There is a tendency in our culture, especially in recent years, to gravitate towards extremes. Some of us put our faith in conventional medicine, while others decide to opt for a completely holistic approach. But what if we could do both? Integrative oncologist Dr. Laura Nasi was trained in conventional medicine practice, but she also believes that lifestyle changes can play a fundamental role in your long-term health and vitality. In this podcast, she speaks to Dr. Gundry about her work in cancer treatment, her experiences as a mind-body medicine practitioner, and even reveals some of the lessons from her recent book,”Cancer as a Wake-Up Call”.

Dr. Laura Nasi:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dralauranasi

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Dra.LauraNasi/

Blog: http://dramlauranasi.blogspot.com.ar

 

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Full Transcript:

[00:01] Hey there. Welcome to another exciting episode of the Dr. Grundy Podcast. The weekly podcast where I give you the tools you need to support your gut, boost your health and live your youngest, healthiest life.

[00:20] Each week Dr. Stephen Grundy, a cardiologist, medical innovator and author of New York Times’ bestsellers The Plant Paradox and The Plant Paradox Cookbook, shares the latest in cutting edge health information. He’s excited to be a part of your unique health journey. So let’s get started.

[00:38] So before we get into this week’s episode, let’s take a look at our review of the week. Thank you by Odeyboy02. “This is a top notch podcast. A brilliant expert way beyond his time with high emotional intelligence to boot. Thanks Dr. Grundy.”

[00:55] Well Odeyboy02 you are a really good judge of character and thank you very much. I’m glad you appreciate the podcast.

[01:02] So if you want me to read your review, make sure to rate and review the Dr. Grundy Podcast on iTunes.

[01:11] So welcome to the Dr. Grundy Podcast. We’re about to start a new year and I thought it was really great that we could get a very distinguished physician Dr. Laura Nasi from Buenos Aires, Argentina to join us. She’s got a recent book that came out in October which is called Cancer as a Wake Up Call.

[01:35] So thank you for joining us and welcome to the Dr. Grundy Podcast.

[01:41] Thank you very much for inviting me and reaching out all the way to Argentina.

[01:45] Well you’re welcome. So your book Cancer is a Wake Up Call, you know really presents a new way of looking at how we view and treat cancer. Now cancer is a sensitive subject, so what’s your approach in two ways, number one, what’s your approach in terms of thinking about cancer that perhaps is different than those of us in the United States view it? You’ve done all of your training, most of your training in the United States at Temple University, also at Sloan Kettering and I know you were in Switzerland at Bern. And now you’ve been back in Argentina for ten years. So tell me the various approaches how should we think about cancer? How do you think about cancer?

[02:40] Okay so what I practice is integrative oncology. What we call now integrative oncology which is based on the scientific evidence that has accumulated in the last decade from psychoneural immunology. I mean the way we are seeing cancer from integrative oncology it’s a broadened way. It’s we [inaudible 00:03:03] that what we’ve been calling cancer, we’ve been only looking at that group of cells that divides uncontrollably and gets the phenotype, the capacity of invading locally or at a distance.

[03:20] But what we haven’t looked at from conventional medicine is why do people some people get cancer and why others don’t. You know for me it’s fascinating if we look at people who smoke, why do some people smoke and get cancer? Why do some people smoke then stop quit smoking and then get cancer years later? And why some people that smoke don’t ever get cancer?

[03:47] And what we know now from all the research mainly from psycho-neuro-immunology is precisely that we are in contact with a lot of carcinogens during the day. You know the sunlight and the pesticides and the tobacco or the air pollution and all those other chemicals we’re in contact in our household or in environment but if our immune system is working well and our DNA repair systems are working well, those cells that are altered by the carcinogen get repaired or eliminated by the immune system and the DNA repair systems.

[04:27] So when someone gets diagnosed of a cancer we have to assume that that immune system and DNA repair system is not working well. And nowadays we know that immune system doesn’t work by itself alone, but it’s part of this network of this intelligent network psycho-neuro-immuno-endocrine network which what explains it that everything is connected within our body, so our emotional part, our thoughts and mainly how we perceive the word and how we translate that internally and how that effects our autonomic nervous system, that part of the nervous system that acts automatically and it’s right now controlling our heartbeat and our breathing rate, rate of breathing and the glucose in our blood and the temperature in our body.

