Discover How Inflammation Triggers Your Cancer Risk

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

It’s going to be so fun. I’m so excited. We’re all about root causes, right?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. Because this stuff is preventable. You know, I love it whenever I get a chance to interview you and I’m super excited about this one. So let’s introduce you to our audience who may not know you yet but you are really a veteran in this space. You’re a health practitioner specializing in innovative cancer treatments. So you combine metabolic, genetic, and nutritional approaches to help people with cancer. Really giving them a personalized approach to it. You’re also the host of True.Health: Body, Mind, Spirit. It’s a health show, and you have two podcasts highlighting real-life success stories in overcoming cancer and Lyme disease. If we have time today, we’ll talk about the connection there, too. And you have a book A Better Way To Treat Cancer, breaks down Integrative Cancer Treatments making them accessible to people. I think sometimes it feels like all this information is top secret or something and so you’ve made that. You’ve broken that down so people can actually use it and digest it. So thank you for that. Let’s jump into this. It’s no secret that cancer is more prevalent than ever or if you’re just hearing that for the first time, I’d be surprised. But cancer is more prevalent than it ever has been. So why is it on the rise in our modern world? Let’s start there because this is the elephant in the room that we can’t ignore, western medicine can’t ignore, and the government can’t ignore. So what’s happening?

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Well, I mean, looking at cancer. At first, you want to kind of see, what is cancer. Cancer is really a survival mechanism of cells that figure that whatever is going on in the cell is, as you know, we can’t survive on this. We can’t survive with these toxins, we can’t survive with this lack of oxygen, we can’t survive with this lack of nutrients and so the cell says, well if we’re not properly supported we’ve got to figure out another way to survive. So then it shifts into another way of producing energy because the normal way is not functioning and so it shifts down into the fermentation cycle. And that’s kind of an ancient primal program that exists within the cell. So it’s not a dysfunction. It is a survival mechanism. So here we live in this world and we are constantly adding more and more stressors onto our, kind of mitochondrial function. How we detoxify, how we produce energy, how we support endocrine function, how we in all these different functions we’re just adding layer upon layer of stressors.

So looking back like 100 years ago, you know, we didn’t deal with all this GMO food. We didn’t deal with all these 5G’s all over. We didn’t sit on the cell phone in and out again. We weren’t sedentary sitting in an office working, and the food were eating was closer to earth. It was not these macaroni and cheese packages. So at that time, the level of stressors, I mean, yes, life may be kind of harsh, work may be harsh but all these other stressors that we have brought in for the convenience of life did not really exist at that time. But as we are kind of adding it so we’re kind of like almost like the boiling pot and the frog. We’re just kind of increasing the temperature gradually, step by step. And it’s almost like we’re being tested as humanity to see how far we can go before it’s just a mass extinction. And here we are because all of a sudden we hit that breaking point where cancer’s just becoming more and more because we cannot handle all the stressors that we’re dealing with right now in modern society.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And what I heard you just say, I think a lot of people have this feeling like we catch cancer. And what you just said is we don’t catch cancer. We create cancer in our bodies. Our body literally makes it as a response to all these insults and assaults that are going on.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah, and that’s absolutely true. Cancer doesn’t just happen all of a sudden. Yeah, it’s not immediate even though kind of a later, few years where there are factors that have been brought in on to humanity that seem to have accelerated processes. A good friend of mine, Dr. Ryan Cole, is using the term turbo cancers. Where cancer all of a sudden just explodes. It used to be from diagnosis to maybe kind of end of life and some cancers like several years and now can be a few months. So it seems like whatever’s happened the last number of years has really kind of accelerated these processes. But knowing that you still get a look at the environment that the cancer develops in and that doesn’t just happen overnight. That is a process that takes place and as you are then shifting your physiology in a direction that then cancer can evolve in, and then all of a sudden the body just says, I can’t handle this more and cancer just takes over.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, I think some people are under the impression that it was my genetics or I was just unlucky. And you’re what you just said is, no, that’s not it at all. It’s like this, it was an accumulation and probably a bit of a smoldering gun and something tipped the scale there. There was something that created it. And interesting about these, what did you say, turbo cancers. I had to write that down because I hadn’t heard that before. We are seeing it. I mean, I know people personally who had reactivated cancer. They’d been in remission and all of a sudden cancers reactivated. I mean, we’ve just been through a massive crisis for the last several years where people are stressed beyond belief. People are taking medications that haven’t been properly researched and we’re dealing with a disease that we don’t even know exactly what it is.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and it’s interesting, I was speaking to another gentleman. He is Dr. Don Huber, and he used to be the assistant director for medical care for the whole military. And right when this, you know, so-called or this unresearched drug that you were talking about, you know, and saying it as people were injecting that there was no way to undo it. You know, once it is there, it is there. And then also we have where people are then exposed to other people that have been injected know they are then getting impacted as well. So now what we’re looking at and I’m not saying that that is the only factor but as kind of that additional layer. It’s that kind of additional drop in the bucket that all of a sudden starts to make things flow over faster.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. I’m curious, have we seen these turbo cancers in people who haven’t received the injection, but maybe they’ve had the infection, maybe they’ve had COVID, or maybe they’re in a tremendously stressful environment where families are divided over this, you know, to vaccinate or not to vaccinate. There’s that, too. People are getting divorced. Families are breaking up. I mean, we can’t ignore all these factors, right? I mean, this is going to shake out 20 years from now as researchers look at this. We’re going to have more answers.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

