The Anti-Cancer Diet: The Best Diet Backed by Science to Increase Your Chances for Reversing Cancer

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

Hey, it's Nathan Crane, director of the Health and Healing Club and host of the Conquering Cancers Summit. And today, I am honored and excited to welcome you to a very special interview. Doctor Jill Furman is MD. Medical doctor, is a board certified family physician and nutritional researcher who specializes in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional and natural methods. He's the president of the Nutritional Research Foundation and the author of seven New York Times bestselling books, which I have some of these myself, we actually, use.

We made one of the recipes for breakfast yesterday. Really good books. He's got eat for life, Eat to live, the end of diabetes, the end of dieting, the end of heart disease, super immunity, and the eat to Live cookbook. That's actually the one we just made a recipe from yesterday morning. I encourage you to take a look at these books at his website. Doctor firm Incom on Amazon anywhere online. Really. He's one of the country's leading experts in nutritional and natural healing, and has appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows and his own PBS television programs, directly addressing the crisis of obesity and chronic disease that's plaguing America.

He's raised over $70 million to help support PBS stations nationwide. He's helped millions of people around the world, and he operates the Eat to Live retreat in San Diego, where people come from all over the world to recover their health. My wife and I and our kids actually stayed there for a few days doing some filming, learning about the Eat to Live retreat. It's an incredible place. Make sure you take a look at that after this interview as well. You can go to Doctor Ferme Incom. It's Dr. f u h.r man doctor furman.com.

Or go to eat to live retreat. It's a great resource to help make healthful eating easy and taste delicious. Doctor Furman, thank you so much for being with us. Oh, great to be here. Thanks, Nathan. So let's start actually by going backwards and then working our way forward. We're going to be talking about really what's the best diet for people with cancer. And this is back in science is back in decades of your own research and experience. But before we get into the best diet, let's talk about what the worst diet is.

So, so people know what is really the worst diet for people who have cancer. I guess you could say the standard American diet is perfectly designed. They used to say it's designed by ISIS to kill people because we want to have, you know, all the features. In other words, your diet has to have excess calories because excess calories make excess body fat and body fat promotes cancer. That's number one. Number two, you want to have it a high glycemic load because the extra insulin is pro angiogenesis which was permissive allows cancer cells to replicate.

Worst Diet for Cancer Risk 3:00

So want to have a high glycemic diet including on a white rice sweetener as honey maple sirup white potato white bread I always say the white of the dead, the white of the bread. The sooner you're dead. You know, don't trust things that are too white, like cocaine and cigarets and white bread and stick. These are no pizza, okay? And then on top of that high glycemic sandwich, you have a lot of animal protein, which also promotes IGF one insulin like growth factor one and the insulin IGF one sandwich, a hamburger, pizza, macaroni and cheese.

The American diet, which mixes a high glycemic carbohydrate with a animal product cooked at high heat forming heterocyclic amines and other carcinogenic compounds. In combination with a high insulin response. You have a perfect witch's cauldron of cancer, because that's exactly what drives cell replication and cancer growth. Promoting foods push up the hormones, restrict the antioxidants and phytochemicals and cancer fighters and the antiangiogenic factors in mushrooms and in berries and things in green vegetables.

In other words, there are foods that promote fat storage and promote growth hormones, and those foods also promote cellular replication and cancer. And there are foods that have anti fat storage effects and keep your growth hormones relatively constricted. And those and we can how we can say dial up longevity and dial, you know dial up longevity or dial up your shorten shorten your lifespan. Destroy your telomeres and your stem cells. Or you can make it the other way. And what we know and what we're talking about today is the same diet style that slows aging and actually extends human lifespan, is most preventative against developing cancers.

And I want to make this point really clear. The same portfolio of foods that prevent cancer have been demonstrated in scientific studies to enhance lifespan and reduce the chance of cancer coming back, and increase and increase the risk. The chance of remission of that was the same. Foods that prevent cancer are effective and most protective. When you have cancer, there's not one diet when you have cancer and another diet to prevent cancer. It's the same foods that are most effective. In both cases.

So talking about standard American diet, for example, and I want people tuning in to really get clear. Be honest with yourself. This isn't about judging. It's not about blaming. It's about education and awakening ourselves to what we're doing that is leading to cancer or chronic disease in our bodies, and then what we can do about it. So I want people to, you know, take some notes, be honest with yourself here. What is your diet currently look like? What are you actually eating? Are you eating? A lot of the things that Doctor Furman just mentioned white rice, white bread, high sugar foods, pastas and pizzas and cake and sodas and candy bars and, you know, processed foods that you're buying from the freezer section, like, is that, 50%, 40%, 60%, 80%, 100% of your diet?

