A (9:02)

Well, and thank you for being proactive, compliant. On it. You were already healthy, so my job is much easier when I've got somebody who's healthy to start with. You just happen to have cancer, right? So I appreciate you. And you are a researcher by nature. You already knew a lot. You were willing to learn more, and that's the perfect place for people to be. Although I will say, some people say I don't want to know. It stresses me out. I don't want to research it. I just want to find somebody I trust. But if you're a person like Dr. Amy and like me, you want to know everything you possibly can so you can make the right decisions.

B (9:44)

Yeah, I think. Well, I think knowledge is power.

A (9:47)

Yes.

B (9:48)

And denial really doesn't get us anywhere. It just allows the cancer that's already there to just kind of sit there and do its thing. So, yeah, knowledge.

A (9:59)

Knowledge is power. But I will say I probably have about maybe a 16th of the people that I see that say, I don't want to know my prognosis. I don't want to be told I only have five years to live. I don't want to know. And I don't want to know all. Everything because I'll be overwhelmed. And that stress makes me worse. And they're correct. So you have to know you. You have to know you. I will say, though most people say, tell me more. I want to learn more.

B (10:27)

Yeah. Yeah, you want to learn more. So, you know, the first big question that I'm sure you get asked all the time, that obviously was going through my mind and that I've received in posts and messages, DMs, the whole thing, what caused it. Now, my answer, of course, is, I don't know. And I don't know that I will ever know. But when you get that question, whether you take my cancer or. Or all the people that you work with, how do you answer that?

A (10:58)

Well, I start with that we're stuck in this genetic theory of cancer, that it's kind of bad genes, but you have to understand only 5 to 10% at most are cancers, are genetically, that you're born with the gene that made you more likely to get that. So if it's not Genetic. Why are all the studies, all the medicines, all that based on genetics? That's where our group metabolically studying the mitochondria say, okay, it's not genetic. It's a mitochondrial problem. I get more into it in a little bit, but it's really looking at the big picture of are we even studying and looking at the right thing? So why did you get it? I do believe environment plays into it. We know that it damages the mitochondria. We know that stressed us. There's many things that could. You could have been exposed to or stressed about that can cause that mutation inside that little powerhouse cell. And when you damage that mitochondria, that's that other 90 to 95% of cancers we believe is due to that damage to that mitochondria. So what caused yours? All the above? Maybe. But most cancers are not genetic.

B (12:14)

Yeah. And I. And you know, it's funny, that's the first place that conventional oncology goes. That's the first question I was asked in every single form that I filled out. Your family history of cancer, which I do have one, ironically, but to your point, it's only 5 to 10%. And it's everything else coming to play. Now, I know the toxin talk. I think all of us have heard about glyphosate and toxins and chemicals in our water and in our food.

A (12:44)

Yeah. Doesn't help. That's for darn sure.

B (12:47)

It certainly doesn't. And really, even. Yeah, go ahead.

A (12:50)

Yeah, but that's okay. But the reason why they're testing, the reason why in conventional medicine, they're testing because if there's a genetic snp, a problem and a gene, then they can match that to a chemotherapy or an immunotherapy to a medicine, to a treatment protocol that's made for that. That's why. So most of the time, though, they do all this comes back and go, we don't see anything in the genes. Sorry, bad luck. They're not paying attention to all the things that you just talked about. Right. That can damage the mitochondria. So they are looking because that's all they've got. They've got a model and a system based on genetics, your genetics and the genetics of your cancer. Now, some of those therapies can work better if they know that it's going after a target. But that still doesn't explain what you just asked. Why did I get it right?

B (13:42)

Right. So we have the. The genetic component in that 5 to 10% range. People know about toxins. They know about exposure. They kind of. They kind of know, you know, that's like the well known area. Can you get a little bit more into the stress component? Because I don't think people fully realize the detrimental effect of stress on our body. All the way connecting to the big C. Absolutely, absolutely.

A (14:09)

So, you know, go back to that mitochondria, that little power plant inside the cell. You know, they're in pretty much every cell in your body, and their main job is to take the food we eat and convert that into energy. ATP. We've all heard of that, right? That's the body's energy currency. Now, the signals, the mitochondria don't just do that, Amy. They're not just about energy that we studied in biology and whatever it was, seventh grade. They also signal when cells should live or die, which is crucial in cancer. Crucial. It also help control inflammation, another piece in cancer. And they influence the immune system. We need the immune system fighting cancer cells all the time, because we all have them and they're important. They produce, they make molecules that are for cell communication and repair. We get DNA damage all the time from the things that you're talking about. But what keeps it repaired? So mitochondria. So when we look at these, the stress piece, Right. What does that do? Well, there's two fuels that we know of that feed cancer. There's two fuels. One is glucose and one is glutamate. That's an amino acid, one's a sugar. Those two pathways both feed cancer. So in our metabolic way of looking and treating cancer is that we want to block those pathways. So you're literally starving the cancer cells. And so you can block glucose, you can quit eating sugar, you can go totally into a ketogenic diet. But then you're like, why can't I produce the ketones? Why am I having such a hard time getting into ketosis? That's because the other pathway, that glutamate pathway, has not been addressed. And guess what feeds that pathway? Stress. Cortisol, the stress hormones. So you can be strict and do everything over here trying to cut down that glucose pathway, but if you're not addressing the stress and those, those chemicals, those hormones on that side, you're still feeding the cancer.

B (16:12)

Okay, that totally makes sense because I was gonna say, I know it from a hormonal perspective. Of course, when you increase cortisol, you increase glucose, you block T4 to T3 conversion, all of that. But I don't think the general population really thinks about what their uncontrolled stress Is literally doing to each and every cell at a. At a very deep level.

