Debunking Myths: The Truth About Cancer Diets

Introduction and Dr. Connorsu2019 Background 0:00

This is Doctor Talks, real talk from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most. Welcome back to the Cancer Breakthrough Summit. My name is Dr. Isaac Elias and I am delighted to talk today to Dr. Kevin Connors, really one of the long-term experts in integrative oncology. Dr. Connors graduated from naturopathic school as early as 1986. So he has almost 40 years of experience under his belt. But out of this, he spent 25 years studying alternative and complementary cancer care. He also holds different A4M fellowships and board certification in anti-aging, in regenerative and functional medicine, in botanical medicine, And he also brought certified integrative cancer therapy, a course I was one of the teachers in.

So, yeah, that's great. And Dr. Konos also does work in functional neurology, which is very important with autism spectrum rising and with neuroinflammation becoming such a wide issue, including as a result of different cancer treatments. And one thing that Dr. Connors took on himself recognizing the budgetary and traveling limits of patients is to provide high quality education to get people going in different fields of cancer, rife, Lyme, autoimmune, genetics and others. through his courses.conoclinic.com.

He's the director of the clinical, of the Conos Clinic, and really is committed to disseminating high quality information. So with this, Kevin, welcome to the Cancer Breakthrough Summit. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah. So maybe tell us a little bit more about your journey, how you got to focus on cancer and a little bit more than I was able to really do justice to in two minutes. Well, I was, my focus on cancer really began when I was in school. You mentioned I went to a naturopathic school, but I actually went to chiropractic school back and graduated in 1986. So I'm kind of an old timer, but I never wanted at that time to have a practice that I was taking care of people with cancer really never entered my mind, but it was really when I was studying frequency medicine and.

and the RIFE technology that that brought into the light of, wow, this could help cancer patients. And so I always was intrigued by that, and I always wanted to someday have a RIFE machine in my office, someday do more frequency therapies in my office, light therapies in my office. Of course, they were very limited back in the 1980s and they just, you know, some didn't exist back in the 1980s. And so it wasn't until in the late 90s that a patient came to me with cancer. And that was my kind of my moment that it's time to buy a rife machine.

How Frequency Medicine Led to Cancer Care 3:08

And she was actually a chiropractic patient of mine. And she came in, told me she had breast cancer in both breasts and they had given her three months to live if she didn't do chemo. And she just said, I'm not doing chemo. So if you can't help me, I'm just, I'm just going to die. I'm just not going to do it. So I bought a rife machine at that time, started to really study. I was always into nutrition. I did a lot of technique called pedisiology, saw a lot of people from a functional nutritional functional medicine type perspective.

But it was at that moment that I had to learn, I had to kind of start taking a crash course in how to take care of cancer patients from a nutritional standpoint. Well, I had time because, you know, this was kind of pre website days. And so we were just seeing patients as they came to us. And so that patient actually lived, you know, another 13 years. before succumbing to the disease. And so I studied about nutrition, studied about how to take care of cancer patients as best I possibly could, used frequency healing on cancer patient with the RIFE technology and some other technologies.

And soon my practice grew as far as having cancer patients call us and come in to us. And it was just, we could start to see the writing on the wall of the way that God was leading our practice. And that's when I ended up going to the A4M Integrative Cancer Fellowship program, when they first organized it and put that together. So that was quite a few years ago, and we've just moved completely out of anything chiropractic over a decade and a half ago, and then just focused completely on taking care of cancer patients, Lyme patients, because of my history having Lyme a couple times, and autoimmune patients, because we've had family dealings with that.

So that's really been our focus for a long time now. Amazing. So, you know, you mentioned that strict diets can be harmful. We know that there is a lot of dietary confusion around cancer and often people prescribe to very strict diets and you have concerns about it that I share with you and philosophically we're really aligned with it. So maybe you can elaborate on some of the risks and potential drawbacks associated with such extreme diets. Well, and it's not even just diets, you and I both know that when you have patients that are looking into alternative means to try to deal with something as serious as cancer, there's a lot of misinformation out there from the alternative perspective too, that, oh, this cures cancer and 100% of the tests known, there's a lot of, wrong data out there of people doing maybe some therapies that they're not validated.

And you see that a lot with dietary restrictions too. Now, I think we both agree that, you know, excess sugar is not good for you. You're feeding cancer by going on a, you know, eating a lot of simple carbohydrates. But there's information that could put people on very strict diets, like let's use ketogenic diet as an example. There's information out there that if any cancer patient goes on a ketogenic diet, every cancer patient should be on a ketogenic diet. that's what's going to cure cancer. Whenever you hear phrases like that or words like that, it doesn't mean that it's completely incorrect, but you have to put up a red flag and start asking questions because cancer is a very complex disease.