What does that look like for you? And and be real with yourself. Because if these foods are shown to lead to chronic diseases like cancer, to promote fat growth, if you said Doctor Furman to lead to obesity, which we know, directly correlates and is associated with high risk of diabetes as well as cancer, then we need to know what foods to stay away from. Right? And so one, be honest with yourself and two, doctor, for me, I love you to spend a little bit more on, animal products. So you said, you know, animal products have a direct, correlation to, higher risk of disease.

Can you talk a little bit more about that? Sure. Well, there's a there's a lot of different issues with regard to animal products. Number one is the way animal products are cooked in this country is people like to eat them when they're cooked under high heat, flame broiled, barbecued, you know, cooked in an oven. They like the outside to be browned and whatever. And when you're when you're cooking animal products under heat, you're forming certain carcinogenic compounds on the surface of the animal products.

Compared to cooking an animal product in a super a stew in a water content where you're going to form much less carcinogenic substances. So, number one, the way that the animals are are of course raised and kept, but also the way people like to eat animal products where they're overly cooked. And you form a constellation, of course, and substances from the heat on the fat, particularly heat on the fat, and crystallizing and forming different types of acrylamide and dangerous carcinogenic compounds.

Likewise, when you fry potatoes or when you fry other foods in oil, and you oil for hours at high heat over and over again, when you get fast food, when you're putting potatoes or a vegetable or even a vegetable into a, fryer or chicken in a fryer where the oil is being cooked for hours, you're forming lots of carcinogenic and rancid compounds that are so cancer causing that think working in a fast food restaurant and inhaling the fumes from the fryer increases your risk of cancer. So it's just it's it's crazy.

But let's just assume that people had a high quality animal product that wasn't commercially raised. It was a naturally raised animal product. Use it eating eating a snake or a lizard or a frog in the woods, or you caught a rabbit out in your backyard. You know, let's just assume that for a minute. And the animal product wasn't cooked in high heat. It was cooked in, in a stew with a soup with vegetables. Like. Right. It's still going to promote cancer in, in moderate to significant amounts, especially if you dye is otherwise not perfect.

Because as you enhance the animal protein in your diet as you go over

Animal Products, Cooking Methods, and IGF-1 8:40

a certain threshold of animal protein, your IGF one starts to rise. And IGF one is a growth hormone that promisingly allows cancer cells to replicate. And IGF one, of course, what I'm seeing right now is IGF one is very sensitive to animal protein. And that's sensitive to to plant protein. Plant protein keeps IGF one in a favorable range, doesn't let it go too high. And excessive amounts of animal protein goes higher and higher. We know what a person's IGF one levels are by measuring how much animal protein they eat, and the more protein they eat, the higher their IGF one and the higher the IGF one.

You means your higher risk of breast cancer, prostate cancer and colon cancer. And the zero controversy there, that all the studies showing the levels of IGF one in the American diet drives people's levels above 200. And this and there's no controversy that higher IGF one levels are linked to cancer in a proportional level to the height of the IGF one level. So there's no one could say hi GF ones are safe and high GF ones. IGF ones are not cancer promoting because it's just it's just a fact. So even if you ate good quality animal products and cooked it right in, unless you're reading very small amounts in higher amounts, you're still going to push IGF one too high.

And this growth hormone, IGF one, obviously is very closely linked with breast cancer and prostate cancer. And because dairy products raise IGF one more than other animal products do, it's one of the reasons dairy is so closely associated drinking milk with breast cancer and of course, drinking milk with prostate cancer. So one of the reasons is the raise of IGF one. So we're talking about your diet has to be hormonally favorable. And you can't your diet cannot be hormonally favorable as the amount of animal protein goes above a certain level, let's say 5 to 10%, 5% for some people, 10% for other people.

When IGF one starts to lift above 150 to a range, that's not ideal. So that's what is going to ask you. What is that ideal range for a healthy person. Right. Well we want to yeah I think between like 90 or 7080 let's say, and 160 is probably a favorable range of IGF one. The average Americans I think is at 225 depending on your age and your, but basically speaking, we all have genetic, susceptibilities. And if your genetic susceptibility to cancer is high, maybe it pays to measure that your IGF one is low.

Most of the people we don't measure because we just know what they're eating. It's going to be favorable. The other what's the word factor here is that some people, because of decreased protein bioavailability with aging, their IGF one can drop to low. And if your IGF one gets too low 50, 60, 40, then your immune system gets too suppressed. And you can also increase your risk of cancer. Those people need more protein, not less protein. What we find in the seventh day Adventist Health Study two, which was so fascinating when we give that study such a high degree of credence because not just a large number of people, but also the fact that they have vegans and near vegans and people eating a little bit of animal products, and some people eating fish and vegans and some, you know, pesco, and some people with lactose over vegans and some people with their more animal products, some people, you know, so we have a whole different cohorts eating different diets.