A (16:38)

That's right. Well, it's. It's wrecking the microbiome, which. That's regulates your immune system and your neurotransmitters, your brain chemistry, how you feel, how you sleep or don't sleep. All of that. It regulates that, but it's regulating the immune system that we need. We all have cancer cells floating around all the time. What's keeping them at bay? Our little scouts, Our immune system. And anything that compromises that, including damage the mitochondria, we. We're in trouble. And glutamate is the fuel for those cancer cells to do well and to not. And to be able to withstand our own immune system. Right. And things that we may be doing that are healthy to do some of the therapies that we'll talk about, things that help support the mitochondria. But stress. You know, it's funny, Amy, I say some of the most stressed people I know are the biohackers. And I love the biohacker group. Right. But they're so busy looking at their wearables. Oh, I didn't sleep well last night. Oh, my gosh. I'm not supposed to work. It's great to know that information if you utilize it and it gives you a sense of peace and power. But if you're freaking out every single minute about, I should be doing a cold plunge. Oh, I didn't get this today. I didn't get that that stress is more harmful and feeding more cancer cells than you doing all the right things. So you're on it. It's. Stress is the big piece. I really believe that we're not addressing enough in any system of medicine, conventional, even on the mitochondrial side, on our side of you have to do ketogenic diet, you have to hyperbaric. There's your protocol. We talk about stress, and we know that's one of the pillars, but nobody quite knows what to do about that. But we'll talk about it.

B (18:20)

Okay. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna unpack all of this. I'm just kind of laying the groundwork, which is so beautiful, because this is really pulling in everyone. So next question is then, based on what you just said, should we all be on a ketogenic diet?

A (18:35)

Because.

B (18:35)

Okay, the stress piece, yes, we should control it. There are things that we can do to get better sleep, to de. Stress, breath, work, pmf, all of those things. Sometimes, to your point, too many things, too many biohacking hurdles, too many. But if we. If we don't have a hundred percent control over stress, which no one does, we do have 100% control over what goes in our mouth. Should we all be doing a ketogenic diet for cancer prevention?

A (19:06)

Well, you know, I say that it's hard to stay on it all the time. It used to be harder. It's not that hard now. You can find things in restaurants. You can do it. If you feel good on it and you like it, you have to say, I feel good. Women in particular, we have to know sometimes with our hormones, it's a little more difficult to get into ketosis and to feel good on it. What I tell people that don't have cancer, active cancer, do it a couple times a year. Everybody's into, oh, let me do a lemon juice detox. Let me do this, let me do it. Why don't you go on a ketogenic diet for about six weeks, Kill off if there's any growth, if there's any cancer cells. Let's try to starve a few at least a couple times a year for about six weeks. And in the meantime, you'll lose some weight. And in the meantime, your brain will go, thank you. Because ketones are clean fuel, the brain doesn't do well with glucose. It's not. So it's the cleanest fuel. The brain loves it. You get the repair going. All the things I'm talking about when the mitochondria are happy, immune system, neurotransmitters, all that thing let's give ourselves. That is a biohack right there. That's not a pill to take. It's not. It's just do something different. We also know, Amy, that with cancer, it's very, very smart. If you do the same thing all the time, it will find a route around it. That's why when I'm working with cancer cells, we kind of shift things. We have three days on, four days off. Or we'll say, let's do this for a while, we're going to stop, and then we're going to do this. They're even doing that in conventional care now, because we know cancer figures it out, and so we have to always shock it. So why not for those who don't have active cancer, and especially for those who do, but we'd stay on it. But those who don't, why not a couple times a year, do a ketogenic diet? It just makes sense.

B (20:55)

That's true. That's very true. So you have seen cancer. You said this in the very beginning about me, that I'm, I'm healthy, I take care of myself. And, and believe me, I got a slew of those questions as well. Like, I can't believe it happened to you. So if it happened to you, then that means cancer doesn't discriminate. And I don't think it does. How if you had to look at your patient population and split it up and say, yep, cancer got this subset of people, they are healthy, they are biohackers, they're on keto, they're doing all the things. But then we have this subset of people over here, they're eating McDonald's and they're all stressed out and they're working too much and they're night owls and the whole thing. What, what percentage?

A (21:38)

In my practice, I'd say it's probably. And it's, it's a skewed. Because as a researcher and having a clinical research company. Right. I'd have to do hundred thousand people to say, let me look at this data. But I will say this. I tend to get those that have been already proactive like you. They're healthy people, they get cancer and they're already not saying, somebody saved me. They go to the oncologist, tell me what to do. Chemo, radiation, surgery, I don't know any of that other stuff. I'm not even going to look. So I get those that are already informed to a certain extent. So that's where my stats are a little off. I will say half of mine are really great. They do, they're doing their exercise and doing everything they know to do from a prevention standpoint. And it's not genetic in them. Sometimes I get the genetic ones. Right.

B (22:29)

Right.

A (22:29)

I know they're going to have a harder time, but we can do it. But it's the other side. It's usually a family member, usually a female bringing in a male, saying, you're going to do this whether you want to do it or not. Now, eventually I'll get to them and say, how's that working out for you eating that hamburger? Right. So I, I, you know, a bigger percentage of mine are healthy people who happen to have cancer. Yeah. And of course, to your point, what caused it? I'm just like all the above. Heavy metals. It's in our water, it's in our air. You know, air is one of the things that really gets missed a lot. You know, we're, we're worried about what we're putting in our body, what we eat, which we should be. Right. Water. But we forget about the air, the air quality. And you know, I have jaspers that it's a certain type of air purifier. You probably do too, Amy. Like they're really good air purifiers and they keep it clean and they get down to a level that I want to see from an air purification. And their skin. Lung cancers are related to air. A lot of cancers are related to poor air quality. So I think we have to look at all of it. Does that mean you have to stay in front of your Jasper and only eat certain things and not have a life? No. Here's the scary part. One in two men will have some form of cancer in their life, in their lifetime. And one in two people, that's 50% chance. Women was just under that. We're catching up. We're almost to. One in two women will have some form of cancer in their life. So what does that tell us? Have we always had that? We just didn't keep track of it because people died on their tractor before they got cancer as an aging disease. Right?

