How to Starve Cancer; The Little Known Proven Principles

Nathan Crane 

Hey, it’s Nathan Crane, Director of the Health and Healing Club and host of the Conquering Cancer Summit. And today I am honored and excited to welcome you to a very special interview. Jane McClelland is the author of the number one best seller ‘How to Starve Cancer Without Starving Yourself’. Pretty important little add to the addition to the end of the title there. She was awarded the amazing woman global award 2019 lifetime achievement. Award for her work with cancer patients since 2003. She has tens of thousands of followers in her Facebook group. You can learn more about her and pick up a copy of her book @howtostarvecancer.com. Jane, thank you so much for joining us. 

Jane Mclelland

Thanks for having me, Nathan. 

Nathan Crane 

My pleasure. So I’d love for you to share with us a little bit. What was it that made you so passionate about helping people with cancer starting back as early as 2003? 

Jane Mclelland

Because I’ve had cancer myself and not just once I had it several times. So started off in 94 when I was only 30 years old. And that’s when I got diagnosed with cervical cancer and then it spread to my lungs in 1999. So I been with stage four and at that point I’d kind of learned quite a lot because my mother had died in the interim in 96 which had completely freaked me out. And I had gone dived into lots of literature but it was really very hard to find out what to do back then. There was very little availability of information. So I did a lot of research on my own. I went to hospitals and actually dived into their medical libraries. I looked at journals. I’d, I’m actually a trained physiotherapist. So that’s my background. 

I had some medical understanding and I knew that just going down the alternative route on its own probably wasn’t going to be enough. And so I did a combination of the two. I use both traditional meds and I used, eventually I ended up using some off-label drugs because my cancer, I ended up having myelodysplasia, which was a result of the radiotherapy and the chemo that I had in 94 and 99. I then in 2003, ended up with this blood disorder in the bone marrow. And that was more worrying to me because I didn’t know how to control that. I was already controlling the cervical cancer with all sorts of complimentary things but that just wasn’t enough for this. 

Nathan Crane 

What were you doing? Sorry to interrupt. I’d love for you to share just a little bit, what you were doing with complimentary therapies back then with the cervical. What were some of the things you were doing? 

Jane Mclelland

So I was doing intravenous vitamin C. I had a whole range of many, many supplements in fact, sort of as people who read my book will know I sort of, I got names markers because he can just shake me and I had battle and most of my followers have ended up being much the same, because there are a lot of supplements to block different pathways that I’ve discovered, but it was so a lot of that I also changed my diet, my lifestyle, I did a whole host of other things but essentially it all boiled down to starving cancer. Exercise was very important to me. And then I ended up just taking this cocktail of off-label drugs. I started off by taking, initially I’ve been taking aspirin, but then I added dipyridamole which is an anti-platelet drug. Now that’s normally used for people with cardiovascular problems. 

And then I added a statin which again, was for people with high cholesterol but statin actually have huge benefits for cancer patients that have been long studies, epidemiological studies that have proven that statin will actually reduce your, it will protect you to a certain extent from having cancer. And when you have cancer, cancer actually makes cholesterol blobs on the surface of the cancer cell. So every daughter cell needs to create cholesterol in order to create his daughters. So locking that, dipyridamole actually blocks, one of the cholesterol pathways, it’s like a salvage route. If you block the statin it’ll sort of use the other salvage route to create cholesterol. So I blocked both of those cholesterol pathways and that was a really effective way of blocking those daughters cells from being able to be manufactured if you like.

Nathan Crane 

Let me let’s take a quick step backwards. So you were 34 years old when you were first diagnosed with cervical cancer, what stage did they tell you it was at? 

Jane Mclelland

Well, I was taught, when I was initially diagnosed, cervical cancer has a slightly different staging system. So I was told I was stage 1B. It ended up, actually it had already spread to many of my lymph nodes, which in many other cancers would be described as a stage three. 

Nathan Crane 

Stage three, yeah. 

Jane Mclelland

So I was kind of lulled into a full sense of security when they told me it was a stage one. And I didn’t do the research when I was first diagnosed. I was so depressed because I’d had my uterus removed, had a massive hysterectomy, radiotherapy. I wasn’t able to have children anymore. 

Nathan Crane 

So you did say you did do, so you had a hysterectomy, you did radiation. Did you all say you did chemotherapy? You did chemotherapy at the time? 

Jane Mclelland

in 99. So I lost my hair again and. 

Nathan Crane 

In 1999, just so we keep on the timeline for our viewers Nine, nine, nine you were diagnosed with lung as well? In addition. 

Jane Mclelland

It was a secondary, it’s not a different cancers it’s the same . But not the cancer was the myelodysplasia which was in the bone marrow, which was in 2003.

Nathan Crane 

So that was a third cancer. And during this, so. 

Jane Mclelland

It’s the second cancer on top of the cervical cancer. 

