloodstream, but if you take someone who doesn't eat any they just don't get a lot of color in their diet and they take juice. Plus it might be a measurable jump in levels of nutrients because they're not getting a nutrient dense diet in the first place. That's my guess. My guess is this is highly dependent on the state of the person before they started taking it, whether you see any difference at all. And, and

Leah 19:21

I tried to looking at different, you know, random studies that were on the website and I didn't find a lot of full articles if I found any at all, but they did. I think I did find a couple, but it seemed to be like the juice plus product versus placebo. I didn't see anything that was like juice plus versus an over the counter multivitamin. Versus placebo. Oh, so I wonder what the difference is between someone taking just your generic over the counter multivitamin versus juice plus versus a placebo. Like, would it be the same effect? I don't know.

Tina 20:01

No, no, I don't know. Cause I would think that the polyphenols in the juice plus have a very different effect than, than isolated nutrients in a multivitamin. So we should at

Plant pigments tell cells to make antioxidants

Tina 20:12

the, maybe I'll take this moment to say this, those polyphenols is a fancy word for all the color that you're seeing. So when you hear polyphenol, it's an umbrella term for all of those other big words that we throw around, like anthocyanins or bioflavonoids, there's all of these different categories under polyphenols and they tend to be the colorful pigments and the parts of the plants that we're using as antioxidants. The way they work is they, for the most part go into ourselves and they tell the DNA and I'm putting that in air quotes. Tell, tell the DNA to make more glutathione, to make more superoxide dismutase, to make these antioxidant enzymes that are super powerful. So when we eat the color from nature, what we're doing is we're taking in some of it is antioxidant directly. So it'll float in our bloodstream and act as an antioxidant on its own, And some of that goes in, directs our DNA to upregulate antioxidants within the cells themselves. And what I think is fascinating is glutathione goes up for example, Everywhere in the cell, within the mitochondria, within the nucleus, within the site is all I'm, it's kind of a pretty neat system of balance. And so, yeah, it is true. The more oxidative stress you have that means pollution, chemicals treatment, of course treatment is oxidative. But do we really want to undo that we're going to talk about, um, all of those things are oxidative stressors and antioxidants found in colorful fruits and vegetables are the most powerful antioxidants we have. So I just want to, I wanted to put that out there because I think of them very differently than if you take a vitamin C tablet or a vitamin

Leah 21:56

E, but there are other whole food, multivitamins that are out there like garden of life they're big on that sort of like whole food, combos for their vitamins.

Tina 22:07

I'm definitely a fan of the whole food idea, but I think it should be. I think that we need to find ways of making the food palatable. Another way of maybe introducing

Another way to increase your veggies

Tina 22:17

yourself to that. If that's something you do is you find a cuisine that you like. So do you like Thai food? Do you like Vietnamese food? Do you like Italian food? Do you like Greek food? Find a cuisine that you actually enjoy already at a restaurant and start to become versed in how to make that particular food? Because a lot of people's traditional diets tend to be very high. Fruits and vegetables things you got from the garden, you know, so traditional diets were happening pre refrigeration, prepackaging pre-processed food. So if you find some cuisines that you actually enjoy, you can go that route. I mean, ideally it would be your own heritage that you would use, but heck if you like Indian food, so be it learn how to make Indian food better or eat that more often. Yeah.

Leah 23:01

And I just think of, you know, like the meat and potato patients, you know, they don't, they don't want to deviate beyond, beyond, beyond that sort of sort of diet. And so, I mean, it does take a little bit more work, especially if people are working jobs and raising children and, you know, they have all of these, these obstacles, you know, that's, that's where I think the appeal of these pills come in, for people who are just like, look, I, I like my meat and potatoes and. I'm going to try this pill to get my vegetables, because I don't want to be bothered cooking them.

Leah's Okra story

Leah 23:37

I mean, I I'm sure I've told the okra story, but when I was, when I was little, I lived down south and the school cafeteria offered okra and I didn't know what okra was. I didn't know it was a vegetable. I just knew it was this big slimy pile on my tray. And it was gross, you know, and fast forward, many years of not eating okra, I tried pickled okra and it was delicious and Crispin, I mean, you could pickle anything and I'll probably eat it. But you know, a lot of it is our past experience on how we eat something or how we try something, you know, it's the whole brussel sprout thing, right? People eat boiled Brussels sprouts and they're just like Brussels sprouts are disgusting, but then maybe if you have them prepared a different way, a person might actually like them. I have bought, um, green beans frozen and

Are frozen veggies good too?

