63 Listener QA BIG News Final Season 4.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

63 Listener QA BIG News Final Season 4.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
Hi and welcome to the Cancer Secrets podcast. I am your host and guide, Dr. Jonathan Stegall. Cancer is like a thief who has come to steal, kill and destroy. I have personally seen it wreak havoc on patients, friends and even my own family. But I am on a mission to change the cancer paradigm. Who? The practice of integrative oncology cancer treatment that integrates the best of conventional medicine with the best of alternative therapies backed by science and personalized to each patient. You need a positive voice you can trust. This podcast will share valuable information to give you practical hope for a better outcome. So I invite you to join me on this journey as we seek to change the cancer paradigm together. Hello and welcome back to the Cancer Secrets podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Jonathan Stegall. This is season four and episode number 63. In today’s episode, we’ll be wrapping up season four of the podcast. I’m going to answer some of your questions and also share some exciting information with you. This episode is going to be a fun one. As always, I encourage you to listen with a loved one or friend. I want to start by thanking you for listening to this podcast, for leaving your reviews, and for sharing this podcast with others. Since we launched our first episode on June 1st, 2018, we’ve completed four seasons consisting of 64 episodes. We’ve had 15 incredible guest interviews, we’ve had over 150,000 downloads. We have reached listeners in 144 countries and counting. My mission to get this message of hope to the world is happening and it’s because of you. I am so grateful. I thought it would be fun to share with you some information that my producer at 11 and 14 studios compiled for me.

Speaker1:
First, here are the top ten countries in terms of listenership of this podcast. The country with the most listeners, not surprisingly, is the United States. Number two is Canada. Number three, Australia. Number four, United Kingdom. Number five, Germany. Number six, Ireland. Number seven, New Zealand. Number eight, South Africa. Number nine, Netherlands. And number ten, Spain. And here are our top ten episodes of all time in terms of number of downloads. The most popular episode was episode number 45. The interview with Dr. Kelly Turner. Radical Remission. Number two Episode Number 25 Interview with Jane McClelland How to Starve Cancer. Number three, episode number 55. Elizabeth Cohen Stunts. Coping with Cancer. Number four Episode 50 Hypothermia. Number five Episode number two What to Do When You’ve Been Diagnosed with Cancer. Number six Episode number 49 Metformin. Number seven. Episode number 43. Dr. Valter Longo. Fasting, longevity and cancer. Number eight Episode number 47 Listener Q&A End of season three. Number nine Episode number 59, Dr. Michael Weiner Living Cancer. And finally, number ten, episode number 37, exercise in cancer. Now I’d like to move on to some listener questions. Just as a reminder, if you’d like to submit your own question to this podcast, you can go to our website at Cancer Secrets. Click on the podcast tab and you’ll see a button to click on for voice mail. And you can leave a voicemail question, and we will do our best to get to it on a future episode. Our first question is from Robert from the United States. And Robert’s question deals with cancer prevention.

Speaker2:
Hey, huge fan. I actually do a little bit of research on cancer myself. But my question for you regards prevention. I already do most of the lifestyle things that you talk about and you treat people in integrative way once they have cancer. What I’m curious about is the something in the middle. Is there something we can do, say once or twice a year that lasts maybe a week, maybe a month? That is a little more intensive. But for prevention, for example, some combination of fasting, maybe some over-the-counter aspirin, which somebody like me is not able to take on a regular basis because of the stomach. Maybe some additional things, intravenous vitamin C or metformin. I would just encourage you to think about filling in that gap, which might be considered a more aggressive prevention that’s utilizing these things that you’ve come to understand from a treatment perspective. Your show is great. I’ve got everything, all the podcasts, the book, everything. Keep, keep it up.

Speaker1:
Robert, you asked a really great question. You said that you’re doing all of the sort of daily prevention recommendations I’ve made in terms of nutrition and exercise and stress management. Your question was, is there anything that can be done on a periodic basis that’s maybe a little bit more intense than the aforementioned lifestyle modifications to help prevent cancer? And that’s a really great question because I know a lot of you are probably interested in just doing all that you can, not just not just the minimum, not just the basics, but but really taking a very proactive approach. And if there’s one thing I can recommend to be doing on a periodic basis, it would be a multi day fast. So there’s a lot of good research on fasting and we talk about fasting, we’re simply talking about a period where you’re not consuming any calories. So on a very basic level, of course, we’re fasting when we sleep at night. So your last meal of the day, let’s say you have dinner or a bedtime snack and then you you from that point on, get in bed and go to sleep. You’re fasting until you eat breakfast the next morning. So if you’re getting the recommended 7 to 8 hours of sleep at night, you’re fasting for seven or 8 hours, which is fine. But the research on fasting has shown us that extended fasts or where the magic really happens. And so as you extend that fasting period out to 12, 14, 16 hours, some really good things start to happen. And so that’s the reason why I recommend for most people to do an intermittent fast or some people will call it time restricted eating.