And we could see the, the with these large numbers of people following them for decades, how long they live and what they diet and what they find, which is really fascinating, is more plant protein in the diet, extends lifespan, reduces risk of cancer, and more animal protein increases risk of cancer. So we're looking at foods like we're talking about the higher carbohydrate plant based diets. Don't the outcomes are not as favorable as a higher protein plant based diet. So we want that because the the IGF one could drop to low with aging, just like animal protein could push our level too high.

A vegan diet that's not designed to have an adequate amount of protein could push your IGF one too far in the other direction, be too low. So that's where eating things like quinoa, you know, hemp seeds, soybeans, Mediterranean pine nuts, broccoli. That's where eating things that are, that have the protein richness. Designing the plant based diet to be protein tablet. Especially as we age to have enough protein is is important as we're decreasing animal protein. We just don't want to live on on on having a macrobiotic diet and just live on rice and potato, for example, because that's not ideal to fight off cancer or to promote longevity, maximize longevity.

So just to recap a couple things here for people tuning in and ideally, if, someone's on a high meat diet or an animal product diet, you want to decrease that as much as possible, get off it completely for most people. But you're saying if there are some people that just aren't ready or willing to completely remove all animal products from their diet, 5 to 10% in their diet should be maximum for most people, right? So that's like if you're if you have a plate, you know, you got vegetables yet clean.

Well, you get some beans, you get some rice or whatever else. Your 5% of that with animal products is going to be like a very small piece of chicken. Right? Announces a week. Let's say you're using animal products as a condiment or a flavoring to flavor a dish, to put in a super a stew, you're not eating it as a major source of calories. We're using it as a flavoring for they can be using, let's say, ten ounces a week. However, I'm saying if you're going to ask which is healthier to be a strict vegan with the right supplementation of B12 and DHEA and zinc or or to get those from animal products, the answer that the data seems to suggest that a properly supplemented vegan diet is most likely, for most people, more lifespan enhancing.

However, as you just were saying, there are some individuals even with an ideal designed vegan diet where you're eating more of a high protein plant foods and you're supplementing it conservatively and intelligently, there are still some people whose IGF one could drop to low, and it might be conducive to longevity to add some animal products to their diet. Small amounts, because those individuals need the extra protein. Otherwise they don't produce enough hormones. So so there's some adjustment that might have to be made for some rare individual who's not assimilating protein.

Well, I just want to make that clear. It's not necessarily a one plant fits all approach. Sure, it's going to work for most people, but really getting some testing and getting, you know, working with someone like yourself, some in an expert in the field to find out what someone actually needs is obviously ideal. And we're talking to, you know, a large global audience here, a lot of people who, have cancer trying to prevent cancer. And so when you're talking about protein, especially getting majority or all of your, your, protein from plants, what are some of the what does the data tell us in terms of adequate amount of protein from plants that, that we need in general for longevity and for prevention of cancer?

Yeah. I don't want people to get too hung up on this protein thing, because almost any assortment of of if you're eating a healthy diet, especially the type of what I call a utilitarian diet, which is high in greens and being vegetables and includes usually at least an ounce and a half of nuts and seeds. You know, eating hemp seeds and flax seeds and, you know, and but in other words, if you're eating all these foods that are healthy in the full variety of plant foods, then you're getting a lot of high protein foods like beans for example, are about 30% of calories from protein.

They're like, I mean, like have the protein of meat. When you consider that almost 25% of the carbohydrate content in beans

Plant Protein, Adequate Nutrition, and Longevity 16:20

are resistant starch, which the carbohydrates don't get absorbed into the bloodstream, they passed into the toilet bowl, which means that the actual total percent of protein is the amount of absorbable calories from beans is more like 40%. So we're talking about when you eat green vegetables, which are like 40% protein, and green beans, which are like 40% protein, that's more than animal products. And when you have them, when you're having nuts and seeds on top of that, which also have a nice protein boost, it's not an issue if your plant diet is designed appropriately.

It's only with these sloppily designed plant based diets or these diets that are, you know, advised by certain gurus that are obviously, you know, more using one food too much or not having a high on high in a good enough design to make sure you have protein adequacy for the elderly, especially, and for the young children, too. I mean, middle aged people could live a lot on food and just live on potatoes and rice and fruit, maybe. And because their protein assimilation is so high. But for children who are growing, you can stunt their growth and stunt their brain development.

