Debunking Myths: The Truth About Cancer Diets

Introduction and Dr. Conners' Background 0:00

Welcome back to the Cancer Breakthroughs Summit. My name is Dr. Isaac Eliaz, and I am delighted to talk today to Dr. Kevin Conners, really one of the long term experts in integrative oncology. Dr. Conners graduated from naturopathic school as early as 1986, so he has almost 40 years of experience under his belt. But out of these, he spent 25 years studying alternative and complementary cancer care. He also holds different a for him a fellowships in both certificate, in anti-aging, in regenerative and functional medicine, in botanical medicine, and is also board certified in integrative cancer therapy.

Of course, I was one of the teachers then, and so yeah, it's great. And Dr. Conners also does work in functional neurology, which is very important with the autism spectrum rising and with neuroinflammation becoming such a wide issue, including as a result of different cancer treatments. And one thing that Dr. Conners took on himself recognizing is the budgetary and traveling limits of patients. Is to provide high quality education, to get people going in different fields of cancer, life, limb or to immune genetics and others.

Through his through his courses at connersclinic.com he's a director of the clinical of the Conners clinic and really is committed to disseminating a high quality information. So with this Kevin welcome to the cancer Breakthroughs Summit. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah. So maybe tell us a little bit more about your journey, how you got to focus on cancer and a little bit more than I was able to really do justice to it in 2 minutes. Well, I was I my focus on cancer really began when I was in school.

You mentioned I went to the traumatic school but actually went to chiropractic school back and graduated 1986. So I'm kind of an old timer, but I never wanted at that time to have a practice that I was taking care of people with cancer. It really never entered my mind, but it was really what I was studying frequency medicine and at the RIF Cardiology that that brought into the light up. Wow, this could help cancer patients. And so I always was intrigued by that. And I always wanted to someday have a RIF machine in my office, someday do lower frequency

How Dr. Conners Entered Cancer Care 3:00

therapies in my office, light therapy. So my office, of course, they were very limited back in the 1980s and they just, you know, some didn't exist back in the 1980s. And so it was it did tell in the late nineties that a patient came to be with cancer. And that was my kind of my aha moment that it's time to buy a Wraith machine. And she was actually a chiropractic patient of mine and she came and told me she had breast cancer in both breasts and they had given her three months to live if she didn't do chemo.

And she just said, I've got to had chemo, so if you can't help me of this, I'm just going to die of this, not going to do it. So I bought a Wraith machine at that time, started to really study. I was always into nutrition. I did a lot of a technique called caseology. So a lot of people from a functional nutritional, functional medicine type perspective. But it was at that moment that I had to learn. I had to kind of start take it a crash course in how to take care of cancer patients from a nutritional standpoint.

Well, I had time because, you know, this is kind of pre website days. And so we were just seed patients as they came to us and and so that patient actually lived another 13 years before succumbing to the disease. And so I had studied about nutrition, studied about how to take care of cancer patients as best I possibly could, used frequency healing of cancer patient with the right technology and some other technologies. And, you know, soon my practice grew as far as having cancer patients call us and come in to us.

It was just you could we could start to see the writing on the wall of the way that God was leading our practice. And that's what I ended up going to the For Integrative Cancer Fellowship Program, the first where they first organized it, put that together. So that was quite a few years ago, and we've just moved completely out of a retired chiropractic over a decade and a half ago, and it just focused completely out of taking care of cancer patients, Lyme patients. Because of my history, having lived a couple of times and autoimmune patients because we've had fairly dealings with that.

So that's really better focus for for a long time now. Oh, it amazing. So you know you mentioned that strict diets can be harmful. You know, we know that there is a lot of dietary confusion around cancer and often people prescribed to two very strict diets. And you have concerns about that I share with you. And I'm philosophically really aligned with it. So maybe maybe you can elaborate on some of the risk and potential drawbacks associated with such extreme diets. Well, it's not even just diets.

You and I both know that when you have patients that are located, an alternative means to try to deal with something as serious as cancer. There's a lot of misinformation out there from the alternative perspective, too, that, oh, this cures cancer. 100% of the tests known. There's a lot of wrong data out there of people delayed, maybe some therapies that that they're not validated did and and you see that a lot with dietary restrictions too. Now I think we both agree that, you know, excess sugar is not good for you.

You're feeding cancer by going out to eat, eat a lot of simple carbohydrates.