Nathan Crane 

No, it’s a lot. 

Jane Mclelland

It’s a lot? 

Nathan Crane 

It’s amazing what you’ve gone through it’s incredible. I mean, I can only, there’s a number of other people I’ve met over the years that have gone through similar again, and again, and again, and again and oftentimes you see this pattern of the chemotherapy radiation, if there or even surgery and then chemotherapy radiation if they’re not doing all the other supportive holistic natural things. And then oftentimes those cancers come back. Even if they’re in remission, five, 10 years later they come back with a vengeance, right? But it sounds like what you’ve done along the way is you’ve modified your diet. You’ve started exercising. 

Jane Mclelland

What it was is working out how to stop the cancer stem cell because it’s the stem cell. You’ve got your fast dividing cells, which are what is what you see when you look on an MRI or a pet scan. That is the cancer that you see. But what you don’t see are the cancer stem cells which are few in number but they’re the really dangerous ones. And they do divide quickly. So they don’t get taken out my chemotherapy or radiotherapy. These are the really tricky ones to treat. And actually by starving them, you can actually treat them.

Nathan Crane 

So what if you don’t mind me asking, what’s your your age now, if you don’t mind sharing publicly and do you, what are your cancer biomarker biomarkers now? 

Jane Mclelland

I don’t have them done now. I’m now the grand old age of 56. Can’t believe I’ve said that out loud, but anyway, so yeah. 

Nathan Crane 

Well, you look like you’re in 40’s. So you’ve been doing something right these last 20 or 30 years. 

Jane Mclelland

Metformin which I’ve been on since 2006 is very anti-aging is one of the best anti-aging things you can take now and berberine as well. They both have similar effects on the telomerase and just basically just keeping you youthful. So that’s been one of my secrets, but yeah. So having, I had, so since 2003 then came back again in 2004, but since then I’ve been cancer free. So I took my markers for several years regularly afterwards, actually funny enough, I’ve just had my markers done last week. I haven’t had the result, but they’ve been within normal ranges ever since. 

Nathan Crane 

What are the biomarkers that you look at? ‘Cause depending on the cancer and depending on where people live and what labs they have access to and so forth, or what their integrative oncologists might report. What are the biomarkers that you look at? 

Jane Mclelland

So there are specific cancer markers which are relatable to different types of cancers. So the CA125, for example, for variant you got the same 15 three or the 27, 29. But my specific cancer marker was the SCC, the squamous cell carcinoma. And that was it correlated very, very strongly. I could see when it was going up when it was going down. I knew as soon as I could see it going up again, I knew I was in trouble. I mean, these things vary a little bit and sometimes they don’t always correlate with your disease but mine definitely did. I knew when I was getting worse and things would, the markers would show it as well, so. 

Nathan Crane 

Do you look at circulating tumor cell count? 

Jane Mclelland

I’ve never done that. Back in my day that wasn’t available. And right now I’ve been cancer free touch word for so long. I maybe it’s something, I’m considering doing it just out of interest, but I haven’t had it done yet. 

Nathan Crane 

So you, wow. I mean, what an incredible journey so far. So as young as 34 years old diagnosed with cancer you went through this scare again and again, 2006 you became cancer free. And since then, so now we’re in 2021, right? So it’s 14, 15 years now, cancer free. I mean, so obviously we’re going to get into how do you start cancer, right? What are the principles you teach in your book to start cancer? What is, let’s start with this. What’s the one most little known scientifically proven cancer treatments or protocols that you’ve discovered that has helped you and healing cancer that most people just don’t know about? What would you say is your top one? 

Jane Mclelland

Well, I’m actually going to veer off onto a totally different subject ferroptosis. Now, ferroptosis is actually using ions. 

Nathan Crane 

Say it again, ferroptosis? 

Jane Mclelland

Ferroptosis, it’s different to apoptosis. Apoptosis is the normal cell suicide. Have you heard of ferroptosis?

Nathan Crane 

No, I don’t even know about it. So I’m excited to hear more. 

Jane Mclelland

Okay . So, what I’m going, I’m doing an update to my book at the moment and it’s gonna be in there. But ferroptosis is a completely different way. In fact, they only discovered it in 2012, as a way to kill cells. It’s a different program cell death to apoptosis, totally different. And what it is, is using iron and of course cancer absolutely love iron to actually target the cancer cell, use iron to oxidate inside the cell. And what it does is it oxidizes the fatty liquid membranes inside the cell, both the mitochondria as well as the sort of the external cell membrane. But it helps to just kill the cell off just by oxidizing these fats inside. And there are specific you actually need to swap. It’s kind of what I call a kill phase, I have in my book, I describe starving it as one phase and then killing it which is apoptosis by oxidation as a different phase. 