Leah 24:29

I have this fondness just because it's how I grew up of, um, those blocks of frozen spinach.

Tina 24:35

You lost me there, you know, it's just.

Leah 24:38

No, I'm just saying that I just, I prefaced it by that's how I grew

Tina 24:42

up. Right. My mom would, would do

Leah 24:44

that and just put some butter on it, whatever you put butter on, anything, you know, it makes it better. Um, but yeah, like there

Tina 24:52

are stopped. Well, no, I, I, for one caveat is I don't like spinach cooked anyways, no matter how it comes, so I'm not a cooked fan. So we'll just, you know, maybe it's perfectly fine. I'll just, I, and maybe people don't

Leah 25:05

like it, but it's something that I grew up with that I actually enjoy. Um, but that sounds horrible. My mom was a really good cook, but I don't know why we used to get the blocks of spinach from the commissary, whatever. Anyways. Yeah. There are certain things that I do, like frozen, even the succotash or whatever, you know, you've got the carrots and the peas

Tina 25:26

and the corn. Like I keep that

Leah 25:29

in my freezer too. Sure. Throw that into things.

Tina 25:32

Yes. So, so basically don't give. Like, if you don't like it one way, maybe you could try it another way, you know? And that's why I said in season as fresh as you can get it, it's probably going to be the best flavor profile and general if, and when you can do that, and I know there are a lot of places, either geographic regions or seasonally, you can't get certain, you know, vegetables easily. so you know, there's a lot of caveats to this, but,

Leah 25:58

and frozen berries, right? I mean, frozen, you can get frozen mango, you can get frozen berries, you know, like, like frozen fruit I think is even more accessible.

Tina 26:07

yeah. And on that note, when we freeze things, we do break the cell wall. So in some ways you make it more bioavailable, right? So like there is that, like when you freeze Often if it's got enough, Hydration in the cells, when it's frozen, it will break the cell walls open, which is why you don't want to cook it very long. Um, or if it's berries, you are already getting more nutrients than you might from even a fresh picked Berry. remember all the goodies are inside the plant cell walls. So frozen has some benefits.

Leah 26:36

And it is super convenient for people who, you know, who don't have time to cook or don't have, you know, it's just super convenient. So, so that's our that's our, our, our first supplement sort of was talking about, juice plus and there, there was a, there was a case study about somebody who I believe there was a woman who was going through treatment for some sort of cancer and was taking juice plus, and. Their liver enzymes went up and then when they stopped taking the supplement, the liver enzymes came back down. So, you know, but that's one case study. So, but that's something that is often brought up too, is that, you know, the quality of a product. Um, and as we will discuss later, you know, the, the potential of interactions with treatments as well. So the, the second supplement that I think,

Protandim

Leah 27:30

again, it's a trend, you know, it comes and goes every few years, the popularity it's this product called pro tandem. And that again is marketed as, you know, kind of one of these, like. Cure all anti-aging weight loss. Like, I mean, they, they, they all are touted as kind of this, this miracle supplement that you take. And a lot of patients who are getting treatment for cancer will ask about it again. I believe it's also a multi-level marketing product, which is, you know, my concern with that is, are these being tested through third-party assessments, looking at the bottle, the ingredients are all kind of things that I like. So it's like, it has milk thistle Bacopa and ashwagandha, which are Ayurvedic herbs, green

Tina 28:24

tea and turmeric. Yeah. So commonly used.

Leah 28:28

Yeah. So like, depending on what's going on with the patient, any one of those at some time might be like, oh, that's an inappropriate thing to take. Then this company. All of these ingredients and then came up with a proprietary blend of these ingredients and our marketing it for, you know, this sort of, I don't know, I don't want to say cure all, but it's, you know, it's, it's supposed to be good for everything, right?

Tina 28:55

Yeah. That is what the market it is.