B (24:06)

Right.

A (24:07)

No, I believe it's environmental is a big piece of it. And younger people now are getting cancer, especially younger females. But it was unheard of that we had younger populations getting so much cancer. Now we see way more of it. There's a big alarm in the research world. Why are young people getting cancer? So it's not just an aging thing. Right. And they're getting more aggressive. Bad cancers. If they get a cancer, it's more likely to kill them than an older person.

B (24:38)

My gosh.

A (24:40)

We've got to ask. And that's, you know, our current administration, no matter what your politics, are starting to ask some questions. You know, why. Why do we have. Why do we have autism? Why do we have the. Why is cancer on the rise? Why have. If you take. If you take out for age in certain other circumstances that we look at, if you look at the trajectory of cancer, we. We haven't made real gains since 1970 when we started looking at it. So how's that genetic DNA thing working out? There's a time and a place, some chemotherapies. There's four types of cancer that chemo can actually cure.

B (25:15)

Okay.

A (25:16)

And so there's a time and a place for chemo in our world at the same time of the metabolic therapies because we can help it be more sensitive and work better and less side effects. So the metabolic therapies actually help the chemo and the radiation do better with less side effects. So you have to look at the whole picture. Right. You have to look at both sides and not say, I'm only doing this, I'm only doing that. Some people come in digging their heels. I'm not going to do it. Now, I know this is up for you to talk about. You were still wondering, do I want surgery or not. And I think that I might have been one of the ones, you know, you have to say, who pushed you. But I said, those cells aren't talking to you, to the rest of your body, they're having a party. The more you take out, the more your immune system can get involved for the things that we're going to miss. And so I'm generally in favor of surgery to take out that foreign alien, get those cells out of there. So you talk that. I want to know that because I know you struggled with that. And we were going back and forth. You had lots of people saying, don't get surgery. Just do this, don't do this. You know, and here I am as a naturopathic medical doctor telling you, saying, I think you should consider it. Yeah, yeah.

B (26:33)

And it was, it was, it was a good game changing conversation. It was a positive game changer. So perfect transition into my story. So for your listeners. A lot of my listeners have heard this already, but if they haven't, they're going to hear it. They're going to hear it. I was doing, I'm going to go all the way back. I was doing rhythmic dosing of hormones. And this plays a role in how I was actually diagnosed. So I was doing rhythmic dosing of hormones, literally, because, I mean, we do BHRT in my clinic. We do thyroid treatment. And I met with a woman who had this amazing story of rhythmic dosing and her Ms. And lesions disappear. And she felt amazing. And I'm like, you know what? I want to try this on myself self before we do it on patients. So I'm the guinea pig.

A (27:20)

Yep.

B (27:21)

Started doing rhythmic.

A (27:22)

Do any good doctor Is, by the way, but go ahead.

B (27:25)

We're biohackers. We like doing experiments. So, you know, let's try it out now. At that point in time, I was not in menopause fully, but my hormones had declined to the place where it was time to replace. And I knew that, so I started in on rhythmic dosing. Now, for the listeners listening, what that means is we can induce a cycle based on how we dose your estrogen and your progesterone through the month to mimic what your body did in your 20s and 30s when you would have a normal 28 day bleed, shedding of the uterine lining. We mimic that with the dosing of those two hormones. And it, we can, we can induce a cycle in a 70 year old with rhythmic dosing. And now, you know, I would say most women are like, please, no, like, by the time my period's over, I'm happy about that. Like, I've already lived through decades of bleeding every month I'm over it. Most people would not choose that. But I thought, you know what, what the hell? I've never been bothered by having my period. I never had bad pms, nothing. So I'm going to give this a try and see what happens. So I go in on the rhythmic dosing, doing it, doing it, feeling great, no side effects, except that I was not bleeding. Hmm. Okay. Well, this puzzled my prescriber, but we let it go for a few months, maybe about six months. Nine months in, she's like, let's get a vaginal ultrasound. So we wanted to check the thickness of my uterine lining at that point in time. It was only eight. I think it's millimeters, centimeter millimeters. It was an eight. Not horrible. You know, we ultimately, I believe, want it below a seven. So it wasn't horrible. Wasn't, wasn't alarming. Said, okay, not a problem. Let's try higher progesterone. We'll try to induce a bleed. No bleed. Okay. I really want you to get a biopsy. Okay, I'll go get a biopsy. Let's check this out. I get the biopsy and the results come back with atypical complex hyperplasia. And when I got the call from the gynecological oncologist office who did the biopsy, they said, you know, we want you to come in, sit down with the doctor. Because with these types of cells, you have a 30 to 40% increased risk of them turning into cancer. So I went in, sat down with the doc, he's like, let's do a hysterectomy. I said, but wait, you're telling me that I have a 60 to 70% chance that it's not going to be cancer? Yeah, I'm going with those odds. I'm going with those odds. Now at this point in time, I want to pause because I've, I've told the story, but I've never had anybody to bounce a question off of as I'm telling the story at that point in time. Dr. Denise, would you have done the hysterectomy with that percentage? What have you seen in your practice with atypical complex hyperplasia turning into cancer.