Now I’ve talked about oxidizing with, and in fact that’s how chemotherapy works but to actually make it really work well. And this is another little tip you have to block a pathway called the XCT antiporter, all right? And this is what brings in cystine into the cell and pumps out glutamate. Cystine makes glutathione, you probably heard of glutathione as your sort of master antioxidant, Well, in order to get any of these oxidation therapies be that H-bot or any of them you can really help by blocking this XCT antiporter which blocks the import of cystine. I know a lot of people take N-acetylcysteine but that can be a huge mistake when you’re trying to do a kill phase. Well, it is a massive mistake because what you’re doing is just providing that glutathione. It will protect the cell from being killed off. So ferroptosis is using specific. 

You can use drugs and supplements and intravenous vitamin C which of course produces hydrogen peroxide which reacts with the iron inside the cell with and then artesunate or atemisinin can help concentrate that in something called the lysosome in the cell. And that creates this oxidation. It’s a very neat little process, bit like cancer stem cells, which are metabolically flexible. There are escape routes that the cancer will use to try and get round that, and this is a problem that we have with cancer generally, is that it is metabolically flexible. It has pathways that it can just whiz around it’s. I describe it a bit like Piccadilly Circus. So on the surface, if you look down at Piccadilly Circus you can see circus, you can see people milling around going in lots of different directions but there are key routes there which are kind of like the genetics. 

But if you look at the underground system there were fewer roots but actually these are really much easier to target because he can’t go in between and, genetics are about thousands of genetic mutations that can occur. You could be forever chasing your tail, but with a metabolic approach, you’ve only got a certain number of pathways that it will escape down. So it’s much easier to target cancer if you’re targeting those metabolic roots as opposed to the genetic roots. Obviously you need to do them both together as a sort of the best approach is to use targeted drugs. Preferably if you’ve got a mutation, it’s got a particular type of mutation why not take that drug but also do the metabolic approach at the same time. 

Nathan Crane 

How did you figure all this out? Did you have a good, I mean, obviously somebody going through cancer needs guidance when you’re using off-label drugs in combination with natural therapies in combination with what we call an integrative approach you need to know how much to take, what to take, what not to take, all those different things to block certain pathways and leave certain pathways open. So did you discover all this on your own or did you have a really good integrated specialist? 

Jane Mclelland

I discovered this on my own. I took the research about dipyridamole, the statins, everything to my integrative oncologist, Dr. Etienne Caliber, and also to my traditional oncologist. This was back in 2003, and they weren’t as constrained with the regulations with prescribing, their protocols. She was actually far more open looking. She knew my situation was dire. She knew I was sort of hanging on to life by my fingernails. So she was very happy. She put her neck on the line and said, “yes okay, I’ll look at the research.” She had actually been doing some research herself into statins. She didn’t know which one to prescribe but I gave her, I said, “look I’ve just found some interesting info on lovastatin, it shows it blocks of this and a RAS pathway and this, that and the other. 

We didn’t know much about how it worked back then that the research has only just sort of been I’ve been delving into the research ever since, just to find out how these drugs work, but she didn’t know how it worked. We just knew that it did the same with the dipyridamole. We knew that it worked, I didn’t know whether the combination was actually going to buy me enough time. I did that’s all I was looking for at the time. I didn’t know it was actually going to eradicate the cancer. That wasn’t part of my plan. That was a mega bonus. But my major approach at the time was just to make sure I was giving myself extra time on this planet. 

Nathan Crane 

Do you know if you know, Dr. Dana Flavin, over in the, I believe she’s in the UK? 

Jane Mclelland

I’ve never met her, she’s currently in the UK. She often works in Germany, I believe, but yeah. 

Nathan Crane 

She, this is her specialty for like 40 years. I think she’s worked with thousands of cancer patients and she’s, when it comes to off label drugs and in combination with natural therapies you create an integrative approach. Like that’s what she specializes in. She does the on it. And then, she does it all through her nonprofit too. And she gets to work with patients all over the world. I think this approach is fascinating. I mean, she uses off-label drugs that have very few side effects, right? That are used for different kinds of treatments and diseases and so forth. But when used in conjunctive therapy with some natural therapy has seen just tremendous results. And I think if you can find something that’s very low toxic to the body like an off-label drug that’s, fairly safe that it’s not gonna destroy your liver and kill your kidneys and great renal failure and all these things and you. 

Jane Mclelland

So you need to get your liver and your kidneys and everything else checked out and make sure. 

Nathan Crane 

That’s why you have to do the natural as well, right? You need the herbs and supplements the food, the diet, the exercise to support and mitigate any damage that’s happening from the pharmaceutical.