Leah 28:58

And my concern, I have several concerns with a product like that. One being, when you look at the label, it says it's a proprietary blend. And I think it's like 675 milligrams of. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, it's a proprietary

Tina 29:17

blend of these

Leah 29:17

five herbs. So, I mean, just looking at turmeric, a typical turmeric capsule is like 500 milligrams.

Tina 29:27

Yeah. And when you're saying turmeric, cause that's what they put on the label. You mean the curcumin?

Leah 29:31

Yeah. I mean, well, I don't know how many Kirk humanoids, I didn't look that up to see what the curcumin portion would be, but I mean, each one of these at least is 250 to 500 milligrams for just a standard dose of just that, I think milk thistle is that also

Tina 29:47

generally we do larger doses. Yeah.

Leah 29:50

Yeah. So when the total of a capsule is just slightly more than what the dosage of just one of those products would be. I don't know, it just doesn't seem it does it doesn't add up. literally it doesn't add up.

Tina 30:07

well, yeah. Looking at each of those ingredients, they each have legs, right? They each have a role in both traditional and modern medicine for us, for natural medicine practitioners, putting them all together and low dose and claiming health effects from that. I don't even think that that's probably horrible. I'm not a huge fan of kind of such combinations. Um, cause we're just more precise when we do our medicine, but the multi-level marketing piece, I tend to be more critical of MLM products because their founding was to make money. Right. So you do an MLM structure because money is your goal. So ma MLMs tend to have belief built in over science because each person who's selling it, you know, believes in it. Yes. But it doesn't need to be backed by science because you have sentinels out there. The people who are representing it, pushing it with anecdotal stories to their friends and neighbors or whomever online. So MLMs in general, I'm, I'm leery of, so right there, whether it's juice plus pro tandem or any of the essential oil companies, it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean they're bad. It just means I am more skeptical and I look harder at them. And then it costs a lot of money compared to just getting these herbs by themselves, whether it's juice plus, and you can buy a lot of fruits and vegetables with what juice plus cost month, month, or it's pro tandem. And you're looking at just getting the certain curcumin or green tea or Bacopa or whatever you're going to take. It's a lot cheaper to buy by. Then pick up the wazoo for pretend them.

Leah 31:38

And I mean, with Bacopa and ashwagandha being ayervetic herbs, I mean, those aren't in according to Ayurveda, they're not for everybody. Right. And so those are two herbs that are very specific for a type of, constitution that a person has. And then milk sisal isn't necessarily something that if somebody is going through treatment for cancer, I would want them to take milk. Thistle can affect how your liver processes things and mommy as can turmeric, you know, as well. So that's always a concern with me is, I mean, so maybe it's not a therapeutic dose of milk sisal, but I still don't know what the quality is or the effect that it's going to have on medications. That patients are

Tina 32:23

taking. Yeah, that's a good point because milk can affect how we metabolize those drugs the other is, you know, pretend them by their own claim to fame. When I am in Google, just general Google, I put Nerf two in the very top ad is for pro tandem Nerf two and RF two its claim to fame is to increase those very antioxidant enzyme systems within cells that I have been talking about. So let's just say pro tandem really does what it says it's going to do. And through NRF two, it upregulates all those antioxidant enzyme systems within a cell. Well, don't take it during radiation and don't take it during chemotherapy. That's for sure. I mean, This would be on my do not take list.

Leah 33:06

Yeah. And so their claim is that it's the only supplement shown to reduce oxidative stress by 40% in just 30 days. And so that in itself is a reason not to take it Yeah. At least during treatment, because that oxidative stress is also known as radiation therapy and chemotherapy, and it is not a reason to take it in place of those

Tina 33:29

either. Oh no, no.

Leah 33:32

Which I mean, I have had. Patients who have wanted to do it in place of conventional therapy. Cause that's not how cancer, you know, cancer treatments work.

Tina 33:41

No, no, that's, that's not going to work.

