Cancer Scientist: Before You Start Cancer Treatment, Watch This!

In the future, you think there is going to be a way to cure cancer. You're not going to cure cancer anymore, then you're going to cure obesity. You can manage it. But if you do the things that cause it, it's coming back.

The reason why they keep talking about the cure for cancer is because they've made it out to be a genetic disease. It's not a genetic disease. It's a mitochondrial metabolic disease. So, we don't use this arrogant term cure because it's inappropriate.

Professor Thomas Safeed is a leading researcher in cancer metabolism. And Dr. Alan Goldhammer is a pioneer in medically supervised therapeutic fasting. They share decades of research and clinical experience in metabolism, fasting, and cancer.

Many people say, "Oh, cancer cells are so wy and tough and versatile and flexible." That's all bullit. The whole system, the medical system is broken.

Why [music] though is it the pharma industry? You have a hospital industry. You have an academic industry. You have all of these industries together are interested in revenue generation first and then patient outcome second.

It's even deeper than that. Many of the companies that are controlling the ultrarocessed foods are the same companies involved with the pharmaceutical industries. And they control the politicians. Every time these politicians try to do something, the industry will shut them down. They control everything. So that's why the only way it's going to change, you have to educate the people. Do they want to live longer with a higher quality of life or not?

Hospitals is also a major part of the problem. Radiation brings in a tremendous amount of revenue to the hospitals. And for brain cancer, it's really tragic because they will not stop irdiating people with brain tumors. Even though I published all these papers showing that the radiation frees up massive amounts of glucose and glutamine, giving the patient a disadvantage in overall survival. Uh but you can't stop them from irdiating the human brain.

What are they doing? So what's some regulations, some rules that we can do in a way to improve this situation? Yeah. One one thing might be to elect politicians that can read. That would be a good thing. It seems a bit we are doomed as I understand from [laughter] this.

First question. Who are you? Can you explain us a bit some stuff about yourself? Maybe we can start with Thomas.

Yeah. Well, well, well, thank you. I'm uh Thomas Seaffrey, professor of biology at Boston College. Uh I teach undergraduates in um non- majors and majors and I have a course in cancer metabolism that I teach every semester while I'm here. We do we we do um pre-clinical research uh on uh new therapies for cancer and uh we have um clinics around the world that will be implementing uh our research on patients with cancer.

C Allan. Well, I've been the director of the True North Health Center in uh California for the last uh 40 years and uh we've had the chance to supervise uh water only fasting in 25,000 subjects and we try to document that and publish that in peer-reviewed literature.

Okay. Do do you know of each other's work? You are aware of each other's work, right? I I I remember uh Dr. gohammer from uh his work on on fasting and and calorie restriction. So I am aware. Yes.

But you never spoke to each other, right? We did actually in New York. Oh yes. Yes. Some years ago when they were doing these uh in person we had a chance to speak uh and I've certainly been an admirer of your work and been following your materials for years.

Well, thank you. Okay, Thomas, can you explain us a bit uh more what you are doing? Uh give us a bit longer uh explanation of what you are doing with the clinic, the biology. Give us a bit longer explanation of the bi listen what we're doing is we're um we're evaluating metabolic therapies for cancer. You you have to realize that our work and the work of others has clearly shown that cancer is not a genetic disease. It's a mitochondrial metabolic disease. Uh that changes the whole dynamics of how you view this the disease and how you treat it.

Okay. So uh what we did uh in our uh 40 years of research on cancer is um uh we went back and we realized that the German scientist autoberg was essentially correct on on uh origin of cancer as a mitochondrial metabolic problem. The problem at that time is he had no electron micro microscopic analysis of mitochondria structure. did not know how to me measure some of the other functions. Um and and there were some gaps in in what he was able to do at that time. Uh he he realized that cancer cells ferment glucose to lactic acid because their oxidative phosphorilation is inefficient inefficient energy metabolism using oxygen. Um this was referred to as the Warberg effect uh which has been a completely misunderstood concept. Um it it's an effect of oxidative oxfos insufficiency. What Warberg did not know uh was that there is a second fermentation machinery inside the mitochondria itself. It's called it's called substrate level phosphorilation in the matrix of the mitochondria.

Uh I'm I'm I I know some of this may be uh a little detailed uh but you have to realize that in evolution uh all organisms were fermenttors before oxygen was produced in the atmosphere and the mitochondria is simply a derivative of a bacteria that was at one time a a fermenttor. Um of course it was able to use oxygen for efficient energy production. But in cancer cells what happens is the oxidative phosphorilation machinery gradually becomes insufficient. So the cell falls back on non o n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n non oxygen dependent energy production pathways. One is in the cytoplasm that Otto Warberg defined and the other is in the mitochondria that we defined in our collaboration with Christo Shinopoulos at Seml Weiss University in Budapest. Uh the cancer field has yet to come to understand that mitochondria can ferment uh produce energy without oxygen. This is the biggest stumbling block. I I go out of my way to write these papers. I must apparently the cancer field seems to be un un can't understand what we're talking about that the mitochondria itself can produce energy without oxygen using glutamine as a substrate producing suinic acid as a waste product.

Okay. Uh I should I write this in crayon? Should we make a child's book uh on how to convey this information? Because apparently you might as well be talking to lug plug sockets on the wall because the cancer industry can s cannot understand that. Once you understand this concept now you have a clear path for managing cancer. you you selectively reduce glucose and glutamine, the two fuels driving the fermentation metabolism and transition the entire body over to nutritional ketosis because cancer mitochondria can neither burn fatty acids nor ketone bodies and we have provided direct evidence for this. Um, Fattius, can you understand what I just said? Do you have any clue what I just said?

Well, I understood the essence of it, but the little. You must understand more. You must understand more otherwise you become part of the problem rather than the solution.

Well, okay. Let let me let me ask some questions to simplify things. So, as I understand uh the the essence of what you're saying is that uh the the other people don't understand that the fundamental difference which I also explain a bit more simple uh for me to understand.

Yeah. Well, that's that's good. And you gota you have to also realize that cancer now is becoming overtaking heart disease as the number one chronic disease killer of humans. And and if you thought and if you think uh we're not making any major progress and the reason why is because they think it's a genetic disease. When I say they, I mean the National Cancer Institute of the United States, the National Cancer Institute of most major cancer uh uh western countries.

And Europe, right? Yes, the Germans, the checks, the English, the French, they all think the same. They all think it's a genetic disease. I the evidence is so overwhelming that it's not. It's hard to imagine that a rational mind could continue to persist on an ideological dogma that's been uh disproven.

So, so what what should uh by the way, Alan, you want to jump in by the way in what we're discussing? Uh feel free feel free.

Dr. Sigfree's work uh supports what you see clinically which is that when you put patients in a fasting state their cancer cells don't compete as effectively as they do in the feeding state. So you you create an environment with a different fuel source that healthy cells are adapted to because you know fasting is a biological adaptation. human cells can deal with these more flexible nutrient sources, whereas cancer cells, their higher metabolic rates don't appear to be as flexible in terms of dealing with their environment. So, you create an environment that's not conducive to the cancer cell and the body's immune cells through autophagy and all the processes the body use to turn these cells over have a selective advantage. And so when we take patients for example, we treat a lot of patients with lymphoma and you can treat them medically and radiate patients or give them chemotherapy or whatever it is you want to do and you can see sometimes tumors go down but the problem is all cause mortality is not reduced. The tumors come back worse than ever. The problem that's not actually being addressed because the problem as he's pointed out is a metabolic problem. It's not a DNA problem. So you can't just kill off some cells or cut out some cells or radiate, you know, that's not going to work well and it doesn't. The data is overwhelming. Conventional treatment is not effective in terms of reducing all cause mortality. And so if you're not going to reduce if you're not going to live longer or better, why would you want to go through something that has such uh tremendous potential side effects? On the other hand, if you change the metabolic environment, that's makes cancer cells have a a less advantageous situation. The body's immune system has a better chance at dealing with the problems and also even conventional therapy has a better chance of dealing with the problems. So in other words, people that use fasting in conjunction with chemotherapy have better outcomes, not just because the um the the uh destructive effect of the chemotherapy, but also fasting and that environment tends to protect healthy cells from some of the damage from the intervention. So you've got a kind of a dualged sword there that gives you a significant advantage. We would go actually even further to say it's not just cancer that's a metabolic disease, but most of these common leading causes of death and disability. Coronary artery disease, diabetes, autoimmune disease, they're all metabolic diseases. They're all disruptions in metabolism, which is the process the body uses to bring in energy and and and heal cells and get rid of scinsesscent cells and everything. If you disrupt that metabolic process, you end up with disease. And the the the big problem in cancer is that the as as as the professors pointed out is the whole basis of treatment is a false one. And therefore, it's it's not going to be possible to see the kind of results people want with it. Uh that's why dealing with the actual disruptions of metabolism, diet, sleep, exercise, fasting, these are likely to have a better outcome and and in our experience they do.