Jane Mclelland

Exactly, so holistic approach. And in fact, there are quite a lot of doctors now who’ve either read my book or have been practicing this for a while, like Dr. Mark Rosenberg and Dr. Daniel Thomas, both of them in Florida. And there’s increasing numbers of people who are sort of coming on to doing this. And they write to me and then I stick them up on my website. So I’ve got a list of doctors actually on my self-cancer website who actually, we’ll look at doing this. So that’s a really good resource for people. If they want to have a look and find a doctor who can help them with this kind of protocol, it’s a growing trend actually using these off-label drugs almost kind of like patient zero with it, really. 

Nathan Crane 

And we have these experts as well, who are part of this event or a part of my Health and Healing Club. We do live Q&A sessions with them every couple of weeks. And that’s one of the benefits for people to who own this series and who joined the health and healing club, is that we bring in experts and I’d love to invite you, we’ll talk more offline so people can actually come on and ask you their questions, ask these important questions to world leading experts and doctors. Dr. Dana Flavin is one who’s joining our faculty at the Health and Healing Club. So people can ask her their questions, but it is important to get guidance. We’ve been talking, from an expert who really knows what they’re doing, right? And it is, we do know we’ve been talking a lot about killing cancer cells, right? Apoptosis, you’ve been talking about ferroptosis, right? What about starving cancer? right? Because you can kill all the cancer cells you want but if you keep growing it, you keep making it, you keep feeding it. It’s just gonna keep coming back. So what are those core principles you teach in your book to starve cancer? 

Jane Mclelland

So the fourth principles is essentially diet is like a major thing. So the big thing being obviously to reduce glycemic foods. So they’re really high-glycemic foods. Some people go full ketogenic. It’s quite hard to maintain that. For a lot of people they struggle with the ketogenic diet. But if you’re doing the off-label drugs, things like metformin or some of the supplements like berberine, these actually have the similar effect to actually going on a ketogenic diet. So you don’t have to be quite as strict with your diet. If you’re doing these things at the same time, it’s all about sort of making sure you get the right combination together so that you’re not going to extremes with anything. You can actually take a slightly more middle path and a healthy approach without going too crazy down one route. 

I know a lot of people do the ketogenic diet and a lot of people get very good results but you have got to be aware that the ketogenic diet will stimulate other pathways things like fatty acid oxidation. People don’t know that, a lot of the fatty pathways, in fact acetate is a ketone and that will stimulate a lot of cancers, particularly brain cancer. So you’ve actually got to be a bit careful about being too extreme with what you’re doing and making sure you’re getting a really good cocktail of things to block the key pathways that are sort of being activated. So diet is the first thing. 

Nathan Crane 

Let’s talk a little bit before we move on ketogenic diet. I’m glad you brought it up, right? Because there’s with the kind of fat or the craze that’s happening around the ketogenic diet. There’s kind of two camps that have happened. People who either swear by it and say this is the diet that solves everything. And then people who say, “no, it’s not.” And actually there’s dangerous to it. There’s long-term dangerous. We know the kid, a high fat diet, even healthy fat can actually is the fastest way to create diabetes type two diabetes in your body, right? So. 

Jane Mclelland

But there are certain aspects of that, which are I mean, ceramides, for example, people don’t know about ceramides and they are waxy lipids that actually increase your risk of diabetes. And probably that’s why the fatty aspect is, may be implicated then. Gamma tocotrienols, are really good for that. So, there are certain things that you can take and mitigate your risk with certain things but I’ve got an online course, actually which people might be interested in to sort of go through everything. But you can maybe mention that afterwards or they can see on my website. 

Nathan Crane 

I know some doctors that are part of our series that we’ll use more of like a modified plant-based ketogenic diet. that’s not true keto, right? It’s a little bit higher fat, but it’s still plant-based. So you’re getting your nutrients problem with a true hardcore ketogenic diet. It’s usually more animal-based, you miss out on a lot of the vitamins and minerals that you need from the fruits and vegetables and berries and the beans and lagoons and things like that. The body needs to thrive and repair and regenerate. So I know exactly, right? So I know some of the experts will use a modify and a short term, right? And so they’re seeing great benefits with that. And I think that’s important that we don’t get stuck on this idea of like, okay, I need to go ketogenic, full ketogenic and do it forever because the research suggests, actually the research proves now, and a lot of the experts I talked to who work hands-on with thousands of cancer patients, they say, “look, yeah short-term therapeutic benefits, but it’s not recommended or ideal to be long-term or animal-based at all, right?” 

Jane Mclelland

And I would say the same. And if you are particularly addicted to sugar actually, going ketogenic and actually doing a bit hardcore to start with can be very useful just to switch off those drivers and your desire to keep on loading up with carbs. So it is very useful, particularly if you’ve just been diagnosed and you’re really struggling with the sort of munchies the whole time. So you go onto sort of a diet which really strips it and you’ve learn, you’d learn, your body relearns it can. But it can be pretty tough for people. And that’s why I think a sort of a slightly more moderate approach where you have supplements and drugs actually making, taking the place of that ketogenic drive and doing some of the work for them. So they don’t have to be so extreme. But yeah, it does depend, there you need to know whether, I mean, you need to look at things like whether you have high cholesterol or what your GlycoMark is, you can actually track how well you metabolize some of these things in your system before you start going all in for a particular diet, so. 

