Outsmarting Cancer: The Foods That Help & The Treatments That Don’t

Introduction and Michael Gregeru2019s Background 0:00

Everybody. Thanks for joining us at this exciting Plant Based Anti-cancer conference or cancer protective conference. And I'm so excited today because I have the fantastic Michael Greger joining us today to talk about. Obviously, that nutritional excellence has incredible power to prevent, not just prevent, heart attack and diabetes and blood pressure, but to really give people the opportunity to protect themselves against cancer. And it's tremendously underrepresented. So we got to talk about that today.

Let's talk about it. All right. So I just got to introduce Doctor Greger for just a second a few quick lines because he's one of the, you know, the superstars in the nutritional movement. He's a founding member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. Of course, he's an internationally recognized speaker on nutrition. He's the host, you know, of the science based nonprofit Nutritional Facts Dawg, which offers free online hosting, More Than you know, 2000 videos and articles in health and nutrition.

And he's also an acclaimed author with bestselling books, selling millions of copies of How Not to Die, to How Not to Die cookbook, How to Die, and How to Age. They all became almost instant New York Times bestsellers, and the bottom line is that he's produced and worked on a tremendous volume of research and has a familiarity with a tremendous amount of data from the nutritional science world. And so we're really excited to have him to communicate and contribute to this event. And obviously, he uniquely does not receive he his all his work as a nonprofit, his he generates tremendous support for nutritional science.

And, you know, of course, and soil sales of books and honorarium and everything are donated to, to the furtherance of nutritional science. Okay, here we are. Doctor Gregor, thanks for joining us. It's nutrition facts, not nutritional facts. Okay. Attrition facts. All right. Okay. Let's get into this now. So here's the thing. Obviously, one of the main things we're talking about is that people have this over optimistic viewpoint that medical screenings, medical interventions, chemotherapy, radiation that were saving the lives from cancer or winning the war on cancer, they was overly unrealistic viewpoint of what doctors can do at a very under realistic and not.

They don't understand how powerful nutritional excellence is really to modulate, and both give us the ability to prevent most common cancers and to even enhance lifespan, prevent recurrence, or even even encourage remission in early stage cancers. So give me your take on some of this. Yeah, I mean, surveys show that both patients and doctors like widely, wildly overestimate the power of pills and procedures to keep them healthy. So, for example, people think that cholesterol lowering statin drugs are about 20 times more effective than they actually are to prevent heart attacks.

Screening, Overdiagnosis, and the Limits of Conventional Medicine 2:56

So no wonder most people rely on drugs to save them. Right. But our leading killers aren't caused by drug deficiency. The dirty little secret medicine is that most people surveyed said they would not be willing to take many of these drugs, like antihypertensive or anti osteoporosis or anticlerical drugs, if they knew how little benefit these products actually offered, whereas treating the actual cause by clearing up our diets is not only safer and cheaper, but may be more effective in preventing and reversing resting some of our leading cause of death.

That's why I'm so glad that you're doing this. I'm actually planning an 18 book series on cancer starting in 2027. I'm going to do a book on every cancer that kills more than 5000 Americans. So there's 18 cancers. And so that is going to be my life. It's going to be all cancer all the time for the foreseeable future. And so yeah, I'm really looking forward to diving into the I'm spending this year a lot on plants protection, too, because we've done so much on diabetes and heart disease. We've got to devote if this because we're seeing, you know, radical benefits and people don't just overestimate what medical treatments can do, but they overestimate what medical screenings can do.

They think you can get like mammograms and prostate exams and PSA. And we're saving so many lives and by early intervention really detection. And it's grossly false. Grossly false. Right. Well so the right so there's a sense that we are preventing cancer through screening. Of course by definition we're not preventing cancers. We're just picking it up with the idea is that, look if we caught it early enough, maybe we would actually be able to save some lives. And that's not the case, right? There's no difference at all cause mortality for PSA testing for men.

