An Inflammation Nation: How to Reduce It through Diet, Lifestyle and Natural Anti-inflammatories

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Thank you for having me again. 

Nathan Crane

So it’s been a while since we’ve connected. We’ve done a lot of great stuff over the years together, done multiple sit-down interviews with you. You have spoken at my conferences, you’ve been on my summits. You have a great multiple segments in my award-winning film, “Cancer; The Integrated Perspective”, and I’m sharing this because, I really believe in and trust the work that you do, the research, the evidence-based approaches that you bring to the integrative field of helping people with cancer and all chronic diseases for that matter. And I know one of your major specialties is inflammation, right? ‘Cause we know inflammation is one of the underlying causes of cancer, as well as one of the underlying contributors to pretty much every chronic disease, lifestyle-related metabolic diseases that we deal with today, right? So maybe to start with answering this question for everyone. What exactly is inflammation, right? Or chronic inflammation, and what are the primary lifestyle behaviors that cause chronic inflammation? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Sure, perfect question. So thanks, again for having me, and thanks to your audience for listening. So let’s start off with what inflammation is. And generally it’s a complex source of metabolic, physiological, anatomical, immunological processes. It sounds really complex, but in a nutshell, we can always say it, the word inflammation just means fire, in terms of defining what flammer inflammation means. And inflammation just means itis, I-T-I-S, like when we write something. So when we think of inflammation, it’s just inflammation is the chronic degeneration through a lot of these variety of diet, lifestyle, environmental sources as well, and even stress as one of them, as for example. 

And these trigger these responses that are supposed to normally kind of balance the body. Like you need to have some inflammation you won’t have too much, but when it’s too much, then it progresses a dis-ease that we may have into disease, right? And then some of those diseases, actually can progress into cancer. And so the key is reducing inflammation as a whole. When we look at inflammation, just to give you an example, and I think I’ve done this before, but I always like to tell the audience every time, is inflammation, we’ll just think of anything with an itis.

So if you have one of these things, you have a problem. So no dermatitis, red eyes, conjunctivitis, runny nose, rhinitis, sinusitis, gingivitis of your, esophagitis, laryngitis, thyroiditis, gastritis, colitis, prostatitis, vaginitis, arthritis, tendonitis. We have over 200 different itises now. And unfortunately, Western medicine sometimes, looks at just treating the symptom. So, we can give a pain medicine, we can give some kind of cheap direct aspect, but from our perspective, using evidence-based integrative therapies, we’re looking at can we find the underlying triggering mechanisms that are causing the inflammatory responses in each individual? Some of them are general, like diet and lifestyle. Then we go further, like what specific foods may be in their diet, and what are the maybe triggers in their environment as well, even the stressors in their mind as well. And then can we help reduce that naturally, and improve their overall outcome. 

Today, what’s happening right now, is with the standard American diet and lifestyle, this is why we have so many inflammatory responses. And as I mentioned before, I think, a long time ago in my book, I had that the US was ranking 46 out of 48 industrial nations in terms of chronic diseases and the outcome, even though we spent more than any other country, I think the top 10 or 15 combined, right? 

So we were the wealthiest nation with the poorest chronic outcomes, is because chronic inflammation is a little bit more challenging to treat from a conventional standpoint. They’re really good at acute care. So for example, you sprain your ankle, which is an immediate acute inflammatory response, that’s a good thing. When you have a fever and you’re sick, that’s a good thing. Your body’s evoking its immune response to fight, fix, and repair. However, if you have a chronic fever, so now your fever is 10 days, right? Or your ankle is still swelling, then there’s a problem because that can cause some degeneration or lack of healing or inhibition of getting to that optimum healing response. 

So what we have to look at from our perspective are what are the triggers, which we usually address when we approach our patients, and then what are the ways to lower it naturally. And even if someone is using conventional therapies, as our goal is how do we even make those therapies less side effects, and improve their outcomes are. We’re kinda data-driven in how we look at things, and we’re not anti this, or pro this, we’re looking at how do we just improve the outcome of whatever they’re using or the opportunity that they have in front of them.

Nathan Crane

So talking about chronic inflammation, specifically in regards to cancer, right? We know, well, let, I don’t wanna assume actually that everybody knows this, but I know through your work and through the extensive research I’ve done, I’ve actually been filming a masterclass and researching for a new book about cancer. And when you do like research for a book, it’s like heavy, it’s like hours and hours and hours of looking at data, data, data, data, right? And I didn’t even fully understand exactly how chronic inflammation caused cancer specifically until I started really digging deep into the data, right? And so it was like, yeah, chronic inflammation is certainly one of the underlying conditions that are associated with cancer and most chronic diseases, all the itises that you said, right? But actually chronic inflammation causes cancer, right? Can you, maybe you can help explain for all of us, even including myself, like how would you explain to somebody who isn’t data-driven, who isn’t into understanding scientific jargon, if you will, how chronic inflammation actually causes cancer. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Sure. 

Nathan Crane

And what we need to be concerned about that. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Right. 

Nathan Crane

Since we are in an, as you state in your title of your book in “Inflammation Nation”. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Yeah, so, in my book, I actually summarize, the 1500 references of studies and medical articles and journal articles that have been published on this topic, tried to put it in an easy to understand fashion, so those people don’t have to look and dig deep like you and I would. But when you look at a disease, for example, let’s just take hepatitis, which is due to say, due to hepatitis C, that chronic inflammation into someone’s liver over a period of time, like a decade or more, increases their risk of getting liver cancer. 

For example, people have esophagitis, they get the chronic heartburn and, they take these drugs or we would give ’em, we would actually change their tie and heal it. But when people take these chronic issues, the idea is that that chronic inflammation, the erosion of those cells in the esophagus due to the chronic insult from the acidic inflammation from a different area in the stomach, that actually changes that tissue to turn into a cancerous cell. And so, when people have like cervix issues, so women that have to get Pap smears, and say they have HPV, which is a virus. 

That virus can cause chronic inflammation into the cervix, and over time, this can turn into a dysplasia, and to a metaplasia, meaning the cells of the cervix will change over time to eventually lead into a cancer, or put that patient at a higher risk of getting cervical cancer. Same thing with chronic bronchitis, particularly due to smokers as we know. They can get lung cancer, and their lung cancer’s the highest risk as most people know. But still what happens is that chronic inflammation, what it does is it’s not only just causing degeneration or destruction of the tissue, but it also has an immunosuppressive activity. So it suppresses your immune system, which I usually call the soldier cells, your army, navy, air force, you know it, your marines, the military. So if your military is not able to fight, fix, and repair, and there’s chronic damage, then there’s just bad outcomes coming over in any kind of area of tissue where the body has the inflammation. 

Nathan Crane

Yeah, I mean, that’s very well said, you’re able to take something complex and make it super simple for people, right? And like basically how I understand and you can correct me if I’m wrong is one of the, some of those causes of chronic inflammation are things like persistent infections, right? Also persistent exposure to toxins, right? It’s that toxic substance continuously chronically infecting the area, causing the damage. And then your body is sending leukocytes into to heal and repair. And then you got damage and repair and damage and repair. And through that process, you have this volatile thing that happens, right? Between the chemicals that are being released from the cells that actually can turn the cells into cancer cells, right? So it’s that chronic situation of damage, repair, damage, repair, damage, repair over time that starts the spread of cancer, is that right?

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Correct, and then when we look at this, when we look at the overall lifestyle of a patient and we look at the data, it goes, tobacco is one of the highest causes in contributing as you know, of cancer, right? Obviously, but diet as actually the first and foremost number one cause, and then aside of so goes diet, it goes tobacco. And then it goes obesity, ’cause obesity then triggers all sorts of inflammatory hormonal responses and other kind of issues in terms of leading to other comorbidities. And then we look at infections which is in, just getting our immune system, and then we at the environment. And then we finally, we look at genetics, which is only 3% of all diseases genetically related. 

So it’s this epigenetic, which is the diet lifestyle environment belief system, which is triggering this onslaught of inflammation that we can control. Now, I’ll give you another example. Say people have colitis, okay? Which is inflammation of the colon. People have colitis for about 30 years, have a 43% increase risk of getting colorectal cancer, ’cause that’s just there’s chronic inflammation in their columns constantly bleeding, is constantly inflamed. That can then trigger changes in the colon, which then can make more polyps grow, and the polyps can eventually turn into cancer. 

So not every polyps the cancer for example, but those people have colitis have higher risks of having more inflamed polyps, which puts them at a higher risk. People that have rheumatoid arthritis. So someone has a active rheumatoid arthritis that is not treated correctly. In 10 years, they have a 71-time higher rate of getting lymphoma, because it’s a systemic inflame. Their whole body is on fire. Their joints are actually degenerating. So it actually, triggers, their immune responses goes to another level. It’s like, I can’t even fix this. I can’t even repair it, I’m out. And then more bad things occur, ’cause the inflammation is still coming in to those patients. 

