45 Dr. Kelly Turner Radical Remission and Cancer.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
45 Dr. Kelly Turner Radical Remission and Cancer.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Speaker1:
Hi and welcome to the Cancer Secrets podcast. I am your host and guide, Dr. Jonathan Stegall. Cancer is like a thief who has come to steal, kill and destroy. I have personally seen it wreak havoc on patients, friends and even my own family. But I am on a mission to change the cancer paradigm through the practice of integrative oncology cancer treatment that integrates the best of conventional medicine with the best of alternative therapies backed by science and personalized to each patient. You need a positive voice you can trust. This podcast will share valuable information to give you practical hope for a better outcome. So I invite you to join me on this journey as we seek to change the cancer paradigm together. Hello and welcome back to the Cancer Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jonathan Stegall. This is season three and episode number 45. In today's episode, I'll have a wonderful guest joining me, Dr. Kelly Turner. Kelly Turner, PhD, is a researcher, a lecturer, author and consultant. She is The New York Times best selling author of Radical Remission Surviving Cancer Against All Odds, now available in 22 different languages. Her highly anticipated book, Radical Hope ten Key Healing Factors from Exceptional Survivors of Cancer and Other Diseases, is also now available. Over the past decade, Dr. Turner has conducted research in ten different countries and analyzed over 1500 cases of radical remission. She is a frequent guest on the Dr. Oz Show. She holds a BA from Harvard University and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Turner, thank you so much for being here. It's an honor to have you.
Speaker2:
Thanks for having me, Dr. Stegall. I'm excited to have a fun conversation with you today.
Speaker1:
I'm excited. I know. I know. Most of our listeners already know who you are. They're familiar with with your work. But for those maybe who don't know, I'd love to to talk about how you got interested in cancer research.
Speaker2:
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I was getting my master's degree at U.C. Berkeley in counseling cancer patients. And so I was getting trained in psychotherapy and working at a major hospital, UCSF in there, cancer center, really just sort of emotionally supporting cancer patients. And that was incredibly meaningful work and was supposed to be sort of the final stop of my professional life. But I came across a case of radical remission. This man who healed from stage four kidney cancer after trying everything Western medicine had to offer, including surgery, chemo and radiation. Then he was sent home on hospice care, saying he had three months to live and two years later he was in full remission. And that was 25 years prior to the time that I was reading about him. Wow. So yeah. So that's that's how it started is just that one, you know, you never know when a book is going to change your life.
Speaker1:
Absolutely. So so this really created interest in you to do more research on the topic. And then that culminated in your first book, Radical Remission, which as I mentioned, is the New York Times bestseller. Could you talk a little bit about what radical remission is?
Speaker2:
Definitely. Well, a radical remission, what a lot of medical doctors used to call spontaneous remission is really a statistically unlikely remission from cancer or any other disease. Another way of saying that is that it's it's a healing that doctors can't explain. So they called them spontaneous for the last 100 years because they had no other explanation. They said, oh, well, this must just be sort of dumb luck that this person got better. It must must have been a spontaneous healing. However, no one had ever really researched these cases in depth. And that's what my PhD research at UC Berkeley did, is I found these these people who'd healed when their doctors did not expect them to. And I really dug deep into everything they did to try to get better looking for common threads. And I ended up finding nine common threads. What has turned out to be in the end now ten common threads. We can talk more about that later. But they did have these commonalities of approaches that they were using to bring their body back into balance. And so through that PhD research, I realized that the term spontaneous remission really had to go and it was sort of hard to figure out a replacement word. But I landed on radical remission because statistically unlikely remission didn't sound as nice. And also, especially in the English language, the word radical refers to a very big shift, a very big change. And that's exactly what these people do. They make they make huge changes in nine areas of their lives, ten areas of their lives. And the end result is also radical. So they make radical changes to have a radical result. And so so yeah, it just, it just felt like a much better term than spontaneous remission.
Speaker2:
But in the end, it's it's a statistically unlikely cancer remission. Specifically what that means is that it could mean someone who heals from cancer without any Western medicine. So they're diagnosed and they say, okay, well, let me try it my way first and I'll come back to to chemo and radiation and surgery later if I need to. And some people who make that very personal choice don't end up needing to go use any conventional medicine at all because the heal it themselves. So that's one way to be a statistical outlier. The second type of radical remission is to try conventional medicine to its fullest, but unfortunately it doesn't work. And you're sent home usually on hospice care. At that point they try other things which do end up working. So that's the second type. And then the third type of radical remission is someone who uses conventional and alternative medicine at the exact same time. Of course, once you do that, it's hard to know which one is helping or if they're both helping. But that third category, I limit it to only cases where there's a less than 25%, five year survival rate. So what that means is that if you're healing from pancreatic cancer or if you're healing from stage four lung cancer, I don't really care how you do it. You're an outlier. You are statistically unlikely to be alive after five years. So let me just hear everything you did, even if in conjunction with your nutritional and your emotional and spiritual changes, you were also doing chemotherapy. You still need to be studied because that is it's just a heroic feat to overcome something so fatal. And so so those are the those are the main three categories of radical remissions.