[05:19] That incredible system that it’s working day and night without us having to give not even one order, it’s this autonomic nervous system that works like with a gas pedal and a break, a gas pedal and a break influences then a immune system and the endocrine system, the hormone system.

[05:39] So I mean women we know it intuitively because we know that when we have some [inaudible 00:05:45]some stressful period we know that something gets out of balance within our bodies and then our menstruation our menses our get delayed or come before. So we know that something gets out of balance within our body and that effects all our hormones.

[06:05] Well the same thing is happening with immune system. It gets effected by how we are internally. The only thing is that with immune system we don’t see it. We don’t see when it’s working badly except when we start getting you know people that have a herpes in a mouth which you call it a lip herpes or a.

[06:26] Cold sore.

[06:28] Reactivation of the cold sore and they say, “Oh maybe I’m stressed out because this happens when I’m stressed out. So we start seeing maybe we start having like indications that the immune system is not working well, but nowadays in our western lifestyle like we were referring to before this interview is that in our western lifestyle we just keep going you know? We take some medicine and we keep going instead of listening what our immune system is saying.

[06:58] So what from the psycho-neuro-immunology point of view when someone gets diagnosed with cancer, we also assume that there is a disbalance in this PNIE network in this psycho-neuro-immunology network. Something is not working well. So we need to look not only at the tumor but to look at the whole person and see how that person is living and what’s leading that person into a path of an unhealthy path that makes her or him more vulnerable to get sick.

[07:31] So the treatment it’s not only to go against the cancer cells, but how we can help that person to regain the help of that immune system and the whole PNIE network.

[07:43] Yeah I think that’s a really good point. Most women with the BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 gene do not get cancer. The vast majority don’t. And one of the things that I counsel my patients is just because you carry a gene that is potentially pro-cancer promoting has nothing to do with whether you personally are going to get those cancers. And you’re absolutely right, it’s this entire milieu of the body and I would throw in the gut immune brain axis, as you know my interest is the microbiome and I think the microbiome contributes so much to how our immune system functions and I’m sure you would agree with that as well.

[08:38] Completely. I do refer to that in my book and I think it’s one of the things I’m stressing most you know in the patients in the recommendations. I mean we’re only starting to understand how the microbiome works. But for example, within the microbiome there this whole strovolo which is the bacteria and the micro-organisms that deal with our estrogens. So one person, a women who has an estrogen sensitive cancer, not only we can help to lower the estrogen levels by medications, by removing the ovaries, et cetera, but also we can help a lot by the nutrition and helping to have a healthy strovolo which is a healthy group of bacteria that will help us eliminate the estrogens through the gut you know through the fecal matter and not re-absorb them because sometimes when there is this biosis and alteration in the microbiome we maybe we are not consuming so many estrogens or producing so many estrogens but whatever little we have are circulating or we are absorbing again. So a lot is presented in the blood all the time.

[09:56] So absolutely the microbiome is something we don’t understand so much yet and it has a major impact. Yeah.

[10:06] So when you say, so let’s have a patient that comes to you with cancer. And you say that this is a wake up call and you’ve already eluded to the fact that this is not just a tumor that’s been picked up or a growth some place. So what’s your approach to counseling that patient that comes to see you? That’s a big subject.

[10:37] Yeah I mean the title Cancer is a Wake Up Call comes as a result of so many patients I’ve seen where the diagnosis of cancer for them was really a life changing situation and allowed them to stop and really take a become aware of how they were living and learn how to live in a more healthy and more happy way. And for them it was really a wake up call into a more happy and healthy life. So really the title comes from observing that this happens. That unfortunately nowadays even though we know that living stressfully it’s not good for us or eating unhealthy or not exercising is good, sometimes we don’t make changes until we have some wake up call.

[11:33] And nowadays cancer unfortunately on one side unfortunately it’s what a lot of people it’s what makes them wake up and stop living the unhealthy way they were living. Fortunately in the sense that it would take cancer as this manifestation [inaudible 00:11:54]this balance within the body then we can really look not only at getting rid of the cancer, but having it as a really wake up call to learn on how to live more healthy and more connected and more truth to who we are.

[12:11] And it’s very interesting how things work because today I’m in my office and the two patients I saw just before this interview, one of them I have seen only once a year ago. And she’s a young lady, she had had a early breast cancer, very good prognosis but two years later she had metastatic disease in her back, in her back and one of her vertebra. And she came to see me at that point when she was completely anguished and anguished and despaired because this had taken her completely out of she didn’t expect something like this happening to her.