Nathan Crane 

Well, let’s talk about, so whether they’re ketogenic or not, we do know one of the main fuel sources for cancer is sugar right? It’s glycolysis. And we need to reduce that when we have cancer, right? At exponentially, especially processed. I mean, there’s a big difference between fructose and glucose from fruit, for example, in berries then from a pop tart, right? Huge difference. 

Jane Mclelland

There is some cancers they use glute five which is the fructose transporter, prostate cancer. Some of the breast cancers actually use fructose. So it’s not always a safe sugar. People think it is and unfortunately that’s not the case. There are some cancers that really do thrive a lot on fructose. So it’s a little bit, you have to be a little bit worried and again, there are some supplements and things that can help block the glute five, so.

Nathan Crane 

So we’ve gotta, either way you’ve got to reduce the sugar intake. We know bear berries for example, blueberries, blackberries and fresh berries have a much lower glycemic index but a high nutritional value, right? 

Jane Mclelland

Exactly, they’ve got that nice soluble fiber in them which actually soaks up a lot of it. They they’re digested slower they don’t release the same amount of glucose. And then as a result the insulin, it’s all much more controlled with those kinds of fruits. 

Nathan Crane 

What are the top three things you remove from your diet that you think made the biggest impact for you? 

Jane Mclelland

Oh, God. Well, definitely dairy products, sugar for sure and wheat products. That wheat I’m definitely have some kind of intolerance to and I think also the same with dairy. I recently put one of those continuous glucose monitors in my arm, very interesting. Just and just out of an experiment, I had cereal, no one my kids’ cereal like disaster with milk. Wow, I mean, I didn’t go beyond normal, but my God, it just went sky high and I just, Oh my God I really need, that’s definite But it was, it’s something that I think every cancer patient should do is wear one of these things for a couple of weeks just to see what’s going on. It’s very revealing. I think it’s well worth having a go at that. 

Nathan Crane 

So diet, cleaning up the diet, removing the sugar and the toxicity. 

Jane Mclelland

But it’s not your sugar. That’s the problem. Some cancers actually are really quite fueled by fat. Prostate cancer initially, but later on it becomes more glucose field. But actually most of the prostate cancers there are subtypes that are more glycolytic to start with but mostly they are more driven by fat and actually glutamine and then they become more glycolytic later on. So that’s something to consider. Every single type of cancer has a fingerprint as sort of signature as to how it feeds, whether it, what pattern it likes which makes things a little bit more complicated but that’s how you need to address the cancer. So there isn’t one diet that kind of suits all. You’ve got to sort of tailor it a little bit to whatever can’t see you actually have. 

Nathan Crane 

I mean, I’ve found some research. I believe it was in pub med when I was researching for my upcoming book on cancer that actually one of the pathways that cancer can switch to is a fuel sources ketones, right? So there’s some cancers that actually if you’re on a ketogenic diet it’s going to make it worse. So that it is really about personalization to. 

Jane Mclelland

The breath driven cancers actually really like ketones. So that things like the melanomas, some of those melanomas can be really fat loving as well. 

Nathan Crane 

So, it’s important to understand what, not only what type of cancer, but what feeds that and what starves that cancer. Let’s stick with general principles and starving cancer, right? What are some other things that you did that were quite effective for you? 

Jane Mclelland

I think people underestimate exercise. I’m a bit of a slouch these days, but I’ve back then I was pretty active. I mean, I’ve got dodgy knees. So I do a lot of cycling and resistance work as well. And resistance work they’ve shown that the bigger your muscles, actually the better you respond to immunotherapy the better you respond to generally to Stelvio cancer and survival, because it actually acts as a sink. The bigger the muscles, the more of a sink for glucose and to pull in all of these things. So I’m doing some resistance work. 

I think alongside a lot of people just stick with walking, but actually you need to definitely do some resistance work too. And I think exercise and try and try and get that oxygen level really raised because that can really help the kill phase. You can actually oxygenate quite effectively. And if you do it while you’re exercising at the same time some people get an oxygen. Generally, I haven’t got this yet, but I it’s my next plan. I got a peloton bike arriving in about three weeks and I’m gonna get an oxygen concentrator and I’m going to be doing that myself just to try and raise oxygenation levels as well while I’m exercising. 

Nathan Crane 

We know that cancer cannot thrive in a highly oxygen rich environment, right? And so things that you can do to oxygenate your body, oxygenate yourselves, oxygenating food, oxygenating water, oxygenating exercise. Exercise is the one free thing you can do every day that will give you some of the most protective aspects of kicking that cancer out of your body. 