Speaker1:
Got it. Okay. And I like I love that you changed it to to radical versus spontaneous, because, as you said, these are patients who have put forth great effort to to reach this this endpoint. I mean, this didn't just happen by accident. You know, this is a lot of time and effort. And it is we'll talk about when we go through these these ten things. I mean, it's a lot of of of involving. But on the patient's part, it's not a passive thing at all.
Speaker2:
Absolutely. In fact, one of the one of the ten common factors that they have in common is this empowerment, this idea of moving from being a passive patient to to being an active participant in their health. So that's actually one of the common things, is this idea of becoming an empowered person.
Speaker1:
Well, I think that's great because, you know, I see that in my my integrative oncology practice a lot, you know, patients typically will come to us after they've they've they've gone the conventional route. I mean, sometimes not, which is great. I mean, that's our preference as they come to us first. But many who come from the conventional the purely conventional approach in the past is they typically say they just didn't really feel like they were involved. They weren't empowered. I mean, they they feel like they to show up. They got their chemo, they got their radiation, maybe they had surgery, but they they even many of them even tried to talk to their doctor and say, well, what can I be doing? How can I change my diet? How can I manage stress? And they really didn't have any resources for that. I'm just like, well, just basically show up, eat what you want to know, don't worry about it. And and most people who do find their way to to to me, we're very disappointed by that.
Speaker2:
Absolutely. And radical remission survivors, the ones that I study, were also very, very disappointed by that. And I think it's just human nature. You know, it's not fun to feel out of control. It's not fun to feel that you have this very scary disease that doesn't have a cure and that there's nothing you can do about it. That's not a very comfortable feeling. And actually, there's there are many, many studies in psycho neuro immunology, which is a field of science that combines psychology and neurology and immunology together, that show that when people are faced with extreme traumatic hardships such as the Holocaust or being born in a war torn country or being given a fatal cancer diagnosis, what what actually helps predict people who live longest is their sense of the manageability of the problem. So, you know, basically people are exposed to the same stressors. Stage four, lung cancer, the Holocaust, war torn Syria. So everyone's being exposed to the same trauma. But the ones who report that they felt some sort of ability to manage that process are the ones who live longest. So we have scientific evidence to show that empowering patients with something that they can do, even if you say this will help a little bit, but it's important that you do it because it will help those patients live longer because they feel that they're doing something tangible to help their body heal. So it's actually really crucial from a scientific perspective. We have the clinical data now to show that doctors really should give their patients something to do. And of course, as you know, being in integrative oncology, there's just so much you can do that's scientifically backed to show that it can strengthen your immune system.
Speaker1:
So. Absolutely. I love that. So so patient empowerment is one of the ten. Let's let's if you don't mind, let's go through the others. We can we can kind of get into more detail on a few of them later, but I'd love to just kind of talk about all ten, if that's okay.
Speaker2:
Absolutely. Yeah, I'm happy to run through. I always say I wish it were three be a lot easier to remember. But there's there's a lot of things people can do to get healthy. Only three of them are physical. That's diet, herbs, herbs, supplements and exercise. So those are the three that are physical. And then the other seven are mental, emotional, spiritual. And those are things like deepening your spiritual connection, practice, whatever that may be for you, empowering yourself as we discussed increasing positive emotions while also releasing suppressed emotion. So those are sort of two sides of the same coin, but I consider them two different healing factors. Believe it or not, following your intuition or at least listening to it, was one of the common factors and then also having strong reasons for living and having strong sources of social support. So those are the ten in no particular order because we don't know which of those ten is more important than the others. Right. And I'm happy to talk about any of those that you'd like to sort of dive deeper into.
Speaker1:
Well, sure. I'd love to kind of jump into the nutrition piece. I mean, that's something a lot of a lot of patients in in my world are obviously interested in. They've they've read some things about nutrition and it being important. And the big question is, okay, well, you know, what should I be eating? And I know you maybe can't say specifically, but but at least from a general basis, did you find commonalities between what these these survivors or eating?
Speaker2:
Yeah, it's a great question. And it's probably the one I'm asked most frequently. Radical remission survivors are on all different kinds of diets, so there really is no one particular diet that they're on. So I've studied radical remission survivors who are vegetarian, vegan, paleo keto fruit, only fruit. And then I have some people who are absolutely no fruit. So it, it really ranges. So in order for me to have to in order for me to talk about the common threads of their diet, I actually had to zoom way back out from the data because the specifics, you know, some people were just juicing for a month, but. Not everybody did that. So when I really zoomed out and I said, okay, what are the broad strokes here? What what are the general trends in diet? There were some and they were greatly increasing increasing vegetable and fruit intake. For some people, that was just vegetable, not so much fruit, but certainly everybody increased their vegetables, sometimes up up by 50%. Then the next trend was reducing things like meat, wheat, sweets and dairy, which you and I both know from. The scientific studies have been shown to increase inflammation in the body. Now, not everybody that I studied cuts those things out entirely, not by a long shot, but most of the survivors, the vast majority, do reduce those food groups.