"Antioxidant" clarified

Tina 33:44

and you know, that's that's might be an opportunity. So the word antioxidant it is confusing because when we say antioxidant, we often are talking about a substance, but truth be told, let's just take curcumin, which is the active ingredient in turmeric curcumin. Is an antioxidant at lower doses. But if you give and you can do this, if you give large doses, let's just say someone takes in eight grams, which is 8,000 milligrams in a day. You begin to get oxidation from that same molecule. So this molecule itself is dose dependent, whether it's an antioxidant or oxidative, that's the same thing with vitamin C. It's an antioxidant at low dose, but if you do it intravenously at large doses, we're talking, you know, 10, 15, 50, 75 grams intravenously. it's now an oxidative action that you're getting from the very same molecule. So just add a little more confusion to this is antioxidant is, is a descriptor. It's an

Leah 34:47

adjective.

Tina 34:49

It's more of an adjective than a noun, even though we use it as a, now we say, you know, we say the antioxidant curcumin, and it's not really true. It's curcumin having an antioxidant action. so that makes it more confusing because we can't really even say in black and white terms, whether something is, or is not an antioxidant it's all dose dependent. So I'm just saying that because there's, there is like the research on pancreatic cancer and curcumin, they used giant doses, multiple myeloma, same thing, early stage, most myeloma eight grams and above might have some benefit. That's very different. In fact, it is the opposite of taking 500 or a thousand milligrams of curcumin.

Leah 35:25

So you're getting into like more pharmaceutical dosing and a completely different property. And I mean, we talked about this before we started taping a lot of the information on. Turmeric or curcumin. I mean, it's true. It's actually turmeric A lot of the initial, information that came out was based on populations that added it to food. And later there were studies that looked at curcumin and those studies, some of those are kind of questionable, you know, so

Tina 35:55

reductionism what we love to do in science and chemistry and, as a spillover to our medicine too, we live in a reductionist world. So if turmeric, the root, the spice in whole form is good, then we like to go dig in there and say, well, what chemical compound inside that root is having that benefit. And well, we pulled out curcuminoids which curcumin is curcumin is actually three compounds chemically. In any case, we pulled that out. It only makes up four to 6% of that whole turmeric root. So when we do whole turmeric in a Curry or whatever, you're using it, you buy it at the store. You buy the spice as a powder. Curcumin is a very. Part of that, but what we've done for our supplements, cause this is what we do. We like single compounds. We put in a capsule at 90 or 95% of that capsules now curcumin. So that's very different than turmeric root, which only has four to 6% curcumin, maybe somewhere in that range on average. So I'm saying this because, um, turmeric and curcumin are often confused with one another. And part of this is the industry's fault. Cause we'll put turmeric on the front of the label and you turn around and you look at the content and it says 90% curcumin. So it's not really turmeric in the bottle. It's curcumin in the bottle, which is

Leah 37:03

the isolate.

Tina 37:05

Yeah. So I don't mean to confuse things with more detail, but the fact is it's just not as simple as marketing teams like to let people believe you know, when they're selling their products out there.

Leah 37:14

Right. And you know, over the years, I mean, it is it's these catch phrases like now by putting plant-based on everything is apparently the catch phrase, right? But yeah, over the years, it's the same products and it's just how the marketing company, kind of pitches it to the public. So, I guess this kind of leads us to our next section that we'll, we'll take a break and we'll come back and we're going to talk about safety issues, which we've kind of touched on, but yeah, we'll talk about specific safety issues between antioxidant supplements and cancer and cancer treatment.

Tina 37:50

Yeah. It's a really important point because, uh, you don't want to undo any of the treatment that. The reason gludethyon support is great for reducing your risk of cancer, is because one of its main roles is to protect us from chemicals. This very mechanism may be undesirable. If you're receiving chemotherapy or radiation as the cancer cells can also use glutathione to protect themselves.

Leah 38:13

Okay, so

Antioxidants & cancer incidence

Leah 38:14

we're back. And we're talking about potential concerns between antioxidants and cancer and cancer treatments. in my mind,

Beta-carotene & lung cancer

Leah 38:22

I think the first one that I recall hearing about, and it may not be the first one, but the big one was lung cancer. Lung cancer and high doses of beta carotene supplements.

Tina 38:35

Oh, you mean the higher incidence of lung cancer?

Leah 38:38

Yeah. How it didn't actually protect against cancer in current smokers that it may have actually increased the risk. This was like back in the nineties. Um, and yeah, it may have actually increased the risk of lung cancer in, in current smokers.

