Affordable, Safe, and Effective Cancer Treatment When Money is Tight

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Hey Nathan, thanks for having me. I appreciate the invitation and appreciate all you’re doing to bring some perspective to the cancer treatment field. 

Nathan Crane

So you were practicing conventional family medicine, right? And something opened your eyes and you started going down this path of let’s say, more integrative, more natural, you know, more, I would even consider effective approaches to helping people deal with chronic diseases. What was that thing that opened your eyes, if you will, or what was divine appointment that you call it, what happened? 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Well, the exact divine appointment was my nurse practitioner at the time had celiac disease and had been diagnosed with that for a number of years and was on conventional therapy for that, which is simply avoid gluten, eat a gluten-free diet. And he was doing that, but he wasn’t overall healthy. I mean, he was a little overweight. He had some fatigue issues, sleep issues, mood issues. He met a doctor at a bed and breakfast one weekend when he was out with his wife at this bed and breakfast and told the innkeeper that he needed a gluten-free pancake. And she said, “Well, sure, we can do that, but hey, there’s this doctor whom I can cure you with that.” And of course you don’t cure celiac. He kind of laughed at her, but long story short, he ended up meeting the doctor. The doctor said, there’s no such thing as diseases. 

They’re all consequences. And if you weren’t born with it, you probably don’t need to keep it. There’s a root cause to stuff. And of course my nurse prac that sort of resonated with him, but part of his conventional training said, no, that can’t be true. Long story short, he implemented some of these natural techniques, which was basic dietary and lifestyle changes, and it radically transformed his life. He was able to eat wheat again without having an extreme reaction. His complexion cleared up, his mood, his energy, his sleep, he was a cyclist and cycling times got better. 

He just got healthy. And the, but the biggest thing was he could eat a bite of wheat and not get bloody diarrhea and stomach cramps, and be out of work for a day. So that opened my eyes and I felt a moral, ethical obligation for my next celiac patient. Was I just gonna say gluten-free or was I gonna say, “Hey, there’s an option. Option one, eat gluten-free or option two, steward your health more optimally. And maybe you’ll be able to tolerate a little gluten here and there.” And I decided to do that, to give that option. So I’ll called that doctor up and that was the beginning of the end. As you mentioned, I was a conventional family practice, small town country doctor, it’s how I like to describe it, for eight years, both my granddad’s were before me and I wanted to be like them, and I just want to do a small town country doctor thing, but this opened my eyes to a whole new realm of medicine. And actually the very first integrative conference I went to was a cancer conference. 

So I just dove in the deep end, right off the bat. And at that conference I met Ty Bollinger and he handed me his book “Cancer- Think Outside the Box” and it blew my mind. And Nick Gonzales was there, gave the keynote lecture. I bee lined it up to the podium after he was done with that lecture and just couldn’t believe it, and of course bought his book. I met Dr. Lorraine Day and Charlotte Gerson and just my eyes were totally opened from that one conference. So that in a nutshell, that was the divine appointment, it all started with my nurse prac and celiac disease. 

Nathan Crane

You know, what’s really exciting about that is the fact that you are, I mean, this is both exciting and a little saddening is, but you’re, you’re really like in the 1% or the 0.01% of, you know, unfortunately medical doctors in the medical community who, when a patient goes out and finds another path towards healing, most doctors do not question that, they don’t wanna research further. They don’t call the nature path that that person went to and say, “How’d you do this? What’d you do? Et cetera, is like, you knew that you had to learn and find out more and you were open to that. And I think that’s really exciting and a huge like testament to the work, you know, you’ve been doing in this field and you know, all the medical doctors that are part of this symposium, all the ones I know, the ones have been working with since 2013 have similar experiences where they, you know, started finding out, wow, there’s naturopathic approaches, there’s holistic approaches, there’s ayurveda, there’s acupuncture, there’s, you know, Western Eastern, Chinese medicine, so on and so forth. And they started recognizing that, wow, all of these other fields of medicine have massive potential and efficacy and they start implementing it and seeing great results for their patients. Unfortunately, you know, you hear from a lot of people that that’s just not the case with most medical doctors. And so what were some of the things for you that started to solidify, you know, that path and that approach for you? What were some maybe patient experiences you were seeing? What were some other 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Well, that’s the first thing I did was I called that doctor up and said, “Who are you? What are you doing?” You know, I gave him the third degree on what’s going on here ’cause this was crazy to me. And he started just coming back with all these answers that resonated as truth in my spirit. Like one thing he said was, “Hey, next time your car is making a weird noise, you’re gonna take it to the mechanic or the alternative mechanic.’ And I was like, “Hmm, okay.” And his point was, hey God, put natural laws into this universe to govern this universe, and either you can understand them and abide by them, or you can not. Whether you’re a airline pilot and having to follow the law of gravity or, you know, structural engineer having to combust a combustion engine with a mechanic, you know, but bottom line as seen in my 10 sickest patients, that’s what solidified it for me. 

I had the worst diabetic, you know, he’s on three different meds, he’s ready for insulin, his A1C is high and he doesn’t want to do insulin. I said, “Okay, well there’s this doctor. You could go see, he doesn’t believe in diabetes. He doesn’t believe in diseases.” I had a lupus patient, worst lupus in the world, had been to all the specialists, been to the big medical center in Dallas, chronic urticaria that nobody could figure out, had been all the specialists, horrible depression, a lady with, or gentlemen with chronic prostatitis, couldn’t get over it. So these 10 sicker than sick patients that had been everywhere, sent them all to this doctor, they all came back better, most of them all the way better. So at that point, I’m all in. 