But I’m not sure if we still will know because obviously, you need to spend money on doing the research. Also, there are so many factors at play. So it’s hard to kind of point the finger at just one thing. But I think it is the accumulation of all these factors that really kind of make this disease cancer to explode and it is like exactly what you’re saying. It’s not like the flu, it is something that develops over time. And so that’s, the beauty with that is that you have then the option of shifting direction. You have the option of kind of testing yourself and kind of seeing where am I at and using even normal blood tests to kind of check and see where am I at, how am I doing and how can I optimize and then mitigate a lot of the risk. And there are a number of tests out there that are available where you can then check and see if am I in a good place. Am I not in a good place? And then you can shift your lifestyle, shift your mentality, shift your internal terrain to then be health promoting rather than something that drives something like cancer.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And, you know, we’re just talking about this turbo cancer in the last few years in this whole pandemic we’ve been in. But let’s face it, cancer has been here for a very long time. So I’d like to go back before the whole pandemic and this whole topic. And can you talk about the link between toxins and pollutants and the rise of cancer because this has been going on since the industrial revolution and this is a huge factor as well. And this is probably setting people up who are getting this type of turbo cancer that’s happening. You know, this is setting people up for that straw that breaks the camel’s back as well.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah, exactly. And you’re exactly right. It’s not something that is new. It is something that’s been on the rise for a long time. And ever since the war on cancer, you know, it’s like cancer is something that we’re fighting. But in reality, cancer is a natural mechanism that exists within ourselves and so we can’t really fight something without looking at what is causing it. So just to try to nuke something that in reality is just a normal physiological function that we need to undo. We are living in a world where we are exposed to more chemicals, we are exposed to more heavy metals. We get silver fillings, and obviously, we’re getting less of that but a lot of us have been exposed to it genetically. What is happening is that the toxins from the parents are passed on to the children. So each generation there is a stronger concentration of toxins that are just passed from mother to child in addition to the environmental pollutants that we have. 