No difference in all cosmetology for mammograms for women, regardless of what frequency. And there's actually very few screenings. So a certain types of colorectal cancer screening and certain cervical cancer screening actually may save lives. But beyond that. So, you know, for example, you know, doctors teaching women to do breast self exams was actually worse than useless. Say the risks were actually exceeded. The benefits skin cancer screenings also actually they there was a there was a huge trial in Germany suggested that the risks actually exceed the benefits.

And people don't understand these like what do you mean risks? What do we do? The risks of a screening procedure, right? You get a blood test or you get I mean, what's the what's the big deal? Well, there certainly are risks for certain procedures, like, you know, colonoscopies. But the people don't understand this. Not just the risks of false alarms. Like, wouldn't it be scary if, you know, they said, oh, there's something that we see in the mammogram. We're not we're concerned about doing a little biopsy and you wait all the time.

Turns out it's nothing. You it's not just that kind of anxiety. The biggest downside of cancer screening is what's called overdiagnosis, meaning we detect a cancer and we treat a cancer that with all of our armamentarium. Right. Chemo, radiation, whatever it takes for a cancer that never would have, you never would have known about had you not done the screening, that you would have died with the cancer rather than from the catch, you wouldn't even have known you had the cancer. Some breast cancers come and go.

They just disappear on their own. And so that's why, so that's why. And so then, and ironically, those people who are cured from cancer are the, the biggest cheerleaders, you know, on PSA tests or of mammograms, they, they found cancer early. They got rid of it. And now I'm all better. But ironically, those who are most harmed actually claimed the greatest benefit. And and so I mean, that's and you know, getting that kind of irradiation to the chest, increased risk of heart disease for women, etc..

That's why even though we may be able to prevent some breast cancer deaths, we don't see any reduce of reduction of deaths overall. And that's unfortunately because there's very serious risk of overdiagnosis. Yeah. And they're getting chemo when they don't need it. And the chemo, the problems and other causes of death and other causes of cancers. But yeah. So and I think our point here is that we're making this point that if people had a realistic idea of the lack of efficacy and real safety and conventional screenings, well, it's not the important point.

The important point is that it would make them more likely to embrace what really does work and what really is important that they're not embracing. And that's our main point, you know, do what's really going to be effective, do what's really going to change your life. And that's change your diet and change your lifestyle and stop incurring the causes of cancer thinking doctors are going to protect you because they're not. It's you that has to protect yourself. And then things you can do that is a really, really, really effective that's underestimated, right?

I'm so glad you bring at that point. You know, just when you talk, when I do videos talking about how ineffective statin drugs are, for example, I'm not stating drugs are actually remarkably effective on a public health scale, saving thousands of lives every year. But on an individual basis, most people wouldn't consider taking them the the the point is, not all of these drugs are terrible. The point is, no, there's actually something that can dramatically decrease your risk of heart disease. And it's only because you think these drugs are so effective that I'm, in fact, people that are getting screening, there's actually concern, there's a licensing effect.

It's like, oh, I don't have cancer. Oh, then I don't have to change my diet, right? Oh, I've been screened for colorectal cancer. So I don't have to worry about whatever. Right. Because I'm, I'm now, you know, kind of a stamp of approval. Oh, you have normal cholesterol, normal blood pressure. Even though, you know, we're in a society where it's normal to die from heart attacks and strokes and all sorts of other problems. And so so that's a further kind of downside.

Diet as Cancer Prevention and Risk Reduction 8:42

But. Right. But it's not right. We're not really against screening because all of this evil doctor conspiracy, we're railing against the efficacy of screening. And look, it's your body your choice. If you think the benefits outweigh the risks, then go for it. I mean, that's the current USPS recommendation for PSA screening, for example, is, you know, every person should be described. The risk and benefits make up their own mind. And look, I'm entirely in favor. I look at that data and like, no way am I going to get a PSA screening.

But look, you're you may be different, right? The point is, there are actually powerful things we can do to live long, healthy lives. And so we just cannot rely on the kind of traditional we really have to take responsibility for our own health. I'm so excited of doing this kind of summit to put those tools in people's hands. Right. So exactly, people, they think that treatments and they even go to alternative medicine treatments that are and it's either medical, conventional, alternative medicine treatments, whether the thing that really does work, which is not type of it's not treatment, it's it's the food.

