Starving Breast Cancer: Key Strategies to Know

Jane McLelland

Thank you for inviting me to be part of this truly special event.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

You have a truly amazing story, which you then told in your book, How to Starve Cancer, which I have. I don’t know if you’re going to be able to see how many tabs there are.. It’s not cooperating, but trust is saying that there is something like that.

Jane McLelland

I can see.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

There are a zillion tabs on the book because I have read it more than once, more than twice, and more than three times, and I refer to it often because it’s just brilliant. It serves such an unmet need.

Jane McLelland

Yes, well, that’s the reason I wrote it because I realized that I had an idea and a vision of how cancer patients could approach a diagnosis and look at their way of treating metabolic diseases that hadn’t been seen before. I tried to put it together like hers. It’s a complicated jigsaw puzzle. The whole cancer is not just fitting a little bit of chemo here and a bit of radiotherapy there, and that’s going to complete the picture back to normal. Not the case. Many pieces are missing, but it’s how you do that and what structured way you approach this. That’s what I tried to do: put it in some structure for people to try to guide them towards solving it and then rebooting the immune system, as well as all the conventional therapies as well.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. Tell us your story. Tell us how you came by all of this wisdom.

Jane McLelland

Yes, well, I’m not a doctor, however, I was formerly a chartered physiotherapist in the NHS.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

What does that mean? What is that for, for people in the US?

Jane McLelland

Yes, it’s a physical therapist. You call them over there. I did a lot of medical training before I qualified to start physiotherapy. I hadn’t done anything in oncology other than basic stuff for respiratory physiology, exercise rehab afterward, or lymphedema. Nothing about the actual nuts and bolts of the cancer itself. I knew a little bit about the pathology, but I certainly didn’t understand some of the words, like angiogenesis, and keywords that get thrown at you.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

What about it? Did you have any background in pharmaceuticals or in pharmacokinetics?

Jane McLelland

No, I had to learn it all myself. Everything is self-taught from ground zero. I had no real basic understanding of oncology at all. This was thrown into it because, of course, I had a diagnosis myself. It wasn’t breast cancer; it was cervical cancer. Then, a few years later, it had spread to my lungs. But in the meantime, my mother had stage four breast cancer, and it was a bit of a hunt to try and save her. That led me to look beyond the conventional treatments to think about other ways, or where are we missing those pieces of the jigsaw. Where do they slot in? Why do we not have the full picture?

Why can we not cure stage four? It’s a massive problem, and I was sure some pieces were missing from the jigsaw that were hidden in old literature. But somehow, if I dug around in the research long enough, I would dig up something that would help me. I started with my mom back in 96, and I was hunting around trying to find things for her but didn’t come across the research that saved me. Sadly, I did come across some things that are quite useful for stage four breast cancer. I know that IGF 1 and IGF 2 are both implicated. These are growth factors—insulin-like growth factors, one and two. I knew that glucose was a major stimulation for feeding the cancer. I knew that stopping the cancer would lead to death. I had no idea whether I could stop it or not, but I was trying to make time for everything I was looking at. I didn’t think when I got to stage four that I was going to survive. As far as I looked on the Internet, I had no chance at all. No chance.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

That is a very common story on the Internet, because the Internet, at least now, is highly controlled. It’s very hard to find the truth on the Internet anymore. What it’s filled with mostly is stories of conventional medicine. Conventional medicine alone will never change the path that you’re on.

Jane McLelland

It’s all down to money with big pharma. They need to have their patents. They need to have those making money back for the big pharma companies. You always need a combination. Whatever you do with cancer, you can’t just target one pathway. What I tried to demonstrate in my book is that if you block one pathway, it literally just finds another pathway and comes back differently. There are always going to be resistance pathways, and that’s not just true of conventional treatment. That’s true of even things like vitamin C and lots of other natural treatments. They all have resistance pathways that you need to understand so that you can block them as well. I built up my metro map, which is like the little triangle in my book, which just shows all the key pathways that cancer uses and then shows, effectively, how to block quite a few of them. Yes. to make cancer slow down into submission. But it is not a straightforward thing. If people are going into the complementary side, the integrative side, of looking after their cancer, they have to be open-minded about the fact that they may have to take quite a few supplements. They may have to take intravenous vitamin C, or there’s a whole host of different complementary treatments that will work, but not on their own. You need to do multiple things together. Just to make them work better.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Can we back up a little bit because I believe that the foundation of your thought and your prescriptive is that cancer is a metabolic disease? I don’t know if everyone knows what that means or understands it as a concept. Can we back up and talk about cancer as a metabolic disease?

