Navigating The Survival Paradox For Cancer Success

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Thank you. Thank you, Michael, for having me. And really, it’s been such a great journey to do this summit with you. And to grow our relationship into friendship and to learn what amazing work you do. And so I’ll be happy, of course, to share whatever you think is of interest to the audience.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Thank you. For everyone out there, Dr. Isaac Eliaz is a leading expert in the field of integrative medicine, specializing in cancer detoxification, immunity, and complex conditions. He is a respected physician, researcher, bestselling author, educator, and mind-body practitioner. Dr. Eliaz partners with leading research institutes, including Harvard, the National Institute of Health, Columbia, and others to co-author studies on integrative therapies for cancer, heavy metal toxicity, and others. He is the founder, and medical director of Amity Medical Clinic in Santa Rosa, California, where he’s pioneered the use of therapeutic apheresis as an adjunct to blood filtration treatments for detox and chronic degenerative conditions. And I must say so this is just the bio. But then as a man, it’s an honor always to be around you. I always feel lighter, and more uplifted, and feel charged. And, you know, I really appreciate our friendship and I appreciate you as a person.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Michael, Thank you. Thank you for the warm welcome.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

So your book, The Survival Paradox, discusses your research, and your unique approach to healing. And survival paradox, I think, is such an important component because when we’re dealing with cancer that says really what we look at, you know, cancers, you know, going into more of a survival mechanism. Can you give listeners an understanding of what that survival paradox is? What it really mean?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Of course, the survival paradox really offers a new paradigm in the understanding of health, of disease, and really in understanding our life journey. And as it sounds it is a paradox and the reason is that we are wired, we are built to survive. Every cell in our body is built to survive. That’s especially relevant in the cancer journey and is such because it’s innate in us it’s also automated in us. The paradox is the same force in energy that allows us to survive is the same energy that shortens our life, that causes us suffering, and that causes and fuels cancer. This is really the depth of the paradox because the tools of our survival response and the issue are with the paradox that it easily goes out of regulation. And it uses the fighting mode of the sympathetic system that equates to inflammation and it uses the fright and flight that creates an isolation in a microenvironment. When we want to hide from the system, there’s no oxygen coming through the tissue. The hallmark of the Warburg effect is the hallmark of the growth of cancer. And this is why this is such a big approach to changing our life. That’s why it affects practically every single disease. And it’s especially relevant in the journey of cancer.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And I think this is so fascinating because, I mean, the survival mechanism, the survival paradox that you’re talking about, I mean, that is like you’re mentioning, it’s so crucial. And yeah, it is so crucial for our survival. And so when we look at cancer cells, I mean, it’s like that they’re shifting back to older programming to like a reptilian brain in order to survive. So to me, if we can, then just kind of shift that energy away from that survival mechanism as a being, we should be able to kind of shift that process, I would believe, right?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Yeah, absolutely. It’s really that as you and I talk about, that’s really how you can heal from cancer. How cancer can just, how you can get spontaneous healing and so it’s here. So why would it happen and why does it relate to cancer, really? And that’s really what I want to talk about. You know, I’ve pioneered a lot of treatment that other people use. And I did quietly whole body hyperthermia in this country many, many years ago. And a lot of other things. The only one in the world who ever did it, unfortunately not available. But today I want to talk more about my mind-body journey, and my unique training in meditation that relates to the survival paradox. Because survival paradox biochemically triggers alarming proteins that help us survive by causing inflammation and fibrosis. You know, I did a lot of work with Galectin-3 with Modified Citrus Pectin, and very timely for the interview today is that just three days ago our multicenter trial where I’m the last author on biochemical relapse of prostate cancer using a Modified Citrus Pectin showed in 90% benefit, nine zero in 18 months follow-up. 