Tina 38:57

Yeah. Those were interesting studies, the headlines in the nineties and there was a couple out, they were smokers specifically. I remember one was men and Finland. Um, they gave them beta carotene. Another one gave them beta-carotene and a type of vitamin E in any case, the headlines and this was everywhere in every office, in every lay press. I think too. it. The cancer rates. So that was the big splashy headlines at the time. There was no big Google at that time, but to whatever extent there was

Leah 39:30

Dogpile or ask Jeeves,

Tina 39:34

ask Jeeves. Oh my gosh. So in any case, what happened after that is they parsed through the data. A few years later, they showed that a couple of things. They noticed one when people entered the trial with higher levels of carotinoids in their bloodstream. So before they took the supplement, so those people at baseline who had the highest levels of carotinoids symbolizing, that they ate some, you know, yellows and oranges in their diets, right? So they had less lung cancer diagnosis. So when they got it from food, regardless of the supplement and the other was they found that the increase in lung cancer was only true in certain people with specific down. Products of the beta carotene due to their genetics in their liver. So your genes program, all of your enzymes, some of these enzymes will then take the beta carotene and metabolize it into pro carcinogenic substances because of the smoking on top of it. So the smoking plus this weird metabolism of beta carotene ended up making products that were carcinogenic was the net outcome. So this was a whole that particular paper. When I look at Google scholar, the 1990s papers have thousands and thousands of citations that people have reuse that information for their new publications, these updated papers that came out three years later, same group, same authors, very seldom cited, because nobody's really cares about the actual parsing of the data. What the real problem was. They were smoking. With this glitch and they took 50,000 IQ of beta carotene isolate, which never occurs in nature. we would turn orange before we got

Leah 41:21

that. Well, but that's one of the things which we've touched on, on, on some of our supplement episodes is, you know, that, that trend to take super high doses of a specific vitamin. I mean, that, that's a trend that I think is kind of past the, bring me, there may be some circles where people still do that. And it was something that I did learn in school as well. for certain protocols to take super, super high doses that don't appear in nature, um, using it more like a pharmaceutical, um, green pharmacy type of a thing. So yeah, and that's something that I do discourage. My patients who are current smokers from taking a high dose multivitamin that has beta carotene in it, even if it's not to that level, encouraging them to try foods and stuff.

Tina 42:09

Yeah. Yeah. And I know a lot of the most reputable companies went to mixed carotinoids, which means not just beta carotene, they used alpha carotene and these other carotinoids in it so that they weren't just giving a single isolate, but they were getting a little bit closer to how nature presents these carotinoids to us, which is we don't do one carotenoid when we eat a carrot or a yellow bell pepper or whatever. We get a mixture.

NAC & Vitamin E

Leah 42:33

the other supplement that, I think was a more recent look into, you know, the influence of antioxidants and CA and lung cancer specifically was, um, inositol cystine. And then I believe it was also vitamin E yeah. Weren't those shown to increase the risk.

Tina 42:50

My recollection is. These were mouse studies and they showed that there was an increase risk of metastasis, of spread of lung cancer. One that vitamin E they used was nothing that even occurs in a supplement form, let alone nature. It was this weird thing called trow locks made by Sigma Aldrich. It's a chemical compound. That's not even an antioxidant in the first place. So discard the vitamin E story. The NAC there is Some concern around NAC, which is N-acetylcysteine because NAC will increase glutathione. And we do have some concerns around increasing glutathione. When cancer is present. This is one of those where what we want to do to reduce the risk of a primary diagnosis of cancer may be different than what we do when cancer is present. And NAC is one of those that once cancer has been present in someone, I personally. Do not recommend NAC to people. that's out of an abundance of caution because we do have animal data showing that taking NAC, increasing glutathione is part of the process, but in animal models, NAC has been shown to possibly increase the spread of existing cancer cells. So in someone who has any diagnosis of cancer in the past, my brain says, well, there could be some cells left. So why do NAC? There's not a time or a place that I can think of that NAC has to be done.

Mouse studies? Seriously?