Jane McLelland

The way I describe it, it’s a bit like looking down through an aerial view on Piccadilly Circus. Now, generally speaking, cancer is seen as a genetic disease. Okay. If you’re looking down on Piccadilly Circus, you’ve got these key roads coming in. These are like the key genetic changes. This has been the focus of traditional oncology since the 1950s when they discovered the P53 key and thought that that was the key. Once he’d sorted out the P53, everything would fall into place. We would have cancer sorted out. It’s been thought of as this genetic disease for decades, and it’s still thought of that way. They haven’t quite understood the influence of the metabolism. What I mean is that if you look at the aerial, you see all this stuff going on—people milling around in all sorts of different directions—and you can have thousands of genetic changes.

It’s the same thing. If you block one mutation, it will just pop up another mutation. Whereas if you look at the underground system of Piccadilly Circus, you’ve got lots of lines going into Piccadilly Circus. Same thing now, but fewer. You have easier routes to block getting to Piccadilly Circus on the metabolic line, and those routes are glucose-driven and glutamine-driven, which are amino acid- and fat-driven. Those are the three macros in your diet. You’ve got carbs, fat, and protein. If you block all three in, I don’t mean starving yourself; you can do some short-term fasting. That’s okay, but I don’t think long-term fasting is anything that I would recommend. But I do know people who have done it. But just blocking out those metabolically gruesome metabolisms is the way that cancer feeds.

It feeds very much on glucose. It has something like ten times the number of glucose receptors on its surface. It’s called the glucose receptor one. Normally, your muscles use glucose receptors for a different route. These are new glucose receptors that pop up to the surface with cancer and pull glucose, and you’ve got lots of different routes to try and block cancer because certain supplements will block that route. The glucose receptors, for example, are blocked by things like quercetin, mebendazole, fenbendazole, and flubendazole. Even though I talk mostly about Mebendazole and fenbendazole if you look at flubendazole, which is another anti-parasitic fluid, it could be a very useful addition to mebendazole, and fenbendazole. I’m a fan of all three, but they have slightly different effects; all of them are similar, and fenbendazole and mebendazole are all very similar. But flubendazole may be more important than mebendazole, and fenbendazole for breast cancer and prostate cancer, for that matter.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Because they’re so similar. The diseases are very similar.

Jane McLelland

This all seems to be more associated with cyclical ptosis. You don’t need to know exactly what that is, but it’s a different way of stimulating cancer cell death. You don’t need to take iron. Cancer has enough iron, but it’s a way of stimulating cancer to die using the iron that it has. You use things like intravenous vitamin C, artemisinin, and certain other supplements that can potentially cause this new way; it’s not a new way; it’s only newly discovered. That’s why it’s determined to be new, and what was discovered in 2012 is a new way to trigger cancer cell death. But flubendazole might be a very good addition for breast cancer patients in particular.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

What you’re saying is that for cancer to survive, it has to reproduce, and it needs certain building blocks to reproduce. It needs glucose.

Jane McLelland

Yes, it needs a source of protein. Yes, glucose is the fuel that drives it. Cancer cells are proteins inside a fat membrane. That’s what they are, with cholesterol blobs on them. Cancer wants to divide and create daughter cells. I know this is going to create a whole load of new DNA. It needs little chunks of DNA called nucleosides, which it has to make. It is quite tiring for it to make the nucleosides, and then it needs to create all these other organelles inside the cell. You’ve got the mitochondria, you’ve got the paroxysms, and you’ve got a whole load of different bits and pieces of machinery inside the cell that it has to create. Then it needs the energy to divide. It needs the energy to create that. That’s where glucose comes in, as a fuel. But because it’s hungry, it doesn’t just rely on glucose; it pulls in glutamine as well. It does something called fatty acid oxidation. All of these things create the fuel for the cancer cells to divide. If you block the glucose, you’ll go, okay, I’ll just use more glutamine, or I’ll use fatty acid oxidation. It’s a complex mixture of different things, and that’s why you have to look at a very coordinated attack program to try and push it into submission.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Now, you did this in cooperation. Well, it took you a while to find it all to help you. Can you talk about that process a little bit?

Jane McLelland

I was diagnosed with stage four back in 1999. This was a long time ago, and it has spread to my lungs. I have this Gulf bull-sized tumor in my lungs. I was told it was my lymph nodes and that survival was zero, effectively. I had a few percent chance of living a few years, but that was it. I was lucky if I got that far. Then I was pushing along, keeping everything under control, using natural supplements, and intravenous vitamin C, keeping myself well detoxed, doing intermittent fasting, and doing lots of things to suppress the metabolism. But I wasn’t quite doing enough. then, of course, I’ve had much chemo and radiotherapy for my first cancer. I ended up getting a treatment-related leukemia in my bone marrow, myelodysplasia, which was heading towards leukemia.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

This is from when you were originally diagnosed. That’s what the original chemo said.