Speaker2:
And when they do eat them, they make sure that their very high quality, organic grass fed grass finished all that stuff. So increasing vegetables and fruits, reducing meat, wheat, sweets and dairy. Switching to an organic diet, is it another another overall general trend that I can report, which instantly people say, oh, but that's so expensive. And I say, I know it is. But the good news is, is that I have also interviewed radical survivors from all walks of life. So low, low socioeconomic status all the way up to high socioeconomic status. And what the people on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale have said is that when they took meat and alcohol out of their weekly grocery bill and replaced it with organic vegetables, they actually ended up with the same total at the end. And I always like to remind people that it's like some of the most expensive items on your grocery bill are meat and alcohol. So take those away. And suddenly that organic broccoli doesn't seem so pricey. And then the last the last dietary change that was really common amongst everyone was drinking much more filtered water. So cleaning up your water, cleaning up the toxins by eating organically and then and then increasing those those vegetables.
Speaker1:
I love it. And that's exactly what we people who've listened to other episodes of this podcast have heard me talk about that a lot. I mean, really a plant. Plant based or plant focused diet is really kind of the way to go. I think the research is starting to come out that organic definitely makes a difference, and I think that's kind of common sense anyway. I mean, why why ingest some of these these additives if we don't really need them there? They're definitely not helping us and they're probably hurting us. And then definitely the hydration is so important. So so thank you. And I think the thing that I'm also getting from from your data is it's it's not necessarily about a strict adherence, you know, having to be perfect with a diet. It's more about principles. And and that's how I talk to patients about, yes, the plant based diet. You need to eat more fruits and vegetables and beans and things like that. You need to limit your your animal protein. But it's okay if you're not perfect. And I mentioned that only because I know a lot of people get so gung ho over, especially with diet. This is something I can control. I can't screw up. I got to do just right. And then if they do maybe have something they shouldn't, one time they beat themselves up about it. And so again, do your best know all that. But, but really, you know, give yourself some some forgiveness to if you need to, especially because this is a huge shift in in nutrition for a lot of people. I mean, if you're going from eating the standard American diet to an organic Whole Foods plant based type diet, that's a big shift. And so there's there's going to be some bumps along the way.
Speaker2:
Absolutely. It's a it's a really good point. You know, studies have shown that the stress that you feel while you're eating puts so much hydrochloric acid into your stomach that even if you're eating like the healthiest kale the world's ever seen, if you're stressed about it because you didn't cook it properly or because you had a candy bar earlier today, you're actually going to negate the effects of that healthy kale. So, you know, exactly. You know, some survivors end up going on very sort of intense diets for a while, usually almost all the time. Those are medically supervised by someone such as yourself. So maybe they are going on a pretty strict diet for for 4 to 6 weeks. The good news is that I can say is that once they get to a place of remission, which on average takes them a year and a half. Right. So a year and a half a half of true dedication to these ten areas of life after they're in full remission, many of them now, because I keep in touch with these people year after year, they don't go back to their old way of life at all, but they are able to ease up a little bit and have a dessert now and then and, you know, be a little a little more relaxed with their diet than they were in the beginning stages. So, yeah, I would definitely agree with your point of like be easy on yourself. If, if what you're eating is making you stressed, then you're just negating the healthy effects of anything you're putting in your mouth. So just find a way to have fun with it. And and yeah. Enjoy those veggies.
Speaker1:
That's right. Exactly. So let's talk about emotions. We both kind of mentioned stress and emotions and things. How can emotions affect the outcome from from fighting something like cancer?
Speaker2:
That's an excellent question. Basically boils down to the mind body connection, which at this point is not only scientifically proven, it's just a scientific fact. So this was something that in the 1950s and sixties was considered, you know, not scientifically proven. And now that's not really true. And some people of that generation still don't really believe that your your mind has an impact on your body that much. But the science from the seventies, eighties and nineties absolutely proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that your pituitary gland, which is like the master gland in the center of your brain, absolutely instantly affects your immune system with every thought and emotion you have. And so if you're in fight or flight mode, if you're afraid of something such as a cancer diagnosis, you are spewing out into your bloodstream cortisol, epinephrine, norepinephrine, right? These are all the stress hormones that get you amped up and ready for a fight or ready to run, which is great. But what your body needs when it's trying to heal, it doesn't need to fight and it doesn't need to run. It actually needs to rest and repair. And so the this sort of discovery of these two modes of our nervous system, nervous systems, right, flight or fight or flight and rest and repair, which is in line with the sympathetic nervous system for fight or flight. And the parasympathetic nervous system for rest and repair is absolutely crucial. If you want to strengthen your immune system, you must find a way to shift into the parasympathetic. You must move into rest and repair, otherwise your body does not rest and repair.