I didn’t understand it, I was having cognitive dissonance. How could this be? I’m looking at 10 of my sickest patients. I’ve known these patients for eight years and now they’re all well, and they’re off their meds. That diabetic, he was 73 years old and his A1C was in the nines when I sent him, he came back with an A1C of six something and off his meds blew me away. So the evidence was in front of me, even though it didn’t make sense that my medical training didn’t prepare me for this or teach me this. And that’s, you know, as I started to dig in and it became clear, there’s only two options for medical doctors. So I don’t blame the medical doctors that go to school with the right intention, with a good heart, and they love patients, most, almost all of them. 

They’re in there for the right reason. But then there’s this indoctrination and someone took the option off the table, what I call option three, fix it. And what left us with just two options, option one, suffer and do nothing, option two take the pharmaceutical or take a surgery, that’s it. Those are the two options. So I walked across that medical school stage, got my diploma, got my white coat and fired out into the world into West Texas, wanting to heal the world, highly trained doctor, but with only those two options. I just told two patients just before the interview started Nathan, a diabetic, I’m here for COVID and they’re not our patients, I’m opening up our practice to the general public to treat COVID. But this lady’s diabetic, obese, has RA and hypertension. And I couldn’t help myself, even though it was supposed to be a five minute visit for COVID, I said, “Hey, let me teach you about insulin resistance real quick. Let me teach you why the medications are just treating the smoke, that the high sugar, they’re not treating the cause, insulin resistance.” Drew it up on the whiteboard, the key and the key hole, explained the whole thing. And I said, “Go read Jason Fung’s book on fasting. I know, the obesity code.” And she said, “You know what? I read that book, my sister gave it to me. I actually started doing it, and my sugar went from 400 to 98, over time, I lost a bunch of weight and I felt great. I went back to my doctor and he told me I can’t do that. Diabetics can’t fast.” That’s the, that’s the disconnect that doctors come out of school thinking we learned it all. 

We’re in the best medical education system in the world. So if I didn’t learn it, it couldn’t be, that’s what I thought and that’s what most doctors think. We just are so closed minded and really arrogant. I hate to say, but looking back now, I totally get it. We are not trained in nutrition, not trained in the terrain. And we’ll talk about the four pillars to get any of that kind of education, two hours of nutrition, in four years of medical school, doctors just don’t know this. We only know option one, suffer or option two, pharmaceuticals and surgery. We don’t know option three, let the body fix itself. 

Someone took that option off the table, I tell my patients, you know, I think it’s just, someone got together 50 years ago and said, “Hey, Americans aren’t going to change their diet and address their stress and their lifestyle, their sitting, and all that, they’re just not gonna, so that option’s off the table. There’s only the two.” So we brought the third option back on the table. And what we try to do is teach people the four pillars. So they won’t need a doctor, so they won’t have cancer, they won’t need a natural cancer therapy. It’s way better to have prevention than to have treatment. So that’s where we’ve landed. 

Nathan Crane

Yeah, we’re gonna get into those four pillars. I really wanted to know, to hear them as well, I know they’re gonna be really valuable to all of our listeners. Before we do, I want to encourage people to go listen to the interview I did with Dr. Peter Glidden, who’s a part of this symposium, because that interview, we actually go into depth. If you wanna understand more of the history of, you know, what’s being called the medical monopoly, it started over a hundred years ago and understand why just as you said, so many good intention, people go into medical school with intentions to save them, you know, save lives. And that’s a beautiful intention, they’re good people, but because of what’s happened with the medical monopoly and all of these other, what we call alternative, which used to be called quackery, you know, methodologies of healing, holistic, naturopathic, et cetera, haven’t had a seat at the same table as the conventional medicine. It’s why people don’t know about it, they don’t have access to it. Medical doctors are taught it doesn’t work, don’t research it, don’t, you know, if your patients talk about it, just forget about it, right? Like you said, there’s that indoctrination and it’s not, you know, medical doctors’ fault. 

They just don’t know what they don’t know, right? And so it’s really exciting to hear you talk about this. It’s huge awakening you had and all these great experiences that you have in supporting your patients. But I do want people, if you want more depth on that, and it’s a really great discussion around that subject and give you a lot more understanding and history about what’s actually going on and what you can do to help naturopathic medicine, holistic medicine are, you know, all kinds of what we call, alternative medicine actually have a chance of having a seat at the same table, which right now is ruled by pharmaceutical companies and so forth, which I think, you know, it’ll be beautiful. We can actually make a positive change in that direction. 

It’s Dr. Peter Glidden, but moving deeper into this discussion, I’d love, obviously you’ve learned a lot, you know, you, you get to work hands-on with patients who you’re implementing these methodologies that you’ve learned and you’ve experienced. I’d love for you to talk about what are those four pillars that you talked about and how does that actually, how can that support people who have cancer? 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Right, so as I started to dive deeper into this more holistic alternative world, it became pretty clear to me, and the literature is clear on this too, I mean, 95% of all cancers, not from genes, it’s from diet and lifestyle has been established. So what does that mean? And as I start walking through this with patients, it became clear to me, nutrition, hydration, movement and peace. Those four things were absolutely essential. In fact, I was at my second conference I went to, after that first cancer conference was a bio-identical hormone conference and there was some brilliant physicians there, alternative guys at one fifth generation endocrinologist from Belgium. And they were just doing an amazing job of kind of micro-managing all the different hormones, the adrenal hormones and sex hormones, I mean, all this, it was amazing, but it seemed really complicated to me at the time too. 

And so my question at the end of the three-day conference, I got up to the microphone and I said, “Hey guys, amazing, thank you for all the information, but you know, what, if I could get my patients to just eat pretty clean and occasionally not eat, hydrate well, move a little bit every hour and be at peace instead of fight or flight mode all the time. How much of all of this bio-identical hormone therapy would we need?” And they looked at each other, the panel did, and they looked at me and said, “You’ll never get your patients to do those four things.” So I kind of took that as a challenge, but also as an answer of, hey, if you could really get those four things done, you’re probably not gonna need most of these for sure pharmaceutical treatments, but even the, what I call the green version of pharmaceutical-based medicine. So I started to see that a lot of integrative clinics were really just switching supplements in the place of pharmaceuticals, still treating a symptom. 