You know the things that we store our food in, the things that we clean our counters with, the things that we use in our skincare, the personal hygiene products, things that we don’t even think about that is an issue. And all of these things creep in and add to that bucket that then all of a sudden make the body tip over. And so it becomes that you got to look at it from a holistic point of view and see, evaluate what does my environment look like? What am I exposed to? What do I have in my home? What am I eating? What do I put on my skin? Get to look at all these and how is my life. What are my levels of stress factors? What is my spiritual connection? What is my community? All these different components you got to look at. And because we are becoming more and more disconnected, instead of gathering together as families, we’re sitting there and we’re on Facebook and we are communicating through cell phones rather than direct personal interaction so all of these things add up.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Even in the same household. So, I mean, I’m even guilty of this. I’ve been in one room of my house and sent my husband a text. I’ve done that. I will admit it’s happened.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Well, exactly. Because we’re becoming, these little things that become so convenient. And I mean, it’s a blessing and a curse at the same time. Yes. I’m not going to say that I could live without it because now that I have it, I’m going to use it. But I mean, yeah, but you got to find that balance and recognize what is good and what is not good.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. Okay. So toxins, pollutants, cancer, big link there. And then can we shift? I just want to kind of unpack a lot of the root causes of cancer here and then we can go into talking about deeper strategies. But can you talk about infections? So anything from fungus to parasites to bacterial infections. What’s happening there and what are you seeing in terms of impacting the likelihood that somebody will develop cancer or even be able to recover from it?

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah. So the pathogens are kind of an interesting component because obviously, you know, we’ve had parasites, we’ve had Lyme disease, we’ve had fungus, mold, all of these things. These things have existed eons some time. So it’s not saying that these are new things that all of a sudden are impacting us. They’ve been around there forever. The things that have changed are the environment that they live in, exactly like the environment that we live in. So they are exposed to the same kind of stressors that we are which will then impact how they behave within us. So, Lyme disease for instance where you have the spirochaete and all the different co-infections like Bartonella, Babesia, Chlamydia, pneumonia, and all that whole list of different pathogens. They are then stressed by 5G, by chemicals, by heavy metals, and by all these things that exist in nature. I mean, they’ve done tests where they look at these Lyme bugs and they put them in a Faraday cage and they don’t replicate much at all. And then you put them in a like in an EMF field and all of a sudden they replicate like 100 times, if not a thousand times faster. And that’s what’s happening in our bodies when we are then exposed to these fields because they are dealing with the same stress we are.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And how does that relate to cancer?

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Well, so any time you’re dealing with an infection then obviously the individual, the immune system is going to have to focus on that infection. Now, the immune system is designed to kind of patrol cancer cells and kill cancer cells. We all get cancer cells produced every day and our immune system takes care of that. That’s a normal function. But then when we introduce these stressors and they become kind of a higher quantity within us and then all of a sudden the immune system gets overwhelmed and this becomes more pressing to them to deal with the fungal infection or to deal with the mold or the spirochaete or the herpes virus or the Epstein-Barr. And so now, all hands on deck for that, and now the cancer can just slowly and methodically develop without any kind of interference. 

And lo and behold, there’s cancer and so it becomes really important to remove these stressors from the body to assess what kind of infectious terrain am I dealing with. What’s interesting is that a lot of people connect. I mean, they look at cancer almost like a fungus. I’m not saying that all cancers are fungus, but what they’ve done is that they have taken pieces of cancer and tested each one. I can’t remember how many samples they did, but each one contained fungus in them. So you know that there is some kind of fungal infection inside each cancer which means that when you are treating cancer, you need to consider also the fungal connection and that is really fascinating to see.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Or just a question that comes up in my mind is fungus there because it’s trying to help your immune system solve the problem? Is that possible also?

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And that’s also an interesting point. So you have parasites, for instance, they hold about 10 times more heavy metals. They actually use heavy metals in their metabolic process and also in their kind of outer layers and it’s the same with fungus. They hold heavy metals. So in some way, if we are toxic, it’s like we are allowing these pathogens to exist within us and help to carry that toxic load for us. So it is a symbiotic relationship, but it’s just that when that relationship goes array and goes too far then all of a sudden we’re in trouble.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. People always ask me when we’re working through their parasite protocols and whatnot, how long will this go on? How long am I going to pass them? And really the answer is until you change the terrain and you release the toxins. And that’s why we got to do toxin work next to you. It’s like this fine dance. You got to eliminate some of those parasites to alleviate some of your symptoms but then you got to go do toxin work. And then you got to come back to more parasite work and all of this for the ultimate goal, to prevent things like cancer. I’m helping people long before they get to you. Hopefully, what I’m doing is preventing people from getting to you but we’re working on detox and release. But those parasites aren’t going to go away until the toxins are gone.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

