Transcription
Hello everybody. It is the Dr. BOS show, and we are live here on Tuesday night. I have numbers of glucose of 73, ketones of 3.3, and I have a heck of a good show for you.
Uh, this is the show that I've been waiting to do for probably two years. And my team said, "It's too sciency, folks are going to click off." So, stick around if you want to know what I would do if when someone says, "My, my friend has has cancer, I really want you to teach them how to do the ketogenic diet." In fact, we are on day two of our 21-day metabolic kick, and we are off to a great start. The class is closed, but the biggest mistake that I see as we are recruiting for students to be in that class, start with people saying, "Hey, my sister has cancer, would you teach her how to do the ketogenic diet?" or "My mom has cancer, would you teach her how to do the ketogenic diet?" And the answer is no. Quit wasting time waiting for me to be their teacher. Listen to what we talk about in this show, and you'll see what I would do if my sister ever called and said, "I have cancer."
All right, the the lessons tonight are, um, are a a bit heavy. Uh, I will, uh, warn you that if you don't like science, you might not like what I'm about to go through. But for those of you that, uh, tune in to this channel, most of you like to see what your numbers are. I like to use data, and we're going to get there. Might be a Kreb cycle involved. Stick around, and I'll show you what, what I think about as I teach the ketogenic diet to people with cancer.
So, let's start with this, uh, this slide. That we now know that there are lots of people, uh, who have used the ketogenic diet to help with their cancer. And I, I felt like a lone, um, isolated wolf in the, um, in the spring of 2014, uh, when my mom, uh, had a relapse of her cancer, of her chronic lymphatic leukemia, and we used the ketogenic diet to really, um, well, save her life, in, in no short words. But there is lots of evidence out there that the cancers listed on this slide have an increased incidence when the average blood sugar is higher. Said a different way, if you check your hemoglobin A1c, that's that three-month report card that's usually only checked in diabetics, but I encourage all patients to check it on your own. Leave, leave your doctor out of it. If that's you, and you've got a, um, a, uh, history of a, um, an elevated hemoglobin A1c, an elevated average blood sugar, uh, these cancers are all at greater risk. When I hear of folks who've had prostate cancer or breast cancer and they say, "Should I be doing the ketogenic diet?" It's this lecture that I would want them to see.
You know, when my mom's, uh, CLL unfolded, her cancer, that called chronic lymphocytic leukemia, is almost like the immune system was attacking itself. Yeah, the immune system was attacking the immune system, so much like an autoimmune disorder. Uh, her cancer responded because of, of what? Of what happens in an autoimmune disorder. So, in many ways, this cancer lecture also applies to many of my patients who have an autoimmune disorder.
So, let's take a closer look at this. So, I have some lovely slides. Some of them that, that are not perfect, but I think they're great teachable moments. Uh, so, let's start with, uh, this cell. And I'm going to blow up the mitochondria. Uh, this mitochondria, uh, is, is the key to life. Uh, I have given a lecture one time where I said, "The Holy Spirit exists inside the mitochondria." Because I believe that. I mean, it's not even a belief. When the mitochondria stops turning fuel into energy, you die. It is a vital, meaning without it, you do not have life. It is the vital component. Whenever you see somebody talking about the ketogenic diet, or metabolic syndrome, or why cancers are, are going to do what we're going to talk on today, uh, they all come down to this unit of the mitochondria, because it is the core, it is the crux of life. And when life isn't going well, specifically in cancer patients, there is some specific shifts in the body that have happened.
So, uh, this, uh, would have been what I wanted to give a lecture on today. Is I would have gone through this, and my team says, "Yeah, no, they're all going to click off." So, we are not going to use that. But I will be looking at the analytics to see if anybody paused and looked carefully at how to turn a molecule of glucose into energy. So, yes, that's the mitochondria found in, um, healthy cells.
This, uh, looks like a warty toad. Uh, this is supposed to represent a cancer cell. And inside the cancer cell, you find mitochondria that do not look normal. They are, they're stubby, they are not plump, they're not taut, they are, uh, deflated. They have less little, uh, wavy lines inside them. Those are cristae. But, uh, they don't act normally. And when I start talking to patients, saying, "What do you think caused cancer?" Um, many people will point to carcinogens. That's an easy one. That is true. It is also true that chronic high blood sugar is linked to cancer. That's where those hemoglobin A1c's are linked to an increased incidence of the cancers we started with, and many more. But those are the ones I put that we can be confident in. It's also a state of chronic inflammation. Is the soup that your cells live in that promote the growth of cancer.