Okay, imagine if this was a drug where the main side effect is that people’s inflammation is lowered, that the memory is better, that they have less joint pain. That’s really the side benefit, not the side effects of this approach. So putting these decades of work aside, I want to really focus today on the more holistic view of the survival paradox because this is something we can all do. Yeah, Modified Citrus Pectin is an essential supplement. I really believe is the most important supplement because it addresses these mechanisms. But it’s simple. I recommended dosing, and that’s straightforward. We want to understand how we can really transform the survival paradox. And the first step is to understand why it happens. And really, If you said we are all built to survive, but the body is built to survive as a community just like a beehive is built to survive in one bee is just like a cell in the body. And you can see it, I raised bees. I just went to look at them before the interview. They’re right here outside. So I’m into bees today. 

So in this sense, you are talking and I’m rounding it up a little bit. I don’t know why this is three of 38, really. And let’s make it around 50 trillion cells. Trillion, not million, not million times a thousand. Billion by trillion. It’s a number we cannot comprehend, actually. So in these cells, each of them has up to 1 million reactions a second. For us to survive, they all have to communicate as one harmonized system. The fact that you and I can talk right now is nothing less than a miracle. And in this sense, the cell is recognizing that it plays a role. It arises, it’s created, it serves the purpose and it dissipates through apoptosis. In another cell will take its role, will take its energy. We talked about energy and will take its role and in this sense, the cell sees its survival not on a selfish, self-focused. I have to survive, but I am a part of the community. That’s a big shift that is something for the cancer to happen. This view has to go away on a cellular level but it doesn’t come out of the blue. Right. Maybe it can be from a toxin, can be from an infection, it can be from a genetic predisposition. It can be more often from an epigenetic, right? It can be a side effect of drugs, including chemotherapy, and radiation often. So all of this makes the cell decide that it’s no longer part of a community. 

And I think in this day and age, when there’s so much divisiveness in everywhere in the world, we have to recognize that for a cell, to recognize that it’s part of a community, the person has to recognize that they are part of a community and the community has to recognize that it’s part of a certain country where people may have other opinions about it. And the country has to recognize that it’s part of this world, and the world is to recognize it’s part of the solar system in the universe. So this universal understanding goes all the way to the smallest particle. And that’s very intriguing. When I interviewed you, you said that you wanted to study the smallest particles. Right. But then you decided to look at the big picture. Well, to understand the big picture, you’ve got to really go to the small particles. And to understand the small particles, you’ve got to see the big picture. That’s why some of the physicists who deal with small particles become highly spiritual beings, right? And philosophers, that’s the connection. 

So once a cell loses this ability then its survival becomes selfish. And what drives survival? Very often it’s trauma, very often it’s fear. We can’t trust the environment. Something is wrong. So what do we do? We build isolation around us. So biochemically, Galectin-3 serves as you know so well to build this lattice formation. A pentamer is made with the paint, and it literally builds the coating, and then growth factors and immune modulation molecules come in and integrate into six sticky molecules. It allows platelets to take some of how you use this right off the treatment. It’s so beautiful. And then suddenly the environment changes and now there is a wall. Oxygen cannot come in. Now, the cell really feeling this survival mode. Is anyone listening, watching? If you hold your breath for a minute, if you have really great lungs for 90 seconds, you would be in this survival mode. And then this cell has a hypoxia, signaling that there is not enough energy. I need energy and then the metabolism shifts, we can talk more about it and then a cascade of events happens. 

And that’s why the survival paradox is the basis of what drives cancer. If you think about the treatment that you’re doing, Michael, they’re all trying not to fight the survival mode, but to give the cell signal, right, that it can go back into a spacious mode. And that’s really what this spiritual journey is. That’s really what it is. And it has many, many layers, you know, and many different levels of meditation. I was fortunate in this life to learn from the really greatest masters in the Himalayas, where my teacher and my doctors and my patients and my spiritual doctors and to put it into practice is a tool for healing. And I think that your work really resonates with this. So this is why the survival paradox is so fundamental. And it’s because in the cell danger response cell in response, we are allowing it to a certain biochemical pathway. And the biochemical reaction, no, it’s what we are. We either react out of survival, out of fear, or we open our hearts and then the boundaries fall away in the sun. The oxygen can come in, nutrients can come in, and we become again a part of a community. So this is really why the survival paradox is so fundamental to our health and specifically for college.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah, that’s it. So, I mean, so fascinating and I think it’s so crucial for people to understand that when you talk about cancer, it’s not just a a physical disease. It is a spiritual. It is a social disease, meaning that if an individual does not feel safe in its space or feels safe or a country doesn’t feel safe within the world, then you are then going to be in that separation mode and you’re going to be in that survival mode. And instead of everything working together in harmony like the beehive, you know, you are going one section is going to separate itself and function differently and then utilizing other techniques to then bring energy into that space rather than working together as a whole. And I love how you’re talking about because each each component. So you look at like, you know, a holographic that like the holographic universe that was the book that I really loved where you understand that each component has the information of the whole so that the cell in itself has the information about the whole being and it also has the information about the whole, pretty much a whole universe, you know, that exists. And if you don’t feel safe within that space, then the cell would then function differently and would go into that survival mode, which is really fascinating.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