A (30:11)

I would have been watching it like every month. And if it was increasing at all, at all, I would have said, you don't have. If you don't have the genes, let's do the genetic work, let's look for that. We have some other types of testing that we can look for cancer cells. I would have been looking for circulating tumor cells around your body and said, okay, it's a personal decision. You know it is. But at that point, I remember telling you, I said, do you want to have babies? Are you still wanting to try to have a baby? Nope. I said, okay, so. And this is after you found out that for sure that it was cancer. So at that point, and I have one in my practice right now, that it's her personal decision as long as she understands the risk. But I am making her every month go and look and see if this is thickening. So, you know, and she's off the hormones because you don't know if it's. If it's hormone mediated until you have the cancer. Then they found out in your case. Right. That it was being fed by the hormones. That's after the fact. So I took them off of hormones. I would have immediately said, I'm not prescribing the hormones until we know what's going on. I would have looked at, made sure we're seeing, is it still increasing? And then we would have done another biopsy to say, has it changed? So it's about, is it getting better, Is it getting worse? If it's getting worse, if you don't want to have babies, let's think about that hysterectomy.

B (31:39)

Now, is it possible, and this is just my theory, my thought process, is it possible that the cancer was there and they were just biopsying?

A (31:51)

Yes.

B (31:52)

The areas around it?

A (31:54)

Yes. Yeah. Okay. They might have missed the spot where it was showing up. The other thing is, I would have been asking for a PET scan because PET scans show when there's metabolic hyperactivity. Right. So if it was light lighting up, that means it's loving glucose and maybe cancer cells, they're lighting up. I would have been even more prone to say, let's assume this is cancer or soon will be. Let's weigh what you want in life. Baby is not big, and let's make the decision then. But I would have been doing more imaging and PET scan would have been the thing I would have been after.

B (32:26)

Well, and that plays a role in this story. I will get to that. I will say the only regret I have is not working with you at that point. So at that point, I was still kind of just on my own. I got the call, I figured, okay, I made a deal with the doctor. I will come in once every three months for you to buy ops, Amy. And I mean, they thought from, even from that deal, they thought I was crazy, right? They thought, why this woman is going to volunteer biopsy. I'm like, well, I don't have any blood. If I get to keep my uterus, like, I'll come in once every three months. It's cool.

A (33:04)

Yeah, yeah.

B (33:05)

So I had had about a year of, of every three month biopsies and same thing. Atypical hyperplasia. Atypical. Atypical. Until this past April. And that's when they called me and said, you have cancer. On episode 354 of the Thyroid Fixer, I talked to Caroline Allen from Beam Minerals about the power of plant based minerals. When it comes to minerals, your thyroid is greedy. Pound for pound, it uses more than any other organ in your body. A full spectrum mineral supplement is an easy first step approach to sorting out thyroid problems. It's amazing what difference it can make. But Bean minerals do more than that. They're derived from humate, a deep earth substance that forms over millennia as plants break down and deposit nutrients into the soil. Humate has all the minerals your thyroid needs. Believe it or not, it does. But it's also packed with antioxidants, plant nutrients, detoxifiers and more. That makes Beam Minerals one of the best all around. Thyroid replenishments you can take beams. Plant based minerals support detox and balanced hormone production. Their antioxidants even protect your thyroid from inflammation, which is essential if you have autoimmune issues. So if you want simple, effective way to support your thyroid, give Beam Minerals a try. For thyroid fixer listeners, I have a special discount code. So you're going to go to the beam minerals.com and you're going to enter Dr. Amy at checkout for 20% off your first order. So that's B A L S dot com and enter D R a M I E at checkout for 20% off your first order. So at that point in time, I, I remember I was on the phone, I said, so that means a hysterectomy, right? I lost, I lost, I lost the deal. She goes, yes, you know, you're going to come in, talk to the doctor, all that. But that's when we connected and that's when we had in Depth discussions. You looked at everything top to bottom. And that's when you said to me, did you get a PET scan? I said, no, they never even ordered it. It's like the hysterectomy is scheduled. No one at any point of time has said, let's do a PET scan. And then you explain that, how. How detailed that imaging is and how much information it gives. So I had a PET scan one week before my scheduled surgery. And based on that scan, you went over it and you said, listen, there are some areas here that are really, really lighting up. Really lighting up. And it was that conversation. I think we reviewed it the day before my surgery or two days before.

A (35:45)

I think I'm ever late. And it was like, listen, Amy, if the more it lights up, the more aggressive it is. We want to catch this before it metastasizes. There's two ways cancer kills you. It gets in, it metastasizes, moves into another vital organ. You can live without a uterus, but if it gets in your liver or it gets somewhere else, you can't. It. It compromises you, and you die from it being in a vital organ, and that organ can't function. The cancer didn't kill you. It was the organization. The other way is sarcopenia, muscle loss. So that's always the thing. I would rather err on the side of maybe taking out something that we didn't have to. And I never thought. I never thought I would say these words. But now, working with cancer for so many years, I would rather err on the side and take out an organ that you don't really care about, then hope that we're going to let it sit there and it doesn't metastasize. Because you know who I see a lot of stage four cancers. They went in, they were doing their regular. Everything was fine, and the first time they find out they have cancer, it's stage four, which means it's metastasized all over. Traditional care is going, okay. We just have you in comfort care. We don't have anything to do with you. That's who I'm getting. I would love it. When I get people like you in the early stage, we take it out. You're doing all these preventive things that we're doing. I feel really good about what you're doing. We're still going to watch you, right? Because your breasts are still there, all these things, right? Yeah, yeah, they're still there. They're still there. Yeah. And you're looking good. So we want to keep Our body image. It's important to us as women. It is. It just is. It's not a vanity thing. It's just we are women, so we'll keep as many body parts as we can. I'm not about cutting and surgically removing things that we don't need to. So it is a fine line. It's always a personal decision as long as you understand your risk. And the fact that I have people from Canada and England, other countries that fly here to Arizona so I can order a PET scan for them because their doctors won't do it. It's an insurance thing. It's a money thing. It's that thing. So you just said, I don't care. I'm going to pay cash if I have to. I'm getting one.