The one thing that I want to point out that is not true is that when people say, "What causes cancer?" and I say, "Not sugar." Yeah, you'll see me demonize sugar in plenty of ways, but sugar is not the cause of cancer. When you consume sugar, like, "Oh, you're getting cancer by consuming sugar." No, it's the chronic high blood sugars, that average blood sugar. You know, last, uh, week we had, um, a test of how, uh, two continuous glucose monitors work. And in the process, we had lots of you say, "Wow, why, why do you check that? You're, I don't have diabetes." And the answer is, I check it because my body, uh, my family has, uh, chronic problems that are associated with the average blood sugar being high. And by watching it, by preventing it from from staying there for, well, I mean, decades, uh, the code that we're cracking is inside this, uh, process, inside this lecture.
So, let's take a closer look. So, here is our fatigued and deflated, uh, patient who's got chronic inflammation. Now, whether or not cancer exists inside his body is a minor detail. Um, when we look at the ways we separate the thinking, uh, between healthy cells and cancer cells, we're going to talk today about the way cancer cells versus healthy cells are fueled, uh, like specifically, how does, how do they turn fuel into energy? And in some cells, that is not, uh, it's not completed. They don't do an efficient job of that. But healthy or not, the way they turn it into to a fuel, well, it's a really important process. Cancer cells do it differently. We're going to review that. The types of fuel that are used, and then finally, what's the cell environment that didn't line up as pretty as I wanted to? What's the cell environment that a cancer cell versus a healthy cell is in, um, and then what's the cost of that energy? Uh, it is through these questions that I could tell you the answer of what I would show my sister to do immediately. But when I've done that in the past, and I don't explain the thinking of how important this is, I am not being GLI. I'm not rushing to the answer and saying, "Here, here's what you should have them do." Because the steps that I'm about to explain, that's what matters in the why. And I've just found that if I'm trying to teach you guys something, when I skip the why, you guys write in a lot of questions, which is good.
All right, let's go to this next, uh, healthy cells versus cancer cells. Uh, doesn't quite fit on my slide as well as I want it to. So, I'm going to show you that glucose is a fermentable fuel. Yeah, you're going to see what that means. That's really important for you to hold on to in your brain. Glutamine, pyruvate, is a fermentable fuel. What you can't quite see on the bottom of this screen, maybe if I did it this way, you could, um, is that, oh, you can't see it there either. Okay. Oh, well, um, that the, um, that ketones are not a fermentable fuel.
All right, so let's get started here. Some of you have seen this process before, but I just feel at peace when, when showing people this. So, hang in there with me. Uh, so, yes, this is, is a, uh, cell, a healthy cell, normal cell. Those are our little glucose folks. And, uh, along the way, you will see that they are, um, they are, um, uh, in the presence of oxygen. So, that's like most of our cells are in the presence of oxygen. And we're going to take glucose, we're going to turn it into pyruvate, we're going to go to sealo, and then we're going to spin it through the Kreb cycle. I know you don't care, but I care. Uh, and once that Kreb cycle is shuffling electrons from one place to the next, is moving fuel, moving energy in a space that at the end of that chain, it phosphorilates that, uh, that, um, molecule. This is ATP, called adenosine triphosphate. It phosphorilates this fuel, and that process is really important for healthy cells. This is how we live so, vitally, so, uh, full of, so, so much life, uh, in, in our lives.
When I look at the two other side chains that are part of the fuel that come from healthy cells, one of them is lactate, uh, and the other one is succinic acid. Both of those side chains are known as the fermenting process. Uh, that a fermentation of a, of a fuel is not phosphorilated. It's not, uh, the other word that I like to use is not respiring. Yeah, respiration meaning, what does that word mean? It means to breathe. Respiration, um, is, um, I'm going to move my head over here because I think this is a really pretty slide. I want you guys to be able to see it. Uh, so respiration has, has a thing where we breathe, right? That's what respiration means. Oxygen comes in, and what do we breathe out? Yeah, we breathe out carbon dioxide and water. So, as we respire, uh, inside our cells, we're going to move oxygen through that mitochondria, and what comes out the other side is energy along with water and carbon dioxide. That respiration is critical and is known, uh, for its, uh, presence inside our healthy cells in the setting of oxygen.
All right, everybody's clear? The next step, the next slide is, oh, please don't crash. Uh, here we go. The next slide is to show you, well, what if I chose, oh, there, did it crash? Hold on here. Let me, uh, pull up that slide. It's just a little heavy. Hang tight. Um, yeah, it is waiting. I'll see if I can pull it up on this other one. Um, you want to come help me, Jack? See if I can get it up. So, I'll push, like this. So, which slide? Uh, let's see. There it is on right here. Great. And we go here. And just a second, guys. Perfect. Awesome. Okay, back.