I believe that every person with cancer has unique metabolic pathways that could be feeding that cancer.

Why Extreme Cancer Diets Can Backfire 7:18

So cancer, you know, as the listeners know by now going through this series, is, you know, certain cells that have, you know, their metabolic makeup has changed and they're in a state of rapid replication. Well, cells that are in a state of rapid replication need a lot of energy, so they're looking for fuel sources. So going on a ketogenic diet is strictly limiting glucose in a person's diet. And they're hopefully in a full ketogenic protocol, their cells are surviving off of ketones instead of through glucose and glycolysis, which can be beneficial for some patients with cancer that their fuel source of that That growing mass happens to be primarily glucose at that time.

But cancers are trying to stay alive. Cancer cells are trying to stay alive. So if you deprive it of glucose for a period of time, that could be good. But it could also cause the cancer to shift to feed off of amino acids. And then a ketogenic diet could actually be harmful. because a ketogenic diet is going to be primarily much higher in proteins and you're basically feeding it now with your diet. So you have to be cautious with doing a strict diet for a long period of time, because as cancer is constantly shifting to try to stay alive, these cells are looking for different metabolic pathways where there's availability of nutrients.

in order to feed it, in order to fuel it. And you have to be cautious that you don't move into a state where you are actually fueling your cancer instead of starving your cancer. You know, Kevin, I can't tell you how much I agree with you. I don't know if you were there in AFORM on integrative oncology when a cancer therapy where the person from Harvard shared for the first time the ketogenic diet and everybody was excited and I got on the stage and I warned everybody. that ketogenic diet has its place for a short time for the right person.

Otherwise, the cancer as part of its survival mechanism will shift. And what happened, people are wasting a dietary strategy much too early in the game. and not in the right time. And if you do it in an intermittent way, it's much more effective. So thank you for highlighting this. And the other thing which is complex is massive data that certain amino acid at high levels will fuel cancer. So when you are moving to too much of a protein, indeed, you can be fueling the cancer. So yeah, it is so it is so important to really understand this.

So how do you think realistically a cancer patient should go about their dietary changes when they have a cancer diagnosis? Well, I think they need to take a moderate approach. The other thing about a strict diet that most practitioners don't really discuss is how difficult and life changing it can be to a patient. And it's easy to go, well, we've got to save the person's life, so we're going to put them on this diet. I don't care how hard it is. But when you take all the joy out of a person's life, you have that psychosocial component that can lead to a person's demise just as easy as if you were feeding the fuel to the cancer.

So you have to be careful and cognizant of that as a practitioner too. I can't tell you how many people I've spoken to on the phone that had cancer. That was their main concern is they didn't want to go on a radical diet. or they heard my information and they heard me speak against a radical diet and that's what intrigued them about my practice is that we get specific so if a person comes to us and they become a member we test them so we do kinesiology testing to see what is the the main fuel source and that can change like we discussed quite readily is that cancer is trying to stay alive.

It's trying to adapt to its environment. So if you change what's in the environment as a possible fuel source, it can readily adapt to try to feed off of something else through a different metabolic pathway. You have to be able to pivot that way. But if a person doesn't come to us, I would say you have to take a more moderate approach and You don't want to be definitely fueling your body with amino acids that have been shown through studies that can feed cancers like methionine and glutamine. There's a lot of people that come to me that have been to functional practitioners that think that, well, it all starts in your gut.

Moderate Diet Changes and Metabolic Testing 12:22

So you need to heal the gut. So they put these people on L-glutamine. as a gut healing product. Well, L-glutamate is a great gut healing product because it causes cells to reproduce quite quickly. So you don't want to, especially if you have an epithelial-based cancer, to feed fuel that are going to cause cells to reproduce quite quickly. What's interrupting for the audience, please listen to what Dr. Connors is telling you. These are words of wisdom. You know, it's a great example. Even in Kaiser Permanente, they recommend glutamine.

Glutamine repairs the, the, the Krebs cycle, which, and then the cancer cell is revitalized. So yes, yes. I mean, it's a great example of common, common mistakes. So yeah, it's so, it's so wise. Really, really thank you for sharing this. Please, please keep going. And then the same thing is true, though I don't think everybody should go on a keto diet, but limiting simple sugars, limiting carbohydrates in general can be beneficial and being careful on how to select the right carbohydrates and to be cognizant of your weight and your weight loss.