Tina 44:22

I think

Leah 44:23

that something that's going to confuse our listeners is, you know, one minute we're like, well, those studies were done in mice. You know, those were my studies. And then another time we're like supporting the data where we were like, well, those were found in animal studies. And so that's one thing that. Can be really confusing is we do dismiss certain data because of the fact that this was, this was a mouse study. And then other times we are, you know, using a mouse study to back up why we might not use something as

Tina 44:53

well. So

Leah 44:55

I'm sure people are getting confused out there, like wait a minute. But that was just a mouse study. But because we do tend to be overly cautious that if something has been shown to be detrimental in a mouse study, in my mind, it has more weight than something that shows to be beneficial in a mouse study.

Tina 45:11

Exactly. Yes. You can't really prove benefit from a mouse study, but if there is proof of harm possible harm, I weigh that more heavily because you can't take something that's possibly harmful and do an ethical study in humans with that substance. So w what if we gave people with lung cancer or any other cancer NAC, and then we said, oh, look at that. The people who took it did have faster spread. It's not unethical clinical trial. So we will never have the human data. Thankfully, um, some

Leah 45:40

people question as to whether testing on mice is ethical too, but we won't go there. I just went there. I just went there and I'm backing up.

Tina 45:49

Um, so I agree with that. Yeah.

Leah 45:52

So the other, the other big, you know, any oxygen. Cancer interactions that you hear about would be with prostate cancer and vitamin E because there was the select trial where they looked at selenium and vitamin E and you know, let's, let's speak about that with, with taking those as supplements, as opposed to getting those nutrients from food. Yeah.

Tina 46:17

My hedge for that information, I'm taking vitamin C and selenium is not something I would recommend to men. Who've had prostate cancer. I would say, get it from your diet, you know, eat nuts, eat whole foods. Um, we don't want a deficiency in them, but I would not have people take those nutrients in a pill form.

Leah 46:36

Well, I know with the select trial, they looked at whether selenium and or vitamin E was a way to prevent prostate cancer. And what they found was that the vitamin E supplements, whatever it was, whatever form that people were taking most likely in alpha to call for all. Cause

Prostate cancer & Vitamin E

Leah 46:53

that's. Most commonly found over the counter. it actually increased the occurrence of prostate cancer. So again, this is where, you know, selenium, you know, it's found in Brazil, nuts, Brazil, nuts that are grown in soil that contains selenium. Um, that's a really important thing to point out. Is that just because it's a Brazil nut doesn't necessarily mean it's rich in selenium. It it's based on the soil.

Tina 47:21

Good point and

Leah 47:23

our Brazil nuts. Are those a tree? I don't even know how those are grown. It's a tree. Yeah.

Tina 47:27

Yeah, no, that's a very large tree. Well, in the vitamin E story with prostate cancer in the select trial is another example of an isolate, a single form, isolate of a nutrient vitamin E. In this case that is given in a higher dose than you would get it. And in a form, you wouldn't get it because vitamin E in nature occurs with other vitamin D compounds. Vitamin E backing up is not one molecule vitamin. He has a term that refers to eight different vitamin E's that occur in nature. So we say vitamin E because it's convenient, but when we say vitamin E it could be anyone, or if you're talking about a food, it's several different ones of these tocopherols or to-go trials that occur. So there's four tocopherols, four Toko trials that occur in nature. Those eight forms are again, you know, I love the word vitamin waters.

Leah 48:21

I'm learning, I'm learning. Vitam hers brought to you by vitamins.

Tina 48:26

Yeah. So, you know, the story is more complicated of course, but

Take home point

Tina 48:30

I think the take home point that we keep getting back to is doing an isolated compound, whatever it is, a single compound in a pill form at a higher dose than you would get in food. That is the experiment that goes awry. And most of these studies that blame the antioxidant and air quotes at that point, maybe it's not acting as an, an antioxidant. were pushing it to the level where we're oxidating people, I don't know. And speaking

Leah 48:54

of pushing things towards the oxidative level, we've already touched on the concern with interactions with cancer treatments, which tend to be pro oxidant. so I don't know if we really need to go much into that because we have talked about that already. So concerns of taking any sort of an antioxidant pill while receiving many types of conventional cancer treatments? yeah. I usually just hold them. Yeah. and part of me thinks like, oh, well, chemotherapy it's, you know, is taking this antioxidant pill, like throwing a pebble at a giant, I don't want to know, let's just hold it. is there a food that is a substance. Like let's include more of this food in your diet. Whereas nutrition is so important when you're going through treatment, you know, like it's just, you can hold if you're really devoted to your multivitamin, let's just hold it for however many weeks. Or, if somebody is on a long-term treatment, let's, let's try to find other options that perhaps are providing more, more of a whole food experience, you know?