B (37:59)

Well, and it should be the patient's choice. They never even gave me an option. Sit down with me and say, there is this test based on your insurance. You know, it might be a 2k co pay. And let me be the decision maker, not somebody behind a desk looking at my insurance coverage. It should be the patient that makes that decision.

A (38:22)

And the more information is what allowed you to go. Okay, you were scheduled for that hysterectomy. Still going. Do I need it? Do I want to do it? I'm not sure. Oh, I don't like it. Maybe I can save it. Maybe you were still in that mindset until we got that PET scan and then it was like, okay, good, it's scheduled. You made the decision and your stress went from here to here because you made a decision and you felt good about it. So that's the point. We go back to the stress piece. Right? The more information you have to make the best decisions, that takes a lot of the stress away.

B (38:54)

It really does.

A (38:55)

I'm not sure. What should I do? State?

B (38:58)

And it's so hard to piece everything together yourself. I mean, I don't care if you're dealing with something as I see it in the thyroid world and you're seeing it in the big C cancer world. But it's so hard. You need a guide, and you need somebody that's going to take all the different tests you've done and lay it out in front of their wisdom, their knowledge, what they've seen and done before, and paint that picture for the patient. And that's what you did for me. And the thing I love about you is that you. You blend functional or integrative and conventional. You're not all here. You're not all here. You say, let's use what we know in the chemotherapeutic realm. And then let's go over here and use what we know in the functional and integrative realm and blend those two together to just lay out the perfect path for each unique individual.

A (39:54)

That's right. And that's what you have to do. And you have to not just look at those labs and that imaging or even that type of cancer. You got to look at that patient. If they have high liver enzyme, their liver is in trouble. I can't do certain supplements. It's going to make the liver worse. We can't even use a chemotherapy. So having someone looking at your entire picture, and I tell patients when they come in, I told you, I said I need to learn your cancer. I got to see your histology pathology report. I'm going to see what cell type, how aggressive, how fast are they. I need to learn your cancer. But just as important, if not more, is I need to learn you. I need to learn your body and what is going to support it best. There is not a protocol one size fits all for in my book, for anybody. Now, everybody says we do personalized medicine. You can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars going to a clinic, but then they throw everybody through the same therapies. Maybe you don't need some of those. Maybe you do. I think personalized mean is really digging down into an individual knowing everything that we can know and then helping make those decisions. And not just here it is in a cookbook. On the conventional side, you have this type of cancer at this staging, this is what we do first and then second and third if it doesn't work. Now, on that side, they have data. They know about how many percentage of patients might survive or do well or get sick with those therapies. At least they've collected data. On the alternative side, terror, we don't have it. Our group, the Society for Integrated Metabolic oncology, we have a group of researchers around the world, from Cambridge to major institutions. We are doing the studies. We are collecting it. We know what we're seeing in our patients, but we're collecting the data. A lot of these clinics are not doing it. So I would tell everybody, no matter who you decide to go conventional, the other side, whatever, say, are you collecting data? Can you show me that? You can't just tell me, oh, we've cured people with your type of cancer. Okay, how many, what stage, what grade? Can you show me the data? You can take their name off of it. They usually won't do it. And so we gotta be careful. There's some players out there. I do believe they think they're doing the right thing, but how do they know if they're not collecting their data?

B (42:11)

And that's exactly where I was going next. I believe the danger in the cancer world on either side is going to the extremes you have. Okay. I saw my dad go through this when he was diagnosed with non Hodgkin's lymphoma back in 2015. I wasn't even deep in this space yet. I didn't know people like yourself to reach out to. So it was that reaction of the whole family and him. Well, yes, of course. Go right into chemotherapy. My God, whatever we need to do, let's just do it. And you rush in without taking a pause and uncovering going, let's get the body shored up and strong before you go into something as potent as chemotherapy, where they use, I think, five different chemotherapy drugs to treat lymphoma, which, after his first session of chemotherapy, he died in front of me. Now, I brought him back to life with CPR and he's still here to this day. But it was so strong and his body was not healthy enough to handle that dose and nobody cared. It was just get him in, start the therapy, that's it. And his, his heart stopped on my side. I was bombarded as soon as I posted it on social media, which I am glad that I did because I want to share this information. That's why we're sitting here today doing this podcast.

A (43:34)

Right.

B (43:35)

I'm open. I'm totally open. But I was bombarded with alternative therapies. Bombarded. And to your point, stories of like, well, it cured this man's stage four and it cured this woman's stage three. And it's like, that's an N of one.

A (43:51)

That's right.

B (43:52)

That's great. That's awesome that they are cured. But am I going to leave the container in me with the active cancer cells that are lighting up to maybe try this, this and this alternative therapy? The what if it doesn't work? And to your point, then it spreads, then it spreads. There's danger. It's on either side.

A (44:11)