If the diet's not well designed on a vegan diet, and likewise with the elderly people, as the protein viability and absorption goes down, it has to be well designed. So it's the extremes of life. We're talking about people that are more frail or growing children. Then the attention to the diet is more is obviously more critical. Now, is there like, a ratio within a range that someone should be aware of, like, oh yeah, like you were asking about it. Well, about you get about 30g of protein for every thousand calories you eat.

So let's say based on you can design the diet to be a little more protein rich, like 40g. So let's just say between 30 and 40g of protein per thousand calories. Based on how well you designed it. And then if you're a bigger guy and doing more exercise and burning more calories, or you're pregnant, you need more calories, you're eating 2000 calories, then you might be getting 60 to 80g of protein. If you're, you know, a powerlifter or a professional athlete, you need 3000 4000 calories. You're getting 120g of protein, which is sufficient.

So based on so you as you're smaller and don't need the calories, you also don't need as much protein. So the protein goes up. Let's say about 30 to 40g per thousand calories is appropriate. And if you want to push that up to 40g per thousand calories, if you're a professional athlete, you want to get push the envelope of muscle development. You can do that a little bit. And in terms of, you know, calories in, calories out, right, in terms of weight loss, in terms of dealing with obesity, in terms of like, actually, if people are really serious about changing their diet, getting healthy, wanting to reverse cancer more naturally.

Do you how do you help people, figure out how much food they actually need to eat? Should they be counting calories? Should they be tracking protein and macros and so forth? We don't really have to because, what we do is we are eating somewhat, moderate caloric exposure. We don't want to eat excess calories. And we can help monitor that by our body weight to a degree. In other words, what I'm saying right now is that, if you're overweight, you've been chronically overeating food more than you need.

And I consider a neutral terrier to be somebody at their ideal weight, or moving to eating a diet without losing at least 2 pounds a week, moving towards their ideal weight. And I use that 2 pounds a week guideline, or kilogram a week as the minimum weight loss acceptable to be eating healthily if you're overweight. And we see that as people are losing 2 pounds a week or more, their IGF one goes appropriately to diabetes. Their insulin levels drop, their insulin resistance goes down, the production of angiogenesis goes down, the production of estrogens go down, the inflammatory markers go down.

The white blood cells start to drop. We see all the beneficial effectors that measure inflammation decreasing as they're losing weight. But if they're overweight and they stay at their overweight condition to stable weight, you see these inflammatory markers and these abnormal measurements of and health don't go down. So so an ideal weight for a male should be a body fat below like 12.5%, at least below 15%. For a female it should be low. It actually should be below 22.5%, but at least below 25%.

Above 25%. You're not healthy above a male, about 15% of body fat. You're not healthy, you know? So, you know, I'm almost 67. I'm going to be so and my body fat still. And we're pretty close to where it was in my 20s and 30s. I still have a close to a 10% body fat. And I'm not saying everybody has to be trans lean 10%, but I'm saying that you shouldn't be, 15% for sure. Males should be, you know, so so how much should you weigh when you want to be, half, you know, we want to have muscles, but we don't want to have extra fat in a body.

We want to, you know, so when that so then you're saying calories and you're eating so healthily you don't driven, you're not driven to become a calorie consuming monster. It's all the oils and the sweets and the the draw and the processed foods that drive people if they have to overeat. Plus the nutritionally deficient drives overeating behavior. When you're eating all these healthy foods, you don't have to overeat and you feel satisfied with less calories, and you let hunger be a guide. You eat when you're hungry and you don't need if you're not hungry and you tried.

And you can use a scale to help you, and you can eat to help you. Make sure you're not. You're at appropriate weight for you. When we even have a, you know, one of those in body tests which measures body fat, which is very motivational to so people will look you weigh 110 pounds, but you're five foot tall with a five foot one. And you're right, weight should be 100 pounds. Even though you you really shouldn't be 110 pounds. You should be close to 100 pounds according to the scale, which says your body fat is still above 30% 110 pounds.

So you need to exercise, build a little more muscle and, you know, maybe put on 3 pounds of muscle and take off 7 pounds of of that, you know what I mean. So yeah, we we adjust that accordingly. And I'm not so one of my primary principles here is just moderate caloric restriction. Just a touch calorically restricted. In other words, that means waiting to eat to get hungry, not eating after 6:00 at night, going to bed on an empty stomach, eating enough. But don't you got to get out of the habit of excessive eating and eating for recreation?

Because when you just moderately caloric restrict a hair and just underweight a little bit, then it slows you metabolic rate down and then your body can devote its energy towards healing, repairing and fighting with cancer. Let me say this one more time. When you eat excessive calories, of course, weight gain of course, of course has all these angiogenesis promotion. High insulin resistance promotes aromatase producing high levels of estrogen. It creates inflammation. You spew out cytokines and all kinds.