Nathan Crane

Right. 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Diabetes is an example, people using Berberine instead of Metformin, you know, great, Berberine’s great, it’s all natural, less side effects, but you’re still just chasing the blood sugar instead of dealing with root causes. So we gotta be careful there. And as we move into these even affordable therapies for cancer, I wanna just drive home the point, that let’s not get to the place we have to chase all these symptoms, including chasing the tumor let’s work on this foundation. And it turns out when you work on the foundation, nutrition, hydration, movement, and peace, those are the ingredients that set the body up to fix itself. And it sounds so simple, but you know, if you give your vehicle the right kind of gas and motor oil and keep all your fluid levels topped up and rotate your tires and keep the air in the tires and do everything that owner’s manual says to do, you should expect it to function and basically maintain itself. And that’s what the body will do. It will maintain health, if you can give it what it needs. 

So it’s all about building your body’s resiliency and resistance. We’re never going to be able to completely avoid all toxins and all stress and all these things, but if we’re more resilient and resistant to those things, our body can push back against them. So we really drive that point home. And when it comes to cancer, you know, we tell every patient, yeah, we can do X, Y, and Z things, but we’re not even gonna talk about that until your A1C, your three-month blood sugar average is below five, until your fasting insulin is below two. We want you to be metabolically flexible. We’ve got to start there, we know this cancer has a lot, mitochondria is where everything’s at. I think people are understanding that now all chronic disease across the board, it’s all about the mitochondria. Can your cell make energy? And can it clear the exhaust? Bottom line, can it do that? Can it do it efficiently and effectively? And if it can’t, then you will be a set up cancer and other chronic diseases too. So let’s talk about the mitochondria. Let’s fuel it well, let’s get it efficient, and it boils down to those four pillars in my opinion. You gotta have that foundation, bottom line. 

Nathan Crane

Well, and it’s really the same thing for any viral infection like COVID, right? Now, I mean, I wanna make this distinction ’cause sometimes we subconsciously don’t realize this. I mean, we’re kind of, a lot of people believe cancer’s like something you catch, even though they don’t think of it as like it’s not contagious, they know that it’s almost like, it’s something you catch not realizing it’s something your body is making because of the internal environment, right? The stressors, the toxins, the poor diet, et cetera. 

So I wanna make that distinction clear, so there’s no confusion. Your body makes cancer, your body catches viruses or bacteria, even though our bodies are more bacteria and viral, you know, DNA than our own human DNA. But I wanna just talk a little bit about COVID, have you talk about that because I know you’ve been putting out some really great videos and information on it. We don’t have to go too deep, but I just wanna make that correlation between what you do to prevent or help reduce or mitigate or you know, reverse the effects of something like COVID, you know, viral symptomology from, from the COVID versus, you know, cancer, it’s similar, It’s very similar to the things you would be doing for both, right? 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Yeah, exactly. So the people that do really bad with COVID, they’re in this chronic inflammatory state, this cytokine storm, this massive inflammation state. Well, that’s what chronic diseases do, whether it’s heart attack and stroke, cancer, Alzheimer’s, it’s all inflammation, everybody understands this now. So there’s a relationship is inflammation. Why is our body so inflamed? And why are the anti-inflammatory mechanisms not kicked in properly? And I like to talk about this in terms of germ theory and versus terrain theory, but right, with germ theory, you can throw in gene theory when it comes to cancer. So yeah, germs are in the picture, they’re part of the puzzle, but just like flies it come to where the trash is, cockroaches in your kitchen, how do you get rid of those? You can go kill the cockroaches all day, or you take out the garbage, clean up the trash don’t attract the cockroaches. Or another good example’s the algae that grows up on your fish tank. 

You can go in everyday and scrub that algae, or you can get the pH right and the temperature right, and the oxygen, carbon dioxide level balanced. Then the algae it stays suppressed all by itself. Same thing with COVID or any other germ. It’s all about the terrain. Is your terrain inviting COVID in to manifest and trigger this inflammatory cascade, or is your terrain managed well where it will gobble up COVID and you don’t need to have a symptom? So it’s really, really important to understand, I mean, who’s dying with COVID? All the people with comorbid conditions, they’re metabolically inflexible, they have diabetes and obesity, they have metabolic syndrome. 

These are the ones with dysfunctional terrains. So yes, there are onco genes with cancer too, but those genes get turned on by the exhaust, by the toxins, by all this terrain garbage, ’cause when you make energy, you make exhaust, we call the exhaust free radicals. But think of it as black smoke coming out of your tailpipe, you can clean that up, make your exhaust system better, where you’re not pumping out all the black smoke. It’s that black smoke, the free radicals that go turn on the bad genes. So, yeah, genes are in there as part of the picture of cancer, but it’s really the poor terrain that’s turning on the bad genes, so it’s a secondary effect. So it’s really almost the same thing, whether it’s a germ versus a gene with cancer, it’s all about what’s the environment like, what’s the terrain like? And if your body’s equipped, it will gobble up COVID and you’ll never have a symptom. So if you haven’t equipped your body and you are not metabolically flexible, maybe you have some of these co-morbid conditions. You could still quickly reverse some of that by fasting, cutting your sugar and carbs down, get your vitamin D level up. 

I prefer a natural version of that through Cod liver oil and sunshine, de-stressing, go take a walk around to the earth and get your electrodes, get the earth electrodes coming into you. Basic simple stuff that will mitigate your risk, but also just doing some anti-inflammatory things if you’re in the middle of a COVID crisis. There’s a pharmaceutical approach, you know, colchicines and steroids and all these things, they’ll suppress inflammation. And then there’s a more natural approach too. Lots of different antioxidants, like vitamin C, Ozone and UV light and help mitigate that response, that inflammatory response too. So there’s a number of great therapies that the literature, even is clear, is beneficial in that COVID, which we can go deeper into that if we need to. But basically you’re trying to temp down and balance out that over-reactive immune system. But really the question is why is your immune system stuck in this over-reactive inflammatory state? Why did it not turn itself off? Well it’s because your training wasn’t right. Your antioxidant enzymes, weren’t properly steward, your gluten is out and superoxide dismutase and catalysts and all these things that will come back, the free radicals, you don’t have it. Why don’t you have it? Because you’re not nourished right, usually. 