Jane McLelland

In 94 and 99, I was given two doses; I had huge amounts of chemotherapy and radiotherapy; I lost my head twice; I have been through all of that. I’m not sure if it was because of all the chemotherapy and, most likely, more radiotherapy on the bone marrow in my pelvis. But anyway, the result was I ended up getting myelodysplasia.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

They’re both associated with the development of myelodysplasia and other liquid tumors. who knows?  You’ll never know which one Is responsible.

Jane McLelland

Yes, exactly. This develops between seven to nine years. You’ve had your original treatments. There are a lot more people who are surviving longer because we got better treatments. Now that we’ve got better immunotherapies, TKIs tyrosine kinase inhibitors, all of these things are fantastic, and they extend your life. But you’re more at risk of getting myelodysplasia if you’ve had a lot of chemo and radiotherapy in the past. We are going to see more of this. It’s a treatment-related disease rather than a standalone disease. Whatever disease you have, you can have various treatments. But, of course, I couldn’t have any more chemotherapy. I got to the point where we already had loads of chemo. That wasn’t a choice for me at this point; I had to find another way of trying to tackle it. There was very little on offer. That was when I went digging, delving straight into the research, just trying to find something—anything—that might extend my life at that point. I was sticking around and came across some research, and I found research on an old drug or platelet drug antiplatelet drug called dipyridamole. It stops your platelets from sticking together don’t destroy them.

This is why people get a bit confused about it. It doesn’t destroy your platelets, but it stops them from sticking together. It shows just reading for breast cancer drug resistance protein, which is a gene mutation you can get in a lot of cancers. dipyridamole seems particularly good for the resistance that you get with this gene mutation. It’s a very common one with breast cancer. dipyridamole could be particularly useful for that gene mutation. But anyway, I was looking back at me back then, and I came across this research that has shown that melanoma patients were on this when they were stage four, and they were surviving for many months. I thought, Great, well if it works for them, I don’t know where it’s going to work for me. It might work on the blood because it’s antiplatelet; I’ll give it a go. Let’s see if I can get somebody to prescribe it. I went running off to my wonderful integrative doctor, who’s sadly no longer with us. he was. Yes, okay. I’ve never prescribed it, but yes, I can see it might be beneficial to you. He was great. Terrific. He just prescribed it to me, and then I shunted around and found more research about Lovastatin and non-steroidal drugs and how they were synergistic. And together, they kill cancer five times better than just on their own. I find myself constantly trying to persuade people that statins can be very beneficial for cancer.

I tend to have a lot of resistance to it, but they are particularly useful because, of course, hormones are driven by being formed by the metal-mate pathway, and this will help block that. But there are other key reasons why statins work well. The cholesterol blobs on the surface of the cancer cell are a way of communicating with the environment, communicating with other cancer cells, and creating an easier transition to metastasis. It’s a way of helping to block some of that. Statens, believe it or not, block glut1. It’s one of those glucose receptors, which seems a bit strange because some people end up being diabetic after being on statins for a while. But, if you have statin and you have metformin, which is an anti-diabetic drug, or berberine when I was going through my research, I came across berberine quite early, and berberine is a natural form of metformin, and it’s a combination of the two. Berberine is fantastic as a treatment for cancer, in my view. It targets many pathways, and metformin does as well. It targets many pathways, so you end up with a synergistic response and us taking lots of other things like fish oils and lots, lots of other supplements. I was known as the maracas rattle, and I ended up good.

Yes, I got through. I just didn’t know because I took all this combination and I didn’t feel any side effects or anything, and I thought, I don’t know whether this is working or not. Anyway, I was as if I had some blood tests done, and then six months later the tests came back and I was almost in the normal range, I was thrilled, and I cannot begin to tell you. I was like, “Wow,”  Then I was a bit confused; I didn’t know because nobody else had done this before me. I stopped because I didn’t know whether I needed to carry on with a big mistake. Of course, it came back harder and faster. the next time. I had to take my cocktail again. But I’ve been on and off it ever since then because I’m scared to come out completely.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

 I get that. I guess the question is, do you just have a plan where you’re on for three months, off for a month, or how do you do that?

Jane McLelland

I’ll be honest and say that it goes a little bit with my lifestyle. If I know I’ve gone off the program, falling off the wagon a little bit with my diet, or if I’m on a sailing holiday with my Irish friends, which is always a disaster for me. I will go into the full protocol afterward again to try and help stop any disaster that I might have kicked off again. It does depend on what I’m doing. I’m never completely relaxed about it, even though I’m 20-odd years old after the stage four diagnosis. I’ve not had any trace of cancer since 2004, as far as I’m aware. and it’s important not to let your guard down completely with it because nobody knows.

Jane McLelland

I haven’t, and I suppose I could do some circulating tumor cell tests. I haven’t done that. I don’t know. I’m not even sure that I can fully trust them. To be honest, the circulating tumor cell assays.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Do you suppose you don’t think they’re valid, or do you think everyone has circulating tumor cells? To invest in that outcome would take you down an unneeded path.