[12:57] And I had that one consultation with her when I explained that cancer is really a group of cells manifesting and saying we don’t want to continue this way. This way of living there’s something that you know, and so I talked to her what we know nowadays that to restore the health of that immune system of that PNIE network we need to address how we’re living, how we’re taking care of our body. Not only how we are eating but also how we are exercising, how we are sleeping. You know it’s very important for immune system, but also nowadays we need to include some relaxation technique.

[13:37] We live in a very at least in the western world we live with a lot of demand, a lot of stress, and we’re just used to it you know. People just say oh everybody’s stressed out or everybody you know. But that’s not an excuse because this everybody’s stressed out is making us sick. I mean the statistics say in the states one every two men will have cancer in their lifetime and one every three women. I mean there’s something the way we’re living that it’s really making us vulnerable to get sick.

[14:09] So and then I explained to her also how important it is to have to build I talk about the team, to build a good team to help one make all these changes. And those are like the basic recommendations like for everybody. But then we have to look at that one person and why she got sick and what let her become sick. And in this case this woman was a woman, is a woman who is very responsible. She has one part of herself that it’s very responsible, very much you know take everything on her backsack you know and really put everything for her had a hard time to ask for help and her life was just being responsible and taking care of her kids, her husband, her profession, da ta da at da.

[14:59] So for her I thought it was very important to do some psycho-therapy to and some other techniques and practices including relaxation practices to really understand who she is because that was one part of her, the very responsible one. But then she has a very much sensitive part that has a lot to do with communication, which is not developed in her. And it was really a pleasure because today she came, I saw her at the beginning of not at one year ago, December last year and now I saw her for the second time. In the meantime I was in contact with her psychotherapist and her nutritionist, et cetera.

[15:43] And she comes today and she’s disease free. You know she was able, she got chemotherapy and radiation therapy to her back and she got the conventional treatment, but she also did a lot of changes in her house, in her family and so today she came to kind of summarize all her work during the last year. And it was such a pleasure to be a testimony how one person can make such a difference for herself for her family and on her case being celebrating being disease free after one year of work with conventional medicine and all other things that she adopted to make her life more healthy.

[16:33] And she’s happier. She feels more like herself. She feels like she’s not just that kind of a soldier just keeping the orders but just living a more plentiful life, more you know. And this for me it’s really amazing and this woman started her journey when she came to see me one year ago. And this is how I wrote the book. I had this people who really are able to listen and to become aware and to make changes just if they understand it by giving the important information on the way we’re living and how it effects us.

[17:20] So I had some of these cases just that with one consultation they were able to make a big change and that’s when I decided okay I’ll write everything in a book and then so that it’s available for everyone who can come to consultation or not, but they can really get information they need to understand that treating cancer is not just going to the chemo radiation or the surgery but there’s a lot of things we can do about how we are living and changes we can do to live a more healthy lifestyle.

[17:57] So that brings up two points and two questions for me. You’re trained originally as a medical oncologist, conventional medicine like I was in a training conventional surgical oncology for the chest. So if somebody comes to you with cancer and says, “I know you’re an alternative medicine doctor. I want to know, I don’t want conventional therapy. I want alternative therapy.”

[18:33] What say you to that person?

[18:37] I have a patient I wrote in my book you know she came with a single lung nodule and she said I come to you because I know you’re not she used a word in Spanish like you don’t like to use knives, like you’re not pro-surgery, you know. And I said no, no, no don’t misunderstand. I said first of all I always explain. I’m integrative oncology. I think there is a role for conventional medicine and I don’t think that everybody needs to get chemotherapy until the end of their days and not everybody needs all that, the whole treatment, but yes there is a role for surgery for radiation therapy for chemotherapy for homeotherapy, immune therapy.

[19:23] I mean but what I propose is broadening the view, I’m not thinking only about the tumor itself but really focusing on what let that person become vulnerable to disease and what he or she can change. So this particular patient I mention in the book, is precisely I said, “Look you need to understand that you’re in an incredible position that they have diagnosed and they have found that one solitary nodule without by chance without having any symptoms and that’s something it’s surgically removable and you’re in a very special location because a lot of people when they find their lung cancer it’s not operable anymore.”