Speaker2:
And so the way that we can do that is to change our thoughts, right? Change our emotions. And so if you think, oh, this thing is dangerous and I'm absolutely going to die from it, you're going to stay stuck in fight or flight. If you can interrupt that thought pattern, which means you're interrupting the emotional reaction to that thought pattern. And you can say, I'm not going to think about that for 5 minutes. I'm going to watch this funny video. I'm going to watch this this comedy, and I'm going to laugh or I'm going to I'm going to go for a run and have to focus on my feet on the trail so that I don't think about the cancer right now. Right. All these little tips and tricks to get your mind out of the fear. Well, if you can find a way to trick your mind to come out of the fear for even 5 minutes, you have interrupted that stress cortisol cycle and you're putting yourself into rest and repair. And even 5 minutes a day of that is incredibly healing. And that's what radical survivors tell me. They say you don't have to be perfect. You're going to be afraid most of the time. But if you can have at least 5 minutes a day where you've distracted yourself from the fear and you've tricked yourself out of fight or flight into rest and repair, that's how you're going to help your body heal. And the studies back that up.
Speaker1:
That's that's awesome. I love that. Thank you so much for mentioning that because if you think about just our society in general, I mean, we're we're such a stressed out society. I mean, that seems to be getting worse and worse as we as we go along. And then people aren't sleeping as well. You know, like you said, they're not taking time out of their day, even a brief amount of time for some kind. Kind of stress relief, whether it's exercise or prayer or meditation or laughing or whatever it may be. So thank you so much for mentioning that.
Speaker2:
Yeah, definitely. One of the people in my my new book, Radical Hope, who really sort of epitomizes that is this woman, Allison, who is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. She had a brain tumor the size of a like a softball in her brain. I mean, you see, she's got pictures of her brain, MRIs. And it's scary what was in there. She did have to have emergency surgery to remove it, but they couldn't remove all of it. And then they found these smaller tumors that they couldn't get to. So she sort of woke up from surgery not knowing what had caused her to sort of pass out. And they said bad news. You have this very rare form of brain cancer and we couldn't get it all. And you have statistically about seven months to live. So, of course, she was she spiraled into into fear, right? I mean, someone's giving you a death sentence, basically. So her journey back to health, she ended up not doing the recommended chemotherapy because it was only going to increase her chances of not surviving, but lengthening her seven months by about 30%. So she said, you know what? It's just not worth it to me. So she went on the healing path, which first for most people, it usually starts with nutrition because it's just so tangible. It's something they can do three times a day with every day.
Speaker2:
So she first focused on nutrition, and she found a naturopathic doctor to advise her on what diet was right for her body at that time made that shift. And then she was like, I've got to do something with this fear. I've got to face this fear of death. I've got to. She had a lot of trauma from her childhood and which I write about in the book. And so she really took a deep dive into her emotions and her mind and and she was able to not only get a handle on this this fear of dying earlier, much earlier than she had had hoped. She was also able to sort of clean out these skeletons in her closet from her past in a very powerful way that, in her words, just like lifted such weight off of her shoulders that she didn't even know she'd been carrying for all those years. And so, you know, this sort of emotional work, which sometimes people think like, oh, yeah, that's nice and all, but is it going to really help your cancer? Right. You ask Allison. She's like the diet alone never would have would have gotten me to remission. I absolutely needed to do the emotional work and the meditation because that's how she got her body into rest and repair mode.
Speaker1:
Right. Exactly. And I think everyone listening needs to just really grasp. It's so important to grasp that our thoughts affect our physiology. Our thoughts therefore affect our reality. I mean, it may sound new age and maybe negative for you, but I mean, wow, it's it's real. And as you said, it's science. I mean, we have a lot more control over the way our bodies behave and the way we we we really sort of create our reality in a way. So I think I think that's awesome.
Speaker2:
Yeah. And the happy ending is that she was given seven months to live and it's been just about seven years. So there's, there's hope, there's possibility of healing even in the direst of circumstances.
Speaker1:
I love that. That's great. And I'm believing that people are listening to this right now, are going to be like, Alison, you know, that they're in the middle of a diagnosis and kind of maybe have not been given a lot of hope that that you can be like. Alison I think that's great.
Speaker2:
Yeah.
Speaker1:
I'd like to talk a little bit about the spiritual component. You talk about a spiritual connection or a belief system that was obviously one of your one of the main factors that people had in common that you studied. So let's talk a bit more about that and what what that looks like. I'm guessing that can take on several different forms for people.
