12 Q and A Recap : Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
12 Q and A Recap : this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Speaker1:
Welcome to the Cancer Secrets podcast. Changing the Cancer Paradigm. Hosted by Dr. Jonathan Steagall, a medical doctor and cancer specialist practicing in Atlanta, Georgia, deeply affected by his grandmother's death from stomach cancer, as well as patients he cared for in medical training, he realized there has to be a better way to treat cancer. Dr. Stegall has a unique and innovative approach to treating cancer called integrative oncology, combining modern medicine with alternative therapies personalized to each patient. This podcast is designed to educate, support and give you a positive voice you can trust. We invite you to join us on this journey as we seek to change the cancer paradigm.
Speaker2:
Hi. This is Dr. Stegall. I'm so glad you're enjoying the Cancer Secrets podcast. Do you have a question you would like answered in a future episode? If so, please go to Cancer Secrets dot com and click on podcast at the top of the page. Look for the tab on the right side of the page that says Send voice mail. You can record your question straight from your smartphone or computer with your question. Be sure to tell us your first name, where you're from, and why you listen to the show. I will choose from the best questions and answer them on the air. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Hello and welcome back to the Cancer Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Doctor Jonathan Seagal. This is episode number 12. In today's episode, I will answer some of the most common cancer related questions in a special listener Q&A. I'll also recap some of the highlights from Season one and also provide a sneak peek about what is coming your way in Season two. If you're new to the show, please go back and listen to my introductory episode to learn more about me and my vision for this podcast. As always, we invite you to grab a family member or friend and listen in together. Today's show is going to be a great one as we look back at season one, preview season two and answer some of your most burning questions. Looking back on season one, I can tell you that it's been a huge success.
Speaker2:
As you know, my mission is to spread the word about integrative oncology, and we've certainly been able to do that during our inaugural season. We have been blown away by the thoughtful messages and emails we've received from patients all over who have found the podcast to be so helpful and beneficial to them. I am so humbled by the impact we've made in only a few short months. The Cancer Secrets podcast has reached thousands of listeners from throughout the world. I'm so thankful for the lives we can touch using this technology and delivery method. In Season one. We've talked about the problem with cancer in the world today, how the incidence of cancer continues to rise, and how we haven't really made much headway in the conventional cancer treatment community when it comes to curing cancer and improving quality of life. In short, we're losing the war, and as we all know, there's a better way integrative oncology. By combining modern medicine with natural medicine. Using a best of both worlds approach, we're able to draw from a variety of healing traditions and modalities using science as well as common sense to craft what I feel is the best treatment approach available for cancer. Throughout this past season, we've introduced some of these treatments to you, including fractionated chemotherapy using insulin potentiation, intravenous vitamin C, nutrition supplementation. Off label pharmaceuticals and Mind-Body Medicine, just to name a few. Our successful season one paves the way for a very exciting season two.
Speaker2:
We have some amazing things planned, including some wonderful guest interviews you're sure to enjoy. We will take a deeper dive into some of the topics you told us you wanted to hear about most. And above all, you can continue to count on the innovative science based information you heard throughout season one. Without further ado, let's jump in to some listener questions. Our first question and one that I get a lot is are there any natural cures for cancer? Now, this is a question that probably has existed for many hundreds, if not thousands of years. But this has become a much more common question with the Internet. Now people can go online and read a lot about their diagnosis and a lot about both conventional and alternative treatments. And as you know, there's a lot of hype online about certain natural therapies, whether it's a certain nutritional strategy or a supplement or some other alternative therapy. And we want to believe what we hear. I think it's human nature to to read about a treatment that's natural and safe and has no side effects and is potentially affordable and think, wow, this is amazing. It's it's perfect. It cures cancer. Unfortunately, most of those really all of those things you read about these natural therapies just simply aren't true. We have no studies showing that any natural treatment cures cancer zero. In fact, there was a study released just last year that looked at patients who basically reject conventional therapies and only utilize alternative therapies.