[20:11] And then I explained the whole I just explained to you on how really what we need to work is in what made her vulnerable to get sick and how she needed to treat in herself there was a big emotional issue and you know she had had very loss of very dear people, too many in a row and she really needed to work on how to deal differently with losses and not just put it all in her body. So she worked with psychotherapy and relaxation techniques and other techniques you know for self getting to know herself better and learning how to deal better with her emotions and her relationships.

[21:05] That actually brings up my second question. So somebody who comes in with cancer, I think some of our listeners are gonna say, well what you’re saying is you got cancer and enjoy yourself. And they’re probably going, what do you mean enjoy myself? You know I’ve just been told I have cancer and you’re telling me to have a great day. How do we make that leap of faith?

[21:37] Well I mean one of the issues is that there’s more and more scientific data to validate that positive emotions effect positively our system. You know when I was explaining about this PNIE network, and the [inaudible 00:21:57]that works with a gas pedal and a break. A gas pedal that’s a sympathetic comparison pathetic nervous system yeah?

[22:05] And the way we perceive the world, if we perceive the world with uncertainty and we don’t feel good with ourselves and we are afraid of what’s coming, we’ll be inside of us it’s like pressing on that gas pedal and activating all the stress response that whenever there’s a situation of uncertainty or that makes us afraid, our body prepares itself to act. But and then when we can relax, it’s like pressing on that brake and then we produce the relaxation response which has a completely different cascade of chemical substances. So how we perceive the world and how we translate it translates physically in different cascade of substances. Either stressful substances or repair and relaxation substances.

[23:04] And usually we can’t have both at the same time. We can’t have stress cascade being activated as well as a parasympathetic and all the relaxation. So the more we press on that break, the more we do relaxation techniques, the more we enjoy ourselves, the more we really enjoy with our bodies you know, go for a good dance or chanting or music and celebrating our body, the more we are producing substances that will help for our repair for our recovery and our health.

[23:48] So we need what we do translates chemically inside our bodies and we need to understand that. Because we need to understand that if we put ourselves you know eight hours a day, I’m sorry I don’t know if you hear but there’s a great thunder at this point here in Buenos Aires. It’s really.

[24:10] We can hear a bit of it, but it’s okay.

[24:13] Okay. So nowadays we know that if we put ourselves eight hours a day in an environment where we feel threatened, we feel afraid, I mean that’s the chemistry that will be bathing on our body and our organs throughout the day. And to compensate for that we would really need to work on pressing on the you know coming back home and having a massage and doing some meditation and having a nice talk with our partner or going with friends out and having a good laugh to compensate for all the other chemistry we would building up during the day.

[24:56] So it’s not just blah blah that we need to enjoy. Enjoy means we need to work on our internal pharmacy, the internal chemistry.

[25:08] Yeah Norman Vincent Peale was famous for curing himself of cancer by watching a funny movie every day and making himself laugh. And certainly I agree that laughter is one of the keys of changing our environment. In fact I even know a yoga instructor who’s called the laughing yogi because all he does is laugh during yoga. That’s actually very hard to do I think, but he’s trained me to do it.

[25:46] So help us understand, so I’ve got the diagnosis of cancer. I’ve decided that I’m gonna listen to conventional medicine, I’m gonna do chemotherapy and radiation therapy. So who else do I have to get on my team? I’m not in a center that has complimentary medicine. How do I take charge of getting my team assembled?

[26:21] Yeah. I think we’re coming to understand that medicine should be more and more personalized. Personalized meaning really focused on the person. So in order for me to be able to recommend why recommend reflexology or acupuncture or yoga or meditation to you, I need to understand who you are. I need to get to know you. So I would take at least an hour to ask you about everything you know.

[26:49] First of all if you, you’re medical history and just to get a feeling whether there have been like flashes, alert systems in your body already telling you you were getting sick. And also that gives me an idea on how long you’ve been, your immune system has been declining. A lot of times with a history, with a medical history. But of course I will ask also about the psychosocial, that person with whom he or she lives how are her relationships that she really, how is the climate at home? Does she really find or him finds a good where to rest and relax and be him or herself?

[27:31] I will ask about the group of friends. How is the climate at work? If he or she has a work if she’s recognized at work if she’s compensated and also I will ask about their wishes and their what’s there’s things that this person has been wishing for and has never accomplished depending you know?