It's dangerous. But the overweight condition also speeds up the aging process. Aging your telomeres and your stem cells. Because your body when you take an extra calories, it raises your metabolism. So it raises your body heat. Your thyroid function goes up, and your respiratory quotient, the amount of calories burn to breathing. You try to tries to burn off those calories and raising its metabolism, which ages you faster. Raising metabolism. Not a good thing when you just moderately undershoot calories a little bit.

The body's resistant to losing the weight. Like I'm already have a low body fat. I exercise money, doesn't want to get thinner than this, so when I undershoot calories, it slows down my tackles and to prevent weight loss. And in doing so, it lowers the respiratory quotient, lowers the thyroid function, lowers the body temperature. My body can devote itself to preventing, excessive and abnormal growth. It can repair better in the non feeding state. It detoxifies and removes and removes toxins better in the non in the non digestive state.

But most important we're saying when the metabolism is slower you're aging slower and it's stabilizing your stem cells, increasing stem cell maintenance and preventing premature aging and shortening of your telomeres. That's the secret. The secrets source. You know, to a neutral territory which people don't understand. It's a complicated issue. I don't know if they're going to get this solved, but at least they'll start to get an introduction to this. Yeah. I mean, you you cover a lot there, but you also made it super clear,

Calories, Body Fat, and Healthy Weight Loss 24:10

which I love, which is overeat, you know, excess calories. You're going to have problems slightly under eat and do it with a healthy diet. You're going to, you know, live longer and be healthier. I mean, that's that's the gist of it. And I love how you go into the science, into the understanding and help us really understand it in much more depth. I do want to encourage people after this interview as well. Go listen to Doctor Thomas Loti and then Doctor Nathan Goodyear, who were part of this symposium.

Those interviews, we also go into different tracks in depth in this same topic. That'll take you even deeper. Also, Doctor Furman's books are amazing for giving you much more depth in the subject, so take a look at those as well. A couple things came to mind as you were talking. You want to share with people because this is a, really valuable analogy. It's helped me and my wife and and helping explain to others too is, you know, if you're talking about calories and some people are like, well, I just don't eat that much, but I don't know why I, you know, still have all this extra fat, all this extra weight.

One potential reason for that, I think, is, that I've seen, like, let's say you eat some potato chips, right? A little handful of ten, 12 potato chips, which when you chew them up, they take almost no space in your stomach whatsoever. But they're really high in calories, really high in oil and salt, often sugar additives, things like that. So 150 200 calories, maybe in just a few chips. Right. 1012 chips, maybe something like that takes no space in your stomach and no nutrients versus you take, like I just had for lunch, a big plate of broccoli.

And I just, you know, warmed it up in the oven, ready to go. Put a natural dressing on it. This huge thing of broccoli has about the same amount of calories as this little tiny amount of potato chips. But it fills my stomach with that fiber and with the nutrition. So now I'm not craving and hungry for something else. Whereas if you're eating some chips or some ice cream or something that's low nutritional value, high calorie, high calorie caloric intake, you're going to continuously be hungry. You're not going to be satiated as you're talking about.

You're not getting the nutrition your body needs and you're going to overeat and not even know that you're overeating well, that you bring up you bring up a very important point, because when you take in concentrated calories in that form, the calories rush into the bloodstream very rapidly. I call it a bolus of calories into the bloodstream all at once. When you eat beans or vegetables, the carbohydrate and beans will come in at 1 or 2 calories a minute. When you have the chips or the oil or the French fries, the calories come in at 100 calories a minute, not 1 or 2 calories a minute.

Well, when the calories rushes the bloodstream so rapidly, it signals dopamine receptors in the brain that make you addicted to that food and can't stop eating it now. It drives overeating behavior. So what I'm saying is there's lots of mechanisms. Dopamine is one of the behaviors we're talking about. But also it launches fat storage hormones that now stimulate angiogenesis. And so from the rush of calories we're talking here. The fact when you pour olive oil on your food because of the caloric richness and how fast the oil is absorbed, it's an appetite stimulant, but it also stops you from losing weight.

It sends a signal to the body don't burn fat and break it down. Take this fat, get it out of the bloodstream and stored away into your fat storage. And we say from the lips to the hips in five minutes flat, because the body stores fat very efficiently and rapidly, and your body is not storing fat and trying to break down fat simultaneously, that turns your fat breakdown for the next few days. When you're talking about people who are cut back on calories and trying to lose weight, they can't lose weight because they keep giving their body signals.

They're promoting dopamine, they're promoting angiogenesis and promoting fat storage hormones. They're taking in high glycemic carbohydrates like pizza or bagels that are producing high insulin, which is an anti fat storage fat breakdown as fat storage hormone. Or they're taking in oils or high concentrated fats. Or I say that caloric bolus in the bloodstream, I call it fast food. I wrote about that in the book Fast Food Genocide. How we're defining fast food is not just food you buy in a fast food restaurant, but food that's accessed fast and absorbed into the bloodstream.