So, you'll notice that this healthy cell has a different fuel. This is a ketone, uh, that is their fuel. And notice that in the setting of oxygen, there are still some great things that are happening, uh, meaning you are taking energy and moving it, um, along that, uh, that pathway. Uh, you're taking those electrons, you're shuffling them down the mitochondria, and what comes out the other end is that phosphorilated, uh, molecule. That is another form of respiration. What I want you to notice is absent in this slide. There is no lactic acid. There is no succinic acid. So, that respiration happened, uh, because it, uh, this, the healthy cells take that oxygen and turn it into carbon dioxide and water. That is respiration. Even in the set of healthy cells having no oxygen for a short minute. People say, "Can you live without oxygen?" Well, not for very long. But your mitochondria have this built-in backup plan. And again, this is really important when we're talking about cancer. Uh, these healthy cells know what to do when oxygen isn't around, when it's not present. And it starts just like, uh, before. It takes glucose, turns it into pyruvate, and it uses this substrate-level phosphorylation. I know no one cares about that, but this is not the phosphorylation that was found inside the mitochondria. It's a substrate that we are phosphorylating. Otherwise known as fermentation. So, we have respiration, we have fermentation. One of them is a very efficient, high return of investment. The other, not so good. As you look at the other place where it has a sneaky little side door for allowing energy to be made in the cell, it uses the Kreb cycle. It takes, uh, uh, it actually, it doesn't use glucose or pyruvate. Uh, it, it uses an amino acid that is found in our body, and it turns it through the succinic acid pathway into fuel. Another form of fermentation. Again, most of you aren't going to care until the day you get cancer.
So, as we look at some of the review, this is important to remember. Glucose is a fermentable fuel. Glutamine is that amino acid, the one that you don't eat to get that amino acid. You, your body actually makes it. It is not an essential amino acid. One of the biggest environments for making that glutamine is a high glucose state. So, that glutamine via the succinic acid is fermentable. Uh, what is off that slide again is that ketones are not a fermentable fuel.
So, as we go back into our little stubby little mitochondria found in cancer cells, here comes the glucose. They're going to start out very similarly. We did note that oxygen is in the scene. You're going to take the glucose, turn it into pyruvate. But in the process, 20% of the energy that this mitochondria makes inside the cancer cells is fermented through the lactic acid pathway. The, the other little side chain I was talking about, that glutamine sidekick, turn it into, uh, uh, fuel. It does use the Kreb cycle. It's very wasteful when it does that. But through that succinic acid, it ferments the fuel, and that's where 75% of that, of the fuel from a cancer cell comes from. So, as I look at those electrons being shuffled through a mitochondria, it is a poor way to make, uh, energy. It is a very minor part of any, uh, metabolism inside a cancer cell. Some would say it doesn't happen at all. But when it does happen, it's this really tiny amount of energy. Uh, when I look at the, the other, uh, fuel that attempts to be put through a mitochondria, well, it's a ketone or a fatty acid. As that enters the Kreb cycle, just like it would of a healthy person, notice the two side chains of lactic acid and, um, succinic acid are missing. And because of that, this, uh, process does not allow for, uh, the shuffle of those electrons down that transport. It doesn't, it cannot take that fuel and turn it into energy. And without energy, that cell is crippled.
So, what final scene? When you take a cancer cell and you're in that form of fermentation, and then you deny oxygen, the cancer cell says, "Yes, that's exactly what I like." Uh, when they're turning fuel into energy, they do a better job when there's less oxygen, when it's a low oxygen state. And if you've ever been to gross anatomy, or even just kind of looked at what cancer looks like in its worst state, it's got a grime around it. It's got an inflammatory kind of wall of, like, it's a, a wall around the cancer that's filled with a bunch of goo, a bunch of inflammatory proteins that keep the immune system from getting in too close, keep oxygen from being too high. It is one of the protections that say, "As cancer, I don't like all that oxygen. Keep it away." And I'll keep doing this thing that I'm really good at, which is fermenting fuel. Uh, the side problem of every time it, that Kreb cycle turns, it makes these, these electrons, these rogue electrons. They're called, you know, free electrons or free radicals. This past weekend, my youngest son, uh, started college, and I got to help him with the first three chapters of chemistry. And I'm telling you, it was lovely. I'm like, "Oh, yes, I totally remember this." Uh, and I looked at those electrons, and that, and when those little turkeys get out of that outer ring and they start bouncing around the person's cells, well, that's where cancer begins. Uh, so free radicals are also called, um, reactive oxygen species.
So, just to make sure I've caught everybody up to speed. Cancer likes low oxygen, and it uses it to ferment things. That when the reactive oxygen species are present, and you have, or when free radicals are present, when you're spinning out those little electrons, um, in the presence of oxygen, now the cancer cell doesn't like this. It likes that fermentation process where it's making lactic acid and the, and the succinic acid. But when you put that cell in a setting of high oxygen, well, those free radicals are also called reactive oxygen species, which means this little fella that's farting around inside your cell, it reacts to oxygen. So, when you put oxygen inside that cell, like maybe through a hyperbaric oxygen, or I will tell you, it's not through breathing a bunch of more oxygen in, uh, in your nose, you're, you're going to still deliver the same, same amount to your body. But a pressurized oxygen, we do know, penetrates into the cell level. Now, those reactive oxygen species are deadly. It reacts and causes cell death. Uh, so, all right, we're almost done with the review. You're doing great.