Yeah, I I I completely agree with that. Um, we've seen it uh work ourselves as as a as a matter of fact when we started this kind of research some years ago.

[clears throat] Uh, we were call we were we were doing calorie restriction and uh because of the differences in basil metar metabolic rate between the mouse and the human sevenfold differences we we realized that it was to to comp to get a comparable outcome in humans it's called water only fasting um which we did the biomarker analysis and a 40% restriction of food in a in a in a mouse with a high basil metabolic rate uh was comparable to human water only fasting. But but at that time uh you know when you're telling cancer patients that have all these problems, okay, let's let's just not eat for for 10 days or something like that, you know, I I said to the I I said to my colleagues that this is probably not going to be embraced by the majority of cancer. [laughter] Right? So, so that's when because I had worked in the epilepsy field for years with ketogenic diets and uh you can you can replicate much of what a fasting would be if you take u a very low carbohydrate diet in restricted amounts. Uh and then and then you get a you get a comparable metabolic change as you would with a water only fasting. And then we developed the glucose ketone index calculator, the GKI, which uh just t came out today in in Frontiers in Science as a lead article. So it's all over the web right now for managing chronic diseases and cancer. Uh just as Dr. Gohammer just said, no question about it. Um, it it really it really makes all of these other therapies work better. So what we found is that when people have a low glucose ketone index, which you can get with water only fasting for sure. It's the best way actually. The problem is it's it's it's a for a lot of people. It's it's really kind of hard.

What other things also you can get it? I accept water only fasting. What did you say? What other ways you can get it? I accept water only fasting.

Well, yeah. What we do for the cancer patients is we give them a zero carb diet um or a very very low carb diet um and try to bring their GKI down to what you would possibly get with water only fasting. See, water only fasting is great for people that are pretty in pretty good shape. Uh but with a lot of cancer patients, you have them they have a whole slug of coorbidities, high blood pressure, diabetes, type hypertension. Um, so one sometimes a water only fast is not appropriate for for these. Although we're going we're striving for the same biochemical readout that you would get with a water only fasting. We're just using different techniques to get there. What we do is is uh once we can get these people into some level of metabolic homeostasis, then we jump into water only fasting because the jump now is much less traumatic to the body after they've been uh given uh very low carb diets, exercise and this kind of thing. And then the other point that we have to make in make is that yes water only fasting is unbelievable uh for uh preparing the body uh not only not only reducing the um the rate of growth of tumor cells but also allowing uh current standards of care to work to work to work much better. But that metabolic therapy also requires the targeting of glutamine and glutamine is the second fermentable fuel besides glucose. So water only fasting is great for lowering glucose and elevating ketones. Uh but it doesn't hit the glutamine targeting as strongly as certain drugs that we use that we add on. So once the patient is into this new metabolic state that would be achieved by either water only fasting, low carb diets or exercise, this kind of thing. Then we come in with these glutamine targeting drugs to shut down the second major pathway driving the disregulated growth. You know, surprisingly, we've gotten with just glucose targeting alone, we've gotten some really remarkable outcomes from many cancer patients. It's when you it's when you hit the glutamine pathway at the same time. But but you but we have to be cognizant of the use of our immune system that uses glutamine as well. So that's why we developed the press pulse therapeutic strategy because you can press glucose down with water only fasting and a variety of other things. It's a non-necessary nutrient. It's the glutamine that is a is a key nutrient for the gut and the health of the immune system. So when you use drugs like parasitic medications which target the glutaminolysis pathway used together with water only fasting and restricted ketogenic diets you get really good results and then we can come in at the end with lowdose chemo or radiation or even surgical resection imunotherapies. You use that as the very end result of how you manage the cancer. You don't do it at the beginning because as we just heard uh you have all these offtarget effects uh that can be uh detrimental to the patient. But the most important thing that people fail to realize and and we were just told this from Dr. Gohammer that the cancer cell is restricted. It's not flexible. It's locked into a fermentation pathway and they can't the people many people say, "Oh, cancer cells are so wily and tough and and versatile and flexible." That's all We we've we've we've interrogated these tumor cells. We we take everything away from them and then we add individual nutrients back and we find out what perks them up and keeps them alive and it's glucose and glutamine. We went through all the other amino acids. We went through everything. So, we know clearly what they're dependent on, what they need to survive, and we target those and and and learning in the clinic how humans do a hell of a lot better on these therapies than the mice do. So it's still a work in progress but we have the overall outline the overall framework on how to approach cancer logically using a metabolic approach.

Yeah, you made a comment that I think is important is that um mentioned how these patients often have other metabolic diseases hypertension diabetes and that's to my earlier point that all of these diseases are fundamentally disruptions in metabolism and the same approach that we use for diabetes is the same approach we use for hypertension. the same approach we use to boost the body's immune response in um cancer. And what's interesting is that we have for example the largest effects that have ever been shown in treating high blood pressure in humans. I mean we took 174 consecutive patients with hypertension. 174 people lowered their pressure enough to eliminate medications. We got long-term follow-up, including 12-month follow-ups with our colleagues from the Mayo Clinic, showing that the majority of people, 76% of people a year later, can maintain their weight and the and the majority are still normal blood pressure without medication. Same thing's true in diabetes. Most type 2 diabetics can achieve normal blood sugars without medications. The same changes you make to correct one metabolic disturbance help the metabolic disturbances in all these conditions. And so for us, the approach isn't uh individual. It's not like you like think about it medically. If you have a diagnosis of diabetes or hypertension or cancer, you have to go to a different doctor just to be diagnosed, let alone treated. They're treated as if they're completely independent, freestanding um issues, and there's not even intercommunication often times in dealing with them. I'm suggesting that these are all the same kind of fundamental metabolic disturbance. And therefore, the only way you're going to really fundamentally prevent these diseases or treat these diseases is correcting the underlying metabolic disturbances that cause their problem. And those metabolic disturbances are affected by diet, sleep, exercise, and fasting.

Absolutely. I 100% agree. Uh it the whole system, the medical system is broken. They they what what Dr.

But why why though is it the pharma industry? Why? Wh why though is is it the pharma industry that is so powerful as.

Well it's not just the pharma industry it's the national cancer of institute it's the national institutes of health uh which recognize all these as separate different diseases when in fact they are very similar uh all of them as a matter of fact our paper on the GKI talks about the GKI as a biomarker tool for managing chronic diseases and cancer and we include it and neurosychiatric problems I mean you got diab diabetes, you got hypertension, you got high blood pressure, just like we heard. They're they're all related to mitochondrial dysfunction. And how do we know that? Because when you when you analyze the mitochondria in these different diseases, you can see structural and functional abnormalities in the very organel uh that's needed for metabolic homeostasis. Uh we have abused our bodies brutally uh with our new diets and lifestyle. We evolved as a species that was primarily always in nutritional ketosis in a state of water only fasting not because of choice but because of circumstance. Uh and our bodies have evolved under that condition. And now within a few thousand years you're now in a completely different metabolic environment where all these highly processed carbohydrate food stress emotional disturbance sleep disturbances put us at risk not only for cancer but for all these different chronic diseases. The difference let me tell you is that you r you you rarely get cancer in neurons of the brain or cardiac meioytes mainly because those kinds of cells cannot switch from oxfos to to uh to a fermentation for for very long so they die so like Parkinson's disease is a mitochondrial metabolic disease but they can't they they the neurons die they they don't switch to a disregulated cell growth same with all these other diabetes all these different kinds of problems are associated with various forms of mitochondrial dysfunction. Cancer just happens to be cells that have switched that have chronically compensatory used fermentation to replace oxfos which then leads to a to a disregulation of the cell cycle that we have defined. So we know pretty much how all the starts hap and management. The problem is the the the industry and I don't want to call just pharmaceutical. You have a hospital industry, you have an academic industry, you have all of these industries together are interested in revenue generation first and then patient outcome second. I mean this is not a mystery. Um the problem is people seem to don't forget they people like to take pills, right? I mean if you got if you take ask a person okay let's not eat any food for a week or you can take this pill. What do you think most people are going to do? They're going to take the pill, right? Um, and the pill is never going to do what the meta what the metabolic uh test does. Uh, there's a guy there's a person who's coming out with a book um from um uh uh I think it's Romania or Bulgaria. Uh one of the biggest problems in water only fasting is they call it the wall. And listen, I've tried it too. You mean you don't eat food and just drink water for three days uh or four days. I mean, you feel terrible. you feel like, you know, it's not it's not easy.