Fast. It's that rapid flux of it's not just it doesn't take up space in your stomach, it's that it calls into your bloodstream so rapidly it makes the brain want to eat more wants, makes you want to eat more food. It turns you into a food addict, and you become a calorie consuming monster. And then all the chronic health conditions that come along with that, that obviously people you're not going to see right away, but you're going to see an accumulation of it over months and years and decades. So you were talking about fat, fat, stored, fat burning, etc..

So, that brings up in my mind the ketogenic diet, right? There's so much information out there now about keto and the ketogenic diet. You see people, even health experts recommending people do ketogenic diet for cancer, ketogenic diet for diabetes, ketogenic diet for weight loss, huge like that for longevity. And I won't say anything about it. I'd love to hear what you know about ketogenic diet in regards to cancer, longevity, what you know about it in terms of the science and the data and what you know about it, because you've been working hands on with people dealing with these chronic health issues for decades.

Absolutely. It's it's important to learn about this because it helps clarifying crystallize how you're thinking. First of all, it's very important that people understand the difference between a short term study looking at soft endpoints versus a long term study that goes on for decades with hard endpoints, with large numbers of people. What I'm saying, that's those short trials that go on for six months to two years, can come up, can generate a hypothesis. When these look positive, a ketogenic diet, a person lost weight, they cholesterol looks better, their diabetes numbers looks better.

Those are soft endpoints, not hard endpoints. But we can give you a cholesterol lowering drug. It makes it makes you cholesterol go down in a year. And that's a soft endpoint. We don't know for sure if you're gonna live longer because the cholesterol went down. Maybe if we took enough, 100,000 people on the cholesterol and drug, compare them and follow them for two decades and look at their heart endpoints, what they how old they were when they died and when they reduced cardiovascular death or not.

Then when the long term studies with the heart endpoint corroborates the short term studies with the soft endpoint, then we have more definitive data. We don't have that, there's no long term data on the ketogenic diets, except we have the data showing that long term studies that. So we're having in other words, we're saying short term studies show that a lot of ways you can have a cookie diet or just eat, you know, just eat cookies or eat Twinkies, and you lose weight if eat low calories or because of crazy diets that look better and long short term people eat just me or just eat bacon.

They lose weight short term, but you know you're not going to sustain a healthy, long life on that. And that's what the studies show. It shows the chronic acidity from the keto diet and the high meat from the keto diets lead to shorter lifespan. And we can measure that with telomeres. Short, excessive telomere shortening when when people are on these keto diets or to their aging more rapidly. And then do we have studies long term looking at hard endpoints. And yes, we do. We have studies show with high meat based diets, especially the keto diets

Why Fast Food and Oils Drive Overeating 31:40

show the most we could say harm as it at preventing extreme longevity. Living to the possibility of 90 to 100 years old. You don't get any of those people with extended lifespans. It accelerates aging of the body. It gives it takes away your possibility of living a long life. Okay, that said, we know that cancer cells are fueled by excess glucose and excess insulin, and we know that cancer cells are also fueled by excess protein. And cyanide is a limiting factor for for cell replication. What I'm saying right now is the studies we have that have the most definitive effects against cancer is that putting the foods that have the most anti-cancer benefits, that, and we don't have a lot of studies on flaxseeds and chia seeds producing higher 71% decreased death when tracked when women with breast cancer were trapped for ten years.

We have studies on green vegetables being suppressed, genetic alterations and extend lifespan in cancer patients. We have the data on mushrooms. We have that data, you know, on onions being reducing risk of death from cancer with people already have cancer. We have all the data on these foods. And putting together a portfolio of a high antioxidant plant based diet without the negative of the animal products seems to afford people the opportunity to prevent and reverse cancer much more effectively than a keto diet would.

Except there's a few exceptions here. One exception may be brain tumors. The studies on brain tumors are that they, they don't respond to, you know, because most of these to methylene restriction, they we do respond to these studies shown that you can shock it by not having too much glucose or insulin response to a brain tumor. So I have had some patients with, type of brain tumors. We put on a plant based keto diet. We made the diet very strict. Avocados, nuts, green vegetables, you know, and a lot of, a lot of foods that were and we we did seem to it apparently looks like the person got tremendous lifespan enhancement.