Jane McLelland

Exactly. It might not be for me psychologically. I’m just worried that that’s not what I need. Maybe that is what I need. Push me back into a strict approach protocol. But I don’t think I need it at this stage. I do not mind.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I’m curious about things like statins because we all know the long-term complications of our statins: there’s weakness, there’s depression. You can have muscle problems, liver problems, a decrease in sexual function, libido, performance, and all of those things. How do you reconcile that in terms of how you think about your long-term plan?

Jane McLelland

I have 2APAli4 genes disaster. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

You did not have Delta. Good.

Jane McLelland

What else? I have cystic fibrosis. I know I’m a genetic disaster.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Which I know is only a testament to the fact that your genes are just part of the picture snd your environment.

Jane McLelland

I am very worried about my mental health going forward, and I’ve done a lot of research. I’ve looked into statins, and yes, they can cause some dementia when you’ve been on them for a while. But it’s only confusion because of the lack of cholesterol. But when you come off them, you can bounce back to where you were. But what I do with the statins now is pull some. When I was going through treatment, yes, I took them to start with for a year nonstop. Then I did them for about three months. I come off for two or three weeks, and then I go back on them again. I give myself those breaks, and it’s important to do that. Maybe you could do three weeks on a week off. This is me supposing this is talking to people who’ve looked at statins and the half-life of how long they stay in your system and what they can do. Three weeks is a length of time where you can take them, and then you can afford to maybe come off for a week and then go back.

You’re not constantly on them. You’re giving your body a break. But one of the things about statins is that they reduce CoQ10 and people think it’s crazy, but reducing CoQ10  when you have cancer for this process called ferroptosis is quite critical because you have CoQ10  is like a key antioxidant, great for your mitochondria for rebuilding your mitochondria, but when you’re going through treatment, sometimes you just want a blitz and you want to pro-oxidate, you don’t want any anti-key antioxidants. CoQ10  is one of those keys, along with vitamin E, that You need to rein in. You need to pulse pro-oxidants, not antioxidants. You need to remove vitamin C and CoQ10 to get this pro-oxidant effect. Some other supplements help reduce glutathione,  which is the key antioxidant in your cells. That’s critical as well. You’re constantly pulsing fat. When I go back and look at my history now, I know more about ferroptosis. I reckon I did it with intravenous vitamin C, which we know is a pro-oxidant.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

We know that it’s a pro-oxidant, but many people don’t. Can you talk about vitamin C that at least people can understand, and we can only hope that their doctors start to understand the vitamin C picture? I know you talk about it a lot in your book. You talk about the history, and I know you talk about the studies. Can you just give us a brief summation?

Jane McLelland

A summary is that there was lots of miscommunication and the way that they looked at the studies on vitamin C, Linus Pauling did a whole load of research on high-dose intravenous vitamin C, and he could see it was helping the patients, helping them survive much longer. The Mayo Clinic back then decided they would repeat the trials, and they did it with low-dose orals. You cannot have the same absorption; you cannot get the same levels. What happened was that they had completely different results. Then it became known as quackery. Intravenous vitamin C isn’t something you can talk about with cancer treatment because the Mayo Clinic says that it doesn’t work. After that, they decided that they would. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Can you share with us the history of vitamin C? I know you talk about it a lot in your book and that this is a source of major confusion, both with physicians, with patients, and even in the literature.

Jane McLelland

It is very confusing. Conventional doctors and oncologists still don’t get the idea that high-dose intravenous vitamin C behaves very differently in the body. What it does is react with the iron inside the cancer cell and release hydrogen peroxide because the cancer cells already have a lot of iron. This is partly why it works: it’s creating this oxidative, this oxygen environment. Cancer hates oxygen. It doesn’t survive in these high-oxygen environments. Linus Pauling had done research with a whole load of patients using high-dose intravenous vitamin C, and then the Mayo Clinic replicated the studies, but using a low dose, which doesn’t get absorbed, you only get diarrhea with high-dose vitamin C.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

With low-dose vitamin C, all you get is diarrhea. It never gets up to the levels.

Jane McLelland

You just can’t like design with vitamin C; you can maybe try, but nobody’s got the answer to that. Yes, I don’t know that you can say you take five grams every waking hour, but I don’t know whether that’s true or not.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I still think you’re going to have a problem with absorption. Even with liposomal. Again, I haven’t done the studies either; I don’t know. But that much vitamin C is very hard to absorb through your gut because of that high dose—you’re talking about 25, 50, 75, or even a hundred grams.

Jane McLelland

They recommend a gram to a gram and a half per kilo of body weight for an average person. That you’re talking for me if I’m just not well, I assume I’m 60 kilos. That would be between 60 and 60 grams of vitamin C. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

So, 60 to 90. That’s the range that we would be talking about. It would be very hard to get that much through. I got absorption even with Liposomal.