Nathan Crane

Yeah, it’s a, yeah, thank you for that. It’s reminded me of something I’ve thought about lately and heard somebody else say that made me really kind of chuckle, but also recognize what’s happening in this, you’re watching mainstream media at all, this is, you know, really, I think the only time in human history where they’re making healthy people sound like they’re sick by making the term asymptomatic seem like it’s a bad thing. You know what you’re saying like for COVID for example, or any viral infection, asymptomatic means that your system is working and functioning, your immune system is functioning, you know, as it should, it means, yeah, you might test positive. You’re not having symptoms. Why does somebody not have symptoms where somebody that does have symptoms, because their immune system is working the way it should be, if it is, you’re not gonna have symptoms, right? So he said, that is not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Yeah, and you can even relate that Nathan, over to cancer. I mean, there are some patients we’re following right now with liquid biopsy, so that’s a blood test. You draw the blood and send it to a special lab that can detect circulating tumor cells in the blood. But there’s a level, if we can keep it below this certain level, like say five cells per ml or whatever the cutoff is, then that tells us your immune system’s functioning, keeping that in check, some people even look at cancer as a management, let’s turn this into a chronic disease management, or we can just keep your levels low, you know, there’s some evidence we all have cancer cells. It’s a matter of your immune system keeping those cancer cells suppressed and killing them. 

Can we keep this terrain so efficient that we can identify and kill and/or suppress and keep these cancer cells from manifesting into a tumor and metastatic lesions that could take our lives. So kind of a similar deal, yeah. You can have a virus come into you, bacteria to come into you, but you’re symptom-free because your immune system is highly functional. It’s all about an efficient immune system. But really it’s about an efficient cell across the board. I mean, ’cause we don’t want Alzheimer’s either and we don’t want diabetes and we don’t want hypertension, heart disease, we need efficient heart muscle cells. We need efficient brain cells. We need efficient liver cells to detox stuff. We need efficient immune system cells for COVID and for cancer, so it’s all about cellular efficiency, steward that cell and that mitochondria nutrition, hydration, movement, and peace. You’re gonna cover a lot of bases as far as mitochondrial health. 

Nathan Crane

Absolutely you know, it reminds me of something, Dr. Thomas Lodi said in my documentary about cancer, that’s always stuck with me. He says, you know, it let’s say you have a tumor, but that tumor never grows another millimeter, right? You can live a normal life for years, five, 10, 15, 20 years, you may have no symptoms from that. You may have, you know, and if it’s not growing anymore and it’s not spreading because you’re doing things that are keeping the cancer cells in check, you’re gonna have just absolutely normal, fine life. So it’s not necessarily always about, we gotta get this out of me as quickly as possible, which is what we’re conditioned into out of fear, you know, when we go in and get a diagnosis or prognosis it’s surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, immediately get it done. And in many cases for most people, it just doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to rush into these things, you know, you can do your research, you can get more consults. 

You can talk to people like yourself, you know, Dr. Edwards and visit other, you know, naturopathic clinics, integrative clinics, and educate yourself, listen to all the interviews on this symposium before you choose, you know, which path you wanna go down, the more education information you have, the more empowered you will be to take and walk the right path for you. And so I love that you said that, it’s like Dr. Thomas Lodi says, you know, you could still totally live a normal life. It’s not spreading, it’s not growing, you know, in cancer, in most cases, until the later stages almost have no symptoms for most people, you know, that’s the incredible thing, right? As when people think cancer, they losing the hair and they’re bald and they’re sickly and they’re on IVs and they’re in so much pain. Like when I saw my own grandfather go through that and chemotherapy, radiation, saw how much pain he was in and couldn’t even walk to the bathroom without just so much pain. It wasn’t the cancer doing that, it was the treatment, unfortunately. And so we have to distinguish those differences. And I wanted to ask you, I mean, you shared a handful of things that are basically free, people can do, you know, go outside, get vitamin D, get grounded on the earth, exercise, you know, you talked about your four pillars, nutrition, hydration, movement, and peace. 

I love for you to take just a couple of minutes, maybe on each one. I know we could go into a lot of depth on each one, but if you had to explain some very practical things in nutrition and hydration and movement and in peace, like what would that look like for somebody who’s like, okay, I can start doing a few five, 10, 15, extra minutes every day, focusing on movement focusing on peace practices, nutrition, you know, I could do an hour. Like, what would you, what would you tell people? 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Yeah, well, first thing with nutrition, I do recognize that there are different clinics and different philosophies, you know, Nick Gonzalez had lots of different diets, you know, do you go vegan vegetarian? Do you go more ketogenic? But bottom line, real food. We need real non-processed food, and depending on what doctor you’re with, what clinic you’re with, and maybe what cancer you have and various factors, you may be more plant-based, you may not be as much as plant-based, but in general, it’s I call it God food versus man food. It needs to be natural, real unprocessed food. If man puts his hand on it, most likely he altered it in some form that benefits the producer and the pocket but does not benefit your mitochondrial health. 