Nathan Crane

So obviously, I mean, chronic inflammation is a major culprit we have to address, which, and we’re gonna get into in this interview. I know you’re gonna share with us some really practical and evidence-based approaches what we can do to, reduce our chronic inflammation, which ultimately is going to help our bodies do what it’s designed to do, which is to heal itself from chronic diseases like cancer, right? But we’ve got to get to the underlying cause and condition that is creating the chronic inflammation. And, you just mentioned some of the core causes or really the core causes of that, right? And you mentioned diets. So, because you’re so research-based and you know the science behind this, what is like the, let’s say, what is the most scientifically proven diet, or foods that directly cause inflammation or chronic inflammation? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Right, so at the end of the day, when people come to this diet discussion, I think it’s kind of been put to rest because we know that all the research and all the published evidence will show that eating a whole foods plant-based diet is the best. Now, even more so is that instead of people getting into that bitter debate, you have to ask, everybody has to ask the simple question, are you eating a pro-inflammatory food, or an anti-inflammatory food? Does the food have phytonutrients or not? Does the food have fiber or not? Is the food high and rich in antioxidants or not? Does it have cholesterol or not? ‘Cause that, so those are some kinda, is it cause endotoxins or disruption to your microbiome or not? And so if you understand those kinds of concepts, where you need, we all need fiber in our diet to feed our microbiome, to have colon health, to reduce blood sugar, et cetera, et cetera, right?

We need phytonutrients, phyto, meaning plant. Those are all the nutrients that, now everybody goes to the health store, and we buy every single phytonutrient on the shelf, which is like, beta-keratin in my flavonoids, in my resveratrol, my green teas, or my curcuminoids, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So those are all the phytonutrients that only come from plant foods. So fiber only comes from plant foods. Antioxidants are higher and richer in plant foods than even the wild-caught and the grass-fed animal protein foods. And remember, plant foods have no cholesterol and animal proteins have cholesterol. And remember, three people every minute still have a heart attack in America. 

So heart disease is still, in sight of this year being COVID, is still the number one cause of death in the United States, and also worldwide. So with a look at, is it pro-inflammatory or anti-inflammatory? So in general, all the plant foods are anti-inflammatory, unless someone has a sensitivity and we can talk about those kind of things to certain foods. But we wanna look at us eating a whole foods plant-based diet, which is anti-inflammatory. In general, the data will show 80 to 82% of all diseases will get reversed or slow down of the progression of the disease. So like diabetes and heart disease, and those things are very simple to treat with diet. I mean, every day we get people with 50 to 70 points drop of their cholesterol. 

Their A1C can drop three or four points, just moving in a diet within a month. So it’s not like a huge, like, “Oh I’ve been eating this way for 65 years. It’s gonna take me another 65 years to get healthier.” I’m like, “It’ll take you less than three months to totally, to recheck your blood sugar and to get another blood test.” So these things are really easy to treat or to give advice to, for people to follow. However, these are also lifestyle changes, which as you know in America, is one of the most difficult things to change, because people want convenience, they want fast food, they want quick and easy and sometimes cheap, but you can still eat plant-based diet, you can even eat organic, very inexpensively. 

I think there’s a misnomer that, people wanna push it to sound like these things are expensive, but really at the end of the day, your body is your vehicle. So I tell everybody, treat yourself like a Ferrari, you’d only put good fuel in your Ferrari. If you wanna run like an old jalopy, then that’s what you’re gonna get. And so I think most people wanna drive like a Ferrari, they wanna feel like a Ferrari. So then you got to take care of yourself just as much as you would take care of your car. 

Nathan Crane

I got to say that’s the first time I’ve heard somebody say jalopy aside from myself in the last 15 years, so. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Well, I didn’t wanna say the other car manufacturer ’cause I might be liable for saying something bad about a car manufacturer. So just for purposes of liability, I’d pick a jalopy. I think hopefully there’s no jalopies out there, but, I couldn’t think of a car manufacturer that’s deffoged now, it’s like, ’cause they don’t like, maybe have to be safe, but. 

Nathan Crane

Oh, that’s great. Yeah, I had to mention that I’m like, “Oh, I thought I was the only one that ever said jalopy.” So if you were to identify top five foods that are pro-inflammatory, what are they? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Okay, so the top five foods that are pro-inflammatory are first of all, anything that has a mother or a face, right? So those are animal proteins, right? But at first, when I kinda put ’em in the ranking order, right? ‘Cause when I see patients, I’m not a perfectionist, I’m a realist, right? So we wanna move them. Now, if they’re a cancer patient, they got to go plant-based immediately if they wanna have the best improved outcome that the data will show. However, first and foremost, I always start with dairy, because dairy is the big one, dairy, we consume more dairy product than almost any other food product. we’re having on average about two pounds per day of per dairy products per person, which is kind of insane. 

Dairy stimulates insulin growth factor. As we know, cancer cells have 10 to 12 times more insulin receptors. So it actually is one of the things that when we show it, not only in animal studies, but even in cell culture, you can actually grow a cancer cell, say a breast cancer cells can multiply just directly by putting the dairy protein. Remember dairy is supposed to stimulate the growth of of a young animal, right? So cows milk is not our mother’s milk. We were breastfed from our mom, but it’s a different source of protein. In fact, that protein sources is much much higher than human milk. And so there’s, all the data will show that, I would avoid, always, first and foremost, starting dairy. And remember, dairy also doesn’t improve their bone health. Remember, so that’s also a misnomer. 

Milk does not do a body good so much so that they can not say that legally. And that’s why the USDA took out that in their advertising, okay? So there’s no reason to have a growth promoting type of foods, particularly that, and we’re not baby animals anymore. After the age of four, you even lose the enzyme to break down dairy products. 

That’s why most people have lactose intolerance around the world, okay/ But there’s an industry, there’s a lot of e-groups, so they’ll still continue selling it. And one of the things that makes dairy really difficult selecting, is that dairy contains casomorphins, and the casomorphins are these proteins in the dairy that triggers the opioid receptor in our brain. And so when we eat it, when you’re sad, it makes you happy, when you’re happy, it makes you happier. That’s why ice cream always wins no matter where, you go to the grocery store, there’s ice cream that goes for the whole side of the store. Usually it’s this freezers full of ice. It doesn’t matter what kind of ice cream, right? It’s because it is something that we can take pleasure in immediately, right? So we got to get rid of the dairy. 

Nathan Crane

What about, before that, what about raw organic, like locally hand-milked milk.

Sunil Pai, M.D.

It still has, it still triggers an insulin growth factor. So what they’re doing with the organic, and this is also with all the grass-fed and wild caught, is yes, they are removing some of the hormones from that, right? And pesticides from that. So that is, clean food is cleaner, but it doesn’t mean that it’s healthier, right? So it still has still has no fiber. It still has no fiber nutrients. It still has, it’s still pro-inflammatory, and dairy is one of the most pro-inflammatory foods, just when it comes to allergies and inflammation. So that’s why, even pediatrics, we always tell people, get your kids off of milk and then boom, their ear infections and respiratory, and even acne 300% increase in acne in teens who consume milk, you cut off the milk, their acne goes away. So these are all things that we. 

Nathan Crane

Drinking, I mean, that’s one of the things you can see, right? I grew up drinking tons of milk and eating lots of cheese. And oh, when I quit drinking all dairy stuff, like one if the things that improves is you have a lot less mucus right? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Correct. It’s a very pro-inflammatory food. And most people understand that outside of the growth and development in this really small the small period of time, there is no further advantage of eating that food. We’re no longer babies, right? So you remember a cow takes a relatively short period of time with a year to rapidly grow to 1500 pounds or 2,000 pounds. We have 18 years that we’re growing to say that we’re all become adults. So all the data has shown that. So there’s normally an argument anymore, but people, this is our lifestyle, right? We put cheese and dairy, and yogurt and ice cream and whey protein drinks. And so it’s a cultural thing that we have to learn how to change. 

But now, the benefit is that there’s so many plant-based options and alternatives now, that there wasn’t, say 20 years ago that, there’s plant-based cheeses and milks and there’s a milk of every kind in the store now. Every day they’re squeezing something, getting something out of a seed or a net of some kind, which is great. And that, so it does provide that. So people can have their cream, their coffee, and their cereal, and then they can have their vegan ice creams and all the stuff like, still is a lot of sugar, for example, but it’s still healthier. We’re trying to move this transition of not taking these proinflammatory foods.

Nathan Crane

And you can make your own, like we make our own almond milk all the time, right? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Sure. 

Nathan Crane

You make in a blender. We ended up getting an almond, it’s called an almond cow, right? And literally, we put water, almond, little bit of vanilla, organic vanilla, a little bit of salt and a touch of maple syrup and no preservatives, very low sugar, and it’s super, super healthy delicious milk. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

We too, we teach people how to do that as well. The second food that I avoid is eggs. 

Nathan Crane

What about before we get in eggs, what about ghee? ‘Cause ghee is this huge thing that so many health experts are promoting nowadays, right? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Yeah. So it’s controversial because if, depending on how vegan you are, right? So some people are like, “I don’t wanna have any animal protein at all. Like, I didn’t even wanna have vitamin D, ’cause most vitamin D comes from animal sources.” And so there is plant-based things as well that people can have. I’m not that much of a purist in the coming, with the Ayurvedic background is that ghee has a lot of health benefits from a fat source, right? When we clarify the butter, we’re actually removing the animal protein content. And that’s why ghee doesn’t gets, ghee is stored outside the refrigerator. You can keep ghee for a hundred of years, it doesn’t spoil like butter. 