Speaker2:
And they found that those patients have a much worse outcome than those who underwent conventional therapy. Those patients had a lot more side effects just from their cancer itself. Their cancer progressed a lot faster and they died a lot sooner. Now, that study was heavily influenced by some conventional physicians. It was it was done in a conventional academic medical center, which those places are fine, but they don't really have a true understanding of more natural alternative approaches. So they really lumped a lot of different therapies into the alternative medicine heading so so all those patients in that study utilizing alternative therapies were not using the same therapies. They were not being administered those therapies under the direction of of a qualified provider. So it was not a perfect study. But I do think that that study illustrates the fact that there's just so much we don't yet know about some of these natural alternative approaches. And they're not designed to be standalone therapies. However, to to completely reject those therapies altogether is foolish. I mean, we know that nutrition is important. We know that supplementation is important. And the real value of a lot of these therapies is alongside more proven therapies. And that's really the essence of integrative oncology, where we're combining those approaches, because neither end of the spectrum, whether you talk about conventional on one end or alternative on the other, is perfect on its own.
Speaker2:
We need that overlap. We need the combination. And so I think that study really reinforces that. But patients say, well, Dr. Segal, don't you think there are natural cures for cancer out there? And I do. I honestly do believe they're out there, but we haven't found them yet. And to rely only on natural treatments for cancer is really foolish, in my opinion. It's playing the lottery to try to get rich, and most likely it's not going to work out well. Next question is why should I take chemotherapy since it's toxic and causes all sorts of bad side effects? We spoke a little bit about this in one of our earlier episodes. But if you talk to any toxicologist or pharmacologist, they will tell you that substances themselves are not good or bad or toxic or poisonous. It's really that the dose makes the poison. And my belief on chemotherapy is that we've just been using the wrong dose of chemotherapy agents for a long time. The way conventional medicine uses chemotherapy is what's called maximum tolerated dose or MTD, and that's actually what it means maximum tolerated dose. It's the maximum amount of chemotherapy that the body can handle at once. And the thought behind this is more is better. If we give as much as we can without killing the patient, then we're going to kill as much cancer as we can. And that's actually what happens with the first dose or two.
Speaker2:
You're going to kill a lot of cancer cells during the first treatment or two of chemotherapy. However, the problem that arises is because we have to wait so long between doses of this maximum tolerated dose. Chemotherapy is at least a week and oftentimes two or three weeks. We have to wait in order for the patient and their body to recover. We're allowing the cells that survive a chance to mutate and actually become resistant to future treatments with that agent. And this is a big problem because it's it's easy to to put a patient through some really high dose chemotherapy. It looks like we're making a lot of progress and everyone's high fiving and ringing the bells and all that. But but in reality, you know, months or years later, that cancer is very likely to come back and the stats bear this out. And when that cancer comes back, those same treatments aren't going to work as well, if at all. And because of the mutations that may have happened, there won't be any treatments that work. And so this is a big problem because we can't just get a short term view of our cancer treatment journey. It has to be a long term view. And so that's exactly why I'm a fan of using much smaller doses of chemotherapy at each treatment. We call this fractionated chemotherapy or low dose chemotherapy and give it more often. We're able to actually give treatments two or three times a week using these lower doses rather than having to to wait, you know, 1 to 3 weeks before we can give another treatment.
Speaker2:
And this is powerful because we're able to hit the cancer more often with a substance or substances that we know kill cancer. We have good research on chemotherapy and how the different agents work, and we're able to give it more often. It's much better tolerated. We see little, if any, side effects and it actually because we're given it more often, it doesn't allow that resistance among those surviving cancer cells to occur. So we have a treatment that's well tolerated. It's still killing cancer. We still see good results on lab testing and imaging, but we're not having the risk of that resistance happening. And so this is these are treatments we can use for quite some time with a lot of success. So it's all about in how we use the tools we have. And doing chemotherapy in a fractionated way is just a win win, from my perspective. Hi, this is Dr. Jonathan Stegall, medical doctor and specialist in integrative oncology. And I want to tell you about my new bestselling book, Cancer Secrets. This book is packed with valuable information you need to know about whether you're searching for information for yourself or for a loved one. In my book, you'll learn what cancer is and what it is not, as well as which treatments you should be focusing on from both modern medicine as well as alternative medicine.