Tina 50:06

Yeah. I think this goes under the one in doubt, leave it out.

Radiation treatment: no juices!

Tina 50:09

Um, one of the things I really think people should never do is do a concentrated amount of polyphenols during radiation in practice.

Leah 50:17

So you're talking food, you even

Tina 50:19

food. Yeah. If they have like a Vita mixer or a juicer, and they think, you know, doing whatever there, kale beet juice or kale carrot or whatever their thing is that they might be juicing up for health maintenance or to feel good. You might feel better, but are you increasing some of those intra cellular antioxidant enzymes? Which those juices do don't get me wrong. I mean, in the grand scheme, I would rather people not do that. I don't think of vitamin C as powerful as that shake is

Leah 50:50

so not doing a blueberry kale, OSI Berry. Is that how you say it? OSI, Asahi Berry smoothie during radiation, correct?

Tina 51:02

Yeah. But

Leah 51:04

what about having a handful of blueberries on your.

Tina 51:08

Greek yogurt. Me personally. Um, I discouraged people during radiation to do a lot of that stuff. I know you need some, I think a handful of blueberries, fine on your food, but you can eat well enough to get your nutrients, but you kind of want to be at a minimalist level of, nutrients. So you know, that whole teeter-totter I mentioned earlier between antioxidant and oxidants, you know, during radiation, you want the teeter-totter to be more oxidative. It doesn't feel good. You'll be fatigued. I don't have any way of correcting that without pushing antioxidants though. So I feel like in some ways it's kind of like going through the fire to get to the other side. So you, you have to know that you're not going to feel well and maybe make sure you take the time off to take care of yourself as if. You know, sick, you know, you take time off and you allow this process to happen. I tell people they can eat normally, but don't push the high

Leah 52:07

color and, and you know, something like radiation, it's not like, you know, there are, you know, we've had patients, many patients who have, you know, they are on chemotherapy for life. Radiation is limited,

Tina 52:21

right? Yeah. Very different. This is why I say radiation specifically. Cause it's always oxidative. It's always the mechanism of radiation chemotherapy may or may not be working through an oxidative mechanism and chemotherapy, waxes and wanes. In other words, it's only therapeutic while it's in its therapeutic range. And then you can eat all the colors. Fruits and vegetables you want when the chemo is not being active. When, because chemo is usually finite, it could be a couple hours or 10 days, but there's a finite amount of time where the chemo is having an action and then it's not. And then some chemos aren't even about all that oxidative, even, that's not their mechanism of action.

Leah 52:57

Right. We're just making this more complex because we're like food, food, food, and then we're like, except for when you have food.

Tina 53:06

I know. Well, and I'm probably more cautious than a lot of natural paths, because I'm I'm of an age where with age comes a growing respect for the unknown and I'm well aware of what we know and we don't know. Um, and so I'm very cautious, you know, I'm more cautious now than I was 25 years ago for sure. And that just means never getting in the way of the actual treatment, especially if it's curative. Right. If we're talking about, a treatment that's curative. You want zero risk of getting in front of that treatment and undoing any of its effect.

Leah 53:39

Okay. Do we have anything else that we want to cover before we come in for our landing before we Fasten our seat belts and thoroughly

Tina 53:47

confused people at this point. So I think I'll stop here. I know people

Leah 53:50

are like, wait, what was the point of this episode? Cause I, yeah, where they were looking for answers and surprise. There are no

Tina 53:58

answers. They're inconveniently complicated answers. Yeah.

Leah 54:03

Okay. So. So

Fan mail.