Speaker2:
Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, I call this this common factor, deepening your spiritual connection practice. And I, I really sort of struggled like what should I title this? Because it's not deepening your spirituality, it's not deepening your spiritual beliefs. It's really deepening a practice that you do every day that helps you reach this spiritually connected state. And we know scientifically what that state looks like in terms of biomarkers, right? So you you get someone and you hook them up to a bunch of sensors or you put them in an fMRI machine and you ask them to meditate or you ask them to pray. Their physiology changes their body radically changes almost instantly as soon as they it depends on how quickly they can get to that state. But when they do get to that state. Everything changes right there. Breathing slows way down, their heart rate slows way down and becomes very, very constant, very steady. So their heart rate variability goes way down and it becomes very steady. There's no fast beats and slow beats. It's just one beautiful, steady heartbeat. Their levels of oxygen around the body go up. Right. And during this time of of COVID 19, that's important, right? We want to increase oxygen oxygenation in the body. So this is really a I always tell people that one of the biggest aha moments from my research these past 15 years is that a spiritual connection. Practice is not about. It's really from a scientific standpoint. It's not about the beliefs. That's not the cool thing. The cool thing is the physiological, physiological state that it brings you to because I mean, imagine if we had a pill that we could give people that would lower and even out their heart rate, increase their oxygen oxygenation, increase blood flow to areas of their brain associated with empathy and relaxation and compassion, and increase their natural killer cells and their white blood cells and then get this drastically improve their genetic expression.
Speaker1:
Wow.
Speaker2:
So that in just one hour of meditation. Yeah, epigenetics, you can change your genetic expression in just one. Actually, not even an hour. In half an hour. Wow. To have it be more health promoting and you actually turn off disease promoting genes. Right. One of my favorite studies showed that people who had never meditated before, who are given sort of a brief introduction, how to do it and told to meditate for 30 minutes a day. In just eight weeks, they turned off their oncogenes, their cancer genes. Right. These oncogenes that are they quote unquote inherited, which just means that they inherited them, turned on because every gene has a light switch on it. And through this spiritual connection practice, they were able to turn that light switch off. So it doesn't matter if you inherited the oncogene, if the light switch is turned off, it's not going to cause a problem. And so, yeah, so spiritual connection practice is what's common among radical remission survivors. And it doesn't matter if the practice is gardening or praying or meditating or being a whirling dervish and spinning around in a circle. It doesn't matter what the practice is, as long as the state that you reach is that one of slow, deep breathing, and usually it's often characterized by an absence of thought. So it's a way to quiet the mind. So if you do that by painting or by running or gardening, you're going to get the same benefits as you would from someone who does a specific religious prayer. So it's really it's it's about the daily practice and whatever, whatever practice works for you to get to that. It's really a super healing state. It's sort of like getting in rest and repair and then turning up the volume to 100.
Speaker1:
So if that were a drug, I mean, how many millions or maybe even billions would that be worth? I mean, incredible.
Speaker2:
Right. And it's free. You just need to sit and you need to sit and deal with the discomfort. I mean, I'm sure you've tried meditation or mindfulness in the past. Dr. Stickle And and for me, someone who never thought she'd be a meditator, I have to say, the first 4 to 5 weeks of, of my regular meditation practice were absolute hell.
Speaker1:
Right.
Speaker2:
Right.
Speaker1:
Same here.
Speaker2:
Yeah, very uncomfortable.
Speaker1:
Either my thoughts started going crazy or I fell asleep. One of the two.
Speaker2:
Right. Well, for me, I never fell asleep. But I thought either of your thoughts are going off to your grocery list, right? Or your body is just so uncomfortable, and you're like, I just you just want to crawl out of your skin. But radical survivors sort of pushed through that initial period of discomfort or racing mind. And I promise you, I can say this from personal experience and from everybody I've interviewed on the other side of that initial sort of monkey mind, they say there is a quieter place in your mind waiting for you. And scientifically, that's that's where the magic happens in terms of lighting up the immune system.
Speaker1:
Absolutely. So if if if you're listening and you you've tried it before, didn't really get it, the message is pushed through. It's like it's like exercise, really. I mean, you start out maybe you're you don't feel like you're very good at it. You can't run that far. You can't lift that much weight. But once you start persevering, you get through the first little bit there. You're going to become really good at it and proficient at it.
Speaker2:
Absolutely.
Speaker1:
I'd like to basically hear what your your advice is for someone who's listening, who has been given a really bad diagnosis and feels like they've lost their hope.