So, true.I’ll tell a story I’ve never shared in my life. So I had a unique relationship with the most amazing diagnostician, in my opinion, who ever lived. His name was V Nails and why V Nails? Because he would diagnose people through the nails. And he died like in his nineties. He would travel in a taxi from place to place in Israel, and he would see between a hundred, 20 to 200 people a day, and he would massage 70 of them. And he had no charts, nothing. By looking at the nail, even at a piece of nail, he could write all your blood tests, your pathology, and any remedy you’ve ever taken. And we have a special connection. And he never told anybody. The day I left Israel in 1989, he sent me a message at the time the only one that he could teach. But it was, I think he gave me a blessing to leave and learn a little bit more multidimensional approaches in his approach. But he came and taught me after he died, he came in a dream, you know, and he was a homeopath. 

In the dream, he showed me the nail and he said, D-3, like, you know, is there is a potentiation of remedy that is in this system in Europe. But then he said, it’s not D-3, it’s three-dimensional, Isaac. Every Spot has all the information about everything, which really relates to my spiritual upbringing and my whole philosophy with meditation. It was amazing. He really gave me the holy gift, you know? And it’s so much what you are really saying thing right now. So I think it was it’s a good time really to bring. People in Israel are really old enough. Everybody knows it. He was a legend. So in this sense, yes. And of course, once we understand the survival paradox and once we understand the cell, has the ability to go in a certain direction and come back, we understand that for a treatment to be successful, it is to be tailored to an individual person and in the individual type.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah. So one of them we’re talking now kind of about the cancer cells and themselves and then the tumor, but then you have kind of the process of all metastases where then start to move and other locations. So how does that relate to kind of this process of we’re talking about the survival paradox where cancer then instead of just being localized all of a sudden it starts to set up satellite offices in other locations?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

So this is a lot of the driven by multiple components, but galectin-3 plays a key role in it. And it’s interesting. Galectin-3 is a carbohydrate-binding protein for people who don’t know. I really talk about it in detail in my book where I introduce a survival paradox in significant depth in how it affects our physiology, our circulation, our metabolism, and then how to block it. And then to go over every certain disease, not every big with, of course, cancer being the centerpiece in the stories being mainly from cancer. So in this sense, Galectin-3 because it’s really the survival paradox protein whenever there is an injury, whenever there is a threat, he comes to the area and it really is a bus that delivers a different factor. And a lot of them are the growth factors, VGF receptors, you know, different receptors for growth factors that are the receptor that is brought to the cancer area. It can attach to the cancer cells or it can be excreted by the macrophage galectin-3. And then of course it calls for the active growth factor to come in. So galectin-3 can attach to the endothelial lining, to the lining of the blood vessels. It will stick with platelets, creates a community, and will stick to cancer cells. And this is really what you need in order to create a metastasis. And just like it’s part of what makes it biofilm in the gut become aggressive, it will allow this new ball of platelets and cancer cells and growth factors to break the endothelial, the surface of the blood vessel and penetrate the tissue and this is really the basic mechanism. It was known for decades, you know, for 30 years at least. And so we have to disrupt this mechanism. And so, again, blocking galectin-3 is very important. But we also can look today in the flavor of our discussion today, we can see that platelets fight bleeding, right? Platelets really fight the flow. When there is too much flow, we will bleed. So the platelets regulate the flow. They are sticky. The sticky molecule right there. There are drugs to reduce the stickiness of platelets where people have strokes or you know, thromboembolic.