But but this guy found way the ways to get through the wall. If you can figure out how to get through that wall, then you're into the promised land. Let's put it that way. And that promised land is going to make you super healthy. Um the problem is we need a guide. Somebody needs to guide us through the wall and then you're going to have tremendous therapeutic benefit. Uh I'm not saying never take pills or anything like this to facilitate going through. uh but once you get in there then the the the probability of managing your chronic disease or cancer becomes far greater. So we we wrote a whole book called Can fasting save your life which talks about that very issue which is you know how to determine who's a good candidate for fasting how to get through that initial transition to fasting and then how to terminate fasting which is really another very important issue that you know if you go through a period of prolonged fasting you want careful relementation or you can undo some of the benefits that you're you're taking for not everybody's at any any time a good candidate for fasting. So there are some considerations there, but we've had 25,000 people complete that process successfully uh over the last 40 years. So we know that it it can be done by highly motivated self- selected people. But if we go back to thinking about what we were talking about earlier with cancer versus autoimmune disease, which are often treated completely as if they're completely unrelated conditions. You know, in cancer, for whatever reason, autophagy is not able to get rid of the cancer cells that are forming as quick as they're being formed. And so they grow into tumors, they spread around, they create a mess. In autoimmune disease, the immune system's overreactive. It's your immune system reacting to your own tissues. And when you treat cancer with a conventional therapy, you often stimulate the immune system. And the long-term side effects are often related to autoimmune disease. If you treat autoimmune disease successfully with steroids and whatnot, you increase the patient's risk for cancer. These are not unrelated uh conditions. diseases are different sides of the same metabolic imbalance. And what's nice about things like diet and fasting is you can impact both sides of the coin without damaging the other. And so, you know, the the side effect is getting healthy rather than just switching disease manifestations.

Yeah, I I agree. So and and the the the thing that we developed was the to allow cancer patients or any anyone wanting to manage a chronic disease uh use the ratio of the sugar to the ketones um as a guide for bioenergetic efficiency. So I don't know if you this is that what this was just published today uh this chart which is the GKI ratio um which is which then brings you into risk management for all kinds of diseases um as well as cancer. It it's published today. it just came out. Um, but what it does is it empowers the patient uh to give them uh confidence to know uh if they're doing water only fasting if they water only fasting will put you into that green zone which is the zone for maximum metabolic health um managing and preventing. Well, the prevention zone is the yellow zone, uh, which is not as strict, but but if you have cancer or some of these other chronic diseases, uh, getting into that green zone, having a low GKI, um, achieves that. And I always said fa water only fasting brings you down into that zone uh, uh, better than than most other things. Um, but you know, it's the it's the idea.

How many days can get you into that green? Well, it depends on person. It it depends on the age of the person, the sex, uh the overall health of the person, uh also religious, cultural differences. You you have you have a whole variety of different uh things that you have to be aware of. Um I mean, but bioenergetically, we're all we're all we all have the same bioenergetic rules that dictate the energy efficiency of our body. Uh the question is once you get into that green zone um how long can you stay there in a state of health and uh but it's okay to come out of it uh periodically uh but as long as it you can get back into it because and then you match it with specific drugs used in very low dosages that work together uh with that uh that's that new health set. So, so basically what we're offering is a bio a tool, a tool to m which is a a statement of mitochondrial health. When you're in those green and yellow zones, your mitochondria are in a state of health because you're burning ketone bodies. And that tells you quantitatively uh how how well you are. Before that, we had nothing. You know, uh oh yes, we could we if you do blood measurements on people that are in water only fasting, you will see low glucose and elevated ketones. And then you also start to see a complete shift in metabolic homeostasis. All of the different blood biomarkers that were all out of whack all all start coming back into a normal what we call normal physiological range. So but but um the guy on the street, nobody has the tool uh unless you go to a clinical chemistry lab and do this uh and get it. Right now we with the GKI everybody can monitor and make their own choices about what zone they want to be living in and uh and then they can make this informed choices about that and work with their physicians to help them so that we're all on the same page because because right now none of that's happening.

You want you want to say something. You have you have these biological adaptations in fasting that what what's being discussed here is basically how to mimic that how to reproduce that environment in an ongoing basis. You know, our experience is not with fasting mimicking but actually just putting into water only fasting up to 40 days and you see really profound changes in clinical manifestations when you're able to do that. The problem with it is has been pointed out. You have to make sure the person's a good candidate. They have to rest and hydrate. You have to realamment carefully. You know, not everybody's uh interested or willing or capable of making that happen. But when you do, the clinical results are really quite remarkable in dealing with metabolic disease. It doesn't solve everything. It solves conditions of dietary excess. So when you treat hypertension, there's nothing that works better. When you treat type 2 diabetes, there's nothing that works better. When you're treating autoimmune disease and at least some forms of cancer, uh, you know, it's a hugely powerful tool at managing the condition. You're curing nothing. You're managing everything. Ultimately, you still have to adopt a healthpromoting diet and lifestyle in order to maintain the results because that's what created the problem to begin with. And if you don't correct that, the problem's coming back.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And and and and um but as you mentioned, we see the same thing with the cancer patients. When you have a a knowledgeable person who is motivated, uh they their outcomes are remarkable. Um the the problem of course is that we have millions and millions of people who uh for one reason or another may not be as motivated or or knowledgeable uh to to adapt and make these um make these transitions and and um and they we want to try to empower the person uh well let the person see what zone they're actually in and then and you can never help many people. Some people just simply don't care. In in in our in our in our brain cancer study out of Greece, Athens, we we have a big group there, Dr. Aan Athanasis, even Julio. In our we had 18 patients with glyopblasto, all having standard of care and then some of them doing a calorierestricted Mediterranean diet and the others doing whatever they wanted to do. um uh of the 12 people who did standard of care and no and no metabolic intervention uh um only one person survived to three years where four out of six of the calorierest restricted Mediterranean diet survived and I talked to Dr. or even Julio. And there were a couple of people uh who didn't want to give up sugar in their coffee [laughter] because they found it to be too uh disturbing to them and they're all dead. So so so the the issue here is that um it's a personal choice. You want to live or you want to die. I mean it's [laughter] simple. And there are people who said rather die than give up the sugar. Okay. Well, that's their personal choice. That's one of the big advantages of running a clinic like True North Health Center where people, you know, are highly motivated, self- selected people come to do long-term fasting. When you say to a person, well, part of this treatment is going to be three weeks on water only, that filters out a lot of the less compliant, less serious uh people. We tend to get really motivated people. And so we acknowledge you can't generalize our clinical results across the population because not everybody's willing to do dangerous and radical things like eat well or exercise or go to bed on time or fast. You know, you only get the people that are really motivated in order to be willing to do that. But those that do, it's really shocking to see how good the body is at healing itself if you get the heck out of the way.

Yeah. The body is a massive unbelievable he healing machine. We've just abused it so much with our diets and lifestyle. It's just that it's so, you know, all we're doing with this u strategy is bringing us back into the metabolic state of a paleolithic man. Um, you know, he they didn't have highly processed carbohydrates. They had a lot of exercise. Um, they did all this thing and and and what we're trying to do is bring our bodies back into that into that metabolic state of health because they were not suffering. Most of them were not suffering from chronic diseases or cancer. They were dying from infections and injuries uh and and infant mortality. They weren't dying from chronic diseases that we're confronted with with today. But but but you're right. So where and and the other thing too is you know I know water only fasting is the ultimate and best way to do this. But for a lot of people that's not even thought about that. You go to a football game, you you and you see everybody pounding beers and eating hot dogs and all of a sudden you tell these guys, "Okay, we're not going to do that for the next for the next 20 days." And yeah, there'll be some of the guys that will say, "Okay." But most of them won't. Um, but we got down into these green zones by, as I said, the calorierestricted Mediterranean diet, which was sardines, uh, it was avocado, a salmon. You can eat small amounts of these foods and still get down into these green zones. Um, with um and then once if you can do that and then jumping into water only fasting for many people might be a different way to achieve the same the same thing.