Speaker2:
Wow. Well, that's a lot of pressure, Dr. SIEGEL. I'm not a medical doctor like you are. And so I actually try my best not to give medical advice. Sure. Sure. But I can I can tell you what I've learned from radical survivors. So sort of turning that question around to not not necessarily what advice do I have for listeners, but I can certainly say what I've learned from radical survivors who are battling that diagnosis and feeling that fear. What radical remission survivors do? Is they first take some deep breaths and hug their family and feel feel their feelings. So I think that's an important part. You know, obviously, we've been talking a lot about the mind body connection and sometimes people get the incorrect message that, oh, if if I need to be in relaxation mode and happy in order to turn on my immune system, then I can't be scared or I can't be sad. And that just couldn't be farther from the truth. Radical emotion. Survivors absolutely feel all of their feelings, and most of the time in the beginning, those are feelings of fear and sadness and depression. So certainly radical emotion. Survivors feel their feelings and then they get help. They get help from friends, from family, from the Internet. They they start reaching out for help and looking for ways to support themselves.
Speaker2:
And so if if someone that I knew came to me and said, what should I do? I just got diagnosed with cancer, I would say, you know. Let's. Let's act like radical commission survivors, right? Like let's let's let's try to find someone to help you change your diet. Now, let's have you find someone to help you deal with all these big emotions that you're feeling. Let's get you on an exercise program that feels good to you. Let's find a an integrative medicine practitioner who can help you find the right supplements for you. But I think the very, very first thing to do is to just take some deep breaths and and find your social support. Right. Find the people who are going to hug you and help you go on this empowering journey where you're going to be an active participant. You know, because it's not it's not easy to be a radical Christian survivor. These people put a lot of time and effort into healing. You know, I'm thinking of baby Jeremiah in my book, Radical Hope. So. Baby Jeremiah was nine months old when his mom felt lumps on his back and they took him in and he ended up having a very, very rare type of lymphoma. So rare I mean, I'm like five people a year in the world are diagnosed with it that they didn't even know what kind of chemotherapy to offer him because they'd never they're just aren't any studies done on this particular type of cancer.
Speaker2:
And so they kind of were saying to the mom, well, which one do you want to give him? And she was like, You're asking me because. Yeah, right. And because because there was just really conventional medicine did not have any proven research or answers for her little baby. She her gut was just really saying, like, let's just try to let's try to shift his system. It's such a tiny little baby system. Let's try to shift it naturally first. So she ended up finding a clinic in South America that would that would take them on because he was only nine months old at the time. And most people just are not used to treating young, young babies with cancer. And she went down to this clinic and at that point she had stopped breastfeeding. And so she was on formula and they said, nope, no formula. And they taught him they taught her how to make green juices for him so that, you know, she's got these pictures of him toddling around as he was learning to stand up, drinking a baby bottle filled with green juice in it. Right. And so they completely changed his diet and they gave him some supplements.
Speaker2:
And then they also did a bunch of additional thermal treatments down there that were unique to this clinic. And after 45 days, the lumps were gone. So. So yeah, it's it's just really, it's really amazing what putting the work in can do and what the reason I bring that up is, is because, yeah, radical survivors have to do a lot. You know, Jeremiah's mom, Tonya, you know, she had to move. She she moved down to South America for 45 days and around the clock was cooking for him, preparing meals and juices and thermal treatments for him. So it's it's definitely something that's going to require a lot of your time and effort. And that's why you need your support network around you to help. You need you need that those friends and family. And luckily, Jeremiah had his mom as as his main and crucial support. So anyway, ten he's now ten year old boy. So from a ten month old baby to a ten year old boy. And they came back to the US and his doctors were just like I we don't understand what his scans are clean like he has no more cancer in his body. So it's it's pretty remarkable what can happen when you put lots of effort into overhauling your health.
Speaker1:
Absolutely. Thank you for that. So you've developed an online course. I'd like to talk a little bit about that based on based on your healing principles that you've uncovered through your extensive research. Could you tell us a bit more about that?
Speaker2:
Sure. Yeah. You know, the online course was not something I intended to create. I'm a PhD researcher, so I'm I'm really interested in finding these cases, analyzing them and and drawing some some hypothetical conclusions from them and and furthering the research which we're doing actually right now with a study at Harvard University. So I'm a researcher. So I was sort of confused and overwhelmed when after the book was published, Radical Remission was published. And then I got sort of overwhelmed with all these requests of people who said, you know, teach me the healing factors. And I was like, I'm not a teacher or a doctor, but I you know, I am I have been a professor at times. And so I know how to lecture. And so I said, okay, I'll put together a course about the science behind these ten, these ten healing factors. And I'll share some of the stories of my, my, the people in my database, and then I'll give you some, some very simple tips, lifestyle tips that you can do right now that have been scientifically proven to be safe and and that I felt comfortable with. So, yeah, the online course is basically a sort of lecture presentation for me that felt scientifically backed and, and gives people safe and simple things they can do right now to start bringing these factors into their lives. And and that's because I thought people would just want to read the research and then figure these things out on their own. But not everybody has you in their backyard, Dr. STEGALL So, so that's why we did the online course. Do you offer any online courses in your practice? I'm sure you're I'm sure your patients would gobble that right up.