Right, right, right. These doctors are bad. So I'm going to get a witch doctor to cure me instead. Know, how about treating the cause and the underlying disease? But, you know, we don't want to talk about that in this society, because then at least blame at the feet of these poor, sick people. But look, I mean, it's that's one way you can look about it. The other way you look at about it is this tremendous optimistic view. You have tremendous power over your health, destiny, and that the vast majority of people should deaths and disabilities preventable with a healthy enough plant based diet and lifestyle.

And so, no, that's good news that that you had a role in your breast cancer, you had a role in your heart disease. You had your role in your obesity, because that means you can do something about it. If you had no role, if it truly was some kind of, you know, quirk of some, some genetic, you know, roulette wheel, well, then that's terrible news, because then at any time you have, like, no control over anything. No, we have tremendous control. And it's never too late, never too late to start, to start moving, to start eating healthier, to stop smoking.

We really do have the power, right. So let's now go into some of that power and give represented representative certain because my my a motive of a mission is to put together you know obviously the dietary portfolio help people put together a diet of substances that really do protect their lives. You know, and there's so much data out there. There's so many studies out there, hundreds, thousands of studies showing the protective effect of these foods that are under people that don't even understand or haven't even heard about.

And it's not promoted in the in the media, you know, and I love that. I love that that approach, you know, there's this portfolio died thanks to David Jenkins University of Toronto looking look there's different cholesterol lowering foods. So in addition to being a plant based diet, getting rid of the saturated fat, trans fat and cluster all that's increasing cholesterol, let's add foods to the dye that actively pull cholesterol from your body from a variety of different mechanisms. So you can use a portfolio of different foods to pull cholesterol down.

The most powerful dietary intervention to pull down cholesterol as effective as first line and drugs. And so why not? Look, there's all sorts of foods that decrease your risk of specific cancers. Let's have a portfolio of different foods. There's this sense that eat more plants know there's iceberg lettuce right. And then there's you know, collard greens right. Oh there's bananas. And then there's blueberries. Cannot you know, there's specific foods with specific effects. Yes. There are some nutrients like vitamin C found widely throughout the plant kingdom.

But there are other things like the lignin and the flag seeds or the, you know, the glucosinolates and the vegetables that if you were not, if you were not eating cruciferous vegetables, you are missing out. If you are not eating flexes, you are just missing out on this very powerful anti-cancer compound that you're just not going to get out, get eating other kind of foods about 100 times the concentration of ligands compared to most other foods, although sesame seeds do have some. But I mean, and we have not just epidemiological studies, observational studies, but they have these, you know, studies where you take women with breast cancer and we have biopsies before and after six months of randomizing people in a double blind manner with flaxseed companion muffins, you can't tell who got the flaxseed muffins versus the placebo muffins, right.

And you actually see differences in the expression of some of these cancer markers six months after in those who were randomized to the flax. So we actually have this high level evidence of specific foods that can have specific effects. And why aren't we talking about it more? Because there's not a big flax out there, but we can get the information out and help change people's lives. Right? It's you know, it's funny that these these interventions are studied independently. You just takes the flax is the only variable.

You just add mushrooms. You just add green tea, you just add berries. It's just one variable. And it's really, you know what happened if you changed 30 variables right. And took away all the other garbage people reading it. So we're talking about incredible power that cancer is really that we really can prevent cancer, just like we can prevent heart disease, you know. So let me go back to this flax thing again to how much flax, which you like. I personally mix flax, grind flax and grind she and mix it together.

And I put a couple tablespoons on that on my morning. Yeah. Oh how much flax chia and and you know because we're going after nutritional variety to fracture. You have both omega three or omega three seeds. You know how much do you think it's the Sibo fiber. But you're not getting the lignin in some of these other seeds. And so that's why part of my daily dozen of the checklist of all the healthiest healthy foods, I encourage people to fit into their diet, kind of the the g bomb equivalent in the nutrition facts world is a type of ground flaxseed today.