So if you're at a state of below healthy weight, and or you're losing weight on a weekly basis, you have to add carbohydrates back to the diet. But you want to choose more complex carbohydrates that are going to give you calories and possibly put on weight, but be the best at limiting the fuel source of the cancer. And then we also recommend quite frequently doing some daily fasting, so modified fasting and time-restricted eating if you're not a weight loss situation or under your current weight.

That can be helpful as well. And you have to also be willing to rotate these around and change your diet. That's really important because we discussed how cancer is always looking for a fuel source. You need to be changing your diet. There's so much research just on your microbiota and eating a diet that is robust as far as different types of foods. It's not uncommon, especially in America where people are eating the same thing every single day. That's not good for your microbiota. That's certainly not good to help your immune system be able to fight cancer overall as well.

Well, so I just want to re-emphasize for the audience, diversity. What Dr. Connors is talking about is diversity. We are losing diversity in nature. We are losing species right all over the world. We are hearing it in the news. We're also losing diversity in our microbiome, which is our biggest friend. And when we eat a more diverse diet, we are allowing different bacteria to thrive. It's like keeping the rainforest alive. So it's really, really important and the idea of rotation. The cancer wants to survive.

You cannot allow it to figure out the strategy. That's why I often say when a treatment is working, it's time to make a change before it stops working, which is contrary to the oncological thinking. Use the treatment until it's exhausted and then there is stronger resistance. Yeah, I can't agree with you enough. And I want to ask, I think we are all in agreement in what we shouldn't do. And maybe one more comment before this. I think that intermittent fasting is something that we agree is very important for regeneration.

I agree with you very much on this on a daily basis. So tell us more what the cancer patients need to remove that feeds the cancer because it is in some level easier to remove what is not good for you. Well, we have to use a little bit of common sense of what are foods that help stimulate growth. So when we do our testing on patients, it's at least 90% of the people come out as one of the growth factors of cancer is dairy products. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, what should I change in my diet?

You think of what are dairy products So, you know, we drink mother's milk as a baby in order to grow quickly. So do baby cows are drinking mother's milk to grow quickly. There's a lot of growth factors in dairy products that it might be wise to stay away from. Now, does it mean you can't ever have butter on something? Butter is better than, you know, other sources. No, but it's a matter of restricting some things. Maybe it might be a good idea, whether you have cancer or not, that we shouldn't be eating very many dairy products.

So it's a matter of pulling that back. We maybe eat way too much of that, and a cancer patient is something that it might be wise to restrict. It's very wise to restrict products that are processed. So many people get a diagnosis of cancer and they're eating a typical standard American diet. So that needs to be cleaned up. Start eating organic, get rid of highly inflammatory foods like maybe gluten might be something that you want to restrict. Now that's typically never a driver of cancer, but it's a driver of inflammation.

Look at any foods that you might have antibodies against, that food sensitivities. To have antibodies against food and you're eating that food, you're creating this inflammatory response in your gut. It hinders your immune system's ability to kill a growing cancer. So that's something to look at.

Foods to Reduce: Dairy, Processed Foods, and Sugar 18:18

And then obviously you're restricting simple sugars, candy, cake, cookies, and things like that. But it doesn't mean that you can never have those things. That's one concern that I hear from patients all the time. It's like they can't have a piece of their grandchild's birthday cake anymore. They feel like they're Their joy in life is gone if they can't go out to eat with their friends because at the restaurant that they go to, it's not organic. Well, you have to loosen up a little bit. I always tell people your diet is something that you're trying to use wisdom on.

It's not a religion that you're following. So you have to still have joy in your life and still enjoy some of the foods that you like to eat, but start to make different decisions as far as when you go to the grocery store and when you're shopping and how you're cooking, clean up that process a little bit without going crazy on it and not being able to, you know, enjoy life. Yeah, it's so true, you know, the joy when we move to our heart and we have the joy of the heart, it's the greatest healer.

And when the diet is restrictive and depressing and not nourishing, it definitely affects us. The thing your point about the milk is profound. It's well-documented and it's under-emphasized. You know, everybody talks about gluten and gluten, but milk products drive cancer. they drive especially hormonally-driven cancers, which are much more than breast cancer and prostate cancer, because there are histogen receptors in colon cancer, in thyroid cancers, sometimes in brain cancers, and in lung cancer, and of course ovarian and uterine, et cetera.

