Imagine your phone rings and it’s your doctor’s office.  The nurse on the other end says your test results have come back positive, you have cancer!  There’s a long silence, then the nurse says, “We have an opening in three weeks for you to meet with the doctor.  Can I schedule you?”

You say yes, while trying to process what you just heard.  Three weeks!  God, that’s like years away!  I want answers NOW!  What can I do?  Who can I call?

Well, here ya go.

The purpose of this article is to get you to think, research and make informed decisions.  Most oncologists still don’t understand how diet, nutrition and the microbiome can beat cancer down and you know as well as I do, everyone has a “cure”—everything from vitamin C IVs to beet juice.  Your physician sees twenty patients a day.  That’s our medical system.  So, fuck all the noise and become the CEO of your own health.

Cancer is Old News

Cancer is one of the largest health problems in the world today.  Turn on the TV any weekend and you’ll see a football stadium filled with about 100,000 people.  Ten of these stadiums equal about one million people.  This gives you a visual to wrap your head around the 10 million people who die of cancer every year. 

In 1884, a whaling ship captain asked his brother, a surgeon, to check the Eskimos for cancer.  Over 15 years and 50,000 natives later, there were no signs of cancer.  Evolutionary biologists still study cultures where cancer is nonexistent.  Information like this allows scientists to drill down on diet, nutrition, lifestyle and possible explanations for what kept them cancer free.

Cancer was at extremely low levels in the Western world in the 1920s.  Why the consistent rise of this disease?  The research indicates that the combination of poor diet and environmental toxins suppressing the immune system and high blood glucose and insulin are the most probable causes of the rise in cancer we have witnessed over the years.

Once I got a call from someone going through chemo.  Part of his treatment was a high carbohydrate diet.  WTF?  It’s 2021 and the ketogenic diet and fasting are exploding across the world over in a $10 billion market.  Both keep blood glucose in check.  Research says these two therapies can slow the spread of cancer, so why are the major cancer centers in the US not using this research?

There is more we can do besides poison, burn or cut (e.g., chemotherapy, radiation and surgery) and some of these treatments actually cause cancer.  What?  Yes, even certain cancer drugs like Tamoxifen used to treat breast cancer is considered a group one drug, which causes cancer according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (part of the WHO).  All the current treatments kill healthy human cells.  Ya think we can do better?  I do!

Beware of Big Pharma’s Agenda

But first, let’s have a reality check.  A few years back, I was consulting for a multi-million-dollar pain management company that was a distribution channel for pain meds.  I had an amazing idea and made my pitch at a meeting.

I took center stage in the conference room and said, “Guys listen, the future will be in customized treatment.  With the advancements in genetic testing, we can test a patient and find out which pain meds work best and cut the other meds out.  From a liability standpoint, it’s a win-win.”  I looked around the room to blank stares and crickets.

I took another shot.  “We can customize their meds and we can be the first company to do this! We can be the early adaptors!”  Then one of the executives said, “Russ, that is a great way to cut our profits in half.” 

When I heard those words, the light bulb went on.  I smiled and said, “Gotcha.”  I moved to the side of the conference table and sat down, processing what had just happened.  “Fuck me,” I said to myself.  “Way to go, Slick, you naive motherfucker.  Follow the money, fuck the patients.”

Your Cancer Plan

After speaking with people who got that devastating phone call, I’ve learned there are two types of cancer patients:  the people that accept their fate and pray and the people who dive into their illness and learn as much as they can, empowering themselves to ask tough questions about their treatment.  Be the second type of person.

Here’s the plan: Call your best friend tell him or her the news.  Ask for help being a metabolic detective.  Get on the internet and start with a search on “ketogenic diet and cancer,” “fasting and cancer” and “Dr. Thomas Seyfried.”  In a few short hours—the time it takes to binge-watch a few Breaking Bad episodes—you and your friend will have your hands on evidence-based research most physicians don’t understand.  Hard to believe but true.  For example, you will learn how cancer spreads in a high glucose metabolism and whatever you can do to keep your blood glucose in check can slow its spread.

Here’s one study I’ll start you off with:

Rationale, Feasibility and Acceptability of Ketogenic Diet for Cancer Treatment

My Friend Wendy

Wendy Chioji, superstar news anchor for Orlando’s WESH Channel 2, was my friend and triathlon training partner.  We rode hundreds of miles together.  Wendy was part of our close-knit triathlon group and one of my biggest supporters as I delved into advanced nutritional testing at the mitochondrial level.  Everyone was calling me batshit crazy, but Wendy went through the advanced testing while she was in remission from breast cancer.  She told everyone, “Russ has access to the most advanced testing and knows what he’s talking about.”  