So be very careful with anything coming off the shelf. So locally grown, vine wrap and fresh wild cut, pasteurized all that real food, what was that animal, if you’re eating animals, what is it eating? Is it eating what God intended for it to eat such as grass versus grain? So that’s simple, number one, unprocessed real food, God food versus man food. But second there is narrow the eating window. Dr. Satchin at Salk Institute, his book “Circadian Code” talks about a rat study where he didn’t change the food, even it was just regular rat chow, but he narrowed the eating window. And when it was an eight hour eating window, these rats didn’t get cancer or any other chronic disease. So narrow the eating window down, you know, that is intermittent fasting. That creates metabolic flexibility. So those are the two biggest things in nutrition, is non-processed real food 

Nathan Crane

Yeah, I was just gonna say, yeah, so that’s so people who don’t know, you know, about intermittent fasting, like that would be eat your first meal at 12 o’clock, you know, at lunch and then eat your last meal by eight o’clock, right? So you’re having at least, you know, 16 hour window where you’re not eating anything, which you know, adds a lot of cellular regeneration in the body. 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Yeah, that’s the healing time, when you’re not putting food in your mouth, your body’s allowed, is able to heal. And that’s when the cancer cells can die, apoptosis. The mitochondria, those carburetors that make your energy, we want them to be efficient. And the inefficient mitochondria will go through mitophagy that’s where they’ll die. You’ll take out those inefficient ones. So fasting is really, really good and simple and cheap. You’ll actually save money, you’re skipping a meal. And then I always like to throw in salt, I mean sea salt. We are so demineralized. All these metabolic functions require minerals. And so that’s an easy way to get it, just pour the salt on. If you’re scared of salt, there’s “The Salt Fix” is a great book. “Salt Your Way to Health” is another good one. But these are super simple, real food, narrow the window, add a bunch of sea salt, you’re gonna get way down the road. Can you do even more things? Of course, there’s always more to do, but those are super basic, simple things to do from a nutrition standpoint. You know, there’s juicing, there’s all kinds of stuff, but these are just real basic things that are cheap, easy, and actually save you money. 

Nathan Crane

So hydration, what do you recommend for people? How much water should they drink? What should they be drinking? 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Right, so I don’t subscribe to the eight ounce, eight glasses a day, or do half your body weight and water. I mean, that’s fine. It’s better probably than staying dehydrated, but everyone’s so unique an individual. I mean, what season is it? How, what’s your indoor environment like? Are you in the middle of winter with lots of heat and the humidity is low and you’re just breathing, you’re evaporating off a lot of water, you’re in a humid place or not and are you exercising? Are you eating your water? Gina Bria, her book, “Quench” talks about historically, ancestrally, she studied anthropology. Most societies ate half their water. They ate food that had water in it. You’ll compare a medium rare steak to a piece of beef jerky. 

How does that change that you dehydrate it. There’s a lot of water actually in meat. And of course, vegetables full of water and the water in the vegetables is structured. That means it’s H3O2. It’s in a different form and it will penetrate your cell membrane better you will hydrate better. So you really wanna eat your water. Chia seed pudding, smoothies, vegetables, real food, unprocessed food, eat half your water. So what I tell my patients look at your urine. If your urine is clear, like water, you’re hydrated. If it’s too yellow, you’re not hydrated. It’s gonna be different for everybody. But I really like good, better and best when it comes to water, so good is clean water. We just want it clean, you know, filter it. You know, the negative of ROS, it takes out the minerals, the good stuff too, it cleans everything. 

So you wanna put the minerals back in. So step one is clean. Step two is remineralized and there’s step three, what I would consider best is structured. Water found in nature is structured. Rain water is structured. Water in motion going down a brook or coming out of the aqua for a spring, is it water inside these plants it’s structured. So you can get devices under the sink or handheld. There’s lots of different ways to do it. I really liked the wellness enterprise, put a plug in for them, but Gina Bria, the hydration foundation totally supported her work, and they explained the science behind the structured water. Of course, Dr. Gerald Pollack, Dr. Tom Cowan, they’re all about structured water. So I love structured water, loved remineralized water, so a pinch of sea salt in every glass. I’ve got one right here. You can probably see the sea salt in it. Everything I drink, I put sea salt in it and I try to structure it, so that in a nutshell is hydration. You wanna be hydrated, cells work better when they’re hydrated. 

Nathan Crane

I love that you said, think about getting, you know, a lot, at least 50% or more of your water from your food. I mean, if you look at a watermelon, it’s like 80% water and it’s structured water and you’re getting, you know, vitamins there, some minerals as well. You know, you look at oranges, you look at apples, you look at berries, they’re filled with water, but they’re also filled with fiber and tons of phytonutrients that your body needs to heal itself. So, you know, a lot of people, they might eat a banana and an apple, and that’s all they have for the day for their, for their fruit and their healthy healthiest version of water, I mean, you can eat and there’s, you know, “Mastering Diabetes,” Robbie and Cyrus, they’re part of the symposium. 

If you wanna know the fastest way to reverse Type II diabetes, you actually get off the high fat diet and get onto a high carbohydrate, highly nutrient dense, rich plant-based diet. That is lots of fruits and vegetables and legumes and things like that. And they’re reversing Type II diabetes in 80 to 90% of people. So, you know, that’s another thing that also supports cancer is all these phytonutrients that reduce inflammation, help the chronic inflammation to dissipate and help the regeneration of the cells so on and so forth. So I’m, you know, I’m really glad, really glad that you said that, which is, which is huge. So add more fruit and vegetables and watery foods to your diet, soups are great too, right? You get all the nutrients in a good veggie soup, things like that. 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Let me real quick, you just reminded me of something. I was at a conference, I think George Washington University was putting it on their integrative medicine department. And there’s the guy, I forget his name, he stood up and gave a lecture on cranberries. And I didn’t realize there was like a hundred different species of cranberries that he honed in on. I think it was three or four different species of cranberries and they isolated eight to 10,000 different phytonutrients in each species of cranberries. And 90% of those phytonutrients were not replicated in the other species. So these are unique to that one species of cranberry. 