So when we are stuck from a point of view of survival or when we are stuck in motion, when we are stuck psychologically, spiritually, and when we can’t let go, it will create the basis for cancer to grow. And as a cancer goes into a stronger survival mode and then stronger hypoxia, and there’s no oxygen, it will try to spread. And then, as we know, every person is part of our ego and wants to be successful. So it wants to overcome and become becomes the whole thing. The sad story is that when the cancer kills the person, it also kills itself. You know, it’s not a winning proposition for the cancer. So in this sense, there is a drive for these approaches. So our role is how can we regulate the flow? How can we remove this stuckness? And, you know, the stuckness is not our fault. Often it’s the trauma that we had in life that we had no control over. Often it is an epigenetic trait that we are expressing itself now. It happened to our ancestors and we are expressing it. 

We know it from Holocaust survivors. I write about it in my book, in my story about my maintenance has been in my grandfather whom I’m named after. Ten of his 12 siblings were killed in the Holocaust. And I was kind of holding it. I never met him, of course. And then when I healed my mother, my view of the Holocaust changed. So it’s really something that puts cancer in the person, the cancer cell into survival mode into. And often it’s fear, right? Fear freezes us. We don’t flow. And you know, and really the best way to melt ice, we can cut it into pieces, we can become more spacious or we can melt in the sun. That’s the best way. Right? And that’s the warmth of love and compassion. Right? It melts this so we can bring these elements into our cancer journey. Then suddenly, every treatment we do becomes more effective. You know, one thing that is so important, and you and I know well, it’s great to use fancy treatments, but they shouldn’t come instead of really addressing the fundamentals that are not so fundamental. They’re not so obvious because it’s part of us not being self-focused, not being frozen, and wanting to really live. We have to be less self-focused. And it’s a real challenge. How can you be less self-focused and still focus on healing yourself? How can you change survival, fear-based eagerness not to succumb to cancer, to the motivation to leave? If there’s something there’s an intent that is bigger than us, it’s to survive. You know, there are so many studies, right, on compassion and community and support and purpose, right? And in this sense, it’s part of understanding. We’re all in the same boat. We’re all in survival mode. We all are stuck in this survival paradox. We are part of a bigger journey. We can be happy and other people can be happy at the same time. It’s not limited. Just like space is not limited. When we can bring it into cancer, things happen in a different way and this really should be for me. It’s the basis for everything else. So throughout my life, you know, I used therapies for this in my work music elective three definitely is really important. I just shared with you that they’re working on a very dramatic development to the political three and we have seen in animal studies to offer a dramatic solution for sepsis that’s 11 million deaths a year. That’s great. It’s my scientist inventor but we really want to bring it as the basis of what I call my third act in life. I mean, my sixties is to really demonstrate and share that by using the mind in the right way. We can really heal from anything. And one of the hardest things to heal with is cancer.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And that’s what I love because you’re bringing that the spiritual and the physical at the same time, because there’s no separation between the two. So we talk about Galectin-3 as a molecule, but then at the same time, we know that that molecule has a spiritual component to itself. It’s behaving based upon kind of the spiritual environment of that individual. You know, how connected, what kind of relationships do we have? How safe are we now? What kind of fear are we dealing with? Are we able to forgive our people around us or are we kind of holding on to injury trauma, which is that kind of stickiness, that stuckness, you know, the platelets, you know that is not moving, which is cancer-causing? You’re concentrating energy in one location. Or are we able to kind of view these traumas or view things that are happening in our lives and even then things that have happened and in past generations that are then passed on to us, you know, like in you and your grandfather, are we able to look at those and then view them and have forgiveness and show gratitude for these events? You know what they have taught us and what we learn from it and then bring light and love and compassion into that space. And by doing that, you’re then impacting actually the physical component, you know, that which is what we can study and what we can see, like the fiscal term or the fiscal galectin-3, how it’s behaving now. All those components are then impacted by working on it, spiritual and emotionally, but then also doing it on a fiscal level and bringing in something like us all see, you know, depleting the Galectin-3 then you’re then unstick in the what you’re doing that on a fiscal level and then translate on into the spiritual component as well. Which is the beauty.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Yeah. Yeah, it is. And it’s important for the audience to understand that this thing will translate into the cell membrane. Really, a cancer cell responds to its environment. And so when the environment changes, when the environment goes into survival mode where Galectin-3 that is in the area, then for example, insulin receptors gets blocked in P53 suppressor cells, suppressor gene gets suppressed, you know, so it can’t protect us. And suddenly AMPK which produces energy efficiently from the mitochondria is blocked and suddenly the cell field is in crisis. And HIF hypoxia-inducing factor is initiated in AKT and then an enzyme called PDK blocks PDH and their mitochondria are shut down. Why do you use you know it decay and other agents you try to open the mitochondria so now all this higher level philosophical understanding is down to cellular biology and do mitochondrial function. It was a Warburg effect and what drives cancer and makes it more and more aggressive as it grows. It doesn’t have enough blood supply, it gets more hypoxic. So, yes, it definitely can really unwind it. And I think in this sense, one of the questions, one of the big issues that we see a lot is somebody can meditate to do yoga and qigong and create spaciousness and blood pressure will go down, we notice and the paths will get more regulated and joint pains will get better and migraines go away and memory can improve. But it’s really hard to get rid of the damn cancer, you know? Why is it, right? 