So from our perspective, if someone doesn’t have a dairy allergy, which we will check for in our clinic and blood testing, and they’re not so strictly like, “I can’t touch an animal product,” which I would respect if they said no, then we would have other options, then it can be used as a healthy fat. We do see that it does not affect their lipids in a negative fashion. And that’s one of the things that when I was in India, during my training, when they do these hospital treatments called Panchakarma, it’s like a kind of a detox, but it’s a full, not the Westernized detox, this is real, where the word, detoxification comes from. 

They actually give people ghee during the treatment. When I went there 20 years ago as a Western doctor in my white coat, I was like, “Oh my God, you’re gonna cause heart disease.” And I was kind of like shaming them. And they would just show me the blood tests on the lipids, they don’t go up. And I was shocked because I didn’t understand the difference between what they called biotransformation of foods. So the clarification of butter is a process of actually removing most of that harmful contaminants. And so for those people who still 

Nathan Crane

It’s like a healthy fat, like. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

It is a healthier fat, but it’s still coming from an animal source. So those people who are like, who are still like, “I don’t want to touch anything from an animal,” then I’d say don’t have ghee. However, for example, there’s a lot of people who are still doing this trend of like putting like MCT, medium-chain triglycerides, or a lot of coconut oil and things, and their lipids will go up. So even vegans, they’re take that stuff and their cholesterol can be 300. And then when I switch them over and say, “Hey if you wanna try a little bit of ghee instead of that,” their numbers will go down, but that’s more of a personal choice. Ayurvedically we find that it does have some other health benefits, and other qualities that we’re looking at in terms of balancing their constitution. 

Nathan Crane

Okay, all right. So I think we covered just about everything on dairy that we could, so where now you were talking about eggs as a second proinflammatory food. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Yeah, so eggs is something that, because the first two, like dairy and eggs, where we think of vegetarian, right? And so vegetarians would say, “Hey, I’m not eating pork or beef, or this, I’m eating a lot of eggs and dairy, cheese, eggs, and breakfast burritos.” But the eggs, aside of having the highest amount of cholesterol, two eggs have about 423 milligrams of cholesterol, which is seven times more than any other serving of food of an animal protein. So if someone had, for example, a four-ounce piece of steak or a four-ounce piece of chicken or something like that, or have about 64 ounce, 64 milligrams of cholesterol, two eggs, raw meaning before you cook them with all the butter and all these oils and stuff, it’s about seven times more, 423 milligrams. 

So the average person having that in terms of risk of heart disease is high. But in the last five years, we’ve understood that when the eggs, the protein of the eggs goes into the microbiome, which is so, out of like, not so important, is that it converts to something called TMAO. And TMAO is a new, is understood as a kind of a procarcinogenic metabolite that’s being converted. So it’s not just, is it white? Is it the whites or it’s the yolk? So is that the cholesterol or is that other supply, it’s that’s heart disease and inflammation, now understanding is triggering another mechanism where, ’cause most of us here in New Mexico, like you being up in Santa Fe, we all used to get our eggs from Taos. 

So it’s our organic free range and all that stuff. Some kumbaya is the cleaner egg than getting a factory farm egg, however, it still converts the TMIL. What we’re understanding right now, is that all animal protein still causes dysfunction to the microbiome. They all produce endotoxins. And even when we get an animal protein that’s organic, grass-fed, wild-caught. And even if we cook it, boil it, and even when we have stomach acid, it still creates endotoxins in the gut, triggers inflammatory responses and things like leaky gut and other kind of inflammatory disruptions to where 80% of your immune system is functioning in your gut. So there’s no. So now the, lot of times a lot of people argue, well, this is better than this. And they do that all the time, right? So like fish is better than chicken. Chicken is better than beef. Beef is better than pork. So that industry will always do that. But what will supersede all of that, in terms of like you just not eating any of it as much as you can, as often as you can. 

Nathan Crane

So that’s true for, I mean, is that true for wild-caught? Let’s say it’s very low mercury, wild-caught salmon. Is it, so, is that 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Yeah, because remember, ’cause remember 

Nathan Crane

An endotoxin to be generated in the-

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Yes, it’s true, and also remember the, so yes, it has omega-3 it’s a salmon, right? But it still has no phytonutrients, it still has no fiber. And so there is, it stores cholesterol. So the idea is that, where everybody’s trying to make, especially in that industry, they’re trying to still say, well, it has some benefits, and on some level, comparing it to something worse is very easy. But at the end of the day, you just got to answer those questions, ’cause they have phytonutrients, ’cause they have fiber, is it pro-inflammatory, is an anti-inflammatory? Does it have high in antioxidants or not? And doesn’t have cholesterol or not? If you do, if you understand those things, it’ll just keep leading you to one aspect, they we’re trying to eat plant-based. 

Now to be fair, there is issues with certain plants, and the reason being is if someone has a food sensitivity, that’s this, one of the things that we specialize in, is like we move people to what the evidence will say is, eat a plant-based diet. However, we still respect your individual immune system and say like, your body can say, I have a trouble with wheat or soy or corn or kale or avocados. And we have to look at through testing to see does your body have a reaction within an hour, or up to four days later after eating something that’s triggering a chronic inflammatory response, because when people move to plant-based diets, sometimes we’re eating more of these foods, right? 

So I’m eating more kale, I’m eating more blueberries, more avocados. And so we wanna make sure that every food that comes in someone’s diet would now, so we know like here’s the evidence-based information that plant-based is better, but now we go further. So what makes our practice different and unique is that we go further to say, you know what, we now wanna analyze, and so that, can we look up what specific foods, even on this side of the aisle, may your body have a problem with? And if we can eliminate that or reduce it, or we train the body to tolerate it, then even that overall inflammatory burden is lower. 

Nathan Crane

So you talked about dairy, talked about eggs, you’ve talked about, and well, more about animal protein, right? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, so it’s like, same thing or same thing will go to the beef and same thing will go to pork. In my book, one of the things I do, which is very interesting for those who are listening, is that if you wanna learn about each industry, because, the answer was, and believe it or not, before I went plant-based in 2006, I was that guy who was getting clean food. My fish became, from that special fishery in Alaska. And my beef came from Japan that I had a massage therapist work on it. And my chickens came from Taos, and they slept for some kumbaya. So I was that person, and I thought I was being healthier, and I’d go out and pay a little extra, go out of my way to buy these things when people would come over. But at the end of the day, it didn’t answer those same simple questions, the foundation of nutrition and health. And therefore all it was doing was just paying a higher rate of cost. 

Now the data shows that even conventional, there’s a recent study showed last year that eating conventional factory farm, versus organic, right? Didn’t really show that much of a difference in terms of health benefit, right? Because it still doesn’t answer those same qualities. So yes, we do have a little bit less hormone. We have a little bit less pesticides herbicide, right? But it still doesn’t have those other main foundational nutritional aspects that you need for optimum health. 

Nathan Crane

Well, here’s what I’ve seen, and this is my perception, my belief, what I’ve seen in the, let’s call the health guru, the health expert industry, if you will, I’m not gonna name in names. But there’s some really key figures that I know everybody out here has probably heard of, maybe even trust them in their intelligence. They have millions of followers. And when you look into kind of like, okay what do they really recommend for the healthiest foods for people with cancer, with auto-immunity, with diabetes, et cetera, they all lead to basically the same path that the data shows us, right? Which is a whole foods plant-based, diverse, organic, highly-nutritional diet, right? But one thing a lot of ’em do and I noticed this in this man’s, there’s something people’s questions like, Well, why does so-and-so say to eat grass-fed beef, or so-and-so says, it’s okay to have some wild caught salmon? 

And, this is my perception of that, ’cause I asked the same question. And if you look deeper into it, I really feel it’s more of like, they don’t want to polarize or lose that huge chunk of their audience, right? And they haven’t really looked at the hard data on the wild-caught salmon, or on the grass-fed beef. And they go, well, if you’re gonna eat beef, if you’re gonna eat cows, make sure it’s grass-fed, right? And they don’t say much more than that. They don’t go into detail, they don’t go on the science. They don’t go into information.

Sunil Pai, M.D.

And I think you’re right in that sense, that they’re afraid of ostracizing or polarizing, but at the end of the day, when I work with the patients, it’s kinda like this, you’re joining the Olympics, I’m your coach. And if you got to go through the training, you’re going for gold. I don’t, I’m not looking for bronzes or silvers. And when you’re dealing with cancer, you’re looking at improving your outcome. So a little bit of cancer is not good enough. And that’s the disconnect where, when they are afraid to kind of speak towards the patient saying like, “Yeah, these are lifestyle changes.” You have to make these lifestyle changes. 

Well, the choices to the patient of whether they want a gold, a silver or a bronze. And the idea is that if you really wanna overcome cancer, no matter what stage of disease, no matter what type of treatment is, you have to be working on doing gold activities, right? And it’s like, you just can’t go say, I do this partial thing and expect to go to the Olympics. And I think the problem with a lot of the providers as well is that, they themselves, don’t also wanna make the change, right? And to be frank, it was tough for me in the beginning. People read my book, you’ll read my story. And then, just like you, when I see you on Instagram exercising, it wasn’t easy probably in the beginning to go the gym and to do sit ups and pull ups every day, the first probably three months were hemming and hawing and like us, but then your body’s like, wow, I transform, I look better, I feel better. I’m playing with my family and my kids, I’m sleeping better. 