Nathan Crane

Wow. 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

A thousand different phytonutrients and that’s just a cranberry. It’s incredible what plant chemicals are in these different berries and I mean, food, you know, plant foods in general. So yeah, it’s a good point with the phytonutrients

Nathan Crane

Yeah, that’s fascinating about cranberries and yeah, I’ve heard like we, we like, we know of like over 30,000 or more phytonutrients in plants that we still have no idea what they are, what they’re called, what they do. We just know they’re good for you, so eat them. 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Yeah, I’m in. 

Nathan Crane

So yeah, thank you. So your third one is movement. What does movement look like for somebody with cancer?

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Right, well, number one, just get up and move, you were not designed to be in a seated position all the time, you’ve probably heard sitting’s the new smoking, will increase your risk for cancer and a lot of other diseases just from being seated all day. So the misconception is I can sit all day and then go to the gym at the end of the day, work out for 45 minutes and be okay. No, and I’m not saying don’t go work out, but it doesn’t mitigate all the negative impacts of sitting all day long. So you need to be cognizant of your time in the chair throughout the day, get a standing desk, walk to the cooler, go up and down the stairs, set a timer, make movement part of your day, better to do it outside, where you get the vitamin D and be in nature. 

There’s lots of studies that talk about just being in a green space, drops the cortisol level, your fight or flight hormone. So that’s number one is just move. And then yes, I like to encourage my patients to do some HIIT training where they can oxygenate really well and increase that metabolic flexibility. So HIIT training, high, intensity, interval training. These are short bursts, 30 seconds, 90 seconds or so, of as hard as you can go, as fast as you can go, but then go, you know, three minutes of just regular pace. But after three minutes you hit it hard again for 30 to 60 seconds, and you can do that with anything, rowing, bicycling, walking, running, pushups, whatever, just do the intermittent up and down as far as intensity goes. So I really like the HIIT training. 

If you can do stuff barefoot outside and get the grounding going or the earthing, I really like that too. And I mentioned the sunshine and vitamin D, but the biggest thing is just move, do something enjoyable because if you don’t enjoy it, you’re not gonna stick with it. But when you move, you oxygenate the body better. You detoxify the body better. You have this whole system of vessels throughout the body, they’re called lymph vessels, lymphatic vessels. It’s where the body dumps all the dead viruses and bacteria and toxins and dead cancer cells. It’s your waste collection system. And this system of vessels from your head to your toe does not contain a pump like your artery and vein vessels has a pump, your heart. 

This system of vessels does not have a pump and it required for movement for this fluid to move and get these toxins out of you, you need to move. You need to be up moving against gravity, that’s what allows this fluid to flow out of you. But also movement allows us to re-energize. This is Jerry Tennant’s work, the battery packs, he, the different muscle groups will energize the acupuncture meridians, so from a more energetic standpoint, we can reenergize some of these pathways just by getting our movement in. And of course, muscle, you know, some resistance training, muscles more insulin resistant or insulin sensitive, I’m sorry, than fast cells, so we want more muscle tone. All this will help prevent cancer, but it also sets you up in the treatment of cancer and detoxification these cancer cells and the toxins associated with them if we move a little bit. 

Nathan Crane

Yeah, I love what you said, you know, do something that you enjoy doing. It’s like, you know, if for you going to the gym for an hour, once a day, every day at the same time, it’s something that gives you a routine and you can get into that, do it, but you don’t have to go to the gym to move, to exercise, to work out, right? You go play tennis, you go play racquetball. You can go cycling or jogging, you know, fast paced hiking, you know, go outdoors and do some kind of labor around your yard, you know, you pick it up rocks or wood or things that will build muscle naturally. Like all those things are such good ways of moving, right? And as you said, you know, we need to be moving every single day, we’re designed to move, so. 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

And I wanna encourage cancer, if you have cancer now, if you’re or any chronic disease where you feel like you’re immobile, you’re stuck in bed, you’re in so much pain or you don’t have the muscle strength, and you just think you can’t move, I mean, I tell my patients that are in that situation, just do some toe raises back and forth with your toes or write the alphabet with your big toe. Do some leg raises, just sitting in the chair you can do some leg raises. You can do some, basically some curls, and then you can add a can of green beans in each arm. So there’s always something you can do, even if you think you can’t and it’s those little movements still are of benefit. So I really encourage even those patients who feel like they can’t get to the gym or get outside. 

Nathan Crane

Yeah, that’s great. I mean, you’ve got gentle yoga. You’ve got, you know, Qigong practices, which were amazing. That can be gentle and simple or all the way up to intense and challenging, so always lots to do. Yeah, thank you for that. And so the fourth one you say is peace. What do you mean by that? What does that look like? 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Yeah, so this is probably not probably, I believe it’s the most important of all the pillars and really this is probably foundational and the other three pillars could sit on top of this. And this goes back to Dr. Lee Cowden, one of my mentors, President of the Academy Conference of Integrative Medicine. And he told me early on, when I was making this transition into a more, a deeper understanding of medicine, he said, when it comes to the cancer Ben, you’ve got to help people reach a point of peace an internal peace, true peace. And usually there’s gonna be unforgiveness in their heart relating to some event or person in their life at say, 80%, this was his kind of estimation of cancer patients, they’re dealing with unforgiveness. And he said, you can do all the nutrition, hydration, movement, detoxification, Ozone, mistletoe, UV light, whatever, but if they have a foundation of lack of peace and unforgiveness, it’s your chances of success go way down. 

So in his experience and this kind of points to new German medicine, Dr. Harmer, and which probably we don’t have time to get into, but his whole theory is based on, we have unresolved emotional conflict at this quantum level. You know, I explained to my patients, you know, we’re in West Texas is pretty conservative and you know, you start talking quantum, they kind of their eyes get big. So I tell patients, “Hey, if I put a microscope on your hand and I looked at the skin cells, and if I could do a high powered microscope and zoom down, what would I see? I would see carbon and nitrogen and oxygen. 