Well, when we meditate, we have to take the process to the cellular level. Meditation is often in principle, and I’ve studied a lot of meditation techniques, spent 20 years, two months a year meditating, ten years I have daily creativity work. So I spent I’ve sat on the cushion for tens and tens of thousands of hours. Usually, meditation is we are fading the space around us. It becomes open right to have this experience. But we really need to find the space inside the area that is really dense, just like your story with this small particle you’re interested in. And I was telling you the same space you there just like this great Vnails said 3D everywhere, three dimensional everywhere. So that’s the trick with cancer. How do we bring it to an it? And that’s really that’s what’s unique about open heart medicine. What I teach, what I mainly teach. I taught it for many years, twice a year in Israel. And I’m going to start teaching it here after the summit. I’m going to start giving some lectures on it. And then in the spring, I’m going to offer a free series it just to taste some of the work that has to be done in a face-to-face environment, which I am starting. I’m so excited in 2024. 

So in this sense, how do we do it? We have to recognize that this cancer is part of its survival mechanism, and gets isolated. Right. You talk about it. I talk about it. I’m sure many people talk about it. So the ability of our mind to affect our body is there. But if a system is no longer a part of the body, it’s independent. Right. We talk a lot about it. It’s much harder to touch it. And so there are many tricks and techniques to do it in this like more advanced meditation practices that I share certain insights I had when I was on my own. It’s a mountain and I put this on my own, really some new approaches. But in general, for us to touch something that we are no longer in control with. It means that our view of ourselves and our and connection with the environment, our interdependence with others, has to expand and melt our physical boundaries. This is because, from our perspective, the cancer tumor and the cancer cells are no longer under our control. It’s really an independent entity. We can see it in both technologies, what we see the behavior of the cancer in relationship to the behavior of the body. So it’s how we can expand, how we can accept things that when we are in survival mode, we don’t accept them. 