And because they were predicted to be dead and there and we seeing some response in what the, in the, in the how can you say in the advancement of the brain tumors. But for most people we see a much better response with cancer, for example, believe it or not, in the few advanced ovarian cancers that I've seen, I'm not on colleges. I'm a family doctor specializing in nutrition. So the point I'm making is that I see, you know, a limited number of people with advanced ovarian cancers and the limited number I've seen were given 3 to 6 months to live with ovarian cancer, spread to their fluid, fluid in their lung or spread to their, you know, body.

They've all survived. And now it's like 15, 20 years later, they've done, you know, one woman, Pam, she's now it's I think 19 years. She was given three months to live. She was four. There was a four liters of fluid of metastatic fluid taken out of her lung. And now she's still alive 17 years later. A friend of mine, Karen, had metastatic ovarian cancer. She's alive almost 20 years later. And, you know, another person, it's just, it's remarkable. Likewise, I've had people with, with breast cancers that metastasize that left the breast that were given very short.

I've had one person who had actually bone lesions, metastatic lesions in the bone now disappeared. That was just what disappeared was unbelievable. I can't I can't even shut that repeated still with a mixed up. The test they got, they messed it up or something. But including people in my own family, my own, you know, even my own family had a member of my sisters, my sister in law had an advanced cancer that left a very aggressive cancer that's now, you know, doing great, you know, decades later and have so many people who are given such little time to live with.

They couldn't be helped anymore. And they've done super well. So I'm saying there's limited data. You know, we don't have lots of studies on the nutritional treatment of cancer, but what we have, and especially looking we know that the emphasis on chemotherapy is, misguided. And, and, and people are given false hope. We know, for example, out of the 75

Keto Diet, Cancer, and Longevity Debate 35:40

drugs approved by the FDA for cancer in the last 15 years, the average lifespan enhancement that's documented in the scientific literature from those drugs, which cost, on the average, $36,000, you know, a pop. Their average lifespan enhancement is 2.4 months. Advanced lifespan. I mean, so we know that, what doctors can do is very, very limited. And we're not living on the war on cancer that was started by Nixon and, you know, and the 1.2, $100.105 billion spent on the national instead of health and producing drugs to fight cancer has failed.

We've lost the war on cancer. Drugs don't work to fight cancer. And what I'm saying right now is nutritional excellence is where the money is. It gives us control over our health destiny. And you don't have to get cancer. And the answer really is vegetables. But people don't like that answer. They want a different answer. They want a magic pill they can take so they can eat donuts and pizza and hotdogs and bagels and not get cancer. But life is not a fairy tale. That's that's nonsense. You can't put cancer causing foods.

Go out and eat white bread and bagels and pizza and burgers and think you're not going to get cancer. It's you can't disallow the biological laws of the way the body functions. You know, if you want not to get cancer, you have to eat, have healthy, you have to eat a healthy diet, which I call the gold standard of healthy diets designed to prevent can't maximally extend life and prevent cancer is called a new territory and diet because it includes the full portfolio of foods that have been shown to be most protective against cancer.

And they are, easy to remember by the acronym G bombs, G bombs, Greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries and seeds. And the combination of these foods putting together in the same dietary portfolio is when the magic happens. I just have to say that, the fact that you brought up these, you know, 75 drugs that have been designed in the last 15 years for treating cancer, they're so expensive and an average life span enhancement of 2.4 months on average in general. Honestly, should be criminal. I mean, I know the doctors prescribing these drugs are, you know, they have good hearts, good intentions.

Many of them, unfortunately, many of them are misguided because they don't understand what you know, you're you yourself are a medical doctor that looked at the research, went down the path of understanding all right. What can we actually do that's better? That enhances longevity, that helps people heal. And, you know, you, become an expert in this field and have been for a long time. And I think it's is so important for people tuning in. I mean, I'm never encouraging anyone. Don't do conventional therapy if that's what you want to do, you know, that's your choice.

But what I do encourage people to do is learn as much as you can about this subject before choosing any kind of therapy, conventional or otherwise, because, the more you know, the more empowered you are, the more you know about diet, about exercise, about lifestyle, about what actually prevents or versus cancer, as well as what causes cancer. And that's what the symposiums about is giving you that education. The more you learn about it, the more empowered you'll be to actually act in the best interest of your health and longevity.

I know there's, you know, the biggest study ever done on chemotherapy, which has hundreds of thousands of people in it. It was both Australia and the United States. They found that the effectiveness of chemotherapy among, you know, all of these people was only 2.5% effective, which means it has a 97.5% failure rate. Right? Which is and that's one of the number one things that's being recommended for people with cancer, is that you have to know what kind of cancer you're treating and when. In other words, most common cancers are postmenopausal breast cancer and prostate cancer, which is slowly growing.