Your your groups of people are all as you said highly motivated and knowledgeable about this. The majority of people on the planet aren't like that. Correct. You know.

Totally agree. Although what we have found is with good preparation prior to fasting, fasting itself doesn't have to be as intense and miserable as people think it's going to be. You know, most of the patients that we have go through our process, even those that are very ill. Actually, the fasting itself isn't rated as a particularly unpleasant experience. The bigger challenge is going home and living in a world designed to make you fat, sick, and miserable. and dealing with the psychosocial issues that come even when people want to eat healthy. It's it can be very challenging just because of all the psychosocial issues that surround them.

Yeah. Uh can I interrupt one minute to say I did 30-day fasting only water just for an experiment uh for fun [laughter] and uh it was a very difficult experience very difficult experiment because I did it in the normal world. I was with my family and the entire time my family was eating food and they were gathering and speaking with together. So it was a very difficult to socialize and to exist in the world if you are not eating because everyone goes and socialize over food or drinks or all this stuff. So it was very difficult. It is a very difficult uh task.

Well that is your big challenge like we just heard the the tempation. Don't forget the food industry has spent millions of dollars learning how to tweak our taste buds to desire all of the crap food that we we put into ourselves. Um and this is a powerful um temptation away from water only fasting.

And and actually part of the root of the problem. We wrote a book called The Pleasure Trap, which talks about the artificial stimulation of dopamine in the brain that comes from the chemicals we add to our food, which is salt, oil, and sugar. Salt, oil, and sugar are not food. They're hyperconentrated components added back to food to stimulate dopamine in the brain to make food taste better. And that's what leads to the overeating, which leads to the obesity, which leads to the visceral fat, which leads to the inflammation, which creates the metabolic disturbance, which is why people are dying from, you know, the leading cause of death. And meanwhile, we're not dealing with the actual causes of death. We're focusing on treating conditions after they occur ineffectively with drugs and pills and potions that don't work rather than dealing with the reason people get those conditions to begin with, which is the metabolic disturbance in the beginning.

Well, absolutely. And and it's an educational mission as well. I mean, the federal government should be and they're trying to little bit. They turn the the food thing upside down, you know, but taking um a food dye out of a Froot Loop or a blue blue dye out of an Eminem is not is not the way uh we're going to manage chronic diseases. I think their ideas are right, but don't forget they're under the pressure of tremendous institutional resistance [clears throat] on the food and pharmaceutical industries. these politicians and when they want to try to do something uh you get they get yolked or eliminated. So it has to come from the people themselves. The people themselves must be educated and and and what we do here at Boston College is I spent a lot of time on scientific literacy. They they've got to understand certain of these things that we've been speaking about. And and then you're right, the socialization. I mean, for crying out loud, of course, these are young kids, but I but I have to be honest with you, some of the younger kids are beginning to realize uh that their their their environment, their food environment is is contraindicated to their overall general health. So, uh again, it's an educational mission. Uh and and you're right about those foods. They're acting like drugs. They're powerful drugs in the brain. It's like cocaine and heroin for Christ's sake. I mean, you're you're addicted to these foods and you you get so used to them and then when you try to go out and eat something healthy, everybody's there, you know, eating Twinkies and stuff and it's hard.

It's one of the great benefits of fasting and we've actually published some papers on this idea of taste or adaptation. It's just like when you fast and quit smoking, within a few days, the cravings resolve very much more quickly than feeding. Same thing with alcohol withdrawal. And the same things with addiction to salt, oil, and sugar. After people fast, good foods start to taste good again. You get an actual taste and adaptation. We've actually shown the minimalist perception to sweet and salt actually changes physiologically in humans after they undergo fasting. And so it makes it a little easier to get adherence and compliance uh for patients particularly if you can overcome the social challenges.

Yeah. Well, that seems to be the biggest problem. The social challenge is like a monstrous. Well, you know, you have an advantage, uh, doctor, is that you you do a lot of, uh, research where you can actually keep the lat rats in the cage for the rest of their life. We have to let people go back to free living because apparently it's not politically correct to keep people locked up indefinitely. And we got that point. So, that's where we run into trouble is getting that long-term followup because they get undue influence from the people around them.

No, it's 100% correct. Then as we said, one of my stu one of my co-workers said, "If we can keep the humans in these cages like we do the right [laughter] answer.

The whole the whole the whole uh change." But you're right, they're tempted and uh and that's why we developed the GKI on a scale where uh you can actually at any moment in time if you are aware now there's two things here. uh one is the continuous monitor uh and the other [clears throat] is the voluntary finger prick uh method where you can measure the blood and ketone yourself and I've had people tell me that what uh that we have the the continuous glucose ketone monitors are still under development the Chinese have one um and and you can then get your ratio at any moment and then not only that we've developed uh my colleagues have developed on their cell phone you can take a picture of a food item uh and immediately that food item is translated to the chart and it will tell you exactly what zone you're going to be in if you eat that and and eat it and let's see how close that the food comes to putting you in in out of at a metabolic homeostasis. Um, so, um, so you show a gl picture of a glass of water and you're in the green zone, [laughter] you know, and a Twinkie puts you immediately in the red zone for for.

One of the challenges I wanted to talk to you about is that uh rats were much of the research is done on rodents uh versus humans. You know, humans have a huge bulbous neuronal net that we had to adapt uh fasting to, all the humans that couldn't fast died because our biggest burner of glucose as a human is our brain. And so if a human couldn't fast, couldn't convert its brain from burning glucose to burning primarily beta hydroxybuturic acid, we could go about a week or so in enter starvation and then we we would die. Rats don't make that conversion and so their life you know they can fast what four five six days you know there's a very limited window um and so sometimes extrapolating the data from the rodents to the humans can be challenging because humans an average 70 kilogram human can fast 70 days. Not you should necessarily do that but you could do that and it's because of this biological adaptation that humans have that allow us to convert our brain from burning sugar to burning fat that and it does make us very different even than chimpanzees. You never see chimps wandering away from the tropics because they wouldn't go through that same bio conversion. The first time spring came late, all the humans that couldn't fast died.

Yeah. Yeah. Because because we have this inordinately large glucose machine demanding machine.

Yeah, you're you're right about that and and that gives us a tremendous advantage. But we did publish papers as I said looking at the differences between uh humans due to that basil metabolic rate differences. The the mouse and the rat are seven times faster than us. I mean the mouse has a heartbeat of 650 beats a minute. Are you kidding me? So so I mean that's why they live only two years. I mean their mitochondria blown to hell in two years. They're reactive oxygen species and all that. We have a much slower metabolism which allows us to adapt a much better way. and and the fasting allowed us to burn to to spare muscle and and brain burning ketones, right?

And the and uh muscles don't share glucose. So when you have cancer and you do exercise and you're in metabolic therapy with fasting or or or or low GKI values, I mean, you protect your muscle and the brain functions. Now, we don't know what's the GLP1 inhibitors are going to do. We haven't really put them through the ringer yet. U they'll lower your blood sugar. I don't know what other metabolic parameters are brought into line and we need to know that none of them will be as good as water only fasting but but we just don't know how close or far the metabolites will be in long-term GLP use. We do know that as soon as you stop that uh they they seem to revert back very quickly uh to a less than healthy state and with that needs to be investigated more all and all of this and then surprise surprise they're saying people taking GLP1s are less the incidence of cancer might might be going down. Yeah. Because you're lowering the glucose the fuel that drive How is it that they don't know that? How is it possible that the the oncologists never heard that glucose drives cancer? And if you do water only fasting and lower your glucose and they always say, "Oh, no, don't do that because you're going to lose too much body weight." Why aren't you losing body weight? Because you're being poisoned and irradiated. I mean, this is nuts.