So yes, and you really emphasize the inflammation. Important for people to understand, when the inflammation, when the fire is driven, it will bring growth factors in order to allow it allow it to address the area of inflammation. So it's really a multiple mechanism that Dr. Konos is offering us with this simple advice. So maybe you can close this such an important basic interview that really with the basic, these are the basics. When you use them, you can integrate with any other treatment. So what are some practical advice for cancer patients or families that really will allow them to make the changes without falling into the trap of being overly restrictive or falling into a harmful diet.

Well, the biggest thing is just, I think, to take things in steps. So if you've been used to eating a typical standard American diet, you've got a long way to go to clean up your diet and to start eating organic and start eating a better, more diverse source of foods. Take it in steps. If you overwhelm yourself, that's going to be difficult. And then there's another group of people that they've been eating organic their whole life and they can't figure out how they have cancer and they've been doing so many things right.

Well, then now just take a step back and look at some things that you may be eating that you could be feeding the cancer. Maybe it's dairy, maybe it's soy, maybe it's you're eating too much animal protein and you got to change things around. be willing to make some changes, be willing to be diverse, be willing to explore new things as far as diet goes. If you've got a really clean diet, maybe get tested for food antibodies to see if even your clean diet, good foods, if you have antibodies against your causing inflammation.

If you're a little bit above normal weight, then for sure, start doing some intermittent fasting. Time-restricted eating is very helpful, I think, for anybody, but certainly for cancer patients. You're basically starving your body for a period of time. That could be very helpful to reset different metabolic pathways. Don't be afraid to go to a practitioner and get some tests done to see what else is going on from a functional medicine perspective. But if you're choosing to do, if you feel led to do a ketogenic diet or you feel led to do a more Gershon type diet where you're going to be juicing a lot, Don't think you have to commit to it for life to commit to it.

If you feel led to do that commit to it for a period of time, and it makes it easier to do that, and I think it's wiser because you're not, you know, created a new fuel source, because of what you're eating now so. Make the changes, continue to make changes, understand it's an ongoing process and it's a battle that you just keep working on and keep making changes

Practical Steps for Patients and Families 23:08

and keep adapting. No, it is so true. And from an energetic philosophical point of view, cancer is an extreme disease. It's a cell that goes crazy and starts dividing, dividing. And you're offering a moderated approach, which makes the cancer so surprised. The whole biochemistry changes. It's a different quality of energy. And there is so much truth to what you are saying. You know, cancer is a complex disease and many times people use different doctors and a team of people. But I think really getting help with this dietary and testing is essential.

So maybe you can share with us how people can find you and how they can work with you and what are the specific programs that you recommend specifically for cancer patients that are available through your center and through your educational program that you would recommend. So we used to have, I used to function as a, you know, I graduated as a doctor that people come to me and they get treated and they go home. That all changed with us in COVID. We always had distance plans where people could work with us at a distance, but during COVID that just flip-flopped.

You know, most people chose a distance plan. And then we gradually just phased out our in office plan in order to be able to help more people so everything's done at a distance so you don't have to leave your home. We found that it's healthier for people, especially if they have a serious disease that they don't have to travel. So we always start with what we call a case review. That's an initial interview with me to see if this is a good fit. We have lots of different options, no matter what a person's budget is.

That's why we have our courses as far as cancer, our Stop Fighting Cancer course based upon the Stop Fighting Cancer book that I wrote years ago. It's a third edition. And then you can make appointments with me and we can talk about protocols and such to do our full comprehensive program that includes a programmed rife machine that includes weekly zoom calls that I do where you could ask questions includes a members only website where You could get all updates and ask questions through that. We do cheek swab testing where I test for diet like we're talking about, but also a nutritional protocol where we could get real specific with people.

Working With Connors Clinic and Available Programs 25:48

We also do a lot of different functional medicine labs that could be beneficial to narrow down things and to be able to see what may be causes of the cancer to address those things. So there's lots of different options in working with us. You just go to ConnorsClinic.com and give us a call and you can discuss with my staff of different ways that might fit your needs or your budget. We have lots of people that are still doing standards of care and choosing to do chemotherapy. And we're just coming alongside and helping people.

And we have people that are working with a local functional doctor that is meeting certain needs that they have. We think that a team approach is often the best approach and that there's a wisdom and a multitude of counselors. So we just try to bring in some wisdom to give people some insight that can help them along their journey. Well, thank you so much for taking the time today to share your point of view on diet and on the general approach to cancer. And from my almost 40 years experience, I can't emphasize how valuable and how true is your approach.

So thank you again for coming and it was great to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks.com. Stay connected, stay healthy, and join us next time on Doctor Talks, real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.