Speaker2:
You'll also learn the ins and outs of nutrition and supplementation, as well as important information about having the proper mindset. I'm in the trenches every day with patients and I've shared my secrets in this book with you. Please go to Cancer Secrets and buy your copy now. Another question we receive a lot is what is the right anti cancer diet? And again, if you talk to different nutritionists or naturopaths or pretty much any self proclaimed guru online, you're going to see that there are a lot of different opinions on this. Some people say you need to lower your carbs. Some say you need to lower your fat. Others say you can't eat dairy. Others say you can't eat animal protein. There's all kinds of different recommendations. And what I recommend and then this is based on research is to eat generally a plant based diet. There's tons of research showing that people who focus on vegetables, fruits, legumes, some grains, if you tolerate grains, okay, that kind of approach is really what works best. You know, I don't think we need to exclude dairy and animal protein altogether, but I do think that those should be limited. And this really follows the research extending back as far as the 1970s. On restricting Methionine, we know that methionine is one of the amino acids, it's one of the components of protein, and methionine has been shown in multiple studies to be absolutely required by cancer cells for growth and development.
Speaker2:
Interestingly, normal healthy cells don't need methionine. They can manufacture methionine from other amino acids, but cancer cannot. So methionine is absolutely required for cancer cells. And so it only makes sense to try to restrict methionine as much as we can. It doesn't need to be zero, but really we need to try to reduce it as much as we can. And we do that by eating a mostly plant based diet. If you look at the foods that are lower in methionine content, it's the fruits, vegetables, things like that. The higher methionine foods fish is actually the highest and then chicken, you know, and B for not far behind. So I don't think you need to cut out animal protein. There's certainly a value in having some protein, especially if you're having good quality sources of animal protein like grass fed beef, organic free range chicken, wild caught fish, things like that. But that's not something we need to make a part of our regular daily diets. If you look at Western societies, we tend to eat way too much animal protein, you don't need a ton. So really by researching methionine, focusing on a plant based diet limiting but but in most cases not eliminating animal protein, you're going to be well on your way. And the good thing about this approach is that it's fairly easy to follow. It may require some sacrifices here and there, but it's not a very drastic diet that is going to require you to to make ten vegetable juices a day or only eat cottage cheese and olive oil or things like that.
Speaker2:
It's a very doable diet for the long term because that's really what we're after. We're after a lifestyle, an anti-cancer lifestyle, using a nutrition plan that's going to support the body in healing and also reinforce the effectiveness of the treatments that we're using. Another question we receive quite regularly is why doesn't insurance typically cover integrative and alternative treatments, especially if you're telling me that they work? This is a complicated question, and it's one that's we could spend a long time on, but I do think it's important to cover it because really when you look at medicine and health care today, over the past 50 plus years, we've gone from a health care system that was basically a fee for service model where you see the doctor and you pay then and you know what the price is and that's what it costs. Same thing for medications and tests and things to this, you know, this this era we're in of just rapid advancement in research and scientific progress. And all these things are great. But along with that has come the idea that insurance isn't just meant to be insurance for catastrophic conditions like we see with car insurance or home insurance. When it comes to health insurance, we've come to expect that to cover everything.
Speaker2:
The problem with that is the standard for what insurance will cover basically mirrors the standard of care and for for a treatment or a lab test or intervention to be consider the standard of care, it has to have a significant amount of research behind it. Now, let's look at an average drug company that wants to release a new drug. They have to undergo 8 to 10 years of very rigorous scientific study on that drug before it's FDA approved to be used in the United States. And so that FDA approval process obviously costs many millions of dollars, which is partly why drugs cost so much today, and thus why insurance to cover it costs so much. But the the rigor that's required for for these studies is important. But we're we're left with a conundrum because there are only a few sources of that funding. A pharmaceutical company has the money available to fund a drug study. A medical device manufacturer has the money to fund a study. But if we're going to do a study on something like nutrition or a supplement or any kind of alternative intervention, there's just simply not a company available that's going to be able to to put forth in many millions of dollars to do a long term significant study. Now, that's not to say we don't have studies on some of these more natural and alternative interventions because we do. But they're not going to be the level of study and the length of study necessary for those therapies to become the standard of care and thus be embraced by the conventional medical community.