My libido, my cognition’s better. My immune system is stronger. And then you go, I love exercising now, right? So just like when I tell people, when they change they transform their diet and we help them. We give them recipes, we give ’em alternatives and all these other things like that, is that over time, when you achieve wellness, you never go back. Like once you drive the Ferrari, the jalopy is never gonna work again. You know what I’m saying? But most people have never felt good. Most people have never had, they’ve always had a chronic disease, although, and they come in, some of these people have these conditions older than me. They’re like, I’ve had this before you were born, Dr. Pai. You know what I’m saying? Well, that’s too 

long. You know what I’m saying? Like that’s too long. But the reference range of what wellness means, most people at the end of the day, they’re just trying to keep their head above water. They’re treading, and for us, it’s not just teaching people how to swim, it’s teaching people how to sail. And that’s a completely different level of wellness and optimum health rather than saying, well, my disease is managed, it’s under control. That’s still not normal, that’s just controlled through drugs or even through natural therapies, we haven’t improved their physiology, mental spirit, spiritual on down. There has to be a complete transformation of that patient if they wanna truly achieve optimum wellness. 

Nathan Crane

I mean, I love, I love the metaphor of look, you have cancer, like we’re going into training, right? Like I’m a CrossFit athlete. Like I train to compete ’cause I love it, and I train for longevity for the rest of my life, ’cause I wanna be healthy and vital and energetic when I’m in my 90s. I wanna be hiking mountains with my great, great grandkids. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Right. 

Nathan Crane

I don’t know, about great, great, the great grandkids, right? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Yeah, sure, you never know. 

Nathan Crane

Well yeah, you never know. But like those are my goals, right? But what you’re saying is like, look, you’ve got to take this seriously and you can’t just greenwash the information if you will. And as they working out, you wanna eat some grass-fed beef, it’s okay. It’s like, no, it directly causes inflammation, endotoxins in your gut to be released. We know it’s gonna contribute to cancer cell proliferation. You need to cut it out a hundred percent. And it’s like, if you’re not willing to give people that hard fact, that hard truth, I think you’re doing a disservice to people, right? And that’s unfortunate. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

And to give you an example, one of the things just recently, in a study that came out a few months ago, was there actually, ’cause, we would actually help people with transitioning their diet, right? It’s not eating kale and keto all day, which is a misperception. I just say whatever you’re eating, like if I’m having Mexican food or Indian food or Thai food or Thaian food, I’m just changing out to make it more plant-based options, right? And there’s a study that just came out recently which is really fantastic because it helps people with this transition and it goes like this. They took all this wild-caught, organic, grass-fed animal proteins, fish and beef and chicken, okay? And then they took processed, frozen plant-based alternatives that are say, like so here’s your meat substitute plant-based, here’s your chicken substitute plant-based, and they’re processed, right? So they’re not fresh. 

So everybody comes in and they’ll say, “Hey, I’d rather eat the real stuff than that fake food.” But the studies showed is that they match the amount of protein and the amount of fat in the foods because that’s what gives us the energy of feeling full, and that mouth feel, like that burger was really juicy, the fattiness of that, right? Or whatever we’re eating, for example. And so they imagine the study and what they showed is at the end of the study of these people eating these foods and did a nice crossover and everything like that, is that the people that ate the plant-based substitute still did better on all the parameters, inflammatory, cardiovascular, diabetes, blood sugar, because you’re still getting phytonutrients, you’re still getting some fiber, you’re still getting, it’s anti-inflammatory, it’s not pro-inflammatory, it doesn’t cause endotoxin disruption, doesn’t cause a microbiome. 

So even then, so then if I tell people, “Hey, if you don’t know how to cook this way or you don’t know how to, then go get a plant-based sausage right now, go get a plant-based burger. It’s transitioning them to not have the things that are worse. And now I can actually say that, before, and some people might say that’s sacrilegious, because you should always be whole foods plant-based, I am trying to move the patient to get a gold. And again, eventually you got to go from a bronze to silver, to a gold. It’s hard just to go, it’s hard to just jump in your time, right? Like if you’re an athlete, right? You got to get a little bit stronger and healthier. So giving people a little bit examples and saying, “Hey, we’re not talking about perfection here.” If I can give you a plant-based alternative, I will. 

If I can get a cleaner food and I’ll also, if we can avoid some of your food sensitivities, then we transitioned it, it’s really easy. And once people have that comfort, ’cause it’s comfort food that we’re all used to eating, right? Still an American fair, then it’s easy. It’s not as restrictive, it’s not eating salads and drinking green juices all day, which is a misperception again of what this alternative counselor role might be offering or selling online. It’s actually providing really healthy, good food.

Nathan Crane

Yeah, it’s fascinating in that study, and it of course makes sense. Even if it’s processed, it’s not the multiple fresh stuff. It’s like, you’re still getting more nutrients, right? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Which is really interesting, right? So it’s like, and it was, and I’m really happy to do that study because then it takes this burden off of people saying like, oh my God, do I have to be perfect? Do I have to go to the grocery store all the time? And if I’m living by myself, the produce sometimes goes off a little bit. Can I buy something from? Yes, you can. I’m transitioning them to get to a place where they can maybe make their own almond milk or just, but if they can, if they’re sick or they don’t have the time or support, then there’s still other things that they can simply do to still be a better healthy option to provide better health outcomes. 

Nathan Crane

Okay, so in terms of orders so far, what’s number one, number two, number three pro-inflammatory? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

So eggs, yeah. 

Nathan Crane

In eggs, or what’s the order you would say? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

I mean, all animal protein is pro-inflammatory, right? So it depends on how much they eat. So if I’m in Texas it might be barbecue foods, right? If I’m in Mississippi, it might be a lot of the fried seafood, right? Like piling po’boy sandwiches all day long. And so also remember, it’s not just the animal proteins, it’s the high omega-6 is that we’re using. So even the vegetable oil. So remember, so it’s like the cheeseburger and the French fries, remember. And this is where people who go plant-based or I think sometimes the younger generation, that also can be unhealthy just eating French fries all day and saying, “Hey, I’m vegan.” If oreos are vegan, beer is vegan. So while some of ’em are. So it doesn’t mean it’s unhealthy-

Nathan Crane

I know plenty of unhealthy vegans. It’s not about 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Yeah. Well, no, yeah. So for us, it’s like eating plant-based foods, and a doughnut is still a donut, even if it’s vegan. Now, it doesn’t mean that people can’t have a donut here or there or can’t have a piece of pie or cake on a holiday or a birthday party or anniversary. But what happens every day is game day in America, every day is celebration in America. That’s why we have the ice cream aisle all across the store and et cetera, et cetera, you know what I’m saying? So that’s where the, I think the danger of sometimes, is that there’s too many options right now of even plant-based desserts. So I can go to the healths food store and there’s just so much junk food there, as people would think, right? ‘Cause that’s when you go in, right? There’s donuts and cookies and maybe, all that right there, like then the produce is way over here, right? I always tell people, you’ve got to go to the produce, fill your produce aisle first, fully thought first and try to like, ’cause otherwise, we’re all victim to the marketing. 

Nathan Crane

It’s funny when I go shopping, that’s exactly what I do first. I always go straight to produce and get as much produce. Like that feels like most of our cart, in the, all the other, healthy package stuff, right? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

And I tell people when you get, when you get packaged stuff, try to limit it and try to not put it in your cart. Because we all, if I get something, if I get even a vegan ice, I’m gonna eat it. If I get chips, I’m gonna eat it. Like it’s one of those things I, we, our will is not as strong as we think, right/ And marketing is very strong, and pricing and placement and sociability. So I, like, we just can’t fall victim to that because this is the victim. The standard American diet has victimized not only the United States, but the rest of the of the industrial world and everybody else is following that. And it’s no longer sustainable from a healthcare cost perspective and environmental perspective, any kind of perspective. So we really have to, just like we’re changing our energy sources, we got to change our food sources.

Nathan Crane

Okay, so what are the next two? The number four, number five of the really, culprits. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

I mean, I would do pork and beef, as that, I would say all animal protein. 

Nathan Crane

You wouldn’t group all of the, all meats into like one, just to say all 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

I would, I mean, I would just say, don’t eat any of them. Like, I don’t like that. You’re asking me these top five. So I’m trying to put in the five. But I don’t think there’s one better than the other, because they still are failing to meet that test of what what is optimum foods for nutrition and health and healing. But, the idea is that it depends on how much people eat. So some people are eating like eggs every day, like dozens of eggs, or some people are just drinking cheese and yogurts. And so I will sort of start with the one that’s consuming a lot more, ’cause it’s about the reduction in the beginning, it’s the reduction of the biggest things that they’re hitting ’em. 