Jane McLelland

I don’t think you could do it.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

What is the difference? How is low-dose vitamin C acting, and how is high-dose vitamin C acting? What is the difference? Because people just see vitamin C.

Jane McLelland

Yes. Vitamin C competes with glucose for the glucose receptor. Both competing low-dose vitamin C can be useful in a star phase, but not in what I call a kill phase, which is more the way I delineate that one side is starving it, which can be antioxidant, and the other side is killing it, which is pro-oxidant. You could use low-dose vitamin C as a starve phase. I thought you’d have to be very careful because, like I said, it upregulates different paths. Vitamin C will upregulate something called Stat3. You don’t need to know what that is particularly, but a good supplement that you could take alongside vitamin C is something called Piper Longum, which is long pepper.

If you’re going to take low-dose oral vitamin C, that’s one thing you should do. The other thing it does unbelievably is upregulate, something called Heif One Alpha. Again, you need to block that if you’re taking a low dose. This is very technical, but you need to block the Heif One Alpha. There are certain things you can do. Chris in C h y SJM will help block Heif One Alpha. So, piper longum you mean an increase in are two things that I would recommend if you’re taking low-dose vitamin C and this research keeps coming out saying that you need to avoid this, you need to just last week came out with vitamin E and vitamin C. How antioxidant they are and how they do all these dreadful things and think, well, you just are about the combination. Cocktails are key. You need to look at it. The cocktails make the biggest difference.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Then, with the high dose, can you just describe what is happening on a cellular level when you have a high dose of vitamin C circulating?

Jane McLelland

Yes, it’s well; it reacts with the iron inside the cell to make your iron more. What’s known is that you need free labial irons to react with vitamin C. One of the best things for that is garlic. Eating lots of garlic before you have your intravenous vitamin C would be particularly useful. That would be a good thing.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

To do this is very good for kissing, but it’s very good for making your treatment effective.

Jane McLelland

Yes.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Does it have to be? Do you have to eat the garlic, or can you take allicin or garlic pills?

Jane McLelland

Yes, you can take the allicin, the aged garlic, and the Kialla garlic. All of those would be useful, and what that does is help release the iron to react with the intravenous vitamin C, and the iron undergoes something called the Fenton reaction. The Fenton reaction is essentially iron plus oxygen, which reduces it. It creates hydroxyl radicals and hydrogen peroxide. that those are free radicals that will kill cancer cells. The thing is, it’s targeted because cancer cells can’t because they don’t have much of an enzyme called catalase, whereas your normal cells can get rid of the hydrogen peroxide and detoxify, and all the rest, cancer cells can’t because they’re not capable of getting rid of those free radicals. They’re much more vulnerable when you kill them with hydrogen peroxide.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Can you talk a little bit we did talk about combinations, and I do want to hear about your experience with chemotherapy but to stay on track here, can you talk about the combination of high-dose vitamin C and chemotherapy because many people are told not to have vitamin C when they’re getting chemotherapy because, again, they’re caught in that it’s an antioxidant and a lot of chemotherapeutic regimens work by free radical generation? They don’t want anything to bind the free radicals. They again go back to the understanding of not knowing the difference between low-dose vitamin C and high-dose vitamin C. Can you talk about vitamin C in the context of a chemo misunderstanding?

Jane McLelland

Many more trials are being done now looking at combining chemotherapy protocols with intravenous protocols. You only need the clinic, which is like the leader in all of these intravenous vitamin C treatments. They treat people the day after with intravenous vitamin C; don’t count that as an absolute meal. They treat patients the day after because it helps them detoxify from the chemotherapy they received the day before. It’s another extension of the pro-oxidation that is helping the cancer to work and the anti-cancer effect of chemotherapy to work. You’re getting a combination of two things hitting it, rather than just one.

It’s misunderstood. It will come back. It’s taking a long time to become much more accepted by the medical profession. I’m hoping, and I don’t see enough people using it. I’ve been giving some talks here and there to about 60 to 100 people sometimes. I ask people to put their hands up if they’ve had intravenous vitamin C, and it’s less than ten of them. Why is it because it’s expensive? Is it because they don’t have access to it? It’s a combination of factors, and that’s something I want to change in the UK. I want to make it more accessible for people to have.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

But quite frankly, this is something that should be happening in every single chemotherapeutic suite. This should be one of their offerings, and it couldn’t be more convenient for them, and it’s very inexpensive for them to do it. But a lot of those.

Jane McLelland

Employees should pay for this. If they’re going to be immunotherapies, which are £100,000 a year or whatever they are, that’s absurd. Why can’t they afford and pay for intravenous vitamin C? 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I couldn’t agree more. I run a Facebook group called Keeping Abreast with Dr. Jenn and there are constant conversations about people’s feelings about having had conventional medical treatments. There’s a lot of regret, and a lot of the reasons why are because they didn’t have any support around how to get the best out of their treatment, how to combat the side effects, and how to recover. I’m curious to hear how you feel about having undergone all of that conventional therapy at the beginning of your journey.