No. Exactly. You know, it’s like trying to get rid of rats but not getting rid of the garbage. You know, it doesn’t happen. Yeah. So, yeah, you can try to kill rats all day long, but if you don’t clean up the environment, you don’t clean up your living space then they’re just going to keep on coming back. And it’s the same with parasites, same with bacteria, same with same blood fungus, and same with mold.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, totally. Okay. Well, I want to shed some light if you can spend about five more minutes before we transition into the second part of our talk here. If you could spend some time now connecting. We’ve talked about toxins in the environment. We’ve talked about different pathogen infections. Now, could you talk about the role of inflammation as it connects with cancer? I mean, honestly, what came first, the chicken or the egg, and what’s the connection there?

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah. So inflammation is never the cause. It’s always an effect. So inflammation is the immune system’s response to when something is going wrong. To trigger either we have an area of the body that needs healing. So then you trigger inflammation in that area to drive the immune system and to drive cytokines and components to that location to heal that area and so that is a normal response. So let’s say you have an infectious agent and a location. So you have that infection there and the immune system then inflammation is triggered and the immune system goes to that location then to address that situation. But let’s say the infection is too much or the environment is too toxic or the immune system is not strong enough or the immune system does not have the nutrients that it needs so you’re not able to fully resolve that situation, that acute situation that’s taking place. So now you’re in that state where you are continually plagued. I mean, you still have that infection there and the immune system is not resolving it. 

So now you’re dealing with a chronic inflammatory state and when you are then having that chronic inflammatory state is going to then utilize a lot of your kind of nutritional resources in that area and it’s going to become a nutritionally void and also toxic area. So at that time, you have that inflammatory place and it’s then moving then the cells that they’re shifting because they cannot survive fully in that area in the normal way that they’re producing energy. And now we’re going back to that survival mechanism where those cells are then shifting towards and more of a fermentation, a different type of metabolic approach than what normal is there. To address inflammation is important because if it is continually, if the fire is continually there, then over time it is like I said, it depletes resources. And then also it promotes an environment that promotes cancer. So we then need to work on calming down the inflammation. In addition to looking at what caused it in the first place.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So this is a different perspective on inflammation. I think a lot of times people think inflammation drove the cancer. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for this insight. I’m going to pause this for just one moment and thank our audience for being here with us. And thank you for joining us here today, Dr. Karlfeldt. So for those of you who are here with us now if you found this conversation insightful and helpful, we’re sure glad you’re here. If you’re a summit purchaser, stay here because we’re about to dive even deeper into this discussion with Dr. Karlfeldt. I’m going to ask you some questions about their specific therapies, how to target reducing cancer risk, and also treating cancer. And we’ll get into talking about some of those markers that you might be looking for in people. And I just want to thank everyone for being here. Get the tools that you need to reclaim your health. If you haven’t purchased the summit, click the button on this page to get access to the continuation of this conversation and many others. 

If you’re watching this continuation of my talk with Dr. Karlfeldt, thank you for being a valuable member of our community, and let’s dive right back in. So, Dr. Karlfeldt, you were talking about, we left off talking about inflammation, and what I’d like to talk about now and shift in, if it makes sense at this point, is to start talking about some of the things you can do. Maybe it makes sense to talk about what you’re looking for in terms of markers in the body and maybe what kind of lab testing or evaluation you do. And then talk about those interventions that you use, the ones that you’ve broken down in your book and that you’ve made available for people to understand and actually start bringing into their treatment plan.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah. So there you can gain such a huge amount of information through just normal labs, just a plain CBC, CMP, and then also a few other markers you can look at. So the common things that I look at, I look at the ratios between neutrophils to lymphocytes and the ratio to lymphocytes to monocytes. You know that’s huge and you look at the absolute numbers and those ratios and then I’ll go back and talk a little bit about what normals should look like and what abnormal. Obviously, there’s more discussion about this and my book, A Better Way to Treat Cancer. But for the listeners, it’s kind of nice to get a feeling of what it should look like. Also, C-reactive protein is very important to look at sed rate, fibrinogen, ferritin, and LDH becomes important. You want to look at homocysteine levels, you want to look at your insulin, your A1c. So all of those factors will tell you kind of where you’re at.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Can I ask you something? 