As much as 40% of that weight loss that they're marking, though, is lean tissue. So, it's important to understand that in fasting, there's a conservation mechanism. We've published a study using a DEXA scanner on humans showing that typical males fasting for two weeks lose 10% of their body weight, 20% of their total fat, 40% of their visceral fat, 6% of lean tissue. But that lean tissue is recovered by the end of six weeks such that the percentage of the body mass from lean mass is higher at six week follow than it was at baseline. So there's a conservation component that goes along with fasting when fasting is done in a restful state.

The problem with GLP inhibitors, yeah, you're losing weight and short-term being fat so dangerous that even poisoning yourself to lose weight may have some short-term benefit, but long term.

You can watch the late-night TV and look for the class action suits because that's what's going to be coming. Yeah. Yeah. I tell you, it's unbelievable. Um, and and and and this is why educational mission and knowledge of what we've just been hearing become so important. And most people had never heard of that. And and and you know, you see you see parents that are obese and little kids, their children are obese. And and that's and that's a kind of a parental neglect. The little kids are not going to live nearly as long. They're going to suffer from all these chronic diseases, uh, when they're young. And the parents don't even know that. They're not even aware of the danger they're putting their families and themselves at without having the knowledge that we're speaking about.

>> Yeah. So I have, so just to summarize, so there is a cure for cancer. No, listen. Listen, you listen carefully. I never say cure. Cure is an arrogant term. We we have to explain me.

>> Cancer is prevention.

>> Yeah. Cancer management.

>> Yeah. We never say cure. God can't cure cancer for crying out loud. So we don't say we cure cancer. We can manage.

>> Can I, can I ask, so there is in the future, you think there is going to be a way to cure cancer, or you don't think there is going to never be?

>> You're not going to cure cancer anymore than you're going to cure obesity. You can manage it, but if you do the things that cause it, it's coming back.

>> Yeah, absolutely.

>> You can lose the weight, you can keep it off, but it's not cured. Go back to greasy, fatty, processed, ultra-processed foods. You're getting fat again.

>> It's not cured, it's managed. The same thing in my experience is true with cancer. Even when you're successful at at at putting a a patient into remission, it's just diet and lifestyle abuse away from being reactivated.

>> Absolutely. And and the the reason why they kept they keep talking about the cure for cancer is because they've made it out to be a genetic disease. Yes. Where if they can find the target, the the golden, the the silver bullet, then they think they're going to cure it like like it would be measles or the mumps or something like this.

>> It's not, it's not a genetic disease. It's a mitochondrial metabolic disease. Cure only becomes possible, or or management, when you are knowledgeable and keeping your body in these states of metabolic health. So, don't, we don't use this arrogant term cure because it's inappropriate for these kinds of disorders.

>> I'm very happy that you are getting angry with me and correcting me. [laughter]

>> I see the tragedy. It's a tragic situation we have in the world today. That doesn't have to be.

>> Yes. So the reason why I wanted to meet is to also, uh, talk a bit about how we can improve the situation because here in the European Parliament, you spoke about bringing awareness, uh, on, that's the one way about this. The other way, you said the hospitals and the academic and the pharma. So what's some regulations, some rules that we can do in a way to improve this situation? What is on the policy side? If you were in the policy, what you were going to do about this?

>> You certainly could start by stopping subsidizing people that are producing health-compromising foods and, you know, at least try to create a level playing field for people that are trying to produce products that are health-promoting. Uh, as it is right now, there's strong incentive financially and otherwise for people to engage in, uh, you know, health-compromising ultra-processed foods.

>> Yeah. Which is a real problem because, you know, the food industry, contra, actually, there's a connection between the pharmaceutical industry and the food industry. You eat crap food and you get chronic disease. So,

>> Even deeper than that, many of the ownership is much, you know, if you look deep into the ownership, many of the companies that are controlling the ultra-processed foods are the same companies involved with the pharmaceutical industries.

>> Yeah. It's, I, I had a student do that study. It's unbelievable, um, how they control and and, you know, and and and and don't forget, they're offering things to people that they like. Uh, they like to eat all this kind of crap stuff and it's tasty and they've and they've designed it to be that way, which is the temptation not to, not to to change from that. So, uh, you have this obesity, enormous portions of poorly, highly processed foods, and and they control the politicians, they control everything. So that's why the only way it's going to change, or the the a major way it can change, is you have to educate the people. Do they want to live longer with a higher quality of life or not? So, um, because you're, it's every time these politicians try to do something, the industry will shut them down, uh, or or interfere with their ability. Just like, um, uh, the, the head of the Food and Drug Ad, or one of the, one of the agencies there, was blocking these bogus cancer drugs from coming in. So, what do, how do you get the bogus drugs? You eliminate the guy, the gatekeeper, and and, uh, and that's the way you get it, you get it through there. You know, you notice that RFK Jr. is being yolked. He can't say as much as he wanted to say in the past, you know. So these guys are all being controlled by the industry. So you got to go over that. If you, if you, people themselves must come to this realization. If a guy, if they stop doing that, that the system will change. The patient, the people themselves must make the change. So, first, find a way to put in the market a lot more healthier products. The other one about academia. What can you do with policy to help academia to do the right researches and all this stuff?

>> Yeah. What one thing might be to elect politicians that can read. That would be a good thing. I mean, that might be a radical suggestion. But if you had politicians who could actually understand some of this material, maybe then they would be more inclined to be supportive of, you know, behavioral and lifestyle changes that might actually benefit the population. Well, that comes back to the concept of scientific literacy. Uh, you have to be able to read and understand the concepts, and if you can't even do that, uh, then, then you really have a big problem. But that's the problem right now. The, we really do have a really big problem. Chronic diseases are, are, are going to be the number one cause of of death and sickness in the world. Uh, and, uh, and it has to be, and the people themselves must start to become more and more scientifically illiterate, literate, so that they can at least make the correct choices. But the temptations are there. So, it, it, it's, it's kind of an interesting situation. We know we have a, a, a plan to reduce this, and every, and people, people are interfering with it as much as possible, and some people just don't want to make changes themselves. But that's okay. You know, those who want to make changes and know about it should be able to do that.

>> So, so just about the academia, how we can fix them, academia to do the right research about this stuff?

>> Well, I mean, NIH, The National Cancer Institute, says cancer right on their website. It's a genetic disease. So they're spending, uh, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars hunting for phantom driver genes. So what's going on here? If they were smart and could read or or understand, they don't get me wrong, they understand completely what's going on. These people are not stupid people. They're they're interested in in maintaining the status quo. Uh, because everybody's back-slapping and making a big buck on this. Whether you get a big NIH grant. The hospitals are all excited when they get big NIH grants because of the overhead, massive overhead. They don't even care about your scientific question. They just want to get revenue into the hospitals. So the the federal government keeps funding stuff that's not based on the correct science, and you have this problem. So, so when will that change? It changed once you start seeing people, uh, recovering from stage four cancers or chronic diseases with a higher quality of life and outcome. And the word starts to spread. Why are we not doing that? Why are there no clinical trials on water-only fasting versus for these different trials? Why don't,

>> You know, we have, um, we're in review right now for an NIH review that'll come up next month, and we're hoping to get our first NIH grant for research that we we have been involved with, and we have 22 papers in peer-reviewed literature right now. So, there's a trickle change. You know, for example, the article we published in the British Medical Journal on the treatment of follicular lymphoma, that's the only article even remotely like that that's ever been published in the last 138 years. I mean, it's it's bizarre, but at least it's maybe starting to happen a little bit.

>> Yeah, you're right. It has to happen. And and and we we do both. We do the scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals, and then at the same time, we do the, the, uh, case reports in small clinical trials and publish those the results. And for brain cancer, it's really tragic because they, they will not stop irradiating people with brain tumors. They, we can't get that through, even though I published all these papers showing that the radiation frees up massive amounts of glucose and glutamine, uh, giving the patient a disadvantage in overall survival. Uh, but you can't stop them from irradiating the human brain. What are they doing? Uh, and when we published that one paper, a guy lived 10 years when he, when he just did water-only fasting and without any of these. He died from a from a hemorrhage from the fourth debulking surgery. The tumor grew slow. He was never so-called cured, but he, he lived with a glioblastoma for 10 years because he chose not to do radiation, toxic chemo. How many other people would be like that if they were to do that? But they don't know. They have to radiate these poor people. People to make that radiation generates tremendous revenue for hospitals. So they continue to do it for revenue generation.