Jane Mclelland

And going back to diet, one of the most useful things is intermittent and fasting? You don’t have to worry too much when you, if you’re intermittent fasting and you just have that smaller window, your body will be where your council will be deprived of what it wants. It doesn’t matter whether it’s ketones or sugar or fat or glutamine just doing the intermittent fasting is a really good option all around for most cancers, I would say. 

Nathan Crane 

Absolutely, I’m going on 16 hours today which is generally I do between 12 and 16 hours. It’s a more recent thing I’ve been doing because in intermittent fasting you start hitting that autophagy phase about 14, 16 hour mark, right? So if you can get 16 hours to 18 hours, if you have cancer you’re hitting autophagy and reduction and inflammation and cell death and all of these benefits that you get. And even you start entering ketosis, right? And so you get short-term benefits of ketosis every day. 

Jane Mclelland

of ketosis. 

Nathan Crane 

Exactly, but you get the benefits of the autophagy and cleaning up the cell waste. You get the benefits if you just can’t eat enough in a day to actually feed excess body, weight and obesity. if your window of eating is six hours, you have to eat so much, right? To try and add body weight. And the nice thing is in that six hour window six to eight hour eating window, you actually, it’s hard to need a lot of food. And it took me about two weeks of doing the intermittent fasting before I didn’t get hungry anymore in the mornings. So the first couple of weeks you’re gonna be hungry, but then after that and you don’t have to be so strict with just water, right? I do coffee, I do tea. I do, I might put a little fiber in there. I might put a little coconut oil, some stevia, things like that. Like you don’t have to be so strict with it. I do my herbs and supplements in the morning during it too. So you’re still getting the benefits. It’s like those, yeah. It may kick you a little bit out of the deeper fast if you’re doing some of those things, right? But the key is, are still getting a tremendous amount of benefits for not eating first thing in the morning. 

Jane Mclelland

Absolutely, but one of the things that may be another thing that people maybe don’t know so much is that autophagy a double-edged sword, has it’s great and stimulating it more in fact is brilliant for ferroptosis. On the other hand, if you’re starving it if you’re just doing a staff phase autophagy can with cancer, unfortunately start to, this is particularly in things like KRAS mutated cancers, her too, they really like to use autophagy. It actually brings in, they use this process of sort of the, part of the autophagy processes to sort of bring in something clear things out but actually then uses to bring stuff in, it then parcels it off into sort of reusing it for energy. 

And you’ve actually got to block some of these autophagy pathways sometimes with some of these cancers, unless we’re doing ferroptosis which is different. But that’s yeah. So autophagy has to be done in a controlled way. I think actually, if you fast for too long you’ve got to be careful because you can then make autophagy more aggressive and it can feed itself using autophagy pathways. So yeah, short-term, daily intermittent fasting, brilliant. And maybe a one or two day fast. But longer than that, I worry that people may, some people do really well and they fast for a long time. And, but you just, it depends on your cancer type. Depends on the mutations. Depends on so many factors as to whether it’s actually going to benefit you or maybe be detrimental. Quite a lot of cancers do want regulate that autophagy pathway.

Nathan Crane 

I agree, if you have cancer, you really need if you’re gonna do any long-term fasting, you really need guidance, a integrative oncologist or good integrative doctor that really knows what they’re doing with fascinating cancer. Because one thing with cancer more often than not is that your body is lacking the necessary nutrients it needs anyway. So now you’ve been lacking these nutrients, right? Whether they’re vitamins or minerals or fighter nutrients or amino acids, whatever you’ve been lacking for a long time and not knowing it that’s been contributing to the cancer cell proliferation. And then you starve your body even more of not only those nutrients, but additional nutrients, you may get some benefit in starving the cancer but you’re also starving the rest of your body, right? And so, yeah, it’s that double-edged sword. So if you’re gonna do any long-term fasting and some people, I know somebody did a 30 day water fast and their cancer was gone at the end of 30 days but some people could do it 30 water . Some people could try that and they would die, right? So you really need good guidance. 

Jane Mclelland

I have met people who’ve done that 30 day fast, got rid of their cancer and then it is come back really, really quickly. 

Nathan Crane 

They didn’t stop feeding, right? 

Jane Mclelland

Didn’t quite get rid of it. I think really, yeah. It’s hard doing that kind of approach is really hard. It’s extreme. I’m not a lover of the extremes really. That’s not my mood really. 

Nathan Crane 

So what else would you share with our viewers tuning in that they can that’s been really effective for you in starving cancer? 

Jane Mclelland

For me particular supplements. So I mean, I can’t list them all because just too many but certainly drinking green tea, massive. That’s I think something that has been really effective for and is effective for every cancer. It helps to block part of that glutamine access, it blocks the ability of, and glutamine is an amino acid as you know and that actually fires up some of these cancer will use gluten and it also, green tea also reduces something called catalyse. So that’s one of the sort of the antioxidant pathways that the cancer uses to protect itself. So it helps to lower that. So it makes it more vulnerable. Some of the other things I’ve been using. 