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yes. 

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Conventional oncologists looking at these same things, are you looking at different things?

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

So conventional oncologists, they only look at things that they feel that they can address. And so because their tools are limited to the chemo, to the radiation, to surgery, to hormone therapy so these components are really not anything that they look at. And frequently they don’t even look at cancer markers like the CA, CA 19-9, or CA 27-29, and these different cancer markers that relate to depending on which cancer you’re dealing with because they feel that it’s not going to change their course of action anyway. Yeah. So, they really don’t look at those things. They look at you while you undergo their care, they look at making sure your hemoglobin is okay, your white blood cell count is okay and your platelets are okay. So just kind of life-saving type of numbers that would interfere with their ability to continue the chemo care. But for an integrative doctor like myself, you want to kind of do a little bit more of a deep dive and you also want to kind of look at things way before something may happen. And so you want to for an individual that is, you know, either, let’s say that they have family members who have cancer and they’re concerned that, you know, am I at risk?

You brought up the issue in regards to genetic versus, you know, non-genetic factors. So even though a family member had cancer. Genetic, you know, if you kind of overinflated this like 5%. It plays a 5% role, and then the epigenetic is like 95%. And that’s your lifestyle, what you’re eating, how you’re thinking, all of those things. So, genetically, if you are concerned, then it is good to be able to kind of look at these normal numbers and follow them to make sure that they’re optimum, that your C-reactive protein is where it needs to be and you want to keep it like one or below that would be kind of the best number or your sed rate, that’s another inflammatory marker and you want to keep that one normal like 20 or below but you want to keep it as low as possible. I mean, if you can keep it down and below 10, that’s great and you looking at fibrinogen, which also when you’re in an inflammatory state that starts to increase or ferritin the same way. If you’re in an inflammatory state or dealing with cancer that number is really good to track. And then you have LDH that tracks kind of your lactate level. And we talked about the fermentation cycle of cancer and how it produces energy. And when it ferments sugar to produce energy, the byproduct that it creates is lactic acid, lactate. That is then secreted into the microtumor environment and the environment around that cancer cell and the lactate will actually drive a lot of the metastatic processes and will drive also the conversion of healthy cells to cancer cells. 