[27:58] And also i will ask a little bit, also to get an idea of how this person has been really from the intra-uterine life. You know from where we were in the belly of our mothers because there’s data nowadays to show that whatever we live when we are in the belly of our mothers in the intra-uterine life and also in the first seven years of infancy, that effects our genome. I mean not the genome itself but the epigenetics.

[28:30] Epigenome yeah.

[28:31] Like which genes we activate and which we turn on and which ones with turn off. And nowadays we know that the stressful childhood experiences leave some epigenetic changes that may be silent for a while and they are uncovered when with are adults and we have some more stress and unhealthy habits and then all this comes up just turning the whole PNIE system into disbalance. So I would need to get like, if I know if this is a person that had some abuse or some adverse childhood experiences, I can already see how this person will react or overreact to situations more with a stressful and will need to focus even more on relaxation and anti-stress techniques.

[29:37] So it would be very personalized. I don’t believe in the one formula for everybody. Yes we need to look into how we eat, if we exercise, how we sleep, our social support, our relaxation. But then it’s very personalized for each you know.

[29:55] So speaking of eating, my treatment of cancer certainly goes with eating. So several points. Number one I see a number of women with breast cancer for instance who are post-menopausal and one of the I think fallacies that I’ve seen is that they are assured that they have no estrogen production and yet they’re overweight or frequently obese. And I can show them in their lab results that in fact they make lots of estrogen. And they’re incredulous. They say no I don’t because I’m in menopause and then I show them and I say well that’s funny you have lots of estrogen in your body.

[30:48] And there’s certainly good evidence in breast cancer that women who are overweight or obese at the time of their initial treatment who remain overweight or obese, have a much higher recurrence rate than women who lose weight and their estrogen levels fall as well as their insulin falls.

[31:13] So the other thing that I do, I do think that cancer has a metabolic derangement feature. I do think that there’s a mitochondrial disfunction. So my job is, I use a ketogenic diet and an extremely high fat and extremely low protein diet on these people. And if I had cancer, I would not eat animal protein because of the amino acids that are more present in animal protein than plant protein that are known that cancer cells can utilize.

[32:02] So that’s kind of my approach to cancer patients and I have a very large cancer practice and knock on wood, we’ve had really good results with this.

[32:18] Can I ask a question? Are you able to recommend the ketogenic diet plant-based and avoiding because you really that’s good?

[32:33] Yeah I think that’s the major mistake that people associate with a ketogenic diet or a paleo diet. These are all variations of basically the Atkins Diet. And people think that a high protein diet, avoiding carbohydrates and keeping the fat that’s associated with animal protein is a ketogenic diet. And I measure ketones in all of my patients and the vast majority of patients that I see who say they’re on a ketogenic diet, in fact aren’t. Because they’re eating primarily a heavy protein diet.

[33:20] And this was actually one of the mistakes that Dr. Atkins made and I know because my original book, Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution, was done by Random House who had done all the Atkins Diets and all the South Beach Diet books. And Dr. Atkins didn’t know that we have no real storage system for protein. We need it for wear and repair, but that’s about it. So we don’t waste energy. So we convert protein into sugar- gluconeogenesis. And he actually died a fat man. I know because I actually take care of his head nurse.

[34:00] He didn’t know this. And so many people in the ketogenic community don’t know that protein will turn into sugar. So to get back to your question, I basically tell my patients that I want them to become a gorilla who lives in Italy. Now you have to think about that for a second. Gorilla’s only eat leaves and twigs and why I want them to live in Italy because I want them to consume a liter or olive oil per weak. And that’s a huge amount of olive oil. It’s about 12 to 14 tablespoons a day, but there’s a very interesting Spanish study of 65 year old people who were followed for four years. And I’ll briefly summarize it.

[34:51] One group had to have a liter of olive oil per week for four years and have a Mediterranean diet. A second group ate a low fat Mediterranean diet. And the original study was to look at memory and I’ll forget about that, but the women in the olive oil group had a 67% less incidence of breast cancer over that time period than the women in the low fat Mediterranean diet.

[35:20] so I think, if you eat a liter of olive oil per week and avoid animal proteins, you’re basically on about an 80% fat diet and the carbohydrates that you’re eating are basically leaves as a mechanism to get olive oil into your mouth. So that’s what I do with my patients. Now I’m not successful entirely. A lot of people will not give up animal protein. But the more I can diminish animal protein, the more successful I am with this program.