And so that's you said so fast a tablespoon of ground flax seeds today. One table that gets you your 2.2g of acid. And the hands I'm concerned about long term consumption more than like a tablespoon and a half. But unless it's cooked. But yeah, attempting day. That's part of my daily dozen. And what I do is I mix it because I was really impressed with the body of literature about sperm adding as an autophagy booster. I'm writing my latest book, I'm on to age. And so I added wheat germ, which most concentrated dietary source.

So I actually mix wheat germ and flax in 1 to 1 ratio. And then and so and I sprinkle that on stuff. And in fact I've added to that all sorts of other things that have a neutral flavor that I want to add multiple times in my diet. So I'm doing photo steroids, I'm adding psyllium, I'm adding I'm considering adding taurine. Interestingly, this is not specifically for cancer, but for other issues, mostly decreasing LDL as much as possible. So you don't use chia seeds? I use it not daily. I mean, I have seeds and I use them for specific recipes I like mixing.

Third, the amount of lignin compared to flax. And they still got, you know, third. Yeah, yeah. One third. The amount of flax. Just thought a lot like flax is 20 20mg per tablespoon. So seven milligrams of lignin. Oh I'm impressed okay. You know I can diversify a little bit. Yeah. Well yeah we're saying the more diversification of different that have the simple but okay so that's great. So you're going you're adding the the which arm which is great. And you're getting of course it's like a raw or raw organic which.

Yep. And it's dirt cheap right. Because it's a byproduct of the building industry. Right. Cool. And so right. And so of course, the reason we don't do this poor fellow approach in the scientific realm is because we want to control as many variables as possible, right? We just want to look at flax. If you do flax and broccoli, who knows if it's the flax of the broccoli. And as practitioners we're like, who cares if it's the flax in the broccoli, right? Let's do both of them. In fact, let's do all 20 of them.

Because look, it's like life or death, right? And look, maybe some of them have similar mechanisms kind of and don't have kind of additive effects upon the others. Who cares? Right? I mean, we're talking about safe, simple side effects, free solutions with no downside. Let's throw it all in the mix. Right. And so you're so greens. You're doing cruciferous vegetables raw and cooked and raw

Building a Cancer-Protective Food Portfolio 16:48

lettuces to what are you doing as far as your green consumption. So I do kind of the hack and hold right. So I'm eating them cloaked but I'm chopping them first waiting for 45 minutes before cooking them. So I get to some for vein, which is he's stable. And so every morning. So I have right now I have my I have my chop grains. I pressure steamed them for, you know, a minute in an Instant Pot. And so which seems to be the most kind of nutrient preserving. And I'm doing I do 2 pounds, 2 pounds of cruciferous a day.

It's usually usually kale. My favorite loss of kale. The dinosaur kale, the black Californian. I can't get it where I am, but when I get back to civilization, kind of in the rural, stuck in rural Virginia these days, when I get back to civilization, I'll get my favorite kale. I'm stuck with green curly as we speak, and so are you doing. You see, not doing well. You're not doing broccoli sprouts and lettuces and then raw onions. Scallion. You know, I should be doing broccoli sprouts. I got out of the habit when I was traveling because I just couldn't keep them from molding over.

But now that I'm now that I'm stuck here in the winter, I should I should get back. I have should get back to the Broncos sprouts. That's an excellent recommendation. Yeah. With scallion and onion in the salad too, you know. And you chew on your teeth. There's hungry. Yeah. There's some advantage to, like, mixing it with your saliva and your teeth and the bacteria in your mouth and all that stuff. And chewing it really well. Good for your teeth. Anyway. I'm encouraging you some. Good for you to.

All right. I'm encourage you to chew a salad too. Okay. Good. Great. Okay, so what about now? How do you incorporate mushrooms in your program? Oh of course. Right. Because we're getting the thinning and the sperm adding all these micronutrients you can't get otherwise. Yeah. And so yeah I'm a big fan of porcini but yeah doing mushrooms every day. That's my if you was a baker's daily dozen it would be mushrooms would be the 13th. Yeah okay. All right. So what what do we of course we're talking here about, you know, wild blueberries, blackberries and stuff. You eaten that with breakfast.