Yeah, that's right. So, you know, in that whole, this cured, this first of all, cured. How long did they follow them? Has it been five or 10 years? It might have decreased a shrunk a tumor size. Yay. They might have had their cancer markers go down. Yay. But for how long did they follow them? You have to know long term data or you don't know, and I'm okay with saying, here's a new therapy in mice or in a dish. It looks pretty good right now. If we don't have anything else that makes sense, that we have data, we might consider trying that. If your other organs, to your point, your heart, do you know, the first people I have, the first specialist I have cancer patients go see is a cardiologist. Because if they're going to use conventional care and even if they're not, cancer is hard on the heart. I want to know what's going on in that heart that everybody forgets about the heart. You've got cancer, they go in here and many patients are dying because of their heart not being able to tolerate the treatments. So you watched it in your father. Right. So the problem is we've got a lot of misinformation from probably, well, mostly well meaning people. But I work with Les Brown and I can say this because he tells everybody I'm his doctor, he has stage four cancer years ago. Right now there's no evidence of disease in him. But here's the thing. He would in the middle of the night be texting me like my 3am, his 5am or 6am about some influencers posts like the ones you got, right? What about this? What about that? And I'd say no less. No, you can't do this because of this. Well, this one doesn't have enough. Finally I said, let's stop. He goes, okay, we got to do some shows on this. So Les and I are going to do some shows. Hungry for health. But that's the point. Here's an 80 year old, very educated, awesome man, going, should I be listening to this stuff? Yeah. And my show, I've been talking to some producer, I've got a show where we're going to have alternative medicine and conventional medicine go head to head called health Hot seat. I'm in the middle of doing that because somebody needs to. We don't hear both sides at once. You got to hear both sides because you had somebody like me. Yeah, but how many people get to hear both sides? They either get this bombardment or, or they get conventional medicine saying, don't listen to any of that, just do ours. We're the only ones that have the science and the studies. That's not true. They have, they have more. But you know, everybody's caught, Amy. They don't know who to trust or what to trust. And it's a bad situation. I've got a book that I, I'm writing and it's about those first days when you find out you have the diagnosis. It's not what to choose. Amy, is how to choose and how to put it together. So I've had that book in the wraps for a few years now, and I've got to do it because that's what I do. What I did with you. And a lot of those steps are the same steps that I do with everybody. So I need to get that book out there.

B (47:08)

Yeah, yeah.

A (47:09)

Because don't run in and say, I don't even know what kind of cancer I have. They told me I have to have surgery. I'm scheduled two days for now. I don't understand my cancer. I don't even remember the name of my surgeon. I'm not even sure if I have a medical oncologist on board yet. Usually not. It's just a surgeon in radiation. And they don't know. And I said, nor do they know your name. This is about give yourself that time. You're talking about Amy. Give yourself that time, Put together a plan, really understand. Because I have set for 26 years of clinical practice, of people saying if I knew then what I know now, I would probably make different choices. So this is about calm down, slow down. Unless it's an emergency, that cancer is on a vital organ. You can't breathe, your heart's not beat, whatever. If it's not an emergency, you've got time. Because by the time you usually find it, it's been there for years. And when you asked that question a little while ago, is it possible that those biopsies could have been missing it? Yes. Because most cancers, by the time we catch them or see them, they've been there for a long time.

B (48:13)

So even if it's a stage one grade one like mine was, it still could have been hanging out, like, all.

A (48:19)

Growing in a little area. Just didn't see it. Didn't. Yeah. So, you know, I suspect that wasn't an overnight thing that happened.

B (48:28)

Right.

A (48:28)

You know, and so that. That's what people got to understand, that you got time. Like you did. You were studying. You were talking to everybody. How many doctors do you go to before me? Like I'm going to say integrative or alternative.

B (48:40)

Well, you know, I got a second opinion I share with you by another gynecological oncologist actually there in Arizona who said the same thing, have the hysterectomy, but he didn't sit with me like you did and go over my Dutch test, my. My path report, my tox test that I did. Six months ago. I mean, just everything.

A (49:04)

Yeah, but I thought you went to another alternative practitioner that gave you a whole bunch of stuff to do. But they hadn't looked at the Dutch. Correct. They hadn't done some of the steps that I do. They just sit here, take all these supplements. Am I correct? You. You tell what happened here.

B (49:19)

Yeah. Okay, so yes, yes. Thank you for, for triggering my mind because I wanted to ask you about some of these therapies on air live. These are not ones that we've talked about before, but literally, kind of like a hot seat. Like, I want to get your opinion. I want to get your opinion because you're the researcher, right? And just like I just said, you are the perfect blend. You're not over here in the conventional world poo pooing, what we're doing in the functional world. You're blending it together. So, okay, first therapy. And I kind of know what you're going to say with this one, but I'm going to lead off with it. Hvat Hyperbaric oxygen therapy. We hear about it all the time for treatment and prevention of cancer. What's the research say?

A (50:00)

So that's how you actually found me. We knew each other, but you didn't know how in depth I was doing cancer.

B (50:06)

Right.

A (50:07)

Substance said, you're going to do hyperbaric. You need to go talk to Denise because she's an expert and she's a diver. You know all this stuff. She knows hyperbaric. And I'm like, yeah, but I know the whole picture, Amy. So here's what we know is hyperbaric oxygen right now looks like it can shrink many types of tumors. Cancer doesn't like oxygenated areas, it doesn't like oxygen, it doesn't grow well, doesn't do it. Hyperbaric drives that inside the cells of the tumor and you it gets oxygen where it needs to go. Our studies in mice and in humans, we have clinical evidence and case histories of hyperbaric oxygen shrinking tumors. And I've seen it in my practice over and over again. But also we don't just do that. We do all the, I'm going to say the pillars of metabolic therapy. Ketogenic diet on its own also does the same thing. Now both of these two things, ketogenic diet and hyperbaric, help chemosensitivity. Remember that makes it work better. Less side effects. And they can use lower dose and radio radiation. Not that we say we're gonna do those things, but if you are, they help. But when we do ketogenic Diet. We see it in the studies, what it's doing, shrinking the tumors. Same thing in hyperbaric. When you do them together, we have faster, better results. And that's over and over again with our Entire Society of 80 researchers and clinicians that we're working with, patients with these types of f therapies. We know what we're seeing. We're collecting the data, and hyperbaric is a pillar. It is a pillar. And I know that you had a soft shell, and I'm going, ew. But you need a hard shell to get a little deeper for a while, and then we'll go back to the soft shell, and that's great. So it's very much a mainstay. And there are so many studies that have been done and are going on, and now the studies are in humans, not just mice. And in the dish, okay, it's looking great. And again, there's no side effects. You feel better. It helps you heal up better. If you had surgery, all those things. So these therapies we're talking about, you feel better, and it supports your healthy cells and pushes against the cancer cells. Why would we not consider these in every single cancer patient?