Jane McLelland

Well, I came up with a lot of resistance from my family, but not much from friends, because I didn’t tell them anything. But my family knew what I was doing. I had two surgeons in my immediate family, and they were watching what I was doing. I thought I was bonkers. This tickles me in the face. It was crazy and fun, but nothing but yes. You’re crazy, but it’s in your shoes. I guess I’d probably do the same, which would be going through their heads, but I just ignored some of it, and it is hard because you can get a lot of pushback from relatives who think that you’re undermining what you’re doing with your conventional treatment. This is a problem. that, and you’ve got to be careful that you don’t undermine the treatments if you’re taking high doses of vitamin E in particular, and you need to avoid those. But it’s very hard to work your way through the protocol and keep yourself on track. If everybody else is telling you that you’re doing the wrong thing and that you’re making yourself waste away, for example, if you’re doing the ketogenic diet, I didn’t do the ketogenic diet. I knew about his name, Atkins, but it was not called the ketogenic diet. Back in my day, I thought, What do I do at Atkins? No, because there’s too much fat in them. I’m not going to do that. It was like.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

The Atkins Diet, God rest his soul was terrible. He died of heart disease. It’s like not.

Jane McLelland

But healthy. Listen, helpless. Hell, yes. I looked at that, and what I did was I didn’t do a full ketogenic diet. I pulsed a little bit into ketosis, and I’d do quite a bit of intermittent fasting. I started with a macrobiotic diet for about three months. That was tough going, and then I switched more to a low-GI Paleo diet, but again, with a bit of intermittent fasting, I was starving myself, my relatives were all sure that I was harming myself, that I wasn’t getting enough nutrition, or something like that. But Domino’s stuffing my face: believe all these supplements to get all the minerals and all the vitamins and things that I thought I did need, and specific things like polyphenols and flavonoids that were targeting cancer specifically—that’s what I was after. I read something and go and get it. If you look in my kitchen, it still feels like a natural food shopping experience. Yes, a load of supplements in there. Yes.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

It is hard to withstand the pressure, and it’s even harder to do it yourself because you don’t know what supplements are helping you, what supplements are harming you, what is going to make treatment better, what is going to interfere with treatment, and all that stuff.

Jane McLelland

Then I didn’t understand the process of what the supplements blocked. I’ve worked it out. This is part of my metro map that I’m trying to work out, like quercetin, which, for example, blocks the gluten 1 receptor, and baseline blocks insulin, like growth factor 2, which is key in breast cancer as well. that, but it’s working out what those pathways are and what all the supplements do. when I look back because it is only with hindsight that I realize I’ve done pretty extensive protocol blocking. all the key pathways. My metro map—I didn’t know I was doing it, but I was blocking pretty much most of them. I wasn’t blocking autophagy, and I wasn’t blocking the proteins. I was there for quite a few things. I wasn’t looking, but it didn’t seem to matter at that point. It wasn’t; they weren’t probably the key pathways that there are.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

They weren’t. 

Jane McLelland

But what I pick is me. Yes, they might give somebody else, but for breast cancer patients, autophagy can be particularly important for her. I’ve had cancer patients come to me. She had heard she had breast cancer. She was doing my price call phenomenally well. She’s been treated by the busiest clinic in Seattle. Anyway, she was doing well, and frankly, she was just gobsmacked because she had no evidence of disease, and then she looked great, so I said, I’ve done it. Then it started, you see, to resist those treatments. Resistance pathways started to kick in, and I said she plotted the autophagy path against the macro-openness factor.

No, I haven’t blocked that. I said you need to take some black seed oil or loratadine; loratadine is Claritin, but this is not medical advice; understand the things that would block that particular pathway. It was discussed with her doctor, but the whole point was that she was then able to go back to these things. chloroquine, when you look at her septin and chloroquine together, because chloroquine is another one that will block that autophagy pathway. Autophagy can be both good and bad for cancer. Cancer cells use autophagy at some point to feed themselves. You’ve got to look at blocking that, particularly with her too. She went back on to the whole treatment approach because she just added the black seed oil loratadine, which is Claritin over the counter, and then bingo went away again, like, and she now doesn’t even take any conventional medicines at all. She’s—I don’t even think she’s on her septin. She’s on; she just takes some of the off-label drugs, and she takes lots of supplements. But she’s fine. She’s doing pretty well.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Pretty well. It will be about the individual and what that person needs. The duration of treatment is going to depend on the individual and what that person needs. But this is a journey; it’s not a destination. Health is not a passive state. We have to constantly pursue health, and we have to constantly work at our health. It can’t be purchased, can’t be bought, and can’t be found by any extrinsic means. It has to be something that we are constantly creating.