Wendy’s results showed a host of vitamin, mineral and amino acid deficiencies.  She also had extremely high levels of 8-hydroxy-2′-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), a critical biomarker of oxidative stress and carcinogenesis.

Research shows that prolonged marathon-style running, or any intense training or competitive exercise, can decrease your immune function for 3 to 72 hours.  Think about training five days a week.  Your metabolism never gets a rest.  Oxidative stress is an imbalance of free radicals and antioxidants in the body, which can lead to cell and tissue damage. 

Excess carbohydrates can contribute to metabolic dysfunction by blocking the synthesis of important antioxidants.  Every endurance athlete slams carbohydrates with six to seven meals a day.  These are the high-mileage athletes who are in a constant proinflammatory state.  Inflammation increases the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) which can support the spread of cancer.

The Ironman is the K2 of endurance events, consisting of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike and a 26.2-mile run.  Endurance athletes are notorious for getting sick right before or right after this 10-hour race.  When endurance athletes get sick from overtraining, physicians are lost on how to care for these super-fit people. 

I told Wendy she needed to dial back the training and think about stopping for 90 days—it was too much for her while in remission.  I explained that the test showed her immune surveillance was extremely low.  She listened with laser focus, but never slowed her training. 

Wendy did FIVE Ironman races.  The cellular damage from going these distances is unfathomable.  This free radical damage combined with high sugar and simple carbohydrates to fuel her though hundreds of miles of training is probably what fed the cancer.  Wendy just kept slamming the mileage until it finally caught up to her—it was so sad.  The news headline on October 8, 2019:  Wendy Chioji, legendary Central Florida news anchor, has died.  I can still remember Wendy’s smile when I close my eyes.  Goddamn girl!  I wish you listened to me.  Miss you, Wendy.

Cancer is Immortal

Cancer cells are immortal—wrap your head around that!  A regular human cell may divide 30 to 40 times before it dies; the medical term is apoptosis.  Not a cancer cell.  It can go on multiplying forever.  There is no shut-off switch.  Just knowing this should scare the shit out of most people.  Cancer cells are immortal serial killers: elusive, intelligent, adaptable and cunning. 

Dr. Thomas Seyfried, a professor at Boston College, presents surprising information that shakes the whole foundation of cancer treatment research.  He’s one of the most advanced leaders in cancer.  If you look up “badass” in the dictionary, his picture is there!  His own research reveals that cancer can be considered a single disease with a common pathophysiological mechanism involving dysfunction of the mitochondria—and a heroine-like craving for sugar as well as some amino acids from protein, methionine in particular.  

Dr. Seyfried found that combining a ketogenic diet with hyperbaric oxygen therapy produces anti-cancer affects including decreased glucose levels, reduced tumor growth and a 77% increase in survival time in mice with systematic metastatic cancer compared to controls.  With this understanding, the ketogenic diet and fasting are now part of cancer treatment.  Studies show you can lower the dose of chemo while implementing the keto diet.

Ketogenic diets selectively starve tumors by providing the fat and protein that otherwise could not be used by glucose-dependent tumor cells. The 4:1 ratio of fat to carbohydrates mimics the metabolic effects of starvation.  Thirteen different cancers are linked to excess bodyfat, yet the 12,000 oncologists in the US never discuss diet, weight loss or the dangers of overnutrition.  Crazy that something so simple is ignored, especially when we know cancer loves glucose.

The metabolic theory of cancer is not new . . . it was first discovery by German physiologist Otto Warburg in the 1920s.  He was awarded a Noble Prize in 1931 for his research on metabolism.  He discovered that the damage to a cell’s mitochondria is what causes it to become cancerous.  Warburg found that tumors extract glucose at a rate 20 to 50 times higher than do normal cells. In other words, cancer thrives on sugar and soaks it up like a sponge.

In 1910, Upton Sinclair wrote a best-selling book called The Fasting Cure, which detailed his research on the benefits of fasting to cure disease.  Fasting today is as popular as CrossFit.  I just hope it doesn’t take as long to go mainstream.  Now there is a paradigm shift in treatment and it’s as exciting as the moon landing to researchers around the world. 

Eating a lot of high-sugar foods such as cakes, cookies and sweetened beverages can contribute to cancer.  This leads to excess body fat.  Research has shown that being overweight or obese increases the risk of many types of cancers including colorectal, postmenopausal breast, ovarian and pancreatic.  Elevated insulin, bodyfat and the inflammatory response can all lead to cancer. 