Glucose is a fermentable fuel. Glutamine is a fermentable fuel. Uh, la, ketones are not fermentable. And when we look at the danger of what happens with those, uh, reactive oxygen species, that oxygen is present inside the cell, and it destroys it. So, in summary, cancer plus oxygen gives us free, uh, or rogue electrons. As the cells die, those reactive oxygen species promote the, the tumor for, for growing. As it, as those hang out before the cell dies, right before the cell dies, it's developing the soup that cancer loves to live in. It's making, um, these cells resistant to our therapies, uh, throughout medicine. Uh, it's also the inflammation that it, it promotes. You know, those little rogue, um, electrons do not, your body doesn't like that, but the cancer loves that. And it's in this space where, uh, all that soup is surrounding the, the cancer cells, and the immune system cannot get to it, cannot get to it.
So, as I look at, um, cancer having, uses for fermentation, it does not use oxidation. Cancer fermentation is also called, it cannot use respiration. The ketones, uh, uh, use oxidation, and cancer cells cannot use ketones.
So, back to this healthy cells, um, how do we fuel them? What types of fuel are we using? We've gone through ketones and and glucose. What's the environment around that cell? What's the cost of that energy? What stresses out the cell? So, this chart, I think, is a better way to say, all right, we've got cancer cells in the one lane, we've got healthy cells over there. Uh, I wish I could see your chat right now, but I cannot see it on the scene that I'm in. But I want you to put in the chat, um, do you think cancer cells like sugar? Do you think healthy cells like sugar? We're going to go through these line by line. So, if you want to rush ahead and try to guess the right answer, I think that helps me to see, did I teach you anything, or was it all old news?
So, step one is sugar. Yes, cancer loves sugar. Much from our, our slides, you can see that the side chain for, um, what sugar is able to do is it's fermentable, and so it allows that cell to have energy. It also allows it to promote a few of those, uh, free radicals inside the cancer cell, and that's good for the cancer, bad for the person. Now, healthy cells also like glucose. So, there's that. Uh, cancer cells cannot use ketones. Okay, right. Healthy cells, well, they like ketones. Uh, and again, depending on how keto-adapted someone is, will depend on how much it loves ketones. It can learn to love them, but it likes them. At best, a, a low oxygen state is where fuel is fermented. Both cancer cells and healthy cells can ferment fuel in a low oxygen state. But in a high oxygen state, you actually can see the destruction of cancer cells, whereas healthy cells will respirate in that high oxygen state. Um, and then finally, reactive oxygen species. That promotes the cancer and, and really creates an environment where cancer cells like to live and damaging cells. Uh, or cells are damaged by those little electrons. Healthy cells become more and more likely to transform into cancer when, uh, when they've, when they've been around those free, free radicals or rogue electrons.
So, again, keto diet. What does it do? It lowers glucose. So, that's bad for the cancer, good for the healthy cells. Uh, obviously, it adds ketones. So, oops, I missed the E on that. So, that's bad for the cancer cells and good for the healthy cells. The oxygen state, again, it shows you the difference in there. Keto versus not keto. There is a long explanation to that, but I'm not going to go into that today. The most important part for this chart is the, the keto diet decreases the reactive oxygen species, whereas the healthy cells don't. I mean, that, that, that healthy cells don't want reactive oxygen species, and the keto diet will promote that decreased reactive oxygen species, um, and not have, um, the price to pay that we were talking about earlier.
Okay, I have, um, a couple of my favorite slides left in this, and I will show you what, what I would do in the next, uh, next little segment here. But stand, stand tuned for one, uh, little commercial here. That I, I did something that I've not done before, and that is I want to go to, uh, website. Here we go. Let's actually back up here. I am going to show you a couple things. So, uh, on our Amazon store, let's see if I can back this out a little bit. I have, oh, good, that's it. I'm going to take my head down a little bit. So, on our Amazon store, if you haven't been to Amazon, it is a beast to make this a, a profitable place to hang out as far as a consumer goes. So, I am going to point out that if you go to the Dr. BOS, uh, storefront, you can follow us, which I didn't know this was possible, follow us on Amazon. Um, but more importantly, is that we have turned on for the next two weeks that if you buy a product from us and you click, uh, we, we turned on the Subscribe and Save. Meaning you get an extra, um, discount that can be, um, uh, that you can unlock a 10% discount by pushing that Subscribe and Save. That's only available for the next two weeks. So, if you're looking for a place to, I know these products are expensive. I'm not the, I'm, uh, I am the first one to say, take them when I give you a discount. And I do announce the discounts here on this channel, trying my best to to deliver. Uh, where do, um, where do most people, uh, tune in? And that's where it's going to save them money. So, check out our Amazon site. We do have Subscribe and Save for the next two weeks that, um, allow you a discount. And we're just trying to see, is it worth it? If nobody clicks on it, then we probably won't use it much. But if you guys click on it, and that's a benefit to you, then I'll, we'll try to keep it around. We'll see how, if we can make that work in our business plan.