How do you. Where do you put that into? That's my breakfast. Yeah. So I do mixed berries with I do groats, a combination of groats, oats, barley, barley, rye, groats and lentils together in this kind of rolled prebiotic mix. Then I mix with berries, wild blueberries, mixed blackberries. It's pomegranate season, so of course I'm adding fresh pomegranates. This is the only me I mean, I do you know what I do? I take black lentils. I cook them in the, of course, black lentils. I don't Mexican little grain.

I put the wild blueberries, I love it, and I mixed the wild blueberries with the pomegranates I have in my freezer. So I mixed the great minds think alike. Yeah, that's cool right? And then I'm adding pumpkin seeds and the flax mixture and. Yeah, right. You know, whatever, whatever, whatever else strikes me. Oh, walnuts for sure. All right. Great, great. So you really. Let's see. What did we miss? Well green tea right. Yeah. Green tea. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. The EGCg and all that stuff. You remember that study from the Asian study where they had women who.

Well, this was a study that followed women for like 20 years that showed protection against breast cancer because they had some mushrooms every day. But the ones that had the green tea and the mushrooms and 90%. Yeah, like a 90% reduction of cancer. Yeah. It's crazy if people can you imagine if a drug could do what food could do? Oh my God. Yeah, they would make billions of dollars. Well there is a drug. What food can do. It's called those. And boy is it $1 trillion industry. Well I don't know if I could do what food can do, but, you know, you're right.

Yeah. Food is just so incredibly powerful. And the and the portfolio we're putting together here and we're going to go, you know, we'll go over this. I'll go later with people. All the list of all the things we recommend recommending. But the full portfolio preventative. And before we close we got to talk about this, that these things that work synergistically that you include in your diet, that have such powerful effects to protect cancer, are also effective when a person has an early stage cancer or has a treated cancer and prevent recurrence.

They also show their effect of extending lives with cancer, and they're more effective than conventional treatments are at at enabling people to extend my span, even people with a diagnosis of cancer. So this is what's so, you know. Yeah, I mean, that's that's a critical recommendation of the American Institute for Cancer Research, world Cancer Research Fund. The same diet that prevents cancer is the same diet used to treat cancer. And, you know, I, you know, it's important to remind people of this kind of artificial delineation.

Line between prevention and treatment. Because for these typical epithelial cancers, you know, breast cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, ovarian cancer, they take decades to grow. And so the the the ovarian cancer were diagnosed with at 70th May have started when we were 50. So for 50 years we've had this cancer growing. And so all of a sudden on one day you get a cancer diagnosis and you're like, I was healthy yesterday and today I have cancer, right? No, you've had cancer for 50 years. And so all the while you were quote unquote preventing cancer.

Know you were treating your cancer, you were slowing down the rate of growth in hopes that you'd never even have to worry about your cancer anytime within your lifetime. And so that's it's critically important. So when you do these autopsy studies of women in their 30s who get killed with an accident, and you look and see these microscopic breast cancers, or you see my, you know, prostate cancer tumors or thyroid cancer, tumors, cancer is a common phenomenon, but we are constantly fighting back against any budding tumors.

So you don't wait until the cancer diagnosis to start eating healthier. You do beforehand and you think you're preventing cancer, but often you're actually treating any cancer that you eventually get diagnosed with because is large enough that you actually pick it up, or preventing it from ever being diagnosed and you never even knew you had cancer. Even better, I love it, I love it. Obviously the point we're making is now's the time to do it. Not now. Now. Never too early. It's never too late. Just do it.

Because this is super effective. And and then later on when people have cancer, they run and they go for treatments like in garden variety, estrogen positive breast cancer or indolent growing past cancer. And they have radiation or chemo and they do all these hormones, they do these treatments and they do not focus on their diet, dietary excellence and the portfolio of foods that we're talking about, which is more effective than, than the medical, than the medical treatments. And what's important to recognize, regardless of what conventional treatments you choose, you can always also improve your diet, right?

You want to go all in chemo radiation. That's no excuse to not. In fact, it's more important to improve your diet because you have to counter the side effects of the treatment. And so that's the nice thing about diet is that regardless of what else you do, you can always choose to eat the healthiest and give your body the best chance of survival. Yeah. And of course, yeah. And of course, the other aspect is that when you're doing when you're doing all this, it's this even if they have chemo, there could be stray cells that escape the chemo and these stray cells that are scattered throughout the body that escape chemo.