[35:58] And among other things what I want to do is get the gut bacteria participating in educating the immune system. So talk to me about where you think nutrition is in the scheme of cancer fighting?

[36:17] Well I think nutrition is one of the pillars of recovering your immune system and you’re whole PNIE network. Personally from the research I’ve done, I mean there’s no real evidence that one diet is or a very restricted diet is better than a healthy diet. This is my take, than a healthy diet like I propose in the book with less animal fat and less animal protein and more plant based and decreased sugars and changing the flour for like complete flour and I also opt for the rice to be complete although I know you have a different view on some advice.

[37:21] But to tell you the truth, I think that we still don’t know a lot about diet. I think you’re completely right that we need to think about diet, not so much what we need, but what our bacteria need. You know like what our microbiome needs. And also I think that that will depend a lot on each person because I believe we will be going into a more personalized type of diet also. It’s not ketogenic for everybody or low protein for everybody or whatever. I mean there’s certain things we know. We know that all the processed foods that have come up the last decade, the last century plus all the sugary drinks and sugary things I mean we know that that’s not good for us. And all the additives, we know that that’s not good. We need to go to a more, but then I believe that we will be looking at more personalized.

[38:23] It’s not that all kinds of patients need the same diet. There is even data about some studies with ketogenic diet and pancreas cancer and neuroblastoma and brain tumor. So I mean but I don’t think it’s ketogenic for everybody. I don’t believe from the data I’ve seen. And personally also I a lot of the things I recommend I try them myself first you know and not the chemotherapy or the radiation but as far as nutrition and relaxation techniques and all this types of treatments and practices, I do practice them myself to see what it does to my body and then I can recommend them with more emphasis or not.

[39:10] And I think that diet it has to be personalized. As I was saying before, it’s not the same a woman, a post-menopausal woman who has high estrogens and maybe we need to be focusing more on that strovolom and see how that how not to feed the bacteria that will cut that [inaudible 00:39:32] you know in the gut and permit allow the entropatic circulation of estrogens and maybe that won’t be the focus for a patient with a lung cancer and other characteristics you know.

[39:46] So you encounter in your practice and I certainly do in mine, a person who has end stage cancer. What advice, how do you change your technique for that person?

[40:09] From the integrative paradigm it’s interesting because integrative oncology not only incorporates the information that comes from psycho-neuro-immunology but also from other theories that were formulated last century. What I’m talking about systems theory and chaos theory and quantum physics and relative theory, that makes us change the perception you know of how we perceive the world. So if we adopt what chaos theory tells us and systems theory tells us is that we are an open system. And we’re in continuous interaction with our media and with our environment and the others around. If this system, if we think this system is closing up and dying, and we declare this is how it is, it’s most probable that we will be doing things to close it down.

[41:21] And I wrote another book which is called Cancer and Psycho-neuro-immunology and I wrote it for, it’s in Spanish only still. But I wrote it with a psychologist who’s been working in Uruguay with this integrated view for the last 20 years. And what we explained there is that you know, we according to the chaos theory if we are an open system we cannot predict how the outcome will be. You know in medicine we believe we know the outcomes, but then we treat ten patients with the same disease with the same treatment and then we know that some respondents some don’t respond and we don’t understand it. But we think we know what the outcome is. And we also know from chaos theory is that little changes in the system may make bigger changes.

[42:17] And so I always when I see a patient who’s with a more advanced disease and what we call end stage or I always leave one window of hope because we really don’t know. There are some testimonies of people who were about to die and did not die. So who are we to say that person will die? If we say that person will die, that person probably will say okay I’ll eat whatever because I’m dying. I won’t exercise because I’m dying. It doesn’t matter how I treat the other ones because I’m dying. So it will go close in by itself you know. So I propose the same integrated view, I tell them it’s like a plant that is wilting. And we know that we need to do a lot of strategies that plants not just poor in water, it’s seeing what the plant needs to see if we can revitalize it again.

[43:17] And so the focus is there. Always keeping a foot on the ground like saying things are not easy and if this has been deteriorating for a while, we cannot expect that with one measure you revitalize again, but yes we need to leave some hope and of course emphasize whatever brings that person peace and some type of a pleasure moment and whatever can stimulate that system. Continue doing it because we are not who to say when that person will die or not. And yes focus on accompanying that person in the most humane and caring and loving way and then let life decide how things keep going.