Cancers and chemotherapy is not effective for cancers that are replicating that slowly, because they mostly only kill cells that are replicating more rapidly because they open their DNA up to be killed by the chemotherapy. But there are pre-menopausal breast cancers that are more aggressive and multiplying very rapidly. The more deadly cancers that going to fast going to kill you, those are the ones most susceptible to chemotherapy. So in other words, when you're a child and you have a couple have specific leukemia or an acute leukemia, maybe the chemotherapy might be useful.

It's the common everyday garden variety cancers that where the later in life breast cancers or later in life prostate cancers where they push chemotherapy, where most chemotherapy is used, where you get very little benefit. But there are some earlier life cancers that are more aggressive and replicating more rapidly when we do recommend chemotherapy because because it's a more deadly cancer and because chemotherapy works better for a more aggressive and deadly cancer, because it's spreading rapidly in the rapidly growth of the cancer, makes the cells more susceptible to the chemo agent.

So we have some knowledge. And when some say the doctors recommend and chemo, you want to say, okay, let's look at the data with your type of cancer, with the staging and with a number with the time. And let's see what the data is on large numbers of people using this methodology of treatment and how much better an extended lifespan they get. And then people can make an educated decision. We always say, okay, well, what is the what does the data show on this? Not just, but most will just go straight forward to doing what is ever conventional.

And they don't really look at what the data shows and what's best for them. So, you talked a lot about what we should not be eating. You talked a lot about what we should be eating. People want to go deeper and actually learn how to eat. And learn more about this subject. You have a lot of great books and resources, obviously, but what would you say is your number one or number two books? People should should read if they have cancer? They're trying to prevent reverse cancer. And I really think that my latest book, eat for life, because it's most recently written, it has the most and it has great examples of people, great success stories of people got rid of cancer, but also gives the for the anti-cancer portfolio.

So certainly my book Super Immunity is an earlier book. That's another best New York Times bestseller. But I still that should be one of those two books. But I certainly recommend my most recent book, eat for life, because whenever you have the updated research and the more more support,

Best Anti-Cancer Foods and Final Recommendations 42:00

it's like becomes a reference tool and you can you can teach a college class with that book, more than a thousand medical references. And people can take the can, you know, do their homework and they can go and pull the references and they can see exactly you over the years of work and research that went into the book. So it's not just a person why you believe in what this person says. You know, the the exhaustive amount of research, the accumulative evidence, not just using one study to support a position, but using 100 studies to support a position, seeing where the preponderance of evidence shows, and teaching people how to be able to, read studies and give studies more credence versus less credence.

So otherwise, you can just believe what anybody says. You can just I believe me, unless there's really enough data and you know how to interpret the data. Yeah. So the books I know a great place for people, a great resource to to start diving in deeper, obviously. If you're very serious, about this change in your own life, you can go to the eat to live retreat, to live retreat, and learn hands on, from Doctor Furman and his team. Get deeper education, understanding, actually learn how to cook and make your meals in a way that is following utilitarian diet.

I know just how you know, hands on an extensive comprehensive. That whole program is when people come and stay at your retreat for weeks or even months at a time, totally change in their lives, right? So just want to mention that to people because that option is available for you. You don't have to go to some clinic in Mexico or Germany looking for what you really want in this regard. He's right here. He's right in San Diego. So, check out that used to Live retreat right here. Right here outside the window where you can see the nice, beautiful mountains and the.

That's how beautiful you see it, right? So you can see the, Yeah. I'm very lucky to be able to, have a positive effect on people's lives and really show them that eating healthily is fun and delicious, and to watch people get well is so rewarding. And I'm really blessed with having a career that's been such a, such a, you know, rewarding career. To be able to work with people and help them and give them information that really can transform their lives permanently, you know? Well, I have to say, you know, I've been studying and researching and experimenting with diet, nutrition, natural health, healing lifestyle, etc.

for 15, over 15 years now. And nowadays, and I've studied, you know, most nutritional experts out there and have done hundreds of interviews and, you know, there's a lot of good people out there and there's a lot of misinformation out there as well. And I have to say, you are the number one person I recommend to anybody nowadays. If you want to learn about nutrition for health and healing and longevity. So, you know, says something, because I've studied dozens and dozens of the world leading experts learn from them directly, interviewed them, etc..

So anyway, I just want to say, you know, thank you so much for the amazing work you do. Every time I, I feel honored just to get to spend, you know, this 45 minutes with you because I learned something new and I know together and with, you know, the incredible wisdom, experience and research that you share with everyone, you're truly changing people's lives for the better. So thank you. You're welcome. Best of health, of course, to everybody listening. And I want to thank everyone for tuning in to the Conquering Cancer Summit.

Please share this with friends and family. Together, we truly can make a difference for the future of humanity in ending the cancer pandemic. Thank you and I wish you ultimate health and happiness. Be well.