Or if they have a food sensitivity as well, I need to remove that food because that also is triggering inflammation, well, if it’s coming from a plant. And so are legume or grain, or fruit. And so we still have to look at the totality of what are the things that are triggering inflammation directly as we know as a food source. And then, from their own perspective, immunologically, is there a sensitivity? And if you remove those, they’re in a completely anti-inflammatory state. Then, when we give anti-inflammatories naturally, or other therapies for targeting their cancer cell metabolism or their immune system or microbiome, they respond very well. The problem is it’s like throwing all this on top of or throwing, the oncology drugs are throwing on top of this. 

We have a concept called prehab, if patients get diagnosed, and it’s not a fast or an aggressive tumor in their earlier stage, and sometimes like, “Oh, I gotta get a lumpectomy, or I got to get a surgery or something, but it’s not gonna be for three months.” I’m like, well, let’s just take the three months so that you can get as healthy as you can, because then you recover better from surgery. All your parameters, the doctors will love it when they have less risk and you will love it when you have a better outcome. And so it’s always like, we have, like you mentioned before, we have to get healthy for even treatment now, right? ‘Cause these treatments that people get oncology-wise is not very simple. 

It’s not easy, they all are, their chemotherapy is chemotherapy. It has never to be easy. It’s, we try to get more targeted as years goes on, we have now immunotherapies and targeted cell receptor therapies, but they do have side effects. So it’s still like, training is training, a sport is a sport. You can improve your risk of getting injured if you train correctly, and then you get that better outcome. And that’s what we try to do with everybody’s. We’re trying to make them healthier as much as we can. So if they do choose or they have to just by default of what their stages or what their type of cancer is, then we’re always looking at our goal as not saying this versus that, it’s always improvement of outcome, evidence-based wise. 

Nathan Crane

Absolutely. So what are some like maybe a couple of pro-inflammatory, whether they’re foods or they’re something that often people think, well, yeah, that’s actually pretty healthy. Like aside from meat, aside from dairy, aside from eggs, what are some other, maybe not as well known things that actually cause inflammation? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

I think when we look at like protein powders that’s a big issue because a lot of cancer patients, and as you see on the store there’s bone broths, there’s collagen broths, whey protein, whey protein ensures boosts, slim fat, things that are just easy to can that people, that we give to adults just like, “Hey, you’re a senior, take this nutrition drink.” And you’ll see in the commercials, they’ll show the can, they’ll show all these vegetables around it kinda thing. But it’s not, those vegetables are not in the can. It’s like they’re trying to give this perception like, “Hey, I’m hanging around with fruits and vegetables.” 

These are just, these are pro-inflammatory foods that have tons of corn syrup and sugars and bunch of chemicals and stuff. So it is classified as a protein source, but it’s a still a pro-inflammatory protein source. And we still gotta be careful with even young people, ’cause they’re always doing, trying to bulk up at the gym. And so you see like whey protein, these protein powders, and that’s triggering a pro-inflammatory response on top of doing a pro-inflammatory activity. So their recovery is a lot harder. So if they switch to like a plant-based protein, they actually recover better, and they can continue to train more, so.

Nathan Crane

And that’s true with bone broth, yeah, ’cause I know bone broth is huge marketing, fad, craze right now and everyone is saying, “Oh, it’s so healthy.” Everyone, I hear, “Bone broth, bone broth, bone broth.” And you’re saying it’s also inflammatory? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Well, because, I mean, there’s no data to show that bone broth will support anything in terms of fixing the microbiome, there’s none. Now it’s been marketed as is, but no studies on that, because why? No phytonutrients, no fiber, it’s pro-inflammatory, has little to no anti-oxidants, and what we’ve now investigated that those are really throw away from the animal industries, right? Like it, a lot of people think like if somebody’s making this nicely, it’s like my grandmother and all, there’s nothing in the bones that we really needed that wasn’t in the animal protein of the meat source, remember. It’s just that people who used to have these things because we couldn’t afford the rest of the meat source. I can say like, that’s what, so most people who grew up like all my grandparents you do this. 

Yeah, because your grandparents lived through the depression you know what I’m saying? Like, that’s all they got. If you were from the South, if you were a slave, for example, that’s all they got. So now, when we get these big food industries that usually throw this away, they’ve been able to come out, now make this into powders, sell it, and just like they classified as a protein in it and then sell it out. Now the problem is with that is that there is heavy metals and toxicities that have been shown in multiple studies, even in the organic forms of that, because where does heavy metals store physiologically in the animal and in the human is in bones. So we’re just concentrate. 

So people like, “Oh, I need to worry about heavy metals.” And it’s like, they’re drinking these things. And we have now tons and tons of patients where we can show, oh yeah, they took these products, and they’re off with heavy metals, pesticides, heavy metals and actually prescription drugs have been found in the studies using these kinds of products. And again, they’re marketed really heavily but those were people who never seen patients before, right? There’s people who’ve never actually opened up a journal and said, “Well, how does this affect the microbiome?” They’ll show you a nice picture of some kind of coding. 

Your gut feels good, this is good. One of the things that’s also misnomers that people think that if you eat a food that contains that part, it’s gonna go directly to that part in your body, right? But it doesn’t work that way. Like I can’t eat eyeballs and get better vision. I can’t eat hearts and get a better heart, or eat brains and get smarter? Now there’s still a thinking of that because culturally, for millennia, every culture has these ideas, right? Like if I have rocky mountain oysters, my virility is gonna be stronger, this part of the rhino. So we understand that like that’s a kind of a human-innate idea, right? But when we actually look at the nutrition aspect from the data and the sciences, no, we wouldn’t do that. Otherwise we would be smarter eating those things, or we would actually recommend, for a heart disease patient eat more hearts, and your heart would get better. So it’s like if I eat collagen, doesn’t mean that’s is just gonna go to my joints. 

It starts to break down into amino acids, still has to have the proper digestion, assimilation and excretion to actually provide any kind of nutritional benefit. So there’s a little bit of like, it’s a little too simplistic, but remember the average person has not had any kind of health class in school or even nutrition class, even as a physician or even as a chiropractor or naturopath truly at the end of the day, right? So everybody starts the same, whatever the is for patients, is the same marketing that our practitioner usually has watched over their lifetime as well. 

Nathan Crane

I mean, speaking of collagen specifically, I was like, what’s this huge craze about collagen, right? So I start researching collagen, and that’s basically what it is. It’s the throw away parts of the animal, right? It’s like, it’s the hooves. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

You don’t even wanna know. 

Nathan Crane

Well, it’s really parts of the animal, and it’s like, you think that I’m gonna blend this up and put it in my body, and it’s somehow gonna benefit me. The arches of the animal is somehow gonna be. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Yeah, the dead tissue, and that is gonna, that has no, none of the important assets. But here’s another aspect, so going further. Since this craze has really still persisted over the last five years and it still continues to grow ’cause they’re just repackaged. And now they’re gonna say collagen peptides. They’re trying to make it smarter, just like the, first it was like Atkins, and then they went to paleo, and then they went to keto to sound smarter. So it’s like they’re always trying to repackage something that once it starts, the trend goes down, then they reformulate, repackage it again. But the problem with those powders, is that there’s now come a point where there’s, you cannot be producing that much powder from that source, right? So actually the the consumption of that is actually higher than so. 

So 9 billion chickens, say Tyson does a year, for example, in the industry now we’re selling more of these products here. So what happens is when you actually investigate, and there’s been some few investigations, we sent out some a couple years ago, is that when they look for organic sources, meaning we need to find the organic compounds to say that it’s real, like from a real chicken or a cow, or a pig or whatever, is that it shows no traces of organic material. 

So what that means it’s a synthetic. So that means that these, now we can trace that a lot of these products might be adulterated or synthetically has formed a spike. So for example, with the dog food problems that happened in the last 10 years, where there were spiking the dog food melamine, which is a chemical that we get from, our boards, our particle boards and the things that we use in kitchens and stuff like that, and stuff like that, that industry that was coming from China and other countries, they’re just spiking. So it’s spike a little bit gas chromatograph, saying this is protein source. 

So dog foods, all the dogs got sick. So there’s a little bit of like now with to be careful because now when you look at those products, there’s so many manufacturers. So now the cost of it’s all over the chart, meaning to get that’s of this stuff at gas stations, even, or even that the fancy health food to the gas station, to the big-box store. They’re selling so much of this on every corner of every place in America. You’re like, there’s a little bit of now a supply issue. Like, how are we supplying? Even though we eat a lot of animal protein as American producers and all, there’s now some kind of, people have to look at like how can they do this, and how can they do that so cheaply? 

Nathan Crane

You mentioned keto. And so I do want to go into keto, before we do, I’ve been interviewing as hundreds of experts in the field of natural medicine, integrative medicine, functional medicine for years now, right? And I really try and go out and find the people like yourself. We’re working hands on with thousands of patients who look at the literature, who see the results. And I glean that information as everybody here is, they’re learning from your decades of research and experience, right? And so you’re able to help me, you’re able to help all of our listeners take decades, and condense it into profound information that can change people’s lives. And as I’ve been doing this over the years, and we see this huge ketogenic trend, I’ve come across three major schools of thought with ketogenic, right? 