Leah 54:05

we don't get that much fan mail, but we do get these really awesome reviews from y'all. And so I want to just to read some of them because they're super, super nice. I don't know who all the people are because they have their own little, little names. They don't necessarily put their actual name on there, but yeah. So I'll just cut to the point. let's go back to our first review. It's so nice. It's back from October, 2021 and

Tina 54:35

it reads.

Leah 54:37

Tina and layup bring clarity to issues that not only people with cancer can benefit from. This is a podcast everyone could learn from before faced with something as intense as cancer. They are funny and down to earth and are excellent teachers. They articulate the complex biochemical reactions that occur from cancer treatments and other things we consume daily. Listen and enjoy that. That's a really funny that I chose that one to read

Tina 55:03

after this episode, people will be like what? I don't

Leah 55:06

think so. So let's see. Is there one that you like in particular?

Tina 55:12

You know, if I was as prepared as I should be, they'd be in front of me, but I don't have them up in front of me. Okay.

Leah 55:17

So I'll pick another one. Let's see. Oh, this is the most recent one. And I know who this is from, but I'm not going to call them out, but I totally know who wrote this one. A very avid listener and it wasn't me. Um, okay. So it reads an amazing resource. I can't believe I get to listen to this without paying a copay. Tina and Leah are so smart, funny, and have a perspective that's sorely missing in most, most healthcare providers as a cancer person. It's the first podcast I recommend to new cancer friends. And I have to say that as a cancer person, I recommend their podcast to Stephanie from cancer for

Tina 55:56

breakfast. You said you were going to call her out, you know,

Leah 55:59

but I just, that was just like the most awesome review. And I, I recognized a name. Um, I called her out. Maybe we'll edit it

Tina 56:08

out. No, no,

Leah 56:09

no. We keep a props because they've given us props on their show and, um, yeah. Cancer for breakfast is definitely my go-to. So, so those are a couple of the reviews. If you want your review, read on the air,

Tina 56:24

leave us one. Gosh, darn. Yeah, we start reading. Let's start reading those at the end or at the beginning. It doesn't matter what we'll read them sometime. We're going to read maybe in the middle.

Leah 56:34

Maybe we'll read them during our segues. We'll surprise you. Oh, and speaking of surprise, I don't know if anyone has ever stuck around to the very end of our music at the, after our episodes, but sometimes there are little Easter eggs, so go back and listen to some episodes. I don't remember which ones we have our Easter eggs on, but we started doing that. And I

Tina 56:59

think they're funny mostly for ourselves because we think it's funny. So yeah, because we're so loopy, but

Leah 57:06

by the end, we're so completely loopy after the end of editing that we're like, oh, this has to go somewhere in there. So, yeah, look out for Easter eggs and leave us comments on those. rate us, give a, share an episode with a friend. If you think that they might find it beneficial, share us on social media. We are on all the major social media accounts. I don't even know if they're major anymore, but just look for the cancer pod. That's who we are on most of the platforms I'm saying most because we're not on some

Tina 57:42

platforms. Well, we can just so much

Leah 57:44

that's right. I can barely do what we're

Tina 57:47

doing. Our main platform is Instagram. Yeah.

Leah 57:51

Yeah. And every once in a while I'll clean out my mailbox and just throw up studies that I want to read later on Twitter. So if I throw up a study, it doesn't necessarily mean that I've read it. It's just more like, oh, that's really interesting. I'm going to file that somewhere. I'm going to file it on Twitter and maybe someone else will read it too. So, if you ever want to see what's in my mailbox, just go to Twitter, my email box. Anything else, Tina?

Tina 58:15

All right. No, I honestly think that an honest review of antioxidants may not clarify anything for people. So let me just apologize about that. And, uh, the truth is messy when it comes to antioxidants, that's all there is to it. There's no way to make it super simple without fibbing. Yeah. And a

Leah 58:33

lot of it is because yeah, there is a great unknown

Tina 58:36

still. Yes. So if you stick to only what is known instead of what you wish was true, it is still a question, a lot of ways.

Leah 58:48

So on that note, I'm Dr. Lee Sherman

Tina 58:52

and I'm Dr. Tina Kaeser, and this is the cancer pod until next.

Leah 59:37

Okay. So we're back and we're talking about issues, issues, issues.