All righty. So, let's get to the punchline here about how, uh, your, um, what is the, what is the next, uh, most important part of having, um, somebody with cancer? Um, you know, I'm going to show you these slides that I think, uh, help deliver, uh, Circle video. There you go. Uh, help deliver the final punchline, which is, we know that, uh, oh, that's not what I wanted to do. We know that, um, um, cancer cells, um, are, they, they work differently. And when I look at how to teach somebody to destroy their cancer, um, I do not say the words "cure." Um, I have a lot of people out there saying, "You said that the, the ketogenic diet cures cancer." I said, "Now, that cancer is promoted in the setting of high insulin. High insulin is something that arrives with years of high blood sugar. That average high blood sugar promotes the growth of many things, specifically the broken part of a mitochondria. It shifts that the mitochondria goes from that respiratory respiration that we just went through to a fermenting process. And now you have two distinctly different crops of cells inside the human body. When, when we try to attack those cells with chemotherapy, when we try to attack those cells with radiation, we get a bunch of healthy cells in the way. This metabolic approach helps to cipher, how can I enhance their personal, their their healthy cells while destroying the ones that are defective? And it has to come down to what goes on inside that broken part, that mitochondrial part."
So, when people call up and say, "My sister has cancer, my friend has cancer," this is the picture that I imagine. I, oh, that's not what I wanted. Uh, I, I can see inside their body that there's a bunch of insulin, that glucose is the primary fuel for their healthy cells and their non-healthy cells. And, and now they have the burden of, what does it look like to have a life expectancy that's now, well, all of our life expectancies have a finite measuring, measuring stick, but now they're coping with that in real time. So, asking that person to say, "Hey, I want you to sign up and do this intense course," because you have cancer, I would say, "No, no, no, no." Here's the first thing that I would tell them to do. So, oh, dang it, I did it again. Uh, I would tell them to, number one, uh, pour in some ketones. That, um, you're going to need to teach them a lot of things. We teach on this, on this channel. Uh, and while you're teaching them, while you're reading the book out loud, or you're listening to an audiobook, or you're listening to a bunch of YouTube videos on why, why is this so important? Because they're not going to want to hear about their mind of right away. And when they see the climb that they have to do in order to reverse the cancer, it can be daunting. So, they have the stress of the new diagnosis of cancer in the first place. They have that wrestle, uh, with the mortality that's now a real part of their thinking. It, it doesn't do anything good to their brain either. That that makes life more stressful. So, the first thing I tell them is, buy them ketones. Get them sipping on at least, at least two servings of this a day while you read through some content over the next week. Because as you pour in ketones, um, this is not the answer forever. But as ketones arrive to a cancer cell, what's happening is your average blood glucose decreases. That appetite suppressant happens. They're learning how to count carbohydrates. And even before I tell them, they're starting to say, "Oh, wow, I, you mean an apple has 20 grams of carbs?" Yes, an apple has 20 grams of carbs. And that wouldn't have been a problem when you were 20, but now that you have these, these defective cells that are fermenting the glucose and they're fermenting that, that side chain, that, that succinic acid pathway in order to blow up a cell like we just did in that scene, you have to lower the average blood sugar. And that takes time. That also takes a friend. That when I look at the most powerful thing that I ask patients or people that write in to do, is I tell them, you shouldn't be the one taking this. You shouldn't be the one that's leading the way. Ask your loved one to step in and learn this process so they can walk with you and teach you how important and how, uh, to reverse that, that fermentation that's that does happen inside your own cells, that your own healthy cells, but gets much less when you shift it to a ketogenic state. And if you've been around this channel a while, you know that the first week of a ketogenic diet is great. The ketones come rushing in, the insulin's a little less, the body does that flip. It's the persistence. It's that, "Oh yeah, now your body has adapted." And how do we get you to the next level? And those steps of helping your loved one to show up in a state of ketosis by the time, um, their next, their next round of chemo happens, or the, the next round of radiation happens, you're not going to be able to land it in their lap today. You can put ketones in their circulation, and that's a minor part of this process. But to get the average blood sugar to decrease, to get the insulin to go down, that means we got to shift the fuel for the healthy cells. We got to keto-adapt them. That means checking blood sugars every morning, checking ketones every morning, getting that Dr. BOS ratio at least under 80, hopefully under 50. And when it was my mom, I wanted it under 20. I wanted the best ratio I could give her. And boy, oh boy, if I wasn't doing it with her, she wouldn't, wouldn't have lasted. She would have been, "That's impossible. I can't do it. I don't believe it's possible." And as, as I look at the first week of our, uh, ketogenic, um, our 21-day, there's several people where this is their last hope. This is the last time that somebody's going to sit still and say, "Boy, doc, um, what