And the first is people who are absolutely proponents of it. They’ve seen some short-term studies, and they’ve put their whole life’s work and energy and everything into promoting ketogenic, right? Because of the the short-term benefits that they’ve been seeing of anti-inflammatory and burning ketones as energy, so on and so forth, that we all know about ketogenic. Second school of thought I see is the complete opposite. Ketogenic actually, the science proves that a long-term, high-fat diet is actually the precursor of diabetes. It is actually the, you can pretty much guarantee on getting diabetes and diabetes, your risk for cancer and other chronic diseases go up exponentially. 

Your long-term inflammatory markers actually increase all of that, right? So short-term benefits, long-term pain and problems. And then there’s a school of thought in the middle, which are some really cutting edge, integrative medical doctors that are working hands on with thousands of patients that will use it as a therapeutic approach, like a vegetarian or vegan ketogenic for weeks or months at a time, specifically with certain types of cancer, brain cancer and some other types of cancer where they will use this diet to help, kind of start starving the cancer cells of glucose, help to burn ketones, and they’ll see a reduction in tumors pretty quickly, right? So I wanted to hear, what has the research shown you? What do you do about ketogenic? What do you believe about ketogenic? What does the science say about ketogenic? Help us understand this really complex, ’cause everyone’s saying do ketogenic, don’t do ketogenic. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Yeah, yeah. 

Nathan Crane

So help in lightness here. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

So here’s the information, and this is actually from, it’s a great evolution of understanding cancer cell metabolism, okay? And so in 2008, as part of a, there was a conference that was at actually Johns Hopkins, looking at ketogenic diets. And that conference was about looking at, a couple of specific cancers. And it was looking at brain tumors. It was looking at prostate, it was looking at colon, and I was looking at breast cancer. And what it did show in the beginning. And I was part of this group, talking to the scientists and researchers that are looking at this kinda concept is that we understood cancer cells having 10 to 12 times more insulin receptors, right? So cancers like this higher glue, it steals that glucose, and that’s why we do pet scans so we can see where cancer is spread. 

So we understand that cancer is a higher metabolic functioning tissue or entity. However, what the data showed was that in that first month when people went on a ketogenic diet, there was some shrinkage of tumor. And what happened was, obviously if you stop eating, all you can eat breadsticks and foot-long subway sandwiches, and donuts, the highly-refined carbohydrate. And we’re not talking about complex carbohydrates, which are good for you, we’re talking about the highly-refined carbohydrates that are predominantly in the standard American diet, right? That that actually, by that reduction you’re reducing the glycemic load, right? And then from that idea, we were starving cancer cells. So that first month, there’s this kinda nice trend downward, okay? 

So what happens is the industry took that one month. Doctors took that one month, and they’ve written that for the last, since 2008 forever, right? Like we’re starving cancer cells, we’re going to win this thing. And for most people, what, just in terms of the general person who doesn’t have cancer, losing weight is their main issue, right? And as you and I talked, there’s a million ways you can lose weight, right? Even the masking tape diet, as we talked about. So the cheapest I’d go to the little hardware store for $3, you got your plan, just put some tape on your mouth when you don’t wanna eat food. But seriously, all setting aside the jokes is that when we look at this ketogenic diet, is that everybody just took it to town, right? ‘Cause that’s really, the industry wanted to find something like to promote. We want to sell more of our foods, which is kind of what Atkins was doing almost even 10 or 20 years previously to that. 

Now, when we further look at that data though, what happens at that month two, there was a plateau of that cancer cell growth, okay? And then at month three, we started seeing this exponential rise of growth of those patients’ tumors. Now, the interesting thing is at that time, again, being the expert in inflammation, that’s kinda my focus in innovative medicine using these natural therapies, and all these other aspects, is that I was thinking at that time, and a lot of the researchers were thinking that, okay, well, it’s because now we’ve shifted from this, kind of this regular kinda diet to this kind of really ketogenic. So you’re starving the cancer cells. And now, maybe it’s just increasing because all we’re doing is eating pro-inflammatory food, animal protein, animal protein, animal protein, no phytonutrients, no fiber. 

So that was kind of what I was thinking at that time, which is true partly, but in 2010 what the data started to show, is that when the researchers took that further, they said let’s put this animals now on a complete ketogenic diet. ‘Cause, the average person although, you’ll see it all over the internet, you’ll see it all over Instagram, they have measurings and then this shakes and these kinds of ketone products and everybody will lose weight, losing weight again is easy to do in America, right? It’s not sustainable, you won’t see people a year from now doing the same thing. It’s a new trend every year, right? 

However, when we’re talking about cancer cell metabolism, is that what we started to see is that when they when they made the animal, and put it into a hundred percent ketogenic state, so it’s only using ketones for fuel. The sad thing is that, the actually, the cancer growth increased, okay? And it increased not only just a little bit, it was like two or three or four times more. And the risk to me, I think it was like 2.7 to three times more the growth. And also the metastasis, particularly to lung was 10 times. What happens is they demonstrated, is that the cancer cell actually converts this metabolism, and uses ketones as fuel, like that should be like the silence now in the room, like what? And that time, remember, our heads exploded. We’re like, what does this mean? Well, what it means is because remember cancer has been around longer than we have, right? If I open up an Ayurvedic text that’s like 4,000 years old or a Chinese medicine texts, it talks about cancer like it’s nothing new. We might have more of it, we talk about it differently. 

We might have other exposures. We have ways to diagnostically look at it or biopsy, but cancer has been around. And that’s why, what makes it so difficult? Because it’s always adapting to its environment. That’s why it’s metabolic, you know what I’m saying? So it’s kinda like a cockroach, it’s been here forever, it’s, and even with Fukushima and Hiroshima, cockroaches still come from the ground in those areas that we would drop nuclear weapons. 

You know what I’m saying? So it’s an adaptable thing. Now this is even scarier. So then further research went on and they said, well let’s just look at this cancers, like we don’t know how it’s using the ketones, so it fooled us. But what if we cut off the vascular support to the tumor, right? So we call it angiogenesis, right? So vascular endothelial growth factor. People have certain cancers that take something called Avastin, which is a VEGF blocker that blocks the blood vessels. And sometimes when people have tumors, they actually like it. They might actually even coming in, like they close off the blood supply, ’cause if you don’t have blood supply to the tumor, it won’t grow, right? It’s not getting your oxygen, it’s not getting your nutrition, it’s not taking your sugar and stuff like that. So they block all of these, the flow of the arteries to the tumor, put on a ketogenic diet. It still grows. 

Nathan Crane

Wow. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

So now we’re like, how does that work? ‘Cause, things should go through the highway to get to the house. Now it’s like it’s taken a back road, it’s jumping over a fence. We don’t really understand the true metabolic function of how that even works. They’ve shown it, we don’t understand the size of it. ‘Cause remember, our body’s a lot more complex. I think what I wanna get across to your, the audience here today, is that you can’t biohack the body, at the end of the day, right? So people, and that’s a big term these days, people are making millions of dollars, biohacking, biohacking, biohacking, that’s kind of the trendy thing, but you can’t biohack something. 

It’s kinda like, you have to understand the laws of nature, right? And if you understand the laws of nature, the body and nature rewards you in kind. If you cheat it, you get the short-term benefits. So yeah, I can drop 15 pounds in 30 days. I can go to my reunion like really good or go to Cancun on the beach, and go without a top or whatever. I mean, everybody can kinda have that quick fix, but is a physiological functioning correct or not? Is it still pro-inflammatory, is it immune suppressive? Is it triggering these inappropriate responses? So biohacking, which is what ketogenic diets are trying to do right now, it’s trendy ’cause most people will get some kind of initial, as you mentioned, I feel good or I look good, right? But what is that doing long-term? Is terrible, and what, and it’s not sustainable. And they’re just putting themselves in pro-inflammatory states through all these other triggers. 

But, now we understand that cancer is a little bit more tricky. So even when people are doing the vegan ketogenic diet, right? Is you can see somewhat a little bit better because they’re still trying to reduce the glycemic aspect, but we are finding right now that that doesn’t really even matter. Like it might be just that they’re on a plant-based diet, and you’re just kinda making it a little bit more restrictive or less restrictive? But it’s just like the main thing, that if you you’re still getting these main things, you’ll do well. If you’re not doing that, then this other aspect is just something that, again, we are still falling because we still think that the glucon, the neogenesis and the glucose uptake of a cancer cell is so particularly the most important thing. What we have to look at is, it is a factor, but we have to look at, is it still pro-inflammatory fuels are coming in? Is it phytonutrients and antioxidants, and things that are either immunosuppressive or immuno-strengthening, that is helping. And that’s different than just looking at ketones. 

Nathan Crane

What, it’s fascinating you said that because, in my research, for the book I’m writing, I mean, I’ve already found three sources of energy that cancer cells can switch to, depending on their environment. So if they’re starved of glucose, they can switch to ketones, for example, right? Even if they’re starved of oxygen, we know when you oxygenate the cells you may oxygenate the body, right? Cancer lives in an anaerobic environment, but just starving it of oxygen, also it can switch to other forms of fuel, right? So as you said, credibly, so it’s not biohacking, like just do one thing. And because it’s about the foundations and the principles of how our bodies are designed, right? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Exactly, and I’ll give a quick example, like bio-hacking, just think of code. So if I’m working on my website, and I don’t know how to do IT stuff. And so I have a college student come in and like, “Oh, can you fix it? Like, “Oh, it’s too quick to do all this stuff to fix problem.” So they kind of hack to put one line of code in, and it kind of looks good. But later on, like there’s a glitch, the car doesn’t work or the VI is not, there’s shopping carts it’s like not working or the email’s not going through ’cause it works temporarily, but it’s not a complete fix of the program. And so we really have to understand that, and that’s why when you go back in my book, when I have these 10 steps in the epigenetic changes, that’s the evidence, but it’s not trendy, it’s not, like these are simple things that people need to do. Like you’re doing exercise. 