>> Now, now that there's a big shift, and it used to be, they've separated pharmaceutical from medicine because they knew there was conflict. But now, if you look at the infusion centers that treat cancer and autoimmune disease, um, they're often physician-owned, and so the more they give, the more they make. And so it's almost like there's an economic incentive in order to be able to sustain the status quo.

>> Yeah, it is. It's it's unbelievable. You know, I'm not saying that we have to get rid of all of these different things. We just have to use them in a more correct way. We're not saying don't ever use radiation except on the brain, or or using poisonous carboplatin, cisplatin, all these crazy drugs. Uh, just use them in tiny amounts, uh, to help water-only fasting do its job. [laughter] So you, you don't want person people to go bald. Why? Every time you see a cancer patient that's bald, he was treated by somebody who has no clue about the metabolic underpinning.

>> Even the bigger message though is that we know that cancer is preventable to a large extent. You could dramatically reduce the incidence of cancer or delay the onset of cancer by avoiding smoking, the use of alcohol, and eating, um, ultra-processed refined carbohydrates, by controlling diet, introducing exercise, uh, getting adequate sleep. These would have a profound effect on the incidence of these conditions. And yet that's not really ever seriously, uh, promulgated.

>> No. And it should be by the federal government. The federal government should say, to stay healthy, you should be doing these things, you know. Um, but they're not. And and so people just have to be.

>> It almost seems like what they're doing is trying to actuarialize social security. I don't know.

>> Yeah. [laughter] Anyway, it's a challenge, but it's, it's not an insurmountable challenge. Let's put it that way. So, so, so hospitals is also a major part, part of this prop, part of the problem, as I understand here.

>> Yeah, they make revenue. Radiation brings in a tremendous amount of revenue to the hospitals. Um, they constantly push these drugs. Pharmacy. In our, in our new paper, you'll see the inverted pyramid that we have, where pharmacy is the very tip, the very bottom of the pyramid. All of these things that we've been discussing in this interview are all part of the top part of the pyramid. At the very end, you might take a tiny small drug here or there just to just to, uh, facilitate, uh, the transition, but not to be using it as a first line of of treatment ever. And and that's and that's what what this new big study on chronic diseases and cancer as a mitochondrial, as a its disorder of mitochondrial function, the whole basis. And I think that's really important because, uh, transitioning and defining a condition as a mitochondrial dysfunction. Most people don't even know what a mitochondria is for crying out loud. You're going to say, "What is this mitochondria? What are they talking about this mitochondria?" Well, now you're going to realize it controls your destiny, how long you're going to live, and how healthy you're going to be. And there's a lot of things that you can do as an individual to improve your overall health and mitochondrial function. And I think that's a really important message that people will, uh, will need to know.

>> So, can I go a bit on the, because you are both saying about this stuff. Do you get pushback from other [laughter] pe, uh, can you talk a bit about the pushback that you get?

>> Oh, my, even as much as a couple years ago, I did a TED talk and I mentioned a peer-reviewed article that we we published on the treatment of long COVID with, um, fasting. And, uh, the talk was actually banned. They wouldn't release it because it stepped over the acceptable line, even though it was just citing a, a peer-reviewed case report. Um, I actually gave that talk, uh, in Lithuania, and I think it's out there as the talk that TED banned. So, it's probably getting more views than it would have otherwise. But,

>> No, there's there's tremendous, uh, feedback and flashback because people think that diet and lifestyle is crazy. I've had patients actively discouraged by their oncologists initially, uh, not to do fasting, and yet when they see the follow-up CT scans, become proponents because they're not evil people. They're just misguided and ignorant and have actually no idea that these conditions are metabolic disturbances.

>> And that's not true. And it's not, it's not part of the education in medical schools to to treat chronic diseases as as a metabolic problem.

>> In fact, think about it. If you go to a,

>> If you go to a physician and you have say, high blood pressure, they will tell you, "Look, you take these drugs and we guarantee you if you do what you're told, you'll never get well. You'll be on drugs the rest of your life." They do the same thing with with, uh, with diabetes, with any of these metabolic disturbances. They promise you upfront that you'll never get well. Yeah. So, um, the pushback comes in many different ways. A lot of it is just, um, ignore it. Ignore it. Don't even talk about it. Uh, because talking about it raises, uh, interest. So, you don't talk about it. And then they will come out like I did a, a show on the diary of his CEO and the and the BBC British Broadcasting said, uh, Stephen Bartlett was pushing, um, bogus information. I said, "When does, you know, data published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, uh, become bogus information?" I mean, this is nuts. Uh, I mean, how is I mean, I'm part of the academy of of of science. We, we have certain standards. You publish these papers in top peer-reviewed journals, and and and and they were credited with providing accurate information. I did the control groups, uh, you know, what numbers do they want me to change to make them happy? You, you know, um, so, so, but, but, so it's not really scientific. It's always like, "Oh, nobody will do that." "Oh, it's going to be too hard." "Oh, if it were important, there'd be a clinical trial." None of that. That, that's all irrelevant stuff. Show me where the science is wrong. If the science is correct, that's your strongest piece of evidence. And when people do it right, they get tremendous outcome. That's the evidence that you must know you're what you're talking about.

>> Are we doing better or worse every day moving forward? You think?

>> Well, I think we're doing worse. I, I mean, every time I read something that in 2050, it looks like we're all going to be dead from something. You know, everybody says in 2050, the cancer will be so much. Everybody will have heart disease, chronic cancer. So, what [clears throat] are they saying? They're not saying that, oh, in 2050 we're going to be really healthy again. We decided to do to do metabolic therapies [laughter] and we're all going to emerge in a new green zone. I mean, give me a break. [laughter]

>> So, so Alan, you agree that we're doing worse as society,

>> By the day? Well, I think it depends on what parameters you look at. In some ways, the power of the internet, uh, means that people that have radical ideas can get those ideas expressed. The problem is the power of the internet, every kind of crazy idea also gets expressed, and so things get diluted. So, you know, it depends on how you look at it. I think overall, some things have improved. The fact that, you know, we can even get published in peer-reviewed journals is actually a big step forward from where I started 40 years ago. I've gone from being a criminal quack to a cutting-edge researcher because we're doing something that's gained some notoriety in large part because of the mass public exposure to this information through the through podcasts like this.

>> Yeah, I agree. I, I think that's right. Absolutely.

>> But as far as people and their health, no. 76% of people are overweight or obese. People are dying from the consequences of metabolic disturbances, and that's not improving. So it's not very hopeful as I see if we don't make change on behavior of the people. So we need to find a way to change the behavior of the people to see results. I think it's more hopeful than ever for those individuals willing to make diet and lifestyle changes. There's more information available for people to make good choices if they should choose to do so. But as far as the social and political environment, I don't know that it's improving yet.

>> No. And we, and we have certain groups of people that [clears throat] are on the lower socioeconomic scales that don't even have access to some of the the kinds of foods that would be helping them. They, they lack the knowledge, and they don't, and they, and they lack the availability. So, so, and the federal government could do a lot to help that, and they don't seem to be doing anything. So, keep continuing with information, and we're going to try to do as much as policy change as we can, and I think bringing awareness to the people, and hopefully maybe electing the politicians that are promoting these policies. It's a good step forward, but it seems a bit, we are doomed, as I understand on this subject.

>> I wouldn't, I wouldn't [laughter] say that. You're too pessimistic. Yeah, you're the kind of guy, you look like you want to run out now and pound down a whole bunch of hamburgers and pizzas and things. But,

>> [laughter]

>> Uh, yeah, no, I wouldn't say we're doomed at all. I, I think the, the, I, I'm looking at a very, a very positive future. I just think the, the educational mission, and I also have to realize that when you change paradigms like this, uh, these are giant shifts in in the way we view things. Uh, there'll be profits to be made. Uh, but the pro, you don't mind profits being made for, for a noble goal. Uh, right now, profits are being made where that are counterproductive to human health, and I, I think that that needs to change. So, but, but who knows? I mean, the idea is we have things that are available for those that want it, and, uh, and most people want to live a healthy, healthy life. You know, in the field of cancer, nobody's really excited when they realize they're going to have to be irradiated and poisoned. I mean, uh, this is not something that people, they fear that as much as they fear the disease. So, you, you have a compliant, you have people that want to hear this, they just need to be instructed in the right way to know what to do and how to do it. And right now, the medical establishment has failed them in providing, uh, this kind of information. The medical schools have failed them in not in not emphasizing how to manage chronic diseases. So, once those can be changed, I think the the the the goal toward the end goal will be achieved faster.

