8 IPT and Low-Dose Chemotherapy.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
8 IPT and Low-Dose Chemotherapy.mp3: 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. Welcome back to the Cancer Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Doctor Jonathan Segall. This is episode number eight. 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. In today's episode, I'm going to talk about the importance of low dose or fractionated chemotherapy in a method I use called insulin potentiation and therapy or IPT. We're going to talk about the origins of this form of therapy, why I use it and how it compares to full dose conventional chemotherapy. I invite you to grab a family member or a friend and listen in together. Today's show is going to be foundational to this podcast and reveal the basics behind my personalized approach to low dose chemotherapy. One hallmark of integrative oncology, which I practice, is a focus on having as many potential treatments at our disposal as possible.
Speaker2:
These treatments should address the scientific advances we've made in our understanding of how cancer forms as well as how it grows and spreads by employing open minded skepticism while maintaining our stance that science is our guide and not our God. We have the framework for a truly integrative approach which takes into account the unique needs of each patient. Chemotherapy is one of the most feared forms of medical treatment in existence and not necessarily without reason. The side effects of chemotherapy are often as unpleasant as the cancer it is being used to fight. Even with the remarkable advances made in chemotherapy regimens. It remains one of the biggest fears when it comes to treating cancer. But it's important to remember that chemotherapy does not have to be a dirty word. Chemotherapy has mountains of evidence supporting its use, and unbeknownst to many people, a significant number of chemotherapy agents are made from naturally occurring plant based substances. I regularly use chemotherapy in my practice, but the way we use it differs dramatically from conventional oncology. A conventional oncologist will determine your chemotherapy dosage by calculating your height and weight. The result is what is known as the maximum tolerated dose or MTD. We also refer to this as full dose chemotherapy. This method came into prominence after childhood. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, also known as Al, was successfully treated this way. Since that time, it's been shown to be a consistently effective approach in a few other cancers as well, such as testicular cancer and Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Speaker2:
However, these cancers are less complex and have significantly fewer mutations than most other cancers. Cancers such as breast, prostate and colorectal do not respond nearly as consistently to full dose. Chemotherapy and side effects can be significant. Scientists have been questioning the more is better approach to chemotherapy for quite some time. In fact, it was nearly 20 years ago when several forward thinking scientists began testing lower doses of chemotherapy given more frequently than full dose regimens. Integrative oncology. We also perform the same calculation using your height and weight, but we only administer about 10 to 30% of what a normal oncologist would. This is known as fractionated chemotherapy, and there are several distinct advantages to this approach. With full dose chemotherapy, there is a large window of time between the administration of the initial treatment and the subsequent treatment. Typically, patients will receive treatment once every 1 to 3 weeks, depending on the chemotherapeutic agents used the type of cancer and the stage of cancer. With this method, side effects frequently occur, including immune system suppression, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and fatigue. Administering full dose chemotherapy more often than this would likely cause even more terrible side effects. During the window of time between chemotherapy treatments, however. We give cancer cells that survive the treatment, the opportunity to build resistance to the drug. We've learned that most tumors contain a proportion of cancer cells that are sensitive to treatments such as chemotherapy, while the remaining cancer cells are resistant to it.
Speaker2:
Maximum tolerated dose chemotherapy kills the sensitive cancer cells, leaving behind a population of resistant cells, which are essentially unaffected by the chemotherapy. These resistant cells are then able to use the nutrients and other factors to aggressively grow and thrive. This is why we often see a dramatic reduction in tumor size and cancer markers during their first cycle or two of maximum tolerated dose chemotherapy, but aggressive recurrence of the cancer in the months or years that follow. Unfortunately, the success seen in those early cycles is nearly impossible to maintain as subsequent chemotherapy treatments against the remaining resistant cells provide little to no results. A strategy which administers lower doses of chemotherapy more frequently has been developed. This is known as metronomic chemotherapy because the dosage used each time with metronomic chemotherapy is less or fractionated. The side effects are greatly mitigated, if not nonexistent, and the collateral damage to healthy cells is also greatly reduced. Another advantage of lower doses of chemotherapy given in this fashion is an antiangiogenic effect. This means that the blood supply to the cancer is decreased. Not surprisingly, such an approach was also found to greatly reduce toxicity. However, we can make fractionated metronomic chemotherapy even better in order to maximize our effects. We take advantage of some of the metabolic properties of cancer. Recall in previous episodes that cancer cells have many more receptors for insulin and glucose on their cell membranes because those cancer cells thrive on glucose or sugar.
Speaker2:
This is the basis for what is known as insulin potentiation therapy or IPT. Hi, this is Dr. Jonathan Stegall, medical doctor and specialist in integrative oncology. And I want to tell you about my new best selling 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. 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 dot com and buy your copy now. There's a very specific protocol we use in my office for IPT prior to administering chemotherapy. We lower the patient's blood sugar by administering insulin. Now typically we try to lower the patient's blood sugar to between 35 and 55 milligrams per deciliter. Now, this is slightly lower than a normal blood sugar, but not so low that we see any significant side effects. Now, lowering the blood sugar to this level creates what we call a therapeutic moment, the point at which we believe cancer cells become desperate for glucose.