Why Strict Cancer Diets Can Backfire 7:00

But there's a there's information that could put people at very strict diets like let's use ketogenic diet as an example. There is information out there that if any cancer patient goes out, a ketogenic diet, every cancer patients should be out of ketogenic diet. And that's what's going to cure cancer. Whatever you hear phrases like that or words like that, it has to it doesn't mean that it's completely incorrect, but you have to put up a red flag and start asking questions, because cancer is a very complex disease.

And I believe that every person with cancer has unique metabolic pathways that could be fatal, that cancer. So cancer, you know, as the listeners know by now going through this series is, you know, certain cells that are you know, they're metabolic make up has changed and they're in a state of rapid replication. Well, cells that are in a state of rapid replication need a lot of energy. So they're looking for fuel sources. So going on a ketogenic diet is strictly limited. Glucose in a person's diet or their hopefully in a full ketogenic protocol, their their cells are surviving off of ketones instead of through glucose and glycolysis, which can be beneficial for some patients with cancer that their fuel source of that that that growing mass happens to be primarily glucose at that time.

But cancers are trying to stay alive. Cancer cells are trying to stay alive. So if you deprived of glucose for a period of time, that could be good. But it could also cause the cancer to shift, to feed off amino acids. And then a ketogenic diet could actually be harmful because a ketogenic diet is going to be primarily much higher in proteins and you're basically feeding it now with your diet. So you have to be cautious with doing any strict diet for a long period of time because as kids are, is constantly shifting to try to stay alive.

These cells are looking for different metabolic pathways where there's availability of nutrients in order to feed it, in order to fuel it. And you have to be cautious that you don't move it to a state where you are actually fueling your cancer instead of starving your kids or. You know, human. I can't tell you how much I agree with you. I don't know if you were there in a frame on integrative oncology when in cancer therapy, when were the person from Harvard shared for the first time the ketogenic diet.

And everybody was excited. And I got on the stage and I warned everybody that ketogenic diet has its place for a short time for the right person. Otherwise, the cancer is part of its survival mechanism will shift. And what happened? People are wasting it. Dietary strategy much too early in the game and not in the right time. And if you do it in an intermittent way, it's much more effective. So thank you for highlighting this. And the other thing which is complex is massive data that certain amino acids at high levels will fuel cancer.

So when you when you are moving to too much of a protein, indeed you can be fueling the cancer. So yeah, it is so it is so it is so important to really to really understand this so how do you think realistically a cancer patient should go about their dietary changes when they have a cancer diagnosis? Well, I think they need to take a moderate approach. You know, the other thing about a strict diet that most practitioners don't really discuss is how difficult the life changing it can be to a patient.

And it's easy to go, well, this we've got to save the person's life. So we're going to put about this diet. I don't care how hard it is, but but when you take all the joy out of a person's life, you had that psychosocial component that can lead to a person's demise just as easy as if you were feeding the fuel to the cancer. So you have to be careful and cognizant of that as a practitioner, too, I can't tell you how many people I've spoken to. The fold that had cancer. That was their main concern is they didn't want to go on a radical diet or they heard my information that they heard me speak against a radical diet.

And that's what intrigued them about my practice is that we get specific. So if a person comes to us and they become a member, we test them. So we do kinesiology testing to see what is the the main fuel source. And that can change, like we discussed quite readily as the cancer's trying to stay alive. It's tried to adapt to its environment. So if you change what's in the environment as a as a possible fuel source, it can it could readily adapt to try to feed off of something else through a different metabolic pathways.

You have to be able to pivot that way. But if a person doesn't come to us, I would say, you have to take a more moderate approach and you don't want to be definitely fueling your body with a with amino acids that have been showed through studies that can feed cancers like with iodine and at glutamine. There's a lot of people that come to me that have been dysfunctional practitioners that, you know, think that, well, it all starts at your gut, so you need to kill that gut. So they put these people on el glutamate as a gut healing product.

Moderate Diet Changes and Fasting 13:00

Well, El Glutamate is a great gut healing product because it causes cells to reproduce quite quickly. So you don't want to, especially if you have a epithelial based cancer to feed fuel that are going to cause cells to reproduce quite quickly with. Interrupting it for the audience, please listen to what Dr. Connors is telling you. These are words of wisdom. You know, it's a great example. Even in Kaiser Permanente, they recommend glutamine, glutamine repair. They the Krebs cycle, which you and then the cancer cell is revitalized.

So. Yes, yes. I mean, it's a great example of a common common mistake. So yeah, it's so it's so I really, really thank you for sharing this. Please, please keep going. And then the same thing is true, though I don't think everybody should go out according to their diet. But with liberty, simple sugars, limited carbohydrates in general can be beneficial and and be careful how to select the right carbohydrate and to be cognizant of your weight and your weight loss. So if you're at a state of below healthy weight and or you're losing weight on a weekly basis, I mean, you have to add carbohydrates back to the diet, but you want to choose more complex carbohydrates that are going to give you calories and possibly put on weight, but be the best at limited fuel source of the kids or so.