These atoms that are on the periodic chart, all those atoms you learned in chemistry. That’s what we’re made of, that’s what everything’s made of, but what’s that atom of carbon nitrogen really made of? Protons and neutrons in the nucleus, and then electrons buzz around that nucleus. But the space between that nucleus and that electron that’s buzzing around it is comparable to putting a penny on the 50 yard line of a football field, and then go to the very top of the stadium and, you know, have a mosquito fly around. 

Well, that’s mostly empty space. These atoms that make up our skin and not just our skin, this chair I’m sitting in, the brick wall behind me, the iron beams that hold up this building, it’s 99% empty space. So what’s that in that space? When you really go down further past the protons and neutrons and electrons, you get into corks and tachyons and fermions and you get to where it’s not a particle anymore. It’s vibrational energy, it’s frequency, waves of energy. Think of, you know, microwave energy or your cell phone. How do you, how can you talk to someone in England? Well, these waves go through the air. So really we’re energy, we’re energetic beings. And what Dr. Cowden would explain it to me as when you have a thought, say unforgiveness or bitterness or anger or resentment, it causes a change in the vibrational frequency at this subatomic level. And it’s that alteration of energy that attracts the toxins, like the heavy metals or glyphosate or whatever toxin. 

And it’s that toxic exposure that attracts the bugs, like candida or COVID or parasites or whatever bug you wanna chase. So he said, it’s fine to chase bugs. It’s fine to detox toxins. But what it really impacted me when he said, you can kill alligators all day long, but if you don’t drain the swamp, the alligators come back and meaning, you’ve got to get down to this more quantum subatomic level. So it boils down to our thoughts, you know. Bruce Lipton’s work “Biology of Belief.” It’s not your circumstances. It’s not the fight you just got in with your girlfriend or your boss just yelled at you or the IRS sent you a letter and you’re going bankrupt, it’s not the circumstances Bruce Lipton showed us, it’s our interpretation of them. 

What kind of goggles are we wearing that we’re looking at life through and he calls it false beliefs. I call it a lie. So I believe there’s truth and there’s lies. And if we’re believing a lie, if we’re looking at that relationship or that argument or fight, or this circumstance, or that trauma from years past, if we’re not looking at it through the goggles of truth, then it will set up abnormal vibrational frequencies in our being. So this is to me, absolutely foundational. I mean, Dr. Lorraine Day, talk about this early on. She was a head of orthopedic trauma surgery. I believe at UC San Francisco, long time ago, back in the 80s, had breast cancer. And to hear her story, that she was basically dying on her death bed on hospice with metastatic breast cancer. And she felt like God told her unforgiveness, you have unforgiveness in your heart and showed her what that was. 

She had a true forgiveness and it changed her. I mean, from that moment on, she started healing and yes, she was doing all the other great things, but she attributes that forgiveness, true forgiveness, as being the foundation of what allowed her to beat cancer and live for, you know, many, many, many years after that. So I’m a true believer in, we can’t just do stress management, so fight or flight mode, yeah, that’s a real thing, but we don’t need to be in it. Or if we get in it, we need to flip out of it. So you can do techniques to make yourself flip out of it. But then if you go right back into your job or your relationship or whatever, you’re gonna come back to that tense fight or flight mode if you haven’t changed your thoughts about that situation. 

So obviously we’re getting down more to a personal, spiritual journey that everyone’s gotta kind of wrestle through themselves. And I encourage people to do that. I’m not trying to put my beliefs onto people, but when they ask I’m more than happy to share. I know where I go is biblical and not religion. I’m not talking church and religion. I’m talking, there’s this book it’s actually 66 books written by 40 different authors over 1500 years, in three different languages, three different continents. 

You start just looking at that, like, wow, this is like impossible that a human being could have wrote this book is my, is where I landed, after I wrestled with this. I decided, man, this is a supernaturally inspired book and you gotta get religion out of it and you gotta, it’s all about relationship to God. The one that created you put you here with a purpose and a call on your life, it’s how I look at it. And when you’re lined up and walk in your purpose, whole reason you’re put on the earth, when you’re doing that, you should be at peace. 

Of course, all these thoughts come in our mind that get us off that, well, I can’t make money or I won’t be able to provide or protect myself. It’s all comes down to this provision protection in my mind, we don’t trust, we don’t trust it, there’s this, there’s God, a higher power that will provide for us, will protect us, will make a way for us, if we will trust and walk in the thing he put us here to do. So we’re all off doing these other things. It drives, fight or flight, so that’s, that’s kinda my take on it. Again, people have to wrestle through that themselves and, but I encourage people to do it. Get on your journey, start your wrestling. There’s no time like today to start looking at unforgiveness and looking at anger and bitterness, we’re not designed and meant to operate in a state of anger, bitterness and unforgiveness. 

Nathan Crane

Beautiful, yeah. I love, you know, you really talked a lot about, you know, really connecting to a deeper spiritual experience, deeper spiritual connection, and it really comes down to a daily practice, right? I mean the more you practice kindness and compassion, the more you read, you know, spiritual literature, spiritual texts, the more you meditate, the more you pray, the more you connect to a deeper spiritual experience, whatever that is for you to create or to a higher power, to source, to the earth, to whatever it is that you’re praying to or meditating on and connecting to you start to feel more peace in your heart and in your life and in your mind and you wake up, you know, I wake up, I have a daily gratitude practice. 

First thing when I wake up and first, last thing before I go to bed, you know, I spent a good five or 10 minutes just thinking about all the little things, my children, you know, a safe space for us to live, the work I get to do people. I get to help just think about the little things in my life to be grateful for every morning and every night, every single day, that’s a practice, right? And start to retrain your brain and start to reshape your subconscious thinking, you know, get into a little argument or dispute. I immediately because of practice, I can flip the switch off in five seconds and I’m out of it. You know, whereas before it might be something I hold on to for an hour or even days it’s like done, let it go, not worth it, deep breathing, it’s gone, you know, and it’s like the more we practice. And then I find myself in the less and less of those disputes, less and less of those angry situations, that I’m not perfect, I’m not enlightened, you know, yet, but certainly getting better and better with practice. 