B (52:22)

Okay, I love it. Now kind of piggybacking off of that. There's also something called exercise with oxygen therapy, a little more affordable for the average person to have, like, in their home and use daily. Any research on that?

A (52:35)

Not as much. Not as much. What we do know is interval training. You know, when you go fast, slow, fast. So whether it's hit whatever it is, even if it's on a bike, it depends on where the person's physical fitness is, what we can put them on. But we know that that also is one of the main pillars that, with the oxygen, makes sense. There are a lot of labs around that are looking at that, but there's not enough data with cancer itself, because we don't want to stress your healthy cells either. We need that immune system on board. You can do too much of some of these things. We feel comfortable with the protocols that we've got for hyperbaric oxygen and ketogenic diet. We've done enough patients, enough and enough studies that we've got those protocols getting closer to being locked down. Right now, we feel comfortable with what we're doing with that live O2 and all that. I had that in my clinic, one of my clinics, probably 20 years ago. It's cool. It's great for athletes. I don't know about it. For cancer, we know that you have to be under pressure of hyperbaric to drive that oxygen inside the cells. When you're just having that mask on and exercising, it's getting the oxygen moving, but I'm not sure how well it goes in sub cells and that's where we need it. Okay, you know what's interesting and for people, they might be interested, there's a group, it was called Keto Pet. In fact, they're. They're going to help us with this new international organization that we've got. But Ron Penna, who was one owners of Quest Nutrition and he sold that and is and now is continuing to do on his own dime just because he's curious and he wants to see what works and what doesn't. He's been after all kinds of wonderful therapies for years. But at the time when he was at Quest, they funded a clinic down in Texas and it was canines. Now, canines are close to us. These dogs, what they did was they found these dogs in the kill shelters. They were about to put them down. They had tumors, they had cancer diagnosed and they said, you're going to put them down. Once you let them come with us, we'll be humane. We'll do all these things. They will not suffer. We want to, we want to try this. Well, they did ketogenic diet, they did hyperbaric oxygen right in these dogs. And they did this interval training and they loved them and pet on them for the whole stress thing. These dogs, their tumors shrank. They got adopted. Some of them, it went into complete remission. Some of almost all of them lived longer. Some of them were so far gone, but they still got farther than they thought they could get. And we're seeing the same thing in humans. So that research on those dogs really does know to say, okay, let's extrapolate this. What would we do with this in humans? And that was years ago. So it's not just in mice that this has been studied, those canines. And that was a beautiful, beautiful humanitarian people who love dogs that wanted to try to save those canines. And it was amazing. The majority of them got adopted and went home with somebody.

B (55:30)

That's amazing.

A (55:31)

Beautiful story.

B (55:32)

Yeah, that's so beautiful. I love that. I love the animal. And that gives us tools too, to do with our pets. If your pet is diagnosed with cancer, to do the same thing you would do for yourself.

A (55:40)

My dog, my little pet, he started having trouble breathing and we got him. He was a rescue and so forth. You don't know what they've been experiencing, exposed to and stress and all this. He was a great, great dog. So I went in. I thought maybe it was congestive heart failure, his heart. But what was found, he did have chf, that congestive heart failure a little bit. But he had a. What's called a splenic hemangioma. And in dogs, they've got about two weeks to live, two weeks done. By the time you find it, they will bleed out. It's going to kill them. I started working with a vet that does metabolic therapies in Florida. And I said, I'm going to do everything I do with humans. And he said, you go for it. Guess what? When I took him in to get the checkup, it was gone. The tumor was completely gone and resolved. He ended up dying of congestive heart failure. I slowed that down with L carnitine and all the things we know about that we use in humans. Right. Slowed that down. But I couldn't save him from the chs, but I did. I have a document in my own dog.

B (56:39)

Yeah.

A (56:39)

It's not supposed to go away. It is terminal. Yeah, a hundred percent terminal. And I've got patients that were given seven years to live that are still going strong, doing well. Some of them still have evidence of tumors. It'll kind of grow, and then it shrinks and it grows. But they're living their lives. They're doing everything that they were doing and want to do. So you can live with cancer if you keep it in under control. Our goal is to rid our bodies of it if we can. Right, Right. But many of mine come to me with stage four, and then I've got to be realistic with them. We can help keep them comfortable. We can help try to regress it. And we have. There are some stage four cancers that are in remission. But anybody who tells you, I can cure your cancer, you better run the other way, because they need to be honest to say, here's what we can try to do. Here's the reality of it. I mean, yours is easy, Amy. You're healthy. Stage one, grade one. If I got everybody like that would just be monitoring and saying, stay healthy. Yeah, right. Yeah, stay healthy. But most people, they've been through conventional care. They've destroyed their immune system. You know, you have to go through chemotherapy. Usually used to be you had to do that, fail that before they would try immunotherapy, before the insurance would pay for it. Kind of changing now. But you've destroyed the immune system with the chemotherapy. Now you're asking an immune system modulator to work. So, you know, they come to me, they have depleted their bodies. They are so far gone. And then they want a miracle. Now we can help. And I help. And sometimes I'm helping just them and the family transition. I have one today that I'm helping to transition into a beautiful thing instead of a scary, horrible thing. Death can actually be a beautiful experience if it's done right.

B (58:27)

Right.

A (58:28)

But if I could catch them in your side and then you're going to say, well, what about the prevention? Now we're back in the biohacking world, let's try things that we think might work, but that doesn't mean that it's going cancer. Yeah. Look at you. Look at you. Right? We were looking at healthy, doing all the right things. You shouldn't have gotten cancer.

B (58:45)

Yeah, that's pretty much what everybody says. Even my conventional oncologists go, you know, you're a little bit young for uterine cancer. We normally see these in older women. So.