You have to have stress reduction. You gotta clean up the environment as much as you can. You gotta, being on an anti-inflammatory diet, you gotta take natural things that can help support strengthen your immune system and lower inflammation. But if you do those simple things, they’re not complicated, but people wanna make it more complicated, ’cause that’s what sells, right? Like I gotta do IV therapies, I need vitamin C. I need blah, blah, blah. I need to be in a hyperbaric, these are expensive, things that people pay for. And I’m like, no, what you need to be doing is feeding your microbiome all those nutritional components to actually then trigger these cascades of effects with all these phytonutrients and all these other chemicals. We now are finding that all the research saying that all these things, IV, are not as good as people are claiming. That’s why I’ve never been a proponent of that because we’ve actually visited clinics, we’ve been there for months. 

We’ve actually looked at people getting, a hundred grounds of IV, vitamin C and B17 and all these other kind of hyperbaric and ozone, can they have certain benefits on certain levels? Sure, is it something that’s, like this natural chemotherapy and people are walking in and out? No, if they actually did work, the pharmaceutical companies would have already panned in it and they would be billing your insurance 10 times more than you can get it in a clinic in Mexico. The problem is that the data is like everybody wants to run from something that they don’t want, which is understandable at a certain level, right? Like everybody’s had a bad experience or a family member or friend with chemo radiation or something like that. But we also wanna make sure that they’re not running to the other side, which is like, “Oh, well, let’s just try these things,” and then become really desperate.

I see patients all the time who’ve come to all these cancer clinics. They spent god, hundreds of thousands of dollars and they’ve bought in the mortgaging houses and selling cars, doing church raises and fundraisers and stuff like that. And they’re like, how come I’m not better ’cause they’re not doing this simple basic epigenetic changes that, ’cause that doesn’t sound sexy. Eating healthy, you can’t really charge for that, you know what I’m saying, but people can charge for a nutrition of IV, right? So I was like, I can sit here and be passive about it. But at the end of the day, it’s like you have to be a participant. Like they’re not gonna hand you the gold, you got to work for it. 

Nathan Crane

Right, Well, and that goes back to once you know the foundations and the principles of what creates cellular regeneration in the body, what actually makes the body inhospitable to cancer cell proliferation, right? And the principles that you follow, it’s like once you have those principles and foundations that reduce chronic inflammation and create cellular regeneration, then all those extra adjuncts that you add on. If you do a high-dose vitamin C and high-dose vitamin B, and you’re adding in extra minerals and extra supplements and herbs and things like that. It’s like those things just start adding a percent here, a percent here, 3%, 3%, 3%. But those aren’t gonna do the trick if you don’t have the foundations, right? They’re not gonna really, it’s like. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Right, they’re not game changers, but they’re sold as if they’re game changers. 

Nathan Crane

Then why don’t you, you mentioned some of those but maybe take a few moments and talk about, I know in your book, “Inflammation Nation”, which I encourage people to go get, you can look at it pretty much anywhere online and “Inflammation Nation”. I encourage people ’cause you go into a lot of depth in that book, but tell us what are those 10 major kind of steps, foundational elements that people can do right now to start reducing 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Sure. And before I do that, I just wanna give, kind of an explanation what this year, with COVID being a big issue, inflammation just kinda hit back again into the news, right? Like a lot of people, I had my book, it was popular, but then it kinda, it’s like, okay, it goes on. And all of a sudden you have this word, inflammation, inflammation is viruses triggering these chronic inflammatory syndromes in all these patients. And for me, it’s like, wow, all of a sudden people are like paying attention. So just to give you an example, a lot of people were buying my book because they were concerned about what inflammation was from the news, from the virus, and all these other things. 

What the feedback I get now, many months later, people who bought and read the book, it’s like my diabetes got better, my heart disease much better, my cancer got better. And they’re not my patients, it’s just like, because if you do the foundational steps, like you talk about,, your health just gets better. Like it’s common sense. It’s like the basic one, two, three fundamentals. If you can’t do the one, two, three fundamentals, don’t try to do XYZ right now. It’s like, so that’s one thing. When we look at, just in general, I always like to talk about first, moving to a plant-based diet, number two, always looking at like what are the triggers of inflammation? So it’s always testing the foods, ’cause you still have to go that one step further. Do they have any kind of food sensitivities, number one, and test for that. 

We always wanna look at, obviously stopping smoking, making sure they’re not taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen, Motrin, Advils, those kinds of things. My book will go into all that detail. What a black box warning is. If you don’t know what a black box warning, highly recommend you reading the book, because there’s a lot of black board it’s warnings now on a lot of the over counter products that people only. So there are not a lot of patients come and say, “Oh my God, I’m worried about my oncology drug.” And I’m like, I’m more worried about ’cause depending on whether it has a black box warning, I’m sometimes more worried about their ibuprofen that they’re taking or their naproxin that they’re taking every day just for joint pain. So we wanna look at detoxification, we wanna look at, how do we actually do a full body cleanse but not like a trendy thing, well, actually think what’s the science, like an Ayurvedic medicine, how do we actually reduce the stress? How do we actually look at controlling glucose and salt intake? How do we look at community and love and spirituality, and in finding belief, ’cause belief is part of the aspect that actually can change your epigenetics, ’cause, you can eat a perfect diet, you can live in a perfect environment. 

If you’re stressed out, or you don’t feel like you have community, you don’t thrive, you don’t do well. And at the end of the day, we wanna change all our patients to be cancer thrivers, not just cancer survivors, right? Anybody can survive at the end of the day. Anything, we’re Americans, we have hurricanes, we have famines, we’ll have COVID, we have. And so as a country, as a whole, we will pull through, but we’re not doing as well as we were doing before that. So thriving is a different concept, but we always start off with natural anti-inflammatories in addition. And so when we look at things like Bosmeric-SR, which is our flagship anti-inflammatory, we’re looking at what is the evidence that we can show that this works? What is the ingredients now? Can we show, yeah, there’s 144 studies with just one of these ingredients in this product that are in like clinical and preclinical trials. 

We’re not just talking about cell culture or a little bit of like, oh, like measured a test tube. We’re actually looking at, what is the major cancer hospitals now using in conjunction with or solely? So everything that we look at it with our patients at the end of the day, this is something that we do specifically. If they’re taking a medication, say an oncology drug, if they’re doing anything natural, we have to look at it from our expertise of looking at how’s it being metabolized? What is the pathway that’s going to deliver? Certain things you can take with certain chemotherapies and radiation therapies. Actually, we have data now that will be a synergy. And actually it will lower the side effects and make it more effective, and certain things we can’t, and you have to be very specific. 

Is it six hours? Is it 36 hours? Is it 72 hours that you cannot give this at the same time, right? So a lot of times the challenge that we have now, when we look at, when we provide this guidance is that a lot of providers will say on one side, take everything. And the oncology side will say, don’t take anything with this stuff. And you have to understand the stage, the pathology, what the patient’s overall health parameters are, and all these other levels outside of the cancer, are there other comorbidities. And then you have to factor in, what can we do at this time to help augment that and improve their overall response? But the challenge right now is that everybody’s trying to kind of be polar on that. So it’s always about reducing the inflammation. 

Nathan Crane

Yeah, sorry, you just reminded me of when my grandpa had cancer and he was going through the conventional chemotherapy and radiation, right? And when I was visiting him in Arizona, and this was 2012 going in 2013, and I really didn’t know much about cancer than I had already been in natural health for seven, eight years up to that point, but didn’t know much about cancer specifically. I knew plants, plant nutrition, vegetables, fruits, green juices, berries, these kinds of things would have helped him. I didn’t know enough to really explain it well. And what he told me though, was, yeah, my doctor said I can’t eat fruits and vegetables. 

I can’t eat berries. I can’t eat these things because, my immune system’s compromised from the chemotherapy and the radiation that these things could have bacteria that could kill me. And I just, I knew at that time, like how backwards that sounded to me, that the exact thing the body needed, right? The doctors tell him he can’t have, because it could actually kill him. That what you’re talking about, is like you need to understand actually what can support, if you’re going through conventional medicine, chemotherapy, radiation, what are the things you actually can take? And that actually will support rebuilding your immune system, since those treatments are destroying it, right? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

‘Cause at the end of the day, I’m an integrative physician, so I’m not alternative and I know there’s holistic or functional like, that umbrellas all of those, right? But the idea is that you have to improve their outcome. And a lot of times, again, this is polarization where people like, don’t get this, just do this. Don’t do that, just do this. That doesn’t get anybody on both sides of the aisles anywhere to where they wanna be, all right? And that’s why the data over here is not as good, but also the data over here is not as good, or they have no data, right? So at the end of the day, we have to be data-driven. 