Nathan Crane 

How much green tea do you drink a day?. 

Jane Mclelland

Back then I was drinking a lot. I only take about, well, I do about two or three a day nowadays, but then I was. 

Nathan Crane 

You just use a regular green tea bag or what do you do? 

Jane Mclelland

Sometimes, well, they didn’t have, I didn’t know about matcha tea back then but I think matcha tea is actually really useful. It’s a lot of research behind that, but normal green tea is what I used and I just make between four and 10 cups a day. It was a lot be constantly running to the loo, but it kept me. 

Nathan Crane 

Well, the polyphenols, the antioxidants, the anti-inflammatory, I mean, for therapeutic approach, you need, therapeutic doses. With green tea though one thing you could do is put three or four tea bags in a single cup, right? And get the benefits that way as well. But matcha is really amazing. I do yogamatte most every day, also very high in amino acids and antioxidants and polyphenols, but yeah don’t forget the power of green tea.

Jane Mclelland

Absolutely, so that was one of my biggies and just did lots of things really. I mean, in terms of supplements, but lots of fish oils in particular, fish oils can help block the uptake of bad fats, because it’s the really small I proteins that can get in. It really likes the small lipids and taking omega threes are really good for blocking that access. So that’s one of the other big things I did. I brought three grams three times a day. So nine grams in total a day. 

Nathan Crane 

Do you block, can you block the same access from a plant-based source of omegas? Like I take a DHGA supplement from like an algae, right? That’s full of omegas or even flaxseeds or. 

Jane Mclelland

Flax seed oil is useful. Actually, it’s one of the things I suggest with the ferroptosis protocol because it oxidizes very readily and it helps to oxidize those membranes in the and kill them off in the cell. But yeah, so flaxseed and omega threes are all, these are polyunsaturated fatty acids that will oxidize very readily. So yeah, and they will block the uptake of other one-on-ones saturated which seemed to be less favorable for cancer. 

Nathan Crane 

Good, and what else, what were maybe some other your key maybe two more of your really key topics? 

Jane Mclelland

So that I discovered that I have sort of educate my integrative oncologists about that. So well, I took some research which I’ve found in a journal of I’ve forgotten which one it was but anyway it was a journal discussing Chinese medicine. And I took this thing in about mahonia aquifolium in which was the kind of like the source of the berberine. And I couldn’t get berberine as a supplement back then. I mean, it’s everywhere nowadays, but back then it wasn’t available. So I was getting it as a sort of the rule tincture of the the plant, which contains berberine and oxycontin as well, which also have anticancer effects. So on sketching, and some of those will block fat as well as glucose. So I was getting much more of a rounded approach if you know what I mean, with having the tincture I think, but now it’s sort of focusing on the berberine. Berberine, berberine everywhere. But actually I think a whole spectrum of the hub times to be better. 

Nathan Crane 

Which is true. I think for most medicinal plants it’s, if you can get the whole plant, like echinacea for example, people will either get the root, was they’ll get the leaf and stem or they’ll get the flower but you get the whole plant, we grow echinacea right out my window here. And then I dry it here on the wall and then I make a tincture out of it, right? Like, and then you get the whole plant like echinacea that we grew here at home you can grow your own medicinal plants in your backyard or in your windows so easily, make an easy tincture out of it. And then you get all the benefits of that plant versus just an extracted molecule from it. ‘Cause we know we like our modern science still has no idea the hundreds, potentially thousands of phytochemicals that are in certain fruits and plants and berries and things what they actually do to the body yet. So, but we know they’re all beneficial, right? I mean, you can just use your reasoning to figure that out. So why not get all the beneficial parts? 

Jane Mclelland

So, another thing is red yeast rice, which is not. 

Nathan Crane 

Red yeast rice, what is that? 

Jane Mclelland

That it’s, I think it’s a fungus actually but it’s. 

Nathan Crane 

How do you spell it? 

Jane Mclelland

Red as in the color, yeast as in yeast and rice as.

Nathan Crane 

Oh, okay. 

Jane Mclelland

and it’s something that the Chinese use in their food and it contains, this is how they discovered lovastatin because it actually contains Monacolin K which is the warm material for lovastatin which is just that, that I took. But it has again, much wider spectrum than just having the statin. So actually I take both red yeast rice and a satin at the same because I think they have benefits over each other. It depends, but yeah. 

Nathan Crane 

Final questions or I know we’re down to our last few minutes here. If you had the opportunity to go to your first diagnosis, knowing what you know now, what would be one or two major things you would have changed back then that you think would have made the biggest impact of not having cancer show up again and again throughout the years? 