happens when if I fail on this?" And I, I'm telling you, do not put that added pressure on somebody with cancer. This ketogenic diet, um, and those cancers I listed at the beginning, all are preventable if the average blood sugar wasn't so high. Uh, I mean, minus that there's a carcinogen in there pounding on your DNA, changing things. But the, the majority of the cancers that we see out there are because their bodies are living in this soup of insulin, the soup of inflammation. And when people say, "I'm good enough, I don't need to lose those extra 15 lbs," that's the part where I would push back and say, "Until the day that cancer diagnosis comes and says the reversal happens with a lower insulin, which means the average blood sugars have to be lower, and that inflammatory process takes us months to unwind when it's been brewing for decades." And that's where, don't give the reins, don't give the lead position to the guy with cancer. You, friend, the one that's healthy, take the lead and walk with them in this story because they're going to need that kind of a hero to show up in the course of the next few months of their life.
All right, let's hop over to the questions. And I do appreciate those of you that have stuck around for those technical difficulties there. Um, I am, I'm going to decrease this. Betty writes in with one of the first questions and says, "When you have a Dr. BOS ratio of 20 or less and are in autophagy, are the cells killed first? Oh, yeah, that's a great question." Let me just try and be really gentle about making this better sized so it fits on the screen. There we go. It's a great question. So, it says, "When your Dr. BOS ratio of 20 or less and are in autophagy, are the cells killed first? Or are there any studies that prove the information on which the cells are eaten? And does autophagy target the most harmful cells first?" Dang, Betty, that is a great question. I have asked this question when I was first learning about this. So, first of all, autophagy is a process of reversing this debris, okay? Especially in the setting of somebody who's, you saw me kind of crumbling those cells in those slides. Well, when they're, when those cells are dying, the process to clean it up is all part of what your, I mean, your body is in charge of that. And when there's a super high glucose and no ketones around, the cleanup process is very slow. So, autophagy is, uh, the signal of, uh, this protein's not in use. Can you use it anywhere else in the body? And then it shuffles it to that place and shuffles it to that place. Um, I think of autophagy as, you know, cleaning out those defective cells. But the first thing it does is it does re, um, absorb, recycle the proteins that are sloughing around in the body. Uh, you think, "Well, what does that?" I'm like, "Well, all you have to do is look under a microscope, uh, for somebody who's been in an inflammatory state." That I'm going to do a, a image of this is what cells look like when they're perfectly fit together. But as they inflame, the cells have spaces in them. And inside those spaces, there's swelling. And the swelling, the fluid is one thing that'll come and go and come and go. But what's left behind is the grime, is the proteins. So, autophagy, and that's that Dr. BOS ratio of 20, that does mean that you're very, very likely to be in recycling these proteins. And a Dr. BOS ratio of 20 or less gets you cleaning up proteins.
So, the next question she says is, um, "Are the cancer cells killed first?" Well, they, they are if the blood sugar got down. Meaning, when they're in stress, just the act of breathing gets them, uh, a better place. When, when I was, when in several of the protocols helping patients, and especially when it was my mom, we would, uh, we would push her body into a really advanced state of ketosis, usually by this time of, of the story, it was through water fasting, um, you know, salt and water only. And we get her ketones, uh, a good, you know, 2.5, 3, and that blood sugar, you know, really in the 60s, 70s, 80s. Then we would put it in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber. So, we would create this environment where the blood sugar is very low, that there's the escape clause for, you know, fueling those patients, fueling those cells with extra fuel. Well, they were compromised. And that's when the presence of oxygen around that cell would cause programmed cell death. Now, that's called apoptosis. And it is different than autophagy. Autophagy would be if the cell kind of said, "I'm done. Could I sweep up that, those particles from that cell and reuse them?" And that is what autophagy is. And when people say, "Boy, you haven't eaten in 48 hours, what, what's your body living on?" I'm like, "Just look at me. There's plenty of cells that if I break them down, I will use the parts of them to fuel the cells in my body that are functioning." So, to know, is this, is the cancer cell the weakest and first to recycle? As long as the blood sugar is low, I can say that with confidence. When I get people hitting at Dr. BOS ratio and their blood sugars, uh, a Dr. BOS ratio in the 50s, and their blood sugar is still really close to triple digits, I think of it as a flash into ketosis instead of that stable phase of ketosis. And anybody trying to do this, anybody clicking their, pricking their fingers and checking ketones and glucose in the morning, they know that this cycle of glucose and, um, of getting the glucose down and the ketones high is hard. But it's the steady state that sends the signal along, uh, to, to the cells that are now looking for fuel, that are stressed because the fuel is lower. And that's where that, that, um, uh, either autophagy happens, but so does apoptosis, if you can do that in the environment that's ignited, they're no longer able to ferment the, the fuel as well.