So LDH will help them measure to see how much of that fermentation process is taking place. So these are just kind of good normal numbers to follow. And then going back to the CBC, the lymphocyte to monocyte ratio you want to keep that one optimum is between like one and two. I’m sorry, neutrophils to lymphocytes ratio, now you want to keep that between one and two, and that lymphocyte of monocyte ratio, you want to kind of keep that one almost as high as you can. And they have done a lot of studies on people dealing with cancer. People survive better when they are three or above in that ratio and people that are 4.25 is kind of like the next step. They thrive even more. So these numbers mean a lot and they can help a person to really kind of evaluate their risk and then also then take appropriate interventions.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Well, let’s talk about some interventions. So that was fascinating to hear this. And I’m sure people were scrambling taking notes, and getting all this. Obviously, you have to be working with an integrative oncology doctor and an integrative doctor who specializes in cancer to understand all of this. If you bring this to your regular Western doctor, they’re probably going to go, I don’t know what to do with that. But you did mention there’s some intervention. So let’s talk intervention because I know you have a pretty amazing clinic there in Boise and lots of cool things that you can do. So let’s talk about interventions that people can do on their own and interventions that people come to you for that are highly specialized. Because I would say there are two categories of interventions.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah. So, initially, you’re looking at prevention. And so with prevention then you want to kind of evaluate what have I been exposed to. If you’re dealing with a lot of toxins and I know you do a lot of this work, then you want to do different projects or programs to help to clear those out using things. I use a ton of chlorella for instance, and not saying that is the only one, but chlorella to me is like a vacuum cleaner. It cleans up a lot of heavy metals and chemicals and just kind of sucks it up. You would want to do a pretty high dose and you want to do good quality. So you shouldn’t just kind of go to Walmart or, you know, not that. Well, I don’t like Walmart.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Target? No, I have no good ones anymore.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah. Well, I’m just in regards to the quality of supplements. Yeah. So you want to make sure that you get high quality. That’s why it’s good to sometimes work with a practitioner that can guide you along that journey or do heavy research.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So I always say, don’t buy your supplements at Costco. Buy your organic produce and your high-quality meats and fish. You can buy lots of organic, wild caught, free range stuff there, buy your fancy wine there, buy your books there, buy your cleaning products there. Well, maybe not because they’re probably toxic, but don’t buy your supplements at Costco.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah, exactly. And so chlorella is fantastic if you want to kind of clean up and then you want to also look at the infectious agents and kind of see what’s going on. And there are some tests out there that I used and a lot of functional doctors use to kind of evaluate and see what is my toxic load. Have I been exposed to mold for instance? So you can kind of check your urine and see, am I expelling metabolites of mold? Do I have an antibody response to mold? And then you can address that. You can also check the test for Lyme, test for viruses, and Epstein-Barr, you know, where’s that at and address all of these different things, and that will then reduce your risk. Also looking at your teeth and your dental issues that’s a big component. There’s a huge correlation between root canals or hidden infections in your teeth and cancer. So you want to, and I was talking to a biological dentist at a conference that I was presenting at and then he was making the point at that. I mean, dentists are the only ones that put in kind of dead tissue back into the body, which is what root canals are. And there is no root canal that is not infected.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And we’ll talk about that at this summit, we’re bringing in a biologic periodontist and we will have a good discussion about that.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And that’ll be a very valuable discussion to listen to. So, yeah, please, everybody, tune in to that interview as well. So you want to look at all these different factors and clean that up. And then once you’ve done that, let’s say you think you’ve done everything right or you maybe didn’t know that you should have done. And lo and behold, you’re dealing with cancer. So now you’re then stepping into kind of another arena where you have to kind of hit things a little bit harder and you need to evaluate truly what are the root causes of my cancer. Also, you need to then bring in different tools that can then address cancer directly and how it produces energy. So you have things like fermented wheat germ extract that helps to kind of shift how the cancer cells. It kind of blocks out the cancer cells to produce energy. And so it helps them to drive the energy production through the mitochondria, which is where the cell death switch exists. So any time the mitochondria are dysfunctional and bypassed, which is what the cancer does in order to be able to become eternal and then it can survive forever. So any time we can then shift it back to drive through the mitochondria then we are then able to activate the cell death switch so that the cancer cell can then die off and something like fermented wheat germ extract can help with that. And you also have something that’s called DCA, dichloride acetate. It’s a fantastic product as well. A gentleman, Akbar Khan. Dr. Akbar Khan, he has done a lot of research in regards to it. And he did lose his license because he was helping people using it. And so it’s just kind of another fascinating thing to show that people do good in the arena of cancer then the powers that be don’t like it. But DCA is really a powerful tool.