Jane Mclelland

I think my mental attitude was all wrong. I was just too depressed and too reliant on the oncologists to get me better first time round that was the biggest mistake I made is just not realizing how, well, I didn’t know. And actually things have developed so much since 94 when I first. That’s a long time ago, but nowadays there are so many options and there are different ways that you can count that can know the start of it or kill it, the different approaches. And many of them have merits, there isn’t, I don’t push just, although my book is about starving cancer because it helps to reduce the cancer stem cell really, there are so many different options out there for helping to treat yourself and to oxidize that cancer and actually kill it. And I think we’re moving to a really fascinating stage right now where we’re incorporating these metabolic therapies and some of them are sort of making their way into conventional treatments now, which is terrific finally. So I think if people can hang on if they got cancer now. Don’t get too depressed because you just can keep yourself going for long enough to get some of these, some and there will be much better metabolic therapies in the future. So don’t give up, hang on in there. That’s my advice.

Nathan Crane 

I’m glad you mentioned mindset. I think it’s the biggest factor for anybody dealing with any chronic disease. And so you said, you wouldn’t have put all of your power into the hands of somebody else. What would you have changed specifically about your mind in terms of how you would have looked at cancer, how you would have, aside from handing all your power away, what would you tell somebody dealing with cancer now, some key things they can do for mental resilience, mental emotional strength to help them through this. What we know is to be a terrifying situation? 

Jane Mclelland

Unfair it’s kind of one of these things that really suppresses your immune system and the stress of everything is massive. And there are some things that you can take, physically take like ashwagandha and some other calming hubs, which escaped me right now. But anyway, there are some really nice calming things that you can do. Kava kava, there you go. Things like that can really help calm me down and help you adjust mentally as well, just by dumping down some of that cortisol is rushing around you and making things worse. And yeah, I think meditation, I didn’t do any meditation when I was first diagnosed. I did it definitely when I was, had the secondary. I was doing it daily sometimes three times a day in order to try, and I was having reflexology and I was having, and I was doing meditation at the same time and hypnosis this and all sorts of things just to try and get my head in the right frame of mind because you can’t ignore it. Fear is massive. And I was terrified. So yeah, it’s one of those things you have to address. 

Nathan Crane 

What was your favorite meditation practice that you ever did? 

Jane Mclelland

Well, actually the hypnosis, I used to go and see this guy and he’d make these tapes cassettes that said as long as I go. And I’d play them on my little portable cassette player while I was having my treatments and things. They would be terrific and wonderful. He was, he’s fantastic guy. I don’t know what happened to him. I think he married some American and disappeared off to the side of the pond. So, but he was great. And that really helped me, really helped me. And he’d do things like trying to extend my timeline What I thought was my, I thought I was only gonna live for six months and he would try and make me break that into sort of looking beyond six months because I had always stuck with a sort of, well, in six months time I’m not going to be here. And next Christmas people are gonna be having Christmas without me and they’ll be doing this and there’ll be doing that. And I’d be so sad. And it would be a way of trying to sort of break through that and actually see myself in the future of actually having a future. And that was something that I couldn’t see initially. 

Nathan Crane 

So important. I mean, there’s so many stories I’ve heard in talking with so many people over the years with cancers that many times somebody actually dies on the day that they thought they were going to die. I mean, and that’s not chance. I mean, that is the power of the mind, the power of belief. We know the biology of belief, we know the thoughts and emotions. They actually can dictate your biological future. And so that fact of just getting your mind to the point of seeing yourself living past and longer and I’m sure healthier and happier you were seeing yourself during that, during those processes, right? Hypnotherapy, guided meditation, all of these. I actually have a meditation that I have led for people I’ve been practicing meditation for 15 years. I mean, I think it is essential for our betterment and wellbeing and healing, and I’m glad you brought it up because a lot of people kind of just dust it off as this extra little thing. I’ll do it when I have time. But, I tell people that should be your number one foundational piece of your treatment protocol is a daily spiritual meditation practice, it’s critical. 

Jane Mclelland

I totally agree. 

Nathan Crane 

Well, good I think that’s a good place to end it, Jane. I just wanna say thank you so much. I mean, your story is just fascinating. I wanna tell everyone to go pick up a copy of your book right now. It’s howtostarvecancer.com, Go pick up a copy of Jane’s book. You’re gonna, we covered a lot today but I think you’ll learn even more in there obviously that we weren’t able to cover today. And again, Jane, thank you. I mean, congratulations for all that you’ve done and where you’ve come from and where you are now. And I just wanna thank you for taking the time and sharing your incredible story and wisdom with our community here. 

Jane Mclelland

Pleasure, okay thanks Nathan. 

Nathan Crane 

And I wanna thank everyone for tuning into the Conquering Cancer Summit. Please share this with friends and family. Together we truly can make a difference for the future of humanity in ending the cancer pandemic. Thank you and I wish you ultimate health and happiness. Be well.