And then we we also recommend quite frequently doing some daily fasting. So bonafide pass stated time restricted eat. If you're not in a weight loss situation or under your current weight, that can be helpful as well. And you have to also be willing to to rotate these around, change your diet. That's really important because we discussed how kids are always looking for a fuel source. You need to be changing your diet. There's so much research on just under your microbiota at eating a diet that is that is robust as far as different types of foods.

It's not uncommon, especially in America, where people are eating the same thing every single day. That's not good for your microbiome. That's certainly not good to help your immune system be able to fight cancer overall as well. Wow. So I just want to reemphasize for the audience diversity, what Dr. Connors is talking about is diversity. We are losing diversity in nature. We are losing species. Right all over the world. We are hearing it in the news. We also are losing diversity in our microbiome, which is our biggest friend.

And when we eat a more diverse diet, we are allowing different bacteria to thrive. It's like keeping the rainforest alive. So it's really, really important. And the idea of rotation, the cancer wants to survive. You cannot allow it to figure out, just try to. That's why I often say when a treatment is working, it's time to make a change before it stops working, which is contrary to the oncological thinking. Use the treatment until it's exhausted and then the stronger resistance. So yeah, I can't agree with you enough and I want to ask, you know, I think we are all in agreement in what we shouldn't do.

And maybe one more comment before this. I think that intermittent fasting is something that we agree is very important for regeneration. Agree with you very much on this on a daily basis. So tell us more. More what the cancer patient needed to remove that feeds the cancer because it is in some level easier to remove what is not good for you. Well, we have to use a little bit of common sense of what are foods that help stimulate growth. So when we do our testing on patients, it's okay. It's at least 90% of the people come out as one of the growth factors of cancer is dairy products.

So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, what should I change in my diet? I think of what are dairy products for? So, you know, we drink mother's milk as a baby in order to grow quickly. So do baby. Cows are Dairy Queen Mother's milk to grow quickly. There's a lot of growth factors in dairy products that it might be wise to stay away from. Now, does it mean you can't ever have butter on something? Butter is better than, you know, other sources? No, but it's a matter of restricting some things in baby.

It might be a good idea whether you have cancer or not, that we should it be eating very many dairy products. So it's a matter of pulling that back. We maybe eat way too much of that. And a cancer patient is something that it might be wise to restrict. It's very wise to restrict, you know, products that are processed. So many people get a diagnosis of cancer and they're eating the typical standard America diet so that that needs to be cleaned up, started, eat organic, get rid of highly inflammatory fluid foods like daily gluten.

Might be something that you want to restrict, though that's typically never a driver of cancer, but it's a driver of inflammation. Look at any foods that you might have antibodies against that food sensitivities. They have antibodies against food. And you're eating that food. You're creating this inflammatory response in your gut. It hinders your immune system's ability to kill a growing cancer. So that's something to look at. And that obviously you're restricted simple sugars, candy cake and cookies and things like that.

Foods to Reduce: Dairy, Processed Foods, and Sugar 19:00

But it doesn't mean that you could never have those things. That's one concern that I hear from patients all the time. It's like they can't have a piece of their grand child's birthday cake anymore. They feel like they their their joy in life is gone if they can't go out to eat with their friends, because, you know, at the restaurant that they go to, it's not organic. Well, you have to loosen up a little bit. I always tell people your diet is something that you're trying to use wisdom. And it's not a religion that you're following.

So you have to still have joy in your life and still enjoy some of the foods that you like to eat but start to bake different decisions. As far as what you go to the grocery store when you're shopping and how you're cooking, clean up that process a little bit without going crazy on it and and not being able to, you know, enjoy life. You know. So to enjoy the joy when we move to our holiday and we have the joy of the holiday, it's the greatest healer. And when the diet is restrictive and depressing and not nourishing, it definitely it definitely affects us.

And I think your point about the milk is profound. It's well documented and it's under emphasized. You know, everybody talks about gluten, including but milk, product drive, cancer, they drive especially hormonally driven cancers which are much more than breast cancer and prostate cancer because they are just different receptors in colon cancer and thyroid cancers, sometime in brain cancer and in lung cancer and of course ovarian and uterine, etc.. So, yes, and you really emphasize the inflammation important for people to understand when the inflammation when the fire is driven, it will bring growth factors in order to allow it allow it to address the area of inflammation.