[44:15] This is my the way I propose it and take it. And of course I have people who recover and there are some people who were according to conventional medicine thought that we can’t do anything more and then you see them. I had a patient with metastatic lung cancer and everybody it was like ten years ago so there weren’t very fewer options of treatment and they thought this person was not going to do well and he lived like five very plentiful years which for that stage it was a lot. And I had patients with metastatic breast cancer to the brain who really also lived over a year of a very kind of pleasurable life in the sense that they were able to travel and do some you know get some.

[45:19] So we cannot tell how one person will go or not and I think that the approach is similar just recognizing that things are more difficult that there’s a more difficult separation.

[45:34] Okay well I think that’s a very good place to wrap this up. A very good place to end. As part of every one of my podcasts, I answer a question from our listeners, so if you’ll bear with me before we sign off, I’m going to answer a question. Okay?

[45:54] Sure. Sure.

[45:56] So this is the audience question and it’s from E. “I heard your podcast today. Very informative stuff and thanks for sharing. I request your opinion on stomach ulcers and what would you recommend with healing?”

[46:11] Actually that’s a really good question E. There’s a lot of options with stomach ulcers. Now I’m not sure if you’re referring to ulcers that are associate with the bacteria H.pylori. We do know that H.pylori certainly is a cause of stomach and duadinal ulcers. But I’m gonna throw in just a little wild card. We know that H.pylori is actually a normal bacterium of the stomach and there’s some physicians, Dr. Blazer from New York City who actually thinks that H.pylori is actually a good organism that is part of the natural rainforest of our bacteria.

[47:01] And I agree with him that things like C.difficile which causes horrible intestinal inflammation diarrhea is a normal bacteria which is normally kept in check by all of the other ten thousand bacteria and it’s the same with H.pylori. I don’t think it’s the demon that it has been made out to be. So I don’t necessarily think that you need an antibiotic treatment for H.pylori. If you want to do that I have nothing against it, but what I would rather do is get the acid medium of the stomach back to normal and there’s a excellent supplement called betaine. You may see it as TMG capital T capital M capital G, trimethylglycine and this will actually increase the hydrochloric acid of your stomach.

[48:02] The other thing is both probiotics and more importantly prebiotics to feed the friendly bacteria will absolutely change the entire milieu in your stomach.

[48:15] Finally, lectins are one of the major causes of breaking down the mucosal barrier. If you have a history of canker sores or what are called aphthous ulcers in your mouth, I can guarantee you having had them most of my life until I realized that lectins were the cause, those things are happening on the inside of your stomach and in the inside of your intestine. So get lectins out of your life and you already know what lectins are if not check out one of my other podcasts or get The Plant Paradox.

[48:51] So thanks for that question. Really good question.

[48:54] So Dr. Nasi, thanks so much for joining me. This has been really great and I appreciate what you’re doing. You’re absolutely I think on the right track. Where can my audience find out more about you and get your book?

[49:13] Oh thank you. I have in the media, social media I have a blog for Cancer is a Wake Up Call and there I have information about myself and how to contact me and I have an Instagram and a Twitter also where I put some information and there’s information also posted some of the talks I gave during my book tour last October where I was at M.D. Anderson and at Joan Kettering and I was at [inaudible 00:49:43] Club in New York. I did a little tour and in California as well at GPSS. So some of the talks are also posted there to explain a little bit what I explained today. Some of them are more scientific for professionals and some for patients as well.

[50:00] So I think that’s the best way to get to know about my book and what I do.

[50:05] Right.

[50:09] Thank you very much for this conversation. It has been very easy for me and thank you for reaching out.

[50:16] Our pleasure. And so that does it for the Dr. Grundy Podcast today. As I said, there’s a new year starting in a few days and just because you’ve been told you have cancer it’s time to make a new you in the new year. Because I’m Dr. Grundy and I’m always looking out for you.

[50:38] So for more information about this week’s episode, please take a look at my show notes below and on drgundry.com. In the show notes you’ll also find a survey and I’d love to find out more about you. Please take a few minutes to fill it out so I can do my best to provide information you’re looking for.

[50:57] Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of the Dr. Grundy Podcast. Check back next week for another exciting episode and make sure to subscribe, rate and review to stay up to date with the latest episodes. Head to drgundry.com for show notes and more information. Until next time, I’m Dr. Grundy and I’m always looking out for you.