A (58:55)

But I will say, and I do believe that those extra hormones that you were doing, I believe that was the trigger in you. If you asked me, my hypothesis of what was it that triggered those hyperplasia cells to finally to really turn into a cancer, I think it was the hormones.

B (59:13)

And to clarify too, for the listeners, I don't clear my hormones. So my DNA, which Denise looked at as well. So my DNA and my Dutch test both clearly show that I do not do well metabolizing and detoxifying anything, but especially estrogen.

A (59:33)

Especially getting rid of that bad estrogen. The estrogens that can cause cancer.

B (59:37)

Yeah. So I have shared this on a more recent podcast, but I did decide to go back on hormones. But now I'm taking everything under this. I'm taking your hormone path. I'm taking extra calcium d glucarate, making sure my zinc is in methyl tetrahydrofolate for the nthfr. I'm doing sauna, I'm making sure I poop every day. And I just actually today went and did a blood test for hormones including the estrogen sulfate. And then I'll do a 24 hour urine, I'll do another Dutch test. Like I'm just going to stay on top of this and make sure that the hormone dose that I'm on now is working and clearing. Working, clearing, working, clearing. It's not that I avoided hormones. I'm not scared of them. I'm not scared of hormones. I just know that what I was doing previous to the cancer diagnosis combined with my DNA and my Dutch. Again, one more regret in addition to not working with you back at the atypical hyperplasia stage, is that I just didn't take the information seriously. Denise. I just, you know, I was.

A (60:43)

Amy, if you had been working with me, I'm not sure you would have done anything differently. And you might have gotten a PET scan, you might have gotten a few things that maybe we'd seen, but you love your hormones. You do. You told me. I feel good. You look good. I get that. If I have somebody on hormones, a patient of mine that I'm prescribing hormones for, I require them to do the Dutch at the very beginning. I make sure that I'm doing like you're saying, looking at every single step all the time. I will say in general. And this is where I'm gonna challenge you a little bit. Right. What are you doing differently now than you were doing then when you were diagnosed with the cancer? Are you. You decrease the amount of hormones, right? Or they decrease. Yep, but they're still there. But you know now that yours were receptor. You have receptors there. You know that those hormones feed. You don't know at what point is it 8 ounces or 10 ounces, a glass of water, when could it proliferate those cells again somewhere else in your body? I don't love that. But you are the patient. You're going to use your intuition, you're going to listen to everything and make your decision. My job is to be in your camp no matter what you choose. But I don't love the hormones in you. I just don't. But you are making a quality of life compared to that. You're doing this, and that's okay because I know you understand the risk versus the reward. And that's the way it should be in our lives. It's not for me to decide, but it is for me to give you my opinion. And you know the reward that you're getting from the hormones, you get it and you're watching. And that is the only way to do that. I don't think it is normal for us to continue to try to have a period. When Suzanne Summers and that group was coming out with this, they wanted me on board 20, whatever it was 25 years ago. And I said to me, close to nature, I would never want to keep a woman cycling past when her body had decided it was menopause time. And there's a cancer risk of extra hormones the longer you have estrogen in your body. Like people who started their periods earlier when they were younger, they have a longer exposure time, they have more chance of a cancer. So I'm like, why would we want to continue? So I didn't jump on board then. Now I prescribe hormones still to certain patients. Risk versus reward. So this is where if your intuition is telling you that you're safe, that you're doing everything and you're looking at it, but if you have any hesitation ever, you wake up one morning and you go, I'm gonna second guess myself, I want you to listen to that intuition.

B (63:13)

Yeah, no. And I would say that for anyone, it. At the end of the day, it has to be a personal choice.

A (63:18)

It does.

B (63:20)

And a friend of mine brought this up recently. She said, I think we're moving the other way to actually shaming the women who choose to not do hormones. Like, right, so hormone driven. There's 5 million menopause books out, right? You got all these Marie Claire, like having 5 million views. So it's like hormones, hormones, hormones. And I love hormones, too. But at the end, if somebody isn't comfortable, I am not going to talk that woman or shame her into using hormones.

A (63:53)

That's right. Remember the power of the human body. The most powerful hormones and chemicals that we, that are available to our bodies are the ones our own body makes. So if Amy is comfortable with what she's doing, her stress level is down and she feels good, that's protective. But if Amy is doing a biohacking or taking the hormones out of shaming and blah, blah, whatever reason, and they're like, oh, I wonder if I should be doing this. Now you got a double whammy. Now you've got hormones that could be feeding a cancer and you're stressing. That's what's not good. So you've got to always be in control of your decisions and know that your own body is powerful. It creates hormones. And, you know, after menopause, whether it's surgically induced or regular, you know where those hormones are produced, right? Is the adrenal gland instead of the ovaries. Now if the ovaries are gone, uterus are gone, it's in the adrenal glands. So if you're stressing, your body can't produce those hormones. So now you're really low in hormones because you can't produce them, because you're telling the adrenal glands produce cortisol. Run from the bear. Run from the bear. I'm in survival mode. So it's gonna survive. It's not caring whether you have libido. And beautiful skin and all the stuff that comes with hormones. Right? It's saying I'm choosing survival. So that's very imperative. And I think we don't talk enough about those adrenal glands that that's the part of the body in women after menopause that's going to keep your hormones to a better level to go through life whether you choose to do exogenous outside hormones or not. Yep. Stress. Big thing. Big thing.

B (65:26)

Now there's so much more to unpack. I started with the, I want to say more gentle, more obvious therapies that I was given by the kind of alternative side, but we're going to get into more controversial therapies and then we're going to get into a very interesting test that you had me do that literally shows what my tumor cells, my individual unique tumor cells will respond to. So we gotta break this up part one and part two. So now all of you listening, you gotta come back for part two to listen to the rest of this episode.

A (66:06)

Foreign.

B (66:09)

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