Another one that I tend to combine with it is alpha-lipoic, it’s called poly-MVA. Where it’s an alpha-lipoic like substance that’s combined with a kind of mineral and palladium actually that helps to drive and get it into the mitochondria more efficiently. And doing that in combination with the DCA tends to be a really powerful combination. So that’s one of the things that we do. And then you can also bring in repurposed drugs which are extremely helpful using things like Doxycycline, Metformin, Mebendazole, and different statins to shut down how cancer gets energy. So those are powerful tools as well. Ivermectin, yeah, we know during the pandemic there’s a lot of witch hunt against Ivermectin but Ivermectin has been around for 50-plus years safely and used without any kind of issues. It has about 50 different actions in the body and it’s very safe and very powerful to use. Obviously, you still want to be prudent about it and you still want to kind of be under a doctor’s care while doing it. But there are these kinds of tools that are available that helped then kind of shut down how cancer gets energy and work on the different cancer drivers.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Amazing. So there are two categories we’re going to talk about the things that people can look for in with their own functional doctors that they’re working with some of these things they can get over the counter. And then there’s this whole category of treatment modalities that are maybe in the biohacking realm. We’ll talk about those.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah. So, one of the things that I specialize in and that people come a little bit from all over the states and all over the world to benefit from is something called photodynamic therapy. And it become a really powerful and exciting new therapy. And obviously, there’s no therapy out there. That’s the be-all and end-all. But it becomes adding these together in an intelligent way and that is when you can have a great outcome. And so photodynamic is utilizing that a photosensitizer and there are a number of ones out there that even natural ones like curcumin would be photosensitizer or we talked about poly-MVA, that’s a photosensitizer. St John’s wort that people take when they’re struggling with depression that is the photosensitizer. So there’s a lot of these kinds of herbal things that we do. Regardless. Yeah. What’s that?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Methylene blue comes to mind.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah. Methylene blue is another one, Vitamin B2, Riboflavin is another photosensitizer. And so all of these can be used just for anyone. We use a lot of these intravenously but we also use ones that are a little bit more specialized like a NANO ICG, which is the one that we like to use a lot and that really attracts. It’s a strong photosensitizer that accumulates and then kills cancer tissue. And then when you expose that with laser light it triggers oxidation of those cancer cells so you can actually kill off those cancer cells. And so it becomes a very targeted and safe and very effective way of killing off cancer cells and using that. So that’s one of the therapies that we do here and we love seeing the effect of it.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

How many sessions do people need to do when they come to you? I mean, people are traveling to you and staying in the Boise area to work with you. How many sessions do they need to do?

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah, so usually we have people come from a minimum of two weeks and then up to four weeks and then even longer. But in two weeks, there’s a lot that can be done. And so with a NANO ICG, what we found when we introduced that it can stay in the system for almost two weeks. So then you have two weeks of treatment that you can do where you bring in optic needles into the tumors if accessible. Then you can kind of introduce them into the tumor in the tumor area and then can you first inject with photosensitizer to create a high concentration of that within the tumor area and then you expose that to blast that with the laser light, to trigger the oxidation of the cancer cells. And then every day people would then get after intravenously getting the photosensitizer then they get an intravenous laser therapy where you treat the blood as it’s passing by. Which means that in a session you would treat your whole blood volume of about 60 times just where when the circulating tumor cell is passing by or the cancer stem cell is passing by. The photosensitizer has gotten attached to it and then you blast that with a laser to kill it off.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It doesn’t blast healthy normal cells.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

It doesn’t. Actually, what they’ve seen is that the light in itself helps with mitochondrial activity. So it actually supports healthy cells and their mitochondrial function. So that light will then drive the electron a chain transport or transport chain, and it will just kind of drive the electrons through there to increase the energy production and so help. So actually is cancer preventative for the healthy cells which is completely different than chemo obviously because it just kills everything.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Do you want to throw out any other treatment modalities that you use in the clinic?