Speaker1:
Yeah, not yet. But that's in that's in the works. This is the.
Speaker2:
First time.
Speaker1:
People are knowing about that. But yes, I am working on an online course for people who can't get here for treatment just to let them know things they can be doing, maybe treatments they haven't heard about, things like that. So you're a little bit ahead of me on that, but I think it's a great way to to get the information to more people.
Speaker2:
Yeah. Yeah. You know, here at the Radical Remission Project, which is my small little organization, we are just all about just helping people who want to be healthy and giving them scientifically backed ways to do that. And like you said, you know, not everybody can give themselves chemo, not everybody can give themselves the blood test or then know how to analyze those blood tests to know exactly what supplements they need. But everybody can work on stress reduction at home and everybody can fill their their refrigerator with vegetables at home. Right. So I think the more online education we have or just education in general we have about how to live a healthy life in general, the better off will be as a society.
Speaker1:
Absolutely. And getting back to the question about hope, I mean, I think I think you've kind of hit it hit that I mean, you know, there's so many things people can be doing and therefore, there's reason to have hope because there are only things you can do, but there are things that we know can be extremely effective.
Speaker2:
So absolutely. I think I think hope based on fantasy is false hope, but hope based on factual real life cases of thousands of cases of people who've healed, that becomes that becomes radical hope. That becomes hope based on on evidence.
Speaker1:
Right. Right. And I know we're of the same mindset. I mean, I talk a lot about in my in my my book and on this podcast about open minded skepticism. I mean, that's really kind of my philosophy of, you know, we have to be open to things maybe we haven't researched or entertained before, but they may be helpful to us. But we also have to have a health. The amount of skepticism as well, because people can be too far one way or the other. You can be too open minded and not have a basis for or a framework for really evaluating that. But you can also be overly skeptical and really be closed minded. So and that's exactly what I know you're about as well.
Speaker2:
Absolutely. I love that open minded skepticism. I'm going to I'm going to remember that one.
Speaker1:
Sure. Sure, absolutely. I think it's great. So I'd like to also talk about your your screenplay open ended ticket. You had a you adapted your your book into a fictional feature length screenplay called Open Ended Ticket. And this is actually a finalist for the 2019 Sundance Screenwriters Lab. So please tell us more about that.
Speaker2:
Yeah, absolutely. Screenwriting is my favorite, favorite hobby. And as soon as I started studying radical motion survivors, I just knew I wanted to make a movie about them. So, you know, I think people learn in a lot of different ways. We have some people who are visual learners or audio learners. I'm someone who learns, number one, through stories, through true stories, and I'm also a big time visual learner. And so actually writing the dissertation was torture for me because I had just traveled around the world for a year sitting across from these incredible survivors. Right. Having tea with them, looking in their eyes, seeing them smile, seeing them laugh, seeing them cry. And I suddenly had to reduce them to subject number 57 in my dissertation. And so as I was writing the dissertation and then even as I was writing the book, I just my heart really wanted to also tell the radical mission story visually. And I've always wanted to do that in two ways. One through like a Hollywood feature film that was based on a true story and then also through a documentary. So I'm happy to report that we filmed the docu series that it actually was ten factors is a lot to fit into 2 hours so we turned it into a ten episode series. Each episode is an hour long and we filmed that this past fall and we had a sort of beta beta launch of it this march to a sort of a private mailing list of my publisher that went really well.
Speaker2:
It was really well received. And now cross your fingers. We are trying to get it onto a streamer such as Netflix or Amazon, so hopefully that will be out soon so that the night you're diagnosed, you can go binge watch 10 hours of of people who healed. That's my goal, right, is to take that night of diagnosis and turn it into a, you know, a pivot to hope, basically. So the docu series will hopefully be out very soon. And then the feature film again, is just another way to tell the story and cross your fingers. We're still working with people in Hollywood to get that made as well and have some offers out to actresses at the moment. So cross your fingers. Anyone who's listening, send us some good vibes. It's Hollywood is a hard place to break into. But. But I know I would want to go see a movie based on a true story about a radical remission. And I do think that many, many other people would, too. So let's hope we can see both of these on our on our TV screen soon.
Speaker1:
Excellent. Well, please keep us posted, because once once we have a plan, once you have a plan, please let me know and I'll be sure to let our listeners know about that.
Speaker2:
Oh, absolutely. Thank you, Dr. Stegall.
Speaker1:
Please let me know.