>> You know, Dr. Seaffred's book does a good job of explaining cancer and metabolic disease. There's another book out there that won a Pulitzer Prize by Muharaji who talks about the emperor of all maladies. And what he did, he's a Harvard oncologist who talks about how the conventional approach to cancer doesn't work. And he just looked at the the outcome data on cancer and made a, you know, he didn't talk about nutrition or he's not offering an alternative, he's just explaining that what is currently being done is not effective. And so hopefully that'll open people's eyes to looking at some of these alternative views about the nature of these diseases so we can come up with a more productive, if not more lucrative, uh, way to manage them.

>> Yeah. And we have advertisements here in the United States constantly pushing these bogus drugs, uh, that are very toxic and potentially harmful, as if they were the panacea for managing the disease. I don't know if the Europeans are allowing that. Um, because we hear every night from these cancer research centers, breakthrough after breakthrough, discovery after discovery, and we've got 1,700 people a day dying from cancer, which is 70 people an hour, according to data from the American Cancer Society. So where are the breakthroughs and where are the discoveries? And they're making people feel that we have them. And then when you run off to the oncology centers, they irradiate and poison you, and they give you things that are very, very expensive and only marginally effective, if at all effective. Uh, and and so people are misled with with bogus information. I don't know if the Europeans are doing that, but they are still controlled by the big drug companies as to what you are able to to do. Uh, and I think this is needs to be a worldwide recognition of how better to approach these chronic diseases as a mitochondrial metabolic problem.

>> So, uh, I believe as a politician, Jean, that you can fix most of the problems of society if you fix the right way, the education when children are growing up in schools and all this stuff. So maybe we can talk a bit, uh, about this, how we can fundamentally, if you agree with this, maybe we can discuss a bit this idea.

>> Well, well, the paper that we have is written in two forms by by the Frontiers, lead article. One was with the heavy science, uh, in the main part, part of the paper, and then they have a child's, what they call a young mind's copy of the paper for kids that are 8 to 14 years old, where the editors took our paper and they kind of synthesized it down to a level of understanding that I wouldn't say just eight-year, I think the majority of people in the country would read the eight-year-old paper and have difficulty with it. We have a [laughter] fourth, fourth degree. We, fourth grade educational average in the whole country. I, I mean, when you, when you listen to the politicians, they, they talk like they have no functional brain cells for crying out loud. The, the, uh, you know, you have to have something that's going to be understandable by a significant number of people so that the children, so that the young people can make demands on their on their educational systems to tell us about this stuff. So, so it's going to be interesting to see what happens in the next four or five years and how this is going to, going to start to change.

>> In, in the past, they've used the school system to miseducate students. And, you know, the food industry understands the power of education. And so, they've been busy trying to teach people, you know, how to eat ultra-processed foods and highly processed foods. And they've done a good job. And so, you know, now you have a society of addicts. And so it's going to be a great challenge helping people escape the pleasure trap and, you know, adopt health-promoting diet and lifestyle. Uh, this, this is not going to be an easy burden or an easy challenge. It's a huge burden.

>> Okay. So, uh, just two, three questions and we're wrapping up a bit the podcast. So, how do you find this conversation, guys?

>> Well, you're talking, you're, you're, you're actually interviewing two individuals that have very parallel thoughts, uh, about, uh, health and and and management. You, you have to bring in, you should have somebody here from the pharmaceutical industry, uh, or, or, or some physician who has no clue about anything, uh, never heard that glucose drives cancer. A member of the, mostly oncologists, um, you know, they seem to be the ones that lack the most knowledge on on metabolic therapy. Uh, you got to get the contro, you got to, you got to get down and talk to the guys that, uh, I've done, I've done some of these interviews with people from the establishment, and it's really funny because they really have no clue what the hell's going on, uh, when you ask them certain questions. They, they never heard that they said, "Water-only fasting, very dangerous, very dangerous." Are you kidding me? What's wrong? [laughter] I mean, why, why, tell me, give me the reasons why that's so dangerous to somebody's health, and they come up with these bogus things. But, but you, you really need to have, um, that kind of a conversation. Uh, in other words, have two other guys on here that have a completely different view, that, you know, the Twinkie is the best thing you could possibly eat in your life. I, I, I mean, these kinds of people, uh, who kind of who love processed foods, you know, never, never would exercise, you know, do all the things, you know, tell them to have be un miserable, doom scroll all day long. Don't do any exercise. Eat Twinkies whenever you have the opportunity to eat a Twinkie, you know, and tell us why that's so healthy for you. Tell me how that's going to enhance your mitochondrial function, and then they see how much they know about mitochondrial bioenergetics. And if it becomes clear that they don't, then you really know, uh, what's going, what's going on. Um, but, you know, most of those guys shy away, but, but every now and then, you get, you get one to come on, and then he gets all, all upset, and, uh, and you find out that he really doesn't understand anything. And the people come to realize that when they're listening and hear the guy, the debate, they come to realize this poor guy doesn't have any, have any knowledge about anything, and they're like locked into one thing, you know, can't, it's a genetic disease. Look at all that. And then you present all the information that say it can't, and they, they don't really have a, a comeback because they never saw the literature. So if you're not reading the scientific literature, how are you going to be able to argue persuasively on a particular topic? So, it's a great idea. Next time, maybe we can have a debate and not an agreement podcast.

>> The guy, the head of the head of one of the big Swiss [snorts] pharmaceutical companies, Bristol Myers Squibb, you know, those guys, they really, they really have no clue. They're ca, they run the cancer industry, and they have no clue about the biology or biochemistry of the disease they're making billions of dollars on. You know, have them come on here. Let's, let's have a debate with one of those guys. We'll see how much they know. You know, I have, I, on, I thrive on that stuff. [laughter]

>> Maybe we can have it here in the European Parliament. Would be very interesting.

>> I'll be happy to go over [laughter] and discuss it with those, you know, Bristol Myers Squibb. Who else is over there? Novartis, you know, all those big companies making billions of dollars pushing bogus drugs into the population, you know, and the food industry, you know, with the highly processed carbohydrates. I mean, let's, let's be honest. Tell us where the health benefits are to your mitochondria. [laughter] I want, want to see what they say. Do they understand what the what the delta G prime of ATP hydrolysis is? Do they understand what ROS will do to the cardiolipin composition of the inner membrane of the mitochondria? Come on, let me hear what they have to say about this stuff. [laughter]

>> I don't know, you have something to say about if you had fun or not.

>> You know, [laughter] from my viewpoint, you know, health actually results from healthful living. So, it's not going to come from pills and potions and powders and treatments. It's going to come from diet, sleep, exercise, and we use fasting as a way of undoing the consequence of dietary excess because it's fat and visceral fat that are the most obvious metabolic markers of imbalance. Uh, visceral fat makes up about 10% of the fat that people wear on their bodies. It's, it's, uh, hypertrophic. It's hypoplastic. It acts like a tumor. And so, getting rid of excess fat is going to be an important consideration. And you can't do that healthfully unless you're willing to modify what you put in your mouth. And that means eliminating the chemicals that make people fat, sick, and miserable. It's the salt, the oil, the sugar, the added, uh, chemical components that are really the problem. And if we can get rid of those, you get rid of the obesity and the visceral fat. The body starts coming back more into balance. I think that waiting for people to get sick and then doing what we do, um, virtuous though that it may be, is not the most effective and efficient way to go. The best way to go is prevention, and prevention means healthy living.

>> Yeah. And we save man-hours to for workers, and and we increase, uh, um, productivity of individuals when they're not suffering from all these chronic diseases. So the, the kind, when I understand prevention, um, you know, people, most people come to me and they say, because they say, "Oh, well, I know I should have done this and that, but now that I have pancreatic cancer, what, what are you going to do for me?" You know, um, and that's what I see, uh, more, more and more. And as you get older, you start to consider prevention with a much greater degree of of of urgency than when you're young. Uh, your body can tolerate so much abuse when you're young, but it, it, it starts to wear on you as you get older. Um, so prevention obviously is the best, and that's why the GKI, we have prevention zones to let people know what zone they're in to keep their mitochondria healthy. But, and for cancer and a lot of the chronic diseases, now that you have the disease, what, what can you do for me? And it becomes a little bit more challenging, but it certainly can work, and we can reverse a lot of those things or manage them. So, can we talk, uh, just briefly about prevention? Like, what stuff a human being, or maybe a government, can do is like help them to make more yearly checks, better healthy living, and all this stuff, promote all this stuff. Is there anything else on prevention that we can do?