And I think that’s what it comes down to, right? Is having a spiritual practice that we really connect to and really dive into every single day, focusing on positive thinking, focusing on, you know, our prayer or meditation, focusing on being, you know, happy, healthy, loving, kind people. And as you said, at the cellular level, you start to look at the energetics of the human being. You start to recognize that the body is so much more equipped. The immune system is up-regulated the adrenal system is turned down. Your fight or flight system is turned down. Now your body can heal when you’re in that state of peace, as you say, so beautiful. Yeah, I love your four pillars. I love the, you know, the way you’ve explained everything, you make it super simple, everything you’ve shared so far, I know at your clinic, you even have, you know, more like extensive, you know, integrative type or natural type treatments that people can come and actually do in person. They can get some more, you know, extra like high-powered support, which is great, but I love pretty much everything you’ve shared so far, is like free, safe, effective things people can do at home on their own, which is fantastic. 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Right, and I just wanna reiterate to everybody at home. It, I know it’s not as sexy sounding or cool sounding. These sound basic, they’re powerful, super powerful. I think some of the most effective integrative clinics around the world really drive this point home with their patients. You’ve got to have these basics down and then the mistletoe works better, the high dose vitamin C IV works better. The Ozone therapy works better, the Poly-MVA works better. All these different things that are known to be beneficial from around the world and have literature to support them work better when you have this foundational, nutrition, hydration, movement and peace, there’s just no doubt about it. 

And nation winners in particular has driven it home with me I mean, it’s like the first question she’ll ask if I’ve called her up, is what’s the A1C, basically, I’m not gonna talk to you Ben until the A1C’s you know, below a five it’s that important. So, and Dr. Tony Jimenez, I’ve sent patients down there too, amazing, these are incredible patients. I just wanna encourage real quick, we can maybe wrap it up, but I had a patient with stage four colon cancer, mets to the liver, went to Hope for Cancer Tony Jimenez. And she’s cancer-free to this day, her pet scan’s clear. It’s amazing, I mean, I’ve never seen that, she shouldn’t have, by this time, you know, this is six, seven years into it. It’s very rare to have a spontaneous remission like that. 

Nathan Crane

Would you tell us a couple of things about Tony? 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Antonio Jimenez at Hope for Cancer. 

Nathan Crane

Oh, I mean the patient, were saying her name was Tony or no? 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

No, no, no, no. 

Nathan Crane

I know Dr. Tony who pretty much had the exact same experience and went to the clinic and she ended up volunteer at one of my conferences, but yeah, a lot of great stories like that. 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Yeah, so just a real encouraging time to be really a part of integrative medicine. So happy you’re doing this forum that where people can learn, get educated, you know, the root, the Latin root of physician is teacher. And if more doctors taught and if we were taught broader and then we could turn around and teach, it would be incredible. We could have a health revolution. So the fact that you’re teaching your, this platform that allow physicians and other health practitioners to teach, it’s all about knowledge, you know, scripture says, “My people die from lack of knowledge.” So you’re bringing the knowledge and a platform where others can bring knowledge so that is awesome. 

You know, all the listeners out there be empowered, be encouraged, you’re the cure. I have a podcast called “You’re the Cure.” And I named it that because it’s true, your body has what it needs and has the intelligence and has the capability to heal itself if you steward it right. If you line up with the truth and steward it right. So be encouraged and just Nathan, thank you so much for, for all you’re doing, and for the hope that you’re giving people. Dr. Lee Cowden said, “There’s no such thing as false hope. There’s either hope or no hope.” So, thank you for doing in the hope that you’re providing for people and all the different outlets that they’re being exposed to go get therapies and get quality care. 

Nathan Crane

Yeah, absolutely, my pleasure. I wanna thank you for the great work you do. And for spending the time with us here on this interview, giving people a lot of really great solutions they can do at home. And I wanted to ask you, so people wanna learn more from you directly, or they wanna come visit one of your clinics in Texas, what’s the best way for them to get in touch with you and your team? 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Okay, well, Veritas Medical is the name of our clinic. Veritusmedical.com is the clinic website, but we’ve also established Veritaswellness.health and the focus of that is more educations. So we have wellness navigators kind of like a health coach. You can Zoom with them. There’s a weekly class that we do each week. There’s a lecture on the four pillars and they can just walk with you from a health coaching perspective. So Veritaswellness.health, Veritasmedical.com. Are our two probably best places to reach us? 

Nathan Crane

What does Veritas mean? 

Ben Edwards, M.D.

Latin for truth. My wife and I were laying in bed one night when I first started getting introduced to the truth. And I said, man, this is amazing and it’s just the truth. What’s Greek for truth and what’s Latin for truth. And I forget what the Greek was, but Latin was Veritas and we googled it real quick, veritasmedical.com. Does anybody have that? Nobody had it, so we took it and it’s been awesome because it is just walking in the truth is the key. So, yeah. 

Nathan Crane

Yeah, I’ll spell it for people in case they can’t make out the pronunciation. Veritas is V-E-R-I-T-A-S, VE-R-I-T-A-S, Veritasmedical.com. Dr. Edwards, thank you so much again, we really appreciate your time. 

Ben Edwards, M.D. 

You bet, Nathan, thanks for having me. 

Nathan Crane

And thank you all for tuning in here to the Global Cancer Symposium. Make sure to share this with your friends, family, colleagues, anybody who needs to hear this information, make sure to visit Veritasmedical.com. You can learn more about working with Dr. Edwards and his team, and take a look at the health and healing club healthandhealingclub.com where you can join our global membership dedicated to helping you get and stay healthy. Again, I’m Nathan Crane. I wish you all ultimate health and happiness take care.