So it's really a multiple mechanism that Dr. Conners is offering guys with this simple advice. So maybe you can you can close this such an important basic interview that really with with the basic these are the basics. When you use them, you can integrate with any other treatment. So what are some practical advice for cancer patients or their family that really will allow them to make that changes without falling into the trap of being overly restrictive or following into a harmful diet? Well, the biggest thing is just, I think to take things in steps.

So if you're you know, you've been used to eating the typical standard American diet, you got a long way to go to clean up your diet and to start eating organic and started eat a better, more diverse, you know, source of foods. Take it in steps. You if you overwhelm yourself, that's going to be difficult. And then there's another group of people that David eat eat organic their whole life or they can't figure out how they have cancer. And they've been doing so many stages. Right. Well, that now just take a step back and look at some things that you may be eating, that you could be feeding the kids.

Or maybe it's dairy, maybe it's soy, maybe it's you're eating, you know, too much animal protein. And you got to you got to change things around, be willing to make some changes, be willing to be diverse, be willing to to explore new things. As far as diet goes, if you've got a really clean diet, maybe get tested for food antibodies to see if you're even you're clean diet, good foods. If you have antibodies against your cause, eat inflammation. If you're a little bit above normal weight, then for sure start doing so.

Intermittent fasting, time restricted eating is very helpful I think for anybody, but certainly for cancer patients. You're basically starving your body for a period of time. That could be very helpful to reset, but different metabolic pathways. Don't be afraid to go to a practitioner and get some tests done to see what else is going on from a functional medicine perspective. But if you're choosing to do, if you feel led to do a ketogenic diet or you feel led to do a more girlhood type diet where you're going to be juice, eat a lot, don't think you have to commit to it for life to commit to it.

If you feel led to do that, commit to it for a period of time. And and it makes it easier to do that. And I think it's wiser because you're not, you know, created to do fuel source because of what you're eating now. So make the changes continue to make changes. Understand it's an ongoing process and it's it's a battle

Practical Guidance and Working With Conners Clinic 24:00

that you just keep working on to keep making changes and keep adapting. You know, it is so true. And from an energetic, philosophical point of view, cancer is an extreme disease. It's a cell that goes crazy and starts dividing, dividing and you're offering a moderated approach, which is which makes the cancer so surprised. You know, the whole biochemistry changes. It's a different quality of energy. And there is so much truth to what you are saying in, you know, cancer is a complex disease. And many times people use different different doctors in in the team of people.

So but I think really getting hit with this dietary and testing is essential. So maybe you can share with us how people can find you and what are you how they can work with you and what are the specific programs that you recommend specifically for cancer patients that are available through your center? It's really the occasional program that you would recommend. So we used to have I used to function as a as a you know, I graduated as a doctor that people come to me, they get treated and they go home.

That all changed with us. In COVID, we always had distance plans where people could work with us at a distance, but during COVID, that just flip flopped. You know, most people chose a distance plan, and then we gradually just phased out our, you know, office plan in order to be able to help more people. So everything's done at a distance so you don't have to leave your home. We follow that it's healthier for people, especially if they have a serious disease that they don't have to travel. So we always start with what we call a case review.

That's an additional interview with me to see if this is a good fit. We have lots of different options. We'll better what a person's budget is. It's why we have our courses as far as cancer, our stop fighting cancer course based upon the Stop Fighting Cancer book that I wrote years ago with the third edition. And then you could make appointments with me and we could talk about protocols and such to do our full comprehensive program that includes a program, the Wraith machine, that includes weekly Zoom calls that I do, where you could ask questions.

It includes a members only website where you could get all updates and ask questions through. Then through that, we do cheek swab testing where I test for diet like we're talking about, but also nutritional protocol where we could get real specific with people. We also do a lot of different functional medicine labs that could be beneficial to narrow down things to to be able to see what maybe causes of the cancer to address those things. So there's lots of different options in working with us. You just go to Connersclinic.com and give us a call and you could discuss with my staff of different, different ways that might fit your needs or your budget.

We have lots of people that are still doing standard of care, doing choosing to do chemotherapy, and we're just coming alongside and helping people. And we have people that are working with a local functional doctor that is meeting certain needs that they have. We think that a team approach is often the best approach, that there's a wisdom in a multitude of counselors. So we just try to bring in some wisdom to give people some insight that could help them along their journey. Well, thank you so much for taking the time today to share your point of view and on dieting and on the general approach to cancer.

And from my almost 40 years experience, I can't emphasize how valuable and how true is your approach. So thank you again for coming in. It was great to talk to you. Thank you.