And really the solution is within us because every cell in our body has a boundary, and every organ in our body has a boundary. I don’t want this. I’m going to decide what comes through the membrane. And when I throw away what I want to do, the only organ that takes what everybody doesn’t want is the heart the venous return to the heart is, quote-unquote, dirty blood. And the heart doesn’t say I’m going to take blood only from the brain and not from the liver. The heart with open arms takes blood from everywhere, without discrimination, and through connecting with the universe. If and then it exchanges in the lungs, and then it gives blood without discrimination, really total selflessness. And only after the heart gives its blood, it relaxes inhibitions itself through the coronary arteries, the only organ that nourishes itself after it finishes its work. And that’s the physiological, physiological basis of what they teach, what they call open heart medicine. And for me, I get so excited about it because it’s a physical, physiological, science-based support for the most esoteric meditation practices that I learned from great masters, which was the manifested just does can be explained within the logical mind. And when I got this shot, the knowledge of student transmission, it had a fancy name in it. And I said, no, people are not going to be able to get it. Many of my teachers said, You can’t teach it. But when you put it in to open out medicine and you’re connected with physiology, then yes, it starts to make sense and this is a component that we need to offer to cancer patients, to everyone, ideally, it’s offered by somebody who has a personal experience or knowledge and it just and it’s a game changer. And this is why this approach of opening my medicine, that’s why love and compassion is so powerful. Because what happens with the heart instead of reacting, it just accepts and responds with love and compassion. No matter what comes in, if it’s good or bad if the blood that comes because that is more dirty is less dirty, the heart accepts and gives. So this describes different levels of meditation experiences between trying to just be relaxed and often people say, Oh, we need to be relaxed. Why are you not relaxed? 

But even when we’re not relaxed, reality doesn’t change. It’s just our perception of reality that changes. And then all of this has major consequences on the ability to create a change because the only truth that cannot be argued is that everything is changeable no matter what. Is there a belief system that everything is changeable, that everything is possible? And that really is that’s why everybody can be a miracle. And it’s important for people to recognize that cancer still has a choice to become in almost yeah, yeah. If we kill all of them with toxic treatments and sometimes it’s necessary because it’s going crazy, then yes, the good cells can take over. But the real healing is this transformative effect. And this transformation happens. And it’s this transformation happened on a spiritual level, a psychological level, and a psycho-emotional level. And as a result, it’s a physical level. So this is really I wanted to date what I wanted to do to emphasize survival products, touch on the biochemistry of modifies it was taking on some of the new research I’m doing with Galectin-3 depletion so a few resources and we will start the clinical trials in about a year and going through an FDA process and in the same time as the real journey where the true healing really happens on this level. And the reason why I use the word true healing is because when we heal at this level, the epigenetics, we move, we live for future generations, it’s been transformed. And the epigenetic going backward is also being transformed because we have this concept that time goes only forwards, time goes forward and backward. The story with my mother’s healing. When I heard about my grandfather’s trauma, I never told her about it. And someday she could watch, you know, programs about the Holocaust in her eighties for the first time. So I’m glad I had the opportunity to share all of this. And I do recommend people to read this Survivor, probably because it really gives a flavor of what we talked about.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And it’s a wonderful book. I had the blessing to read it. And I mean, and you what I love about you is that you bring healing on all these different and so like we’re talking about the survival paradox and then talking about that the heart, the heart organ and how it is completely unselfish. So we need to then move out of that space of being. We have to transcend this certain need to survive and transcend and be selfless and just give human beings that accept what is around us and then still love and compassion. And by doing that, we then set a different tone and that is above and beyond the kind of reptilian survival and get a fight to protect against this and so we’re just moving beyond that, recognizing that we’re more than that. And by doing that, the paradox is that then we survive.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Exactly this is why the end of the book. And that’s where people have to come and learn is freeing survival. And when we free survival paradox, then our existence expands. And as a result, we live a longer, healthier life. And that’s another angle of the policy not often talked about is actually letting go of this attachment to survive and that will allow us to survive in a harmonious way in a long way. Very well said, Mike.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah. We have to stop being like the monkey through the cage that’s holding on to the banana and is not able to pull it in, you know, it’s not that attachment to life. We have to kind of let go and then we can become free.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Exactly. Yeah.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Well, Dr. Isaac Eliaz, it’s always such an honor and pleasure and. Yeah, thank you so much for everything that you do. Where can people learn more about I mean, obviously the book Survival Paradox, but where can they learn more about everything that you do?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Well, people can go to dreliaz.com at dreliaz.org I have a newsletter I put out twice a week and they can sign through the newsletter and I will update my community about future events. I’m going to start teaching more and more and meditation and healing. I’m excited to connect with people and to support as many people as they can.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Well, thank you so much, Dr. Eliaz. I, was just truly a pleasure. Thank you.