>> Well, it's diet, sleep, and exercise that are the key dominant determinants, as well as environmental exposure. So, and, and potentially stress management. Those are the the lifestyle factors that make the the most proven difference. Controlling what you put in your mouth, getting to bed on time, getting regular exercise, controlling your environmental exposure, and managing stress. If you do that, you tend to win.

>> Yeah. But you know, and that's absolutely true. But when you think of our societies and how many people are stuck in massive traffic jams every day, uh, stressed out to the max, uh, whether whether they're sitting in front of their computer all day or or doing these other things, all of this, and then then they get home, they get a bunch of crying kids jumping around. Uh, "Just throw something in the microwave, man. Just let me relax with a cocktail. You know, I've had enough, enough problems all day long. Now you want me to go out and run around the block four times, you know." I, I can do that here at the university because the gym is right outside behind my, my lab here, you know, and, and, uh, for the, a lot of people, unfortunately, don't, don't have that luxury of of being able to to do this. And, and it's the conveniences, uh, of our societies that sometimes can put our mitochondria at risk, for damage. So, it's very hard to get chronic diseases and cancer if you keep your mitochondria healthy doing, uh, doing what we, what we just heard. But for a lot of people, that becomes a real challenge, and it's not so easy, and,

>> I'm not saying it's not a real challenge. It's the greatest challenge that most people will face. But the price that they're going to pay for not taking that challenge is chronic degenerative disease. We know what happens. Look around.

>> And so the only answer is to pay that price. And that means controlling diet, sleep, exercise, and, and using fasting appropriately. And, you know, that's what works. We know that works. We, we, it works in healthy people to keep them healthy. It works in sick people to reverse their disease. It's just hard.

>> Yeah, it's hard. But we also overcame the smoking. Uh, we, we challenged that was the single biggest thing for dropping the risk for cancer was the anti-smoking campaign. There was no drug. It wasn't drugs or any of these new developments that you hear about. It was the anti-smoking campaign, and that was a peer pressure, uh, um, um, situation. You know, vaping and other, uh, use of tobacco is starting to increase in younger people. So, I'm not sure it's a really solved problem. It's been, we've managed it better recently publicly, but it's, I think it's starting to resurface.

>> And again, people just take risky behaviors on this. They, whether it's vaping or chewing tobacco or whatever you do, it's just putting people at at risk. And people are risk-takers when it comes to their health. It's just human nature. Yeah, I know. I should have done that. Yeah, I know. My plan. I'm going to have every, every New Year's, we have a New Year's resolution. I'm going to do something different, and then nobody sticks to it. So, not nobody.

>> Oh, actually though, some people do stick to it because, as I said, we've got data showing long-term follow-up in patients.

>> So, what we'd like to see is more people not just motivated by pain, disability, and fear of death, but for this educational, uh, byproduct of health education. If you get people educated, perhaps they'll take action earlier, and the return will be very large. Well, I agree 100%. That's why I'm hoping my young, young mind's paper has a bigger [laughter] impact. It says written at a lower level. Uh, but it's a stepping stone to the higher level. So, so anyway, you always have to be hopeful. I'm, I'm always hopeful. I think the, the future looks bright. Uh, uh, even though, uh, the demographics say it might not be, but I, but I'm, I'm hopeful that the the work that we do, uh, will start to ring more in the ears of people that want to stay healthy.

>> So, uh, just to clarify, every type of smoking, tobacco, and all this stuff, this is not good for your health and will help get a lot more likely cancer.

>> That's correct. Nicotine is one of the most well-established premature aging, cancer-inducing behaviors that people have. And another one is using cancer juice, or alcohol.

>> Yeah. And that's, uh, that's going to be a tough nut to crack because I definitely enjoy beer myself.

>> Yeah, I'm sure you do. But that doesn't mean it's not cancer juice.

>> I know it is. And, and I have to be honest with you. Yeah. That nice glass of wine with a big tomahawk ribeye. I, I can do that almost every, every time.

>> That's what we need you is come and come and do a fast with us, and we'll reboot your system too.

>> Imagine you ripping a tomahawk ribeye after a 20, 20-day fast. That ought to be the euphoria. [laughter]

>> Okay. Another ancestors were,

>> Another question is that you both invested your whole lives, may not your whole life, most of most of your life in this. Do you feel this worth it if you look back?

>> Well, I feel like I'm just getting started. I'm only 42 years into this, uh, career. Um, I started as a kid at 16, uh, with an interest in this, and I'm far enough out in the spectrum that, you know, once I got interested in something, that's just kind of all I've been thinking about for these last, uh, few decades. So, but I, I, I feel like we're literally just getting to the point where we're able to do more significant, meaningful research. So, I'm really looking forward to what's going to happen in the next 20 or 30 years.

>> Yeah, I think there's going to be a change. I, I definitely think there'll have to be some quoted. We can't continue on the path. It's not, it's, it's, it's not working for the majority of people.

>> So, how is AI going to be involved in this? You think, guys? Is it already inside? And how do you think AI can help your mission?

>> Well, we're already seeing tremendous benefit from AI and just in terms of interpreting the wide variety of literature that's available, processing our data, uh, making our, uh, data collection much more efficient. So the use of technology is going to be tremendously beneficial in terms of us getting more accurate information out of the data that we're able to produce. So, I, I think that's a very big positive benefit for us.

>> Yeah, I, I agree because sometimes you can take like a lot of the information perhaps that might not be, um, readily, uh, discernable to some people right now that you can use AI. AI can can synthesize and make things understandable to a lot of people, uh, in, in a, in a different way. I mean, people abuse it because you can, you know, make, make it look like you're an author, uh, by by just synthesizing stuff from the, the field, but, but when you have, um, data in a scientific publication, you say, "What, what does this really mean to me?" AI can do a pretty good job of of of of breaking it down so that it can be at a much lower level so you can kind of understand it, and therefore it becomes a powerful tool, and we just have to see how that tool, and, you know, looking for structures of drugs and things like this, uh, that may not be readily discernible to to people. Um, we, we do all the pre-clinical testing before we ever use it on a pe, on people. So we make sure that we know how something is going to work and the structure of that molecule. If it works, then you might be able to develop new structures. AI could help potentially develop new structures that have not yet, uh, been tested pre-clinically. So there's a lot of, a lot of things that are very powerful that could be coming. Uh, on the educational side, I'll give you an example. I just prepared 130, uh, uh, slide, slide deck on a two-hour presentation on health span expansion. And so we had to go through a lot of literature to see whether or not the data that we were claiming actually was well supported. It took, you know, a fraction amount of the time to review thousands of articles with AI than it would have if we had individuals reading all those articles and then trying to synthesize them and then to actually produce the slide deck. We got beautiful, clear slides in a fraction of the time that it would have taken slide designers to go through and build that deck. So in a period of, of a couple months, we accomplished something that would have in the past taken us years, if ever, uh, to have been able to reliably accomplish. So to me, the patient education and research are both going to be tremendously potentially benefited by the new technologies that are available to us.

>> Yeah, I agree. Okay. So, just the last question, uh, I ask it in all the podcasts, but you guys are two, so maybe you each one has answers, uh, separately. So, if you actually die in 30 seconds, what, uh, you want your last words to be on this planet?

>> You're going to die in 30 seconds. Are you saying?

>> Yes. What you want your last words to be on this planet if you actually die in 30 seconds? I, I, you know, I, I don't know what, what.

>> My wife told says that what's driving me along the whole way was two things. She said, one, I wanted to prove that I was right and everybody else was wrong, and I wanted to have a place to eat lunch. [laughter] That's a, that's a, that's a good thing. No, no. I, I, I just, you know, in my, in my view, I, I just said, go to the science and become wise. Um, and, and, uh, that that can help you, um, uh, navigate the the difficulties that you have to have when you, when you live on the planet.

>> Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you, guys for listening. We love you. Have an amazing day.