Speaker2:
And I just wanted to say one more thing about my research, that third category of radical survivors, which is people who combine conventional and alternative medicine at the same time to overcome a very dire prognosis. Those are like the people in your practice, right? I mean, I know you offer low dose chemo. And one of the people in in my new book, Radical Hope, Tom, he had stage four colon cancer and considered him a pretty he considered himself a pretty healthy guy. You know, he had kind of a stressful job, but he was eating pretty healthfully and exercising pretty regularly. So he was very shocked in his late sixties when he was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. I mean, it was like emergency surgery and it was it was bad. And he ended up finding an integrative oncologist just like you. And they combined low dose chemo. He actually did chronic modulated chemo. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it's where the chemo is. You sent home with a fanny pack and it's basically delivered to you. Yeah. On a pump at a certain time when your specific cancer cells are awake. So it's a really effective way to give low dose chemo. But the integrative center he went to, much like yours, not only offered the low dose chemo, but offered nutritional cooking classes and very personalized targeted supplements and an emotional support group and mind body connection practice classes like meditation classes and meditation CDs to take home. And just it's just such a beautiful example to me of what medicine can be like. And it sounds just like your beautiful practice. So I just want to thank you. And by the way, the happy ending is that Tom, with his stage four cancer, has gone into complete remission. And it's you know, it's many, many years later at this point. And I know you probably have so many of these third type of radical remission cases, success stories in your own practice, right?
Speaker1:
Yeah, I it's funny, I had never heard you kind of break down into those three categories, but when you were listening to them earlier in the episode, I thought, okay, yeah, integrative oncology. That's that's the third one right there.
Speaker2:
But that's the third category.
Speaker1:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we we certainly have plenty of patients like that that I would say with your your. Syria absolutely meet the criteria. So it's it's awesome. So thank you for saying that. That means a lot.
Speaker2:
Yeah, well, it's it's just I'm just so, so happy to know more and more oncologists are practicing medicine the way the way you are. It's just it's how medicine should be practiced, bringing in the whole life of the patient. So it's wonderful.
Speaker1:
I'm sorry to say there aren't more of us there. There are only a few of us. But but I'm hoping over time, I mean, they can't ignore what what the data shows. I mean, if you if you show them a patient who had a really nasty looking scan and then you you show them a follow up scan, that after treatment that it looks dramatically better. I mean, you would hope they can't ignore that. So I'm hoping the more and more of those cases that are that are occurring and that are published, ultimately they will start to make a change in how how oncology is practiced.
Speaker2:
Absolutely. Results don't lie. So if you if you and all the other integrative oncologists that I know are continue to have the great results you're having, then the tide will eventually change.
Speaker1:
Absolutely. Well, Dr. Turner, I know you're so busy and and we'll have to let you go. Unfortunately, I hope to have you on again another time. But I did want to. Before we go, give you a chance to let our listeners know how they can learn more about you, how they can check out your your website and your your books and that kind of thing.
Speaker2:
Absolutely. Well, they can find me at radical remission dot com. And everything we do at the radical Christian Project is on there, so you can find the links to the two books. Our social media handles the online course. We have a wonderful group of like 45 teachers from around the world who've been trained by me who are offering well, they were offering in-person workshops before coronavirus. Now there are they've pivoted themselves and they're offering livestream workshops, but there's a great community there and there's also on that website is our database. And so if you have a radical remission story to tell me about, please, it can take you 10 minutes, as little as 10 minutes to tell me your story. But that is how I find out about the people that I write about and research about. Because, as you know, Dr. Stegall, there really is no way to track radical remission survivors in our current statistical accounting methods. So it's these these survivors are not tracked once they go home on hospice. Many of them don't go back to the doctors, even if they do. And the Dr. Marks, that they're still alive. If they had chemo seven years ago, then their remission is is the credit is given to that chemo that was given seven years ago, even though they were sent home on hospice to die because the chemo didn't work. It's just the way that the computer marks it. So it's the way the way that my research has grown these past 15 years is that our website's just been flooded and flooded with these cases that aren't published anywhere and also aren't tracked in the statistics. So. Awesome. So, yeah. So tell me your story. Radical remission.
Speaker1:
Excellent. Go do it. Go tell her, guys. We'll talk tomorrow. Thank you so much. This has just been an honor to have you. And I've been a fan of your work for a long time. And I just appreciate your willingness to to do the research, but also to share it with everyone. I know you've you've helped a lot of people, and a lot of people are going to be really helped by by this episode today. So thank you so much.
Speaker2:
Oh, well, awesome. Thank you for having me, Dr. Scott. I really appreciate.
Speaker1:
It. Absolutely. And just as a reminder to our listeners, please subscribe to the Cancer Secrets podcast to be notified when new episodes are released. And if you're enjoying these podcasts, please take a minute and provide a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. And finally, please share this podcast with your family and friends. All previous episodes are available for free on our website at Cancer Secrets dot com. Dr. Turner, thank you again. Really appreciate it.
Speaker2:
Thanks for having me.
Speaker3:
Bye bye. Oh. He.
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