The other part that I thought you were asking, but I see now that I read it, not quite perfectly, was when you hit autophagy, when you hit a number that's a Dr. BOS ratio, how long do you have to stay in it to clean up the proteins? And the answer is, the longer you can stay there, the more likely it is that you are reversing it. I did read a paper that was reassuring to me that once an autophagy process starts within a cell, it's not like, "Oh, I ate my sugar, went high, so it, you know, gobbled up half of it and didn't finish it." The process of igniting autophagy seems to be a cellular, you know, that whole cell will have that ignited. Now, not all cells turn on that autophagy at the same moment. It's kind of like a, you know, tapestry, a quilt of different, um, cells, some of them clipping over into autophagy before others. And the fragility of cell, meaning how broken is it, is part of that equation. So, all right, that was a very long answer, but a question I've been asked before and never had the opportunity to answer it to an audience. So, thank you for asking that.
Sam writes in and says, "If your DBR is 20, but you got if that low drinking ketones, are you really in autophagy?" Oh, that's a good question. Um, so the supplement of ketones, the autophagy, or the by adding ketones to that bottom row, uh, you know, that denominator trying to get a DBR ratio of 20. I mean, so the answer is sometimes. If your average blood sugars are running in the triple digits, and you drink enough ketones to flip that DBR ratio to 20, first of all, I think you're doing it wrong. Uh, the question is valid. I, I, I know what you're asking. But it's also one of those places where when people click on and they listen to a little bit of what I'm saying, and not the whole sentence, it bothers, it gets them in trouble. So, if you're looking for autophagy, having supplemental ketones, like I'm telling them to drink ketones, drink ketones, why am I telling them to do that at the beginning? Because the steps it's going to take to get you in a stable state of lower blood sugar with higher ketones. I mean, I can have people tumble weed into the ketogenic process, but they don't stay there. And if you're trying to reverse cancer, if you're trying to augment the treatment of your chemotherapy and your radiation with a ketogenic diet, it doesn't mean swallow a bunch of ketones and you're going to be fine. Swallowing the ketones boosts the ketogenic state. It boosts the power of that liver to make ketones. Uh, having ketones in circulation produces a higher amount of ketones the next day, and a higher amount of ketones the next day. So, it does bump it up. But if you're making ketones, but the blood sugar never went down, which is what really happens when you stop swallowing so many carbs, when you really do the ketogenic diet and don't just swallow ketones, uh, I can make your brain work great by just swallowing ketones. I can give you some energy. I can suppress your appetite by just swallowing ketones. But when we're talking about the metabolic shift inside a cell, this stop the fermentation, allow the body to to live in that respiratory state where the number one fuel is a ketone, you'll never drink enough ketones to get to that those cells to that level. So, when they're trying to use the ketogenic diet to augment their, their chemotherapy, I'm like, "It's a great beginning. Please do not say, 'Oh, you toughen up and do it just, just on your own.'" A cancer patient does not need to hear that. The supplementation of that, um, of the ketones boosts their liver's ability to produce ketones. I, I don't want to give false hope that it's that you can get there just swallowing them, though it is an augmentation. And when I, at the, that one slide where I'm like, "Just have them drink ketones, have them drink ketones," it's because the learning curve in that first two weeks, it's a lot. As the students in in class today, it's a lot.