Speaker2:
I would love to have more studies on a lot of these approaches, especially if we could do it in an integrative context where we maybe have one group of of patients in a study that are getting the conventional treatment. And then we have another group in that study that's getting conventional treatment, plus some of these natural therapies we like to combine with them and see how they do. I'm confident, if it's a well designed study, that the integrative group of patients are going to do better. But we just don't have that research and we probably never will with the way our system is. And so we're really between a rock and a hard place because we need more research. We may never get it. And therefore, if we're waiting on insurance to jump on board, they're going to require that data that we just don't have. So that's really the the simplest way I can answer that question. And I think it's an important one because, you know, honestly, we we are going to have to just understand that a lot of these treatments are going to be out of pocket. Our last question is from Lisa in New York, who was diagnosed with endometrial cancer in June of this year, followed by Lynch Syndrome in July. And she asked if I could discuss Lynch syndrome as well as precautions patients should take.
Speaker3:
Hi, Dr. Stoeckle. I'm Lisa from New York. I listened to your podcast after being diagnosed with endometrial cancer in June and Lynch Syndrome in July. Could you discuss Lynch Syndrome and the proper precautions those diagnosed with it should take?
Speaker2:
So Lynch syndrome was formerly called Hereditary Non Polyposis Colorectal Cancer or PCC for short. It's one of the few cancers which is inherited, meaning that it has a purely genetic cause. And in Lynch syndrome we typically see an increased risk of several cancers, including colorectal, endometrial and stomach cancer. But these patients also have increased risk of cancers of the stomach, liver, small intestine, gall bladder, urinary tract, skin and even brain. But we typically see colorectal and endometrial cancers in Lynch syndrome. And usually what we'll see is that one of those cancers will be diagnosed first and then the other will will subsequently be diagnosed pretty soon thereafter. In the case of patients who are diagnosed with endometrial cancer, the biopsy will usually let us know that it's probably from the colon. And then we we kind of go through the process of discovering that it's the Lynch syndrome. So it's not a very common clinical diagnosis. It's estimated that approximately 3% of all colorectal cancers, as well as about 3% of all uterine cancers, are due to Lynch syndrome. And as with many cancers, the first line treatment is typically surgery. If the patient's a surgical candidate. And I believe that chemotherapy has a role to play here as well. Of course, I recommend fractionated metronomic chemotherapy, like we just mentioned, giving lower doses more often and then combining that with the insulin potentiation therapy we've discussed on previous episodes as well.
Speaker2:
I feel that this combination is is very efficacious and safe and also very well tolerated. And then, of course, with any cancer treatment protocol, I believe strongly in nutrition supplementation and certainly a positive mindset as well. Those are very valuable tools. And finally, with something like Lynch syndrome, which is genetic in origin, it's very important to have family members tested as well. And so especially for patients who have children, I think it's important to go ahead and do some testing to see if they've inherited that same genetic mutations because if so, proper monitoring by a cancer geneticist can then begin and that'll allow for treatment to occur as necessary, ideally as early as possible. So, Lisa, I hope this information is helpful for you. We're certainly thinking about you and praying for you and your journey. Thank you for being a loyal listener. Thank you for joining us on today's episode and for making our first season such a success. I'm honored to be able to spend this time together with you and look forward to providing more great information in Season two. Please remember to submit your questions by going to Cancer Secrets, by clicking on podcast at the top of the page and then selecting the send voice mail tab on the right side of the page. Have a wonderful rest of the day and I will see you soon. Bye bye.
Speaker1:
Thank you for listening to the Cancer Secrets podcast. If you were encouraged by this show, please share it with a loved one or friend. Help support the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. The more reviews, the more friends like you can find the show. Finally, to learn more, visit us online at Doctor Stay Google.com. The Cancer Secrets Podcast. Changing the Cancer Paradigm.
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