In 2014, the global market for cancer drugs hit $100 billion.  Drugs like Avastin can cost a patient $8,000 a month.  The average cost of a new cancer drug is $100,000 a year.  These medical costs cripple families, which is one more reason to share new research.  The people who have healed themselves are on social media telling their stories. 

If the connection between sugar and cancer is definitively proven, will we hear about it?  The global industrial sugar market is expected to reach US $45.6 billion by the year 2027.  Yeah, I don’t think so!

Don’t Wait for the Mainstream to Catch Up to Cancer Research

By sharing the new research, cancer patients can see they may have a way out.  There are alternatives and complementary therapies to chemo, radiation and surgery.  Thousands of people go into remission every year, but we never hear about it; the physicians who work in this alternative area are called quacks, so little advancement has been made.

In 1882, William Halsted performed the first radical mastectomy to treat breast cancer.  This surgical procedure remained the standard operation for breast cancer until the latter half of the 20th century.  Bureaucratic institutions do nothing but slow innovation.  We see this in business every day—Blockbuster versus Netflix, NASA versus SpaceX—the status quo is everywhere.

Being smart or having a lot of money doesn’t help either.  Steve Jobs was so fucking brilliant he became a fruitarian, no doubt elevating his blood glucose and insulin and causing an inflammatory response that put major stress on his pancreas, which probably led to his death.  Higher than normal levels of circulating insulin and increased pressure on the pancreas to produce insulin have been suggested as possible reasons for diabetes, leading to a higher risk of pancreatic cancer.  Imagine understanding the complexity of computer function and not having a basic understanding of how carbohydrates affect every cell in your metabolism.

When friends say they want me to meet one of the smartest people they know, I have a visual of a PhD from MIT on the side of the road with the hood of his car up and a mechanic bent over working on the engine.  Who’s the most brilliant person there?  I always say we are all wicked smart at something, and I’m not impressed with degrees.

Be the CEO of Your Own Health

I love social media because I get to follow the influencers who have put their cancer into remission using a combination of fasting, the ketogenic diet and low-dose chemo.  Social media provides an area where we can follow these SMEs (subject matter experts) who are often highly educated, passionate people who have investigated their illness or condition for years.  Regular folks are applying new research and putting themselves into remission on their own.

For example, there was a British man who rejected the standard of care to treat his brain cancer.  He has lived with a (typically fatal) glioblastoma tumor growing very slowly after adopting a ketogenic diet, providing a case study that researchers say reflects the benefits of using the body’s own metabolism to fight this particularly aggressive cancer instead of chemo and radiation therapy.

Another good example is on my YouTube channel.  Hank, a cancer patient, educated his oncologists on all the new research.  They worked as a team and were successful.  Hank’s still in remission from prostate cancer.  This is exactly what I’m talking about.  You control your treatment, take charge, get a second opinion and do your research. 

One of our more recent cancer consults was a woman with stage 4 ovarian cancer.  This woman was a marathon runner eating a carbohydrate-heavy diet for years while suppressing her immune system with high mileage.  We had a conference call with her and her family members because we wanted everyone involved in this intervention.  We quickly passed on the research to the family, did some testing, educated her physicians and advised her to read the research on the ketogenic diet and fasting.  Today this woman is still in remission, even though she was told that she only had six months to live!

This is exactly what I want to do with my stories—give people alternatives.  It’s true that knowledge is power, but only when it’s applied.  I’ve had cancer patients go into remission, but it took a lot of education, discussion, testing and imaging to show the tumor was shrinking.  To help patients into remission, we had to deconstruct their behavior years prior to the diagnosis and educate them to work with their physicians and share all the new research.  This is not a “how to stop cancer” program, just observations, research and testing.

You can see the puzzle pieces coming together if you study the history of cancer, the subject matter experts and the research.  This combination slowly allows us to see a road map to our metabolism and how best to end cancer as we know it.

One of my hypotheses is that all stress—physical, mental and emotional—causes our immune surveillance to tank.  If we can test people and correct their deficiencies, we can help put the brakes on cancer.  The field of psychoneuroimmunology shows us that emotional stress will suppress your immune surveillance, causing cancer to spread at an accelerated rate. 

Here’s an article on the topic of emotional health and its effect on natural killer (NK) cells.

So, getting back to that phone call from your doctor, as you do your research with your best friend, you will quickly realize some important reoccurring points when it comes to cancer treatment: stabilizing blood glucose, correcting nutritional deficiencies, removing toxins, rebalancing the microbiome, slowing inflammatory response, fixing hormonal imbalances and cutting the stressful people out of your life.  Folks, do your research and take control of your health.