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Well, another fascinating component that we do is something called a platelet-derived nanoparticle delivery system so that’s a mouthful. But what that means is that we use individuals’ own platelets and we do that. We pull out the blood, spin, collect the platelets, and then we can then mix that through a sonic process, can mix that with either a therapeutic agent or things like even chemo like that doxorubicin and you can kind of mix it with that and then you micronize that to make them very tiny particles. And then you can infuse that intravenously and the platelets are then drawn to areas of inflammation. And we know that the tumor microenvironment, the area where the tumor is at is very inflammatory. So, you know, these platelets will then go to that location, then offload whatever therapeutic agent or chemo agent, and that is then introduced and to increase the concentration of that in that area. So let’s say we want to kind of shut down a lot of those inflammatory processes that take place within the tumor environment at the tumor microenvironment. Then you can combine the platelet and delivery system with like curcumin as an intravenous or artesunate or if you want to kind of deliver chemo at a stronger concentration and therefore don’t need as much of it. You can then bring in something like doxorubicin and, then that will then be offloaded at a higher concentration in the tumor environment rather than in healthy tissue to where it’s more of a payload and more targeted.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It sounds like it’s highly individualized for each person depending on what their cancer is and what their co-factors are. I would call that infections toxins, deficiencies, whatever’s going on, their genetics. And then you formulate a plan from there and based on the type of cancer, everything.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah. Each person is different. I mean, each person’s got to have a different protocol.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So I would love to wrap up this conversation. If you could blast some holes in this lie, maybe. So when I was growing up in the Western medicine space and going to school and then working in various clinics, family medicine, internal medicine, I can remember being taught and I’ll just use this one example men for men, it’s not a matter of if they’ll get prostate cancer, it’s when and they’ll die with it, not of it. So this concept of the Western model has normalized like everybody’s getting cancer. Everybody’s getting cancer. So what do you say to that?

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Well, everybody doesn’t have to have cancer. And the right like in men, I’m used to be that your age was kind of that percentage risk that you had. So if you’re sixty years old and they have a 60% chance and so but young men did not get prostate cancer and we’re seeing that now. We’re seeing young men getting prostate cancer, We’re seeing young men getting colorectal cancers like a surge of 20 and 30 year olds getting like colorectal cancer.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

The phones are in their pocket.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah, exactly. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the reason. Yeah. And probably testicular cancer and also the reduction and production of testosterone.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Infertility, all of it.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Exactly. You have these young men that are coming in with their testosterone is like, you know, in the basement that never happened before. But in regards to, we don’t need to get cancer. Yeah. If we do things appropriately, we don’t need to die from cancer. And it is the statistic right now, though the way it’s going is like almost one out of two is going to be diagnosed at some point and one out of four will die from cancer men and women. And we’re looking at 2023, there are over a million people here in America getting diagnosed with cancer this year. So it is the stark reality that we need to address.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Thanks for speaking into that. Any final words maybe words of hope for our audience before we sign off?

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

I think the hope is we need to wake up and we need to recognize that we need to take responsibility for our own actions. We can’t wait for governmental direction. We can’t wait for somebody else to save us. I mean, we need to be in the driver’s seat and I think that is the hope. If we are all in educational platforms just like this to bring this kind of education to people so that people then can take the steps that they need in order to be able to shift their own lives to have a better and different outcome. So, I think it’s just an awareness that needs to be created and people cannot be complacent anymore. They need to know that whatever action they’re taking is going to have a result. And so what kind of actions am I taking today to produce the result tomorrow?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

That is a great way to close this. Now, I’ve hinted that you’re right here in the United States, in Idaho, in Boise. So how do our audience find you if they want to see you? If they have a loved one who wants to see you, come to your clinic, get nurtured, and be supported? How would they do that?

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Well, please go to our website thekarlfeldtcenter.com and there’s a huge amount of resources there. Obviously, my book, A Better Way to Treat Cancer, and it’s available on Amazon and all different outlets and it’s a tiny 500-pager book. So it’s just a huge amount of information and all actionable steps to take. Please also reach out, I do offer a free 15-minute discovery call for people that are diagnosed with cancer, and for other people that are wanting to prevent we have programs for that as well. So just please reach out to us and give us a call.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

How wonderful. Thank you. I just want to personally thank you for your work in the world. I mean, besides being a contributor here, we’re friends on the outside of this, and I’m just really blessed that you’re in my life. Thank you for being a mentor and just being a shining light in this world where it feels like it’s heavy sometimes. It’s a lot. So thanks for the work that you do.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Thank you so much. Thank you for everything that you do. Laura, you’re doing amazing things.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Until next time, everyone. Take good care. Bye, now.