Jane McLelland

We need the effort involved. One of the big problems is that some people just can’t be bothered to make the effort, and it’s gutting. If you were a relative of somebody who’s got cancer and thought that they should be doing all this stuff, it’s very hard to watch them die because they just haven’t made any effort at all. They still die, and it may not have anything to do with whether they have a go or not, but nobody can guarantee what’s going to happen. But if they’re harming themselves by eating the wrong things, it can be very hard for the relatives to sit by and watch and know that they’re making themselves worse. Yes. Again, watch them eat that bag of chips. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

No, it’s very hard. At the same time, there are a lot of people willing to do the work and just don’t know where to turn. Because if you are trying to stay within the confines of conventional medicine, these answers are not there. They are. They are still talking about what you eat. Doesn’t matter. They’re not giving any lifestyle advice or interventions. They’re not even asking you about any of that. You brought up oxygenation before and how cancer cells hate oxygen, and one of the very best things that you can do is have a very oxygenated body. And that happens by eating and by moving; movement is key to all of this. and that is not something that is included in the conventional medical world at all. for the people who want to do the thing but just don’t know how. What is your advice to them? Because you have a website that talks about providers that can help people with your protocols.

Jane McLelland

Yes, I have a website and I have a doctor’s tap so people can look up doctors in their area, but a lot of them will do some consultations as well. You don’t have to necessarily be in the area, although sometimes you have to maybe do one visit before they take you on. But what I have is that it increases, but if there are any doctors or anybody else who should be on the list, please contact me and let me know. They cannot. They are stunned by word of mouth and dumbing good faith that these doctors are looking at adding in some of these off-label drugs. It’s not just because there are lots of doctors who do integrative therapies; there are tons of them. But what I’m looking for specifically on my website are doctors who will go that extra step and prescribe some of these off-label drugs. They don’t print them all. It’s not something you can get a hold of in the USA. I’ve got it because I know just how useful it is with breast cancer. I don’t know how you guys are going to get it. Maybe I don’t know. Then I do have to think about some ways of getting it over to you a little bit easier because I can get it easily in the UK.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I wonder if it’s available.

Jane McLelland

You don’t understand that I’m not sure about Canada. That’s a good point. I can’t remember.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I know a lot of people, just because of the cost difference, choose to get their medicines from Canada because there is such a cost differential between purchasing things in the US and purchasing them in Canada. That part and parcel speaks to the issue with our medical system in that we are not only overlooking potentially helpful things, but we are intently and rationally not allowing them to be part of the conversation. They’re not part of the medical machine, because they cannot be overcharged and bring in huge profits. They are discarded.

Jane McLelland

But they’re not bringing in huge profits for big pharma; even Atorvastatin, which is like the blockbuster statin, is now off-patent. Yes. There are generics you can get instead. It’s the pharmaceutical industry, and they see this as a problem themselves as well. Of course, they want to keep making money out of their blockbuster drugs.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

But they want to just create new ones. Yes. All the time. Yes. Because they would far rather sell you something on patent than something that’s off patent that is available generically at a very low price. It’s sad what’s happening in the chemotherapeutic world and even in some of the pharmaceuticals, where once the drugs come off patent, they’re making minor, not meaningful changes and calling in a new drug. then, it’s then again on patent, you can apparently change the color of the pill, change the coating on the outside, and now it’s you get you now that’s a new drug. I’m—that’s like despicable. I hope that that’s not true. Although I did hear from a fairly reliable source that it is, you can read about it in a book called Malignant. I forget who wrote it. Sam will come to me. But the pharmaceutical companies’ approach, especially cancer care. The potential money that they make off of the new cancer drug is so enormous that it clouds the purpose now, and they’re no longer applying for drugs that increase cure rates. They’re applying with these; what is it called? My God, when you have someone carry your baby for you, surrogate endpoints. Yes, they apply for these surrogate endpoints, like decreasing the size of the tumor or something other than survival. They’re getting approved on that basis. then people, and then they’re being prescribed, and people are taking these medications with huge, huge side effects and costs that are both financial, but people are paying with their health as well as with their time, and for the metastatic population, paying with the little time that they have left for no increase in survival. and it’s very, very sad and very, very scary. I am very grateful for people like you who provide an alternate path. I don’t want to call it an alternative past. I want to call it an alternate path that gets people. To. Where they want to go. That is what is helping them to reverse disease and reinstate their health. If followed, keep them there.

Jane McLelland

Yes, exactly. I’m not against conventional medicines at all, but they have stopped. We know that it doesn’t block all the pathways. We know that chemotherapies don’t lock all the pathways. It’s just a matter of trying to work out what those resistance pathways are and adding things in to make sure conventional treatments work better and get rid of the cancer stem cell, which is always left behind with chemo and radiotherapy because they’re slow-dividing cells. They’re not going to get wiped out with chemotherapy or radiotherapy. None of that is going to work to kill the stem cells. That’s a big problem. That’s the key little naughty one that comes back and survives all of those treatments. You think you’ve got rid of the whole tumor because it looks like it’s all shrunk on the x-ray.