All right, let's go to Jennifer. Uh, Jennifer writes in and says, "What do you think about dry fasting?" Uh, I think dry fasting has several limitations. Uh, I wanted to go actually over here. Several limitations to it. And, um, I, I, I would not recommend that. I mean, I don't dry fast. I don't have any of my patients dry fast. I can go into the research for it. But the punchline of what happens when people are dry fasting is they're usually not working at that core metabolic burst that I'm trying. I mean, so what, what's the purpose of fasting? Okay, it's a workout for your mitochondria. So, when people go from a, even like a moderate ketogenic diet, like sometimes they hit ketones over the next week, and they're like, "I just, I want to get the inflammation to go away, so I'm going to dry fast. I'm not going to put any water in my body." That's not a good idea. Um, and you, you've got the wrong approach. When we look at what fasting is doing to a metabolic, uh, system, especially when it's already on the bed of a ketogenic state, it's giving those mitochondria a workout. It's practicing and pushing them to deliver fuel in a ketogenic state, not using any fermentation, in a, in a very rapid, but easy transition. Meaning, if you ask somebody to go from a, a normal diet and, and fast to the point of ketosis, I went through this on the, um, on the show a couple weeks ago where I'm like, "There are obese people that it will take over two weeks for them to produce enough ketones, uh, to, to get what would be a metabolic workout for a tenth of their cells." When you're already, already in a ketogenic state, the purpose of a fast is to recruit more cells to be practicing life with just a ketogenic fuel, ketone-based fuel, a fat-based fuel. Uh, and the water fasting just stresses out the kidney, stresses out the heart, and often lowers the blood pressure so quickly, especially in my elderly patients, that we're, we're not helping them. Uh, it also can trigger a couple, I'm not going to go into that. So, the answer is, I do not recommend that. I do not recommend that.
All right, let's go to next question. Donald says, "A close friend was recently diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma. Yeah, uh, internet research said that keto, keto is bad for people who have kidney disease and kidney problems. Is this true or false?" This is false. Uh, so the first person I'd like you to go look up, Donald, would be, uh, Dr. Jason Fung. So, Dr. Jason Fung is an internal medicine doctor, like me, except he went on for the advanced training that happens in, um, in this, in the specialty of the kidney. So, he's a nephologist. And he, and he is in the space of teaching the ketogenic diet along with fasting because he's like, "By the time these patients get to me where they need a kidney specialist, if somebody would have just taught them that a ketogenic state or a low carbohydrate enough to produce ketone state, uh, is the most refreshing, cleansing thing for that kidney, we could have prevented them from ever ending up in my clinic." And, um, I mean, where the research comes from that causing kidney disease is they say, "Oh, high protein." But I will tell you, there, um, when a kidney is damaged, when it's on the last 15%, like we're right, we're in the last, maybe they've already started dialysis, or we're, we're just about to start dialysis. In that setting, we got a lot more talking to do. But when I look at, do is the ketogenic diet bad for kidney disease and can it cause kidney problems? The answer is, um, the high insulin, the high blood sugars is what killed that kidney universally. That's what kills the kidney. The high blood pressure, all of those metrics are improved when they're in a ketogenic state, not a flash, but exactly like what I was talking about, understanding that the steps to get into a ketogenic state and then stay there have much more to do with the success and the improvement of kidney function than, uh, the worry of somebody saying, you know what, um, it says on the internet that the, that keto is bad for kidneys.
All right, I might be the last question. Aloha 22. Oh, you are nothing if not dependable. Thanks for coming. Um, "While elevated A1C does not mean you have cancer, can you have cancer without an elevated A1C?" Yes, of course you can. Uh, so unfortunately, um, most of you know this, that, um, having an elevated A1C means that the blood sugar's been elevated. Um, but before the blood sugar's elevated, the insulin's been high for several years. And it is that protein, that insulin is a protein that is a growth factor. It promotes the growth. It's an insulin, you know, it promotes the growth of things. Now, skin tags and and warts are very common things that people will say when insulin's high, you can see those skin changes. But those are the outward growth problems. What insulin also does is it promotes the growth of cells that aren't acting normally. And it's that growth factor that, um, the blood sugar can still be normal, but in the setting of a high insulin state. So, can, you know, the other causes? I think if you recall back to the slides we showed at the beginning, carcinogens are very well known for, uh, the promotion of cancer. Uh, I contend that that's been overplayed, like that's, "Oh, if you don't, if you're not exposed to a carcinogen, then you're fine." Right? No. Oh, that it's genetics. I'm like, "Well, I actually think it's more metabolism than anything." And when you look at the population studies, when you look at the amount of increase, our DNA didn't change that much, guys. We have this massive outbreak of cancer throughout our communities because of our high insulin state, our high consumption of processed foods, and what that does on a cellular level, and today, I might even say a subcellular level, uh, on how energy is delivered through a cell, whether it's fermented or it's respired, and whether or not there's an escape plan for, uh, dealing with a reactive oxygen species. Something a ketone can do a very good job of. But a cancerous cell that's built on glucose fuel and fermentation, it cannot handle that, that overtax of a reactive oxygen species, especially when you add a little extra oxygen.
All right, I just want to say thank you for those that stuck around, uh, uh, during that glitch. And I really do look forward to people pushing that Subscribe and Save inside our Amazon account. We hope that helps you. And we'll take, uh, a look at the numbers over the next two weeks to see if, if you push it, do we get, uh, do we should we keep doing that? And that's how we'll make that decision. All right, uh, see you in class tomorrow to all the students. And we will say, uh, a good night to the rest of you. See you next week on the Dr. BOS Channel. Reversing health problems, one ketone.