Chemo doesn't kill every cell. The body has the ability to seek out and destroy individual cells and create apoptosis of cells that could actually grow back and create a recurrence of cancer that causes the person's difference, secondary occurrence. And that's where nutrition and my lifetime experience as a clinician taking care of people with cancer, that's what we've seen a tremendously effectiveness preventing recurrence of these cancers because of this, of nutritional excellence, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

No, no. And so the right. So that's why. So for example, women that consume soy, we now have half a dozen studies looking at thousands of breast cancer survivors, those so significantly lower risk of cancer recurrence, as well as a significantly lower all cause mortality than those women with diagnosis of breast cancer who don't eat soy. Yeah. So all right, so we're hitting on all these individual facts and

Diet, Treatment, and Recurrence Prevention 24:18

I'm so excited. This is exactly what I was going to do in the in the in the cancer series is like, okay, every single food that's ever been associated with survival lung cancer goes in lung cancer book. Every food is ever right. So there's like a portfolio of foods that best fight lung cancer. And so this is the daily prescription, you know, I mean that's a that's that's I'm so excited. See I'm telling you great minds. Great minds. Yeah. So that's what we're gonna put together a prescription for people to give the diet and give the right type of extra, additional conservative use of supplements.

Just the and the all these things that they could do that are really very effective, inexpensive. So what's what's what's up man. Give me a, give me an example of cancer fighting something okay. Like like turmeric and the green EGCg from green tea genes and possibly the, you know, the mixed mushroom extracts from a variety. You know, you drive a mushroom, I see. Okay. You know, and the herbs and spices to like, you know, I love it. Sage Rosemary time. Yeah, yeah. Roman rosemary and you know, all these things that I love it.

Our exposure to to the natural plant world's natural protective sound pounds. I'm going for lunch. It's like we've we've changed our thinking in the last five years. Instead of thinking like, okay, we're going to eat like, kimchi or yogurt to get the right probiotics, the right bacteria, or take a probiotic supplement. Now realize it's the variety of fibers, phytochemicals, and diversity of the plant kingdom that leads to the most healthiest immune system. And variety of these substances do work effectively with each other as synergistically.

You have this unique opportunity in human history to get these to, like, make our diet have this wide variety of these protective substances that a person wouldn't have this knowledge, wouldn't know how to do years ago. Right. Absolutely. You know, people don't understand that the word fiber is this catch all term for literally thousands of different, you know, indigestible carbohydrates that fit under that. And they all may feed different subpopulations of good gut bugs. And so that's why people are like, oh, fiber is good.

I'm going to take some kind of supplement fiber supplement as opposed to having, you know, you know, 50 different foods a week or whatever, the different, you know, kind of diversity challenge you go to because you're feeding the wide range of of different good gut bugs with prebiotics, the, the good gut bugs, what the good gut bugs each rather than taking probiotics, which are just going to die. The reason that you don't have good gut bugs is because you're obviously creating a bad environment in your gut.

And so if you take the they're going to die off just like the other good gut bugs died off. And so that's why you actually got to create a good you got to keep coming down the hatch with these wonderful bounty. And so they will, you know, be fruitful and multiply all on their own. Well, great. Michael, I think we, you know, we we talked we covered a lot in a short period of time. Yeah. Valuable things here. And I think it's going to help people understand the whole point of this much, much better.

Well, thanks to you, you got to do this into a book or something. I'm excited to read. I want to see what your cancer portfolio is. Not really. You know, I make little pamphlets with booklets for people with, you know. All right, well, send me your booklets. Yeah. Okay. I don't really make it into a total book because I'm, like, past that point in my life. Give me the pamphlet. Send it to me. Okay. Sounds good. All right, well, thanks again for your contribution here. Great to see you. Keep up the great work.

Okay. Take care. All right. Because everybody. Thanks for joining us. And don't miss the rest of the series. All right. Bye bye, everybody.