Fantastic. The PET scan comes back looking wonderful, but it doesn’t pick up the tiny ones. that you’ve got any one cancer stem cell per 10,000 of the fast-dividing cells. very small number of these cancer stem cells. But they’re the ones that can trigger and spawn a new metastatic tumor. It is important to get rid of those as well, which is where my treatment comes in. My approach is to block the feeding pathways because the cancer stem cells are very hungry, they swell up a lot, and they produce all of these changes in them. It’s that they are much more vulnerable to being starved and certainly more vulnerable to being something. People do worry about starving their healthy cells. But your healthy cells are very resilient.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, they are. That’s important.

Jane McLelland

Yes. People need to realize that this is not some kooky, weird approach. This is based on science. This is not going to happen suddenly; it doesn’t come extended fast. There’s no point in doing that. Why would you do that? You want to slow it down and stop it. You don’t want to just try and kill it right away. It’ll find a way around it. If you try to kill it straightaway with too much fasting, it’ll use about a G pathway to repeat itself and just gather up stuff from the environment and then feed itself differently, and that’s where you get texture. You get all of that going on. That’s the starvation that you get with cancer. If people don’t know what cancer is, it’s associated with the wasting of light. Yes, it’s just a starvation process.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, it’s like when you have so much tumor burden that it has more or less hijacked your metabolism, and every single thing that you consume is going towards tumor growth rather than your health promotion. It’s a very end-stage state at which, if you are trying to starve yourself, it will. That will not be the solution.

Jane McLelland

No, not the solution.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

We talked about many great things today. I just want to spend a couple of minutes reviewing and wrapping up. We talked about some growth factors, IGF-1 and IGF-2, and we talked about why cancer is a metabolic disease. Knowing that cancer is a metabolic disease, using what we know about metabolism to improve health affects tumor growth and tumor capability. block it. Looking at gluten, the glucose pathway, the glutamine pathway, and the fat pathway and blocking those. It’s about the combination of doing that. It’s always about the common and the combination.

Jane McLelland

Glucose that uses glutamine will use fat; it will use many different substrates and breath-driven cancers; it will even use ketones to a certain extent as well. You just have to be a little bit careful about making sure you block different pathways together. That’s the worst thing: patients are scared that they do nothing. That’s the worst thing as well. You need to have that bravery to go; I’m going to die in this. I do something. What am I going to do? You can’t just sit there and do nothing. Sarah, you have to get on some programs. You can’t just wait for God to rescue you because, yes, I’m afraid to say she won’t. You have to do something active. Don’t be passive about it. You have got to. You can have your belief in God, which will help you enormously. If you want, it’s up to you.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, for sure. I always use the example, and I am a woman of deep faith, and I deeply believe in God. I deeply believe that God has a plan for me. I think that I have to participate in that plan. If you’re a big farmer and you believe in God, unless you plant, you’re not going to have any crops. Your belief in God comes into play. Plant your field and believe, trusting that God will provide the rain, the sunshine, and all the nutrients in the soil that your crops need to grow. But you will never have crops unless you plant them. We all have to do our job. We all have to participate. while God’s plan is God’s plan. But we cannot sit passively and think that we’re leaving. It.

Jane McLelland

I’m sure part of God’s plan is to try and provide people with the tools to help get them to a better place.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Everyone needs to read your book, How to Starve Cancer. If you are looking for a provider, there are several providers on your website with the same name.

Jane McLelland

howtostarvecancer.com

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Just know that there are people out there to support you, and there are ways to come at this that may not be readily available, and your doctor may or may not understand all of this. Maybe give your doctor the book to read as well. They don’t always take too well to that. But you can try, and then a lot of it is trusting your gut, knowing that you are doing the right thing for you, and giving your body what it needs. Then there’s the whole part of making sure that you don’t give your body what it doesn’t need. avoiding toxins, eating clean, making sure that you’re moving, prioritizing sleep, and all of those things that we talk about all of the time that go in conjunction with this.

Jane McLelland

Not overfeeding—give yourself a break from overfeeding—is a massive issue when it comes. Massive.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, I couldn’t agree more. having a fasting practice that is appropriate for what is happening with you.

Jane McLelland

Yes, I agree.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

This was wonderful. I’m grateful that you were here today, and you are such an inspiration. What you have done is truly amazing, having not come from a pharmaceutical background. I know you took it on for a very good reason and a very good purpose. But the enormity of what you’ve done is not unappreciated. I am in awe of your work and your contribution, and you truly have made the world a better place. I thank you for it.

Jane McLelland

Thank you. I do hope so.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

It’s Dr. Jenn. Bye for now.