We have to say, can we do this? And if we actually look at what some other countries are doing, or even certain hospitals here that they’re doing, ’cause again, most of my patients that I’ll see, there are gonna be taking some kinda conventional therapy, or they’re already in conventional therapy. They’re like, or more importantly 30% of my patients are recurrent patients. So they’re already went through chemo, surgery, radiation, and then within five years, they’ve had a recurrence. Some of the patients are recurrence times two or recurrence times three, meaning this is like the third time cancer is coming back. And they’re like, well, something is wrong. And I’m like, yeah, ’cause we need to, you need to change the terrain of the individual of what set them up for that perfect storm. 

And remember, it’s not, just as you mentioned, it’s not just gonna be one food or one this or one that, or, oh, I just smoked or I did didn’t exercise. It’s the combination of like all the 10 steps that I mentioned in my book that that you need to work on. But that at the end of the day, you have to, we can’t just be polarizing people, we have to look at, there is times where some of these treatments are gonna lifesaving, but we also get them. We have to get them through the treatment, and also have them have ’em quality of life after that. It’s not just the treatment of the cancer. 

And so we need, as an integrated physician, I need sometimes treatment, but we also need healing and supportive cares. And that’s the combination that, right now, sometimes it’s just like they treat the cancer, they don’t treat the patient, you know what I’m saying, or likewise here, they’re just like, again, with the natural therapies, they’re throwing all these things at the patient even if they’re natural, but at the end of the day it’s like, are they doing better? Is our cancer showing better signs of regression or remission or response? Or is there a quality of life just even improving? We have to do more than just give hope at the end of the day. And a lot of people sell that, but we have to go further than that. And that’s gonna be improving outcomes. 

Nathan Crane

Yeah, and I mean, that’s what I love about the work you do, Dr. Pai. I just wanna say, I wanna honor you and thank you for being so dedicated to one, really helping people, but also really looking at the data and being open and researching, and then living this yourself. I’ve known you for a few years now, and I know that you live what you teach. And I think it’s a really important thing for anyone who is educating and serving and supporting people going through cancer, that you’re actually doing what you say yourself.

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Absolutely, because, once you drive the Ferrari, you wanna stay a Ferrari, no more jalopies men. And I used to be a jalopy, like everybody remember. I always wanna make sure that the audience understands. Yeah, I want the audience to understand that, it’s not saying that we’re better than anybody, right? The goal is that you cannot afford to get sick in America, no matter what kind of insurance you have. Money doesn’t buy you out of your cancer. Money, even Steve Jobs, to all these, the world’s richest people, they all get cancer eventually. And they all have heart attacks and diabetes and strokes and all this stuff. And even, wonderful Hollywood actors can get colon cancer. It’s a tragedy, it’s a tragedy. 

So the goal is like, it’s not saying, these are lifestyle changes that are not easy. Everything every day is trying to sabotage us from making a wrong decision and eating this or trying this or not working or not exercising, like you going to the gym. It’s a practice that you have to get in. But at the end of the day, I think people have to respect themselves enough, love themselves enough. Have that community support enough. Hopefully you’ll build that with some of your podcasts, or your email groups because of the goal is like, it’s not saying, oh, I’m the perfect person. The idea is that I work on it everyday because I never wanna be on the other side of the seat, that I’m talking with a patient because it’s never an easy decision. And it’s always easier to change those lifestyle behaviors now than in the middle of crisis where now you’re in crisis mode you have to make these life challenging decisions. 

And now I’m telling you what to eat or not eating on top of that, which there’s, sometimes that’s what you gravitate, ’cause that’s the only thing that’s gonna give you some pleasure, right? So some people are like, “Oh, let them eat whatever they want, they’re getting chemotherapy.” That’s not really how we wanna work with the patient. We wanna say, we wanna get you through the chemotherapy successfully or we want you to maybe not have to get the chemotherapy if you respond adequately, but it’s never a failure of the patient. I think this has been a failure of the system of providing the adequate choices and options and kind of the integrative approach. 

Nathan Crane

So, is a practical steps moving forward, right? Get the pro-inflammatory foods out of your body immediately.

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Correct, correct. 

Nathan Crane

Like step one, step two, put the natural anti-inflammatory foods, nutrients, supplements into your body, right? And then you talked about all the other things we can do to reduce chronic inflammation, obviously reducing stress, meditation, yoga, Qigong, taking care of the mind, we know stress actually causes inflammation and causes, can cause cancer cells to proliferate, right? So all of those things, I need to go into more depth in your book. But if you were to leave people with kind of one final thought or once plant, step that they could take right now that would drastically change for them, really help reduce inflammation and really start taking back control of their health. What would that one thing be? 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Well, we always talk about using Bosmeric because it’s a quick introduction to feeling better using natural therapies, right? So if you had something that’s evidence-based, like here’s all the research, right? Not only for chronic inflammatory conditions, but now we’re looking at for actually role in treatment of prevention of certain types of cancer. And even with certain type of oncology treatments, the Bosmeric-SR is kind of what our goal is. Because once people realize like plants can do this, they take that within 20 minutes, their inflammation is going down, it’s an eight-hour sustained release, right? So it’s got the four main ingredients that are natural, that are patented and are clinically tested. But when they realized the power of that plants can do, then they will switch, cause you’ll say, gosh. But plant can do this, what about my breakfast, lunch and dinner that has more than just these four ingredients, right? 

So that, I really always wanna start with that because I think right now people, they need something quick, before I’d be like, just don’t eat mothers and faces foods. That’s, I used to say that, yeah, like don’t even start with that. But even that’s a challenge because that takes time. It takes effort, they were kinda like, what am I gonna shop for, what I’m gonna eat for breakfast tomorrow, blah, blah, blah, my family, my spouse, my kids, whatever. And here’s like, if you take something a while, my inflammation, my pain, my condition is immediately drawn down or my parameters getting better. What if I fed my body not only that, but really this full, comprehensive, total, rainbow-colored diet of phytonutrients, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory foods that have fiber. 

That’s where the plant-based medicine, and the food is medicine at the end of the day. What we end up doing is like we don’t end up giving like vitamin C. We don’t even give the nutrients, unless it’s deficiency on their test. I only prescribe and recommend targeted things. So we have protocols now for every single cancer and every two weeks, we have to review the literature. Patient comes on, even if I saw someone two weeks ago, the similar cancer, the data’s coming out, like this ingredient, this one. So then we have to look at, is there in vivo and in vitro studies showing the benefits on this cancerous type, this cell in that person? And then we have to look at then, potency, purity, safety, and efficacy, that’s our mantra. Then have to look at is that dose a clinical dose? Is that source of what was found in the study. And that’s what we deliver to our patients. We’re actually giving them what something that’s been published. 

Everything else is just like, it sounded like a good idea and then it’s marketed and you’ll see that all the time on social media, like, oh, everybody’s some kind of expert, but the idea is that understanding plant medicines have power because that’s derived from plant foods. So it’s just kinda like we’re concentrating that, trying to give them a little bit of a jumpstart, a little bit of a kick, and also to get them into a place where they can actually have some relief immediately. But then that’s the drive. Like if they tried the Bosmeric-SR, and then we look at other things like Glucan 300, and vitamin D and simple things that help with, keeping your new system stronger. These are simple things that people could do. 

Checking the microbiome when you look at their fats or proteins or carbohydrates there. Is there a leaky gut? Is there inflammation? Is there parasites, overgrowth, gut dysbiosis? If that is all evaluated and that’s what we do, then we know it’s like we building that individual. ‘Cause most of us, we’ve been beat up. We become a jalopy over time, right? We got fender benders and people did door dinged us. And along the way maybe there’s acid rain or mud on our car. We haven’t got a carwash. So it’s like you have to really restructure that individual. So it’s not always just looking at the cancer thing. How do we kill it? How do we kill? A lot of people wanna just go and attack like a natural oncology. And our goal is like, how do we just restructure? How do we make everybody into the bionic man or woman that they truly are, right? And if we do that, then the epigenetics, the body has an ability to heal, you just got to give it what it needs to do to do that.

Nathan Crane

That’s it. I mean, I think that’s the gold statement right there this entire interview, and I’d say if don’t need to heal and it’ll take care of itself and give you driving a 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

But you got to give the right things. You got to get with the right things. 

Nathan Crane

Well, listen, thank you, Dr. Pai, I appreciate your time as always. Always fascinating talking with you. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

Thank you. 

Nathan Crane

You always have so much wisdom experience and evidence-based information to share. So thank you so much, appreciate it. 

Sunil Pai, M.D.

It’s a pleasure, right, thank you for having me again. 

Nathan Crane

Absolutely. 

Sunil Pai, M.D. 

That’s the best of health. 

Nathan Crane

Yeah, thank you. And I wanna thank all of you for tuning in here to the Global Cancer Symposium. Make sure to share this with friends, family, anyone who needs to hear this information. make sure to visit sanjevani.net to order Dr. Pai’s book in “Inflammation nation”. You’ll learn more about his products there, Bosmeric-SR, you can consult with him, you can visit his clinic, sanjevani.net. Also take a look at healthandhealingclub.com. 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.