Speaker2:
It is at this point when we administer intravenous glucose known as dextrose, along with multiple chemotherapeutic agents, strategically and carefully chosen for that patient based on advanced testing. We discuss some of this testing in the two previous episodes by bringing the patient's blood sugar back up while at the same time administering chemotherapy. We believe we can better target the chemotherapy drugs directly to cancer cells. In this way, lower dosages of chemotherapy become more like a heat seeking missile rather than an atom bomb. In addition to being more targeted toward the cancer, fractionated chemotherapy has the added benefit of stimulating the immune system. It is also been shown to reduce angiogenesis, which is the creation of new blood vessels to feed cancer tumors. These are not benefits seen in full dose chemotherapy, which, as we all know, often wrecks the immune system, harms the body's healthy cells and creates resistant cancer cells. Now the challenge with fractionated chemotherapy using IPT is that we do not have large scale clinical trials evaluating its efficacy. This is not surprising as studies involving many patients treated for years require significant funding. This funding most often comes from pharmaceutical companies. And let's be honest, pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to investigate the possibility that their drugs work just as well, if not better. Using 1/10 to one third of the usual doses. An ideal study would be to compare full dose chemotherapy given the usual way with fractionated chemotherapy administered with IPT.
Speaker2:
Although fractionated chemotherapy and IPT are not yet the standard of care. They are not new concepts. Ipt was first developed in 1930s in Mexico by Dr. Donato Pérez Garcia. He theorized that insulin could improve the cellular uptake of other medications given, since insulin was already known at that time to be required for the uptake of sugar. For the first couple of decades, Dr. Garcia treated several different diseases using IPT, including schizophrenia and syphilis. It was not until later that he began using IPT to treat cancer in conjunction with low dose or fractionated chemotherapy. Today, IPT is primarily used as a delivery mechanism to treat cancer at a select group of cancer treatment clinics. Mainstream cancer clinics only administer treatments that are considered the standard of care. As we all know, despite a lack of long term randomized placebo controlled trials involving fractionated chemotherapy with IPT. There are some studies which shed light on how it works. The current belief is that IPT affects the metabolism of cancer cells, making them more sensitive to chemotherapy agents. Thus the reason for using significantly less chemotherapy than in conventional medicine. It is also believed that the insulin and glucose given in conjunction with chemotherapy better target the chemotherapy to the cancer cells rather than healthy cells. This is consistent with previous research confirming that cancer cells have significantly more insulin and sugar receptors on their cell surface compared to healthy cells. Although it would be wonderful to be able to conduct long term clinical trials on fractionated chemotherapy with insulin potentiation therapy.
Speaker2:
This is unlikely to occur. As mentioned previously, there is little incentive for a pharmaceutical company to pay for a study on a drug which would possibly result in as much as an 80 to 90% reduction in the current doses used. This would greatly cut into their profits. I'm not a conspiracy theorist by any means, but it is important to remember that pharmaceutical companies are businesses which strive to make profits for themselves and their shareholders. If a drug company is not going to fund a large scale study, we unfortunately are not left with many options. Fractionated chemotherapy administered with IPT makes sense to me on a biochemical and physiological level, despite it not being proven. I have seen it work very well in my own practice with my patients. It is a much safer way to administer chemotherapy in many cases and I believe it is quite efficacious as well. I do not think it is appropriate for everyone, but for those patients who have either failed full dose chemotherapy previously or are not candidates for full dose chemotherapy, or who simply prefer to try a gentler and safer approach. It is an. Excellent tool in our toolbox. Hope you've enjoyed today's episode. Perhaps you're a cancer patient yourself and you've undergone or are currently undergoing maximum tolerated dose chemotherapy and you're looking for a better option. Or perhaps you're the family member or loved one or friend of someone who has gone through full dose chemotherapy or is going to be going through it in the future.
Speaker2:
I hope that this information has been helpful for you because I do feel that fractionated chemotherapy, given more often in what we call metronomic fashion delivered with insulin potentiation therapy, is the optimal way to treat cancer using chemotherapy. Chemotherapy does not have to be a dirty word. By using chemotherapy in a safer, smarter way, I believe we greatly improve outcomes as well as tolerance to treatment. And this is really the nature of what we do in integrative oncology, as we've discussed in other episodes. Integrative oncology is about using all the tools at our disposal, whether they come from modern medicine or alternative medicine. We're drawing from various healing modalities, combining them in a very personalized and safe way for patients to ideally get better outcomes. We know from all the current research that cancer is as unique as your fingerprint. So why do we continue approaching cancer with a one size fits all approach? It doesn't work. We have to use integrative oncology treatments if we're going to improve our fight against cancer. And I'm honored to be one of the doctors who does this every single day. I hope you'll join me next time. For Episode nine, we're going to dive into intravenous vitamin C and how it can be a powerful treatment in our cancer fighting arsenal. Thank you again for your time today. I look forward to our next episode together.
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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