Speaker1:
But basically what that’s doing is extending your fasting period beyond when you normally eat breakfast. And so for some people, that’s what we call a 16 eight regimen where you’d be fasting for 16 hours a day and you’d be eating during an eight hour eating window of time. That’s kind of a basic way to get started. So an example of how that would work is instead of eating breakfast at 8 a.m., you’re extending that fasting window to around noon. And so around noon, you know, 12 or 1:00, that’s your first meal of the day, and then you have an eight hour eating window. And so you’d be eating, um, again, healthy foods, but you’d be eating until about 8 p.m. and then you’d cut off your eating and then you’d start your, your fast again. So most of your, your fasting time is sleeping or at least half of it is. But you are going to have some awake time while you are while you’re fasting. So this is something that you can do on a regular basis. I personally intermittent fasting during the week, Monday through Friday and I’ve worked up to doing a 20 and four schedule. So I eat during a four hour window every day during the week and I fast for 20 hours. That works well for me. I’m busy at my office, I’m seeing patients, I’m doing a lot of things and honestly, I prefer not having to think about stopping and eating.

Speaker1:
So it works well for me and my schedule. And then in the evenings when I get home, I see my family. You know, I have I have dinner and a few other things. And so I’m kind of condensing. My eating into that four hour window, and that worked really well for me. That’s something I recommend everyone trying to do, of course, with the approval of your physician. But but that’s something you can do a few days a week. You can do it. I would say if you’re going to try, you know, time restricted eating, try to do it at least three days a week. You certainly could do it every day if you wanted to. But but for most people, I find that having a few days per week where you’re not doing that seems to work well. And so for me that’s on the weekends and I don’t intermittent fast. So that’s kind of a basic daily thing you can do. But Robert’s answer your question specifically, there’s some good research on multi day fasting, so that would mean you’re going three or four days, maybe even five days where you’re fasting now. That’s a pretty big challenge to truly not consume any calories for that many days, and that’s certainly something that would need to be under the direction of your physician. And if he or she does not have experience with multi day fast and then try to find a doctor who does specialize in that, because certainly there are some things that have to be done to make sure that’s done in a safe way.

Speaker1:
Certainly you have to make sure you’re staying hydrated. And for many people, it’s also going to mean supplementing with electrolyte. So they do make electrolyte powders, which can be added to water that don’t contain calories. You could still supplement electrolytes like sodium and potassium and magnesium and things like that that you really don’t want to go without for multiple days. Even with that, it’s a very hard not to eat any food or consume any calories whatsoever for several days at a time. So there, if you remember back in the episode where I interview Dr. Valter Longo, he has created what’s known as the fasting mimicking diet, and that is based on all of the current research into fasting and all of the many benefits we get from fasting. The main benefits with multi day fasting, your immune system is going to get recharged. You’re going to clear out some of those older, more compromised cells, those senescent cells, as we call them. It helps kind of clear those out. So a multi day fast has a lot of benefits. But but Dr. Longo and others have found that it’s really hard for most people to fast for four or five days at a time or even two or three days at a time. So the fasting mimicking diet is a very low calorie diet. And Dr. Longo, his company called Prolonged, they have basically meal packs that you can take for each of your meals during that multi day fast, with the goal of giving you enough calories to feel sustained and to be able to to feel pretty normal, but still, with a low enough calorie count that you’re able to get most of the benefits of fasting.

Speaker1:
So we’re talking about several hundred calories a day on those days. But the idea behind it is that people could periodically do fasts for health reasons and for longevity reasons, because we found that people who fast tend to live longer. And we know from from thousands of years that that people in cultures have been have been fasting, you know, sometimes for religious reasons. But but also there are a lot of health reasons to do that as well. So I think fasting is a big deal. I’m actually working on a book right now called Fasting from Cancer that’s going to hopefully be out later this year. That talks a lot about fasting and how fast it can be implemented, whether you’re working on cancer prevention or you’re actively battling cancer because there are some subtleties there that we have to get down if we want to do it properly. But I would start with something like the fasting mimicking diet, and I would recommend for most people, if you’re pretty healthy, that’s something you could do, let’s say 2 to 4 times a year. So if you’re just really healthy and you feel like you’re you’re really checking off all the boxes in terms of doing what you can on a daily basis for cancer prevention, you’d probably be fine, you know, every six months or so doing a multi day fast, the fasting mimicking diet or if you’re really brave and want to try it a true fast where you’re not consuming any calories those days, if you have more health challenges, it’s probably advisable to do it a little more often.

Speaker1:
So Dr. Longo has talked a lot about doing a fast once every 2 to 3 months. So once a quarter, let’s say you could do a fast you probably would not want to do it any more often than once every month or so. And that would be a pretty aggressive regimen to do with that often because a lot is going to happen in the body when a fast is done. But that’s really my my top recommendation in terms of cancer prevention. If you want to really get serious and hardcore about about doing all that you can, I would implement fasting. Robert, I hope. That’s helpful. Our next question comes from Vanessa, who’s from London, England. And Vanessa is an otherwise healthy female. She’s young, and she was diagnosed with stage four non-small cell lung cancer. She states that she eats well, she exercises. But this diagnosis seemed to come out of left field because she has no smoking history. But she asks a really good question, and that is about targeted therapies. So when Vanessa was diagnosed, her pathology was sent for advanced testing and they identified a specific mutation in her case, which is known as the RET mutation, and that mutation corresponds to a drug that targets that mutation. And this is in a class of medications known as targeted therapy.

Speaker3:
Dear Dr. Segal My name is Vanessa and I’m based in London. First of all, I want to say thank you so much for sharing your knowledge on your podcast and in your book. I’ve been listening to them almost ready for a couple of weeks now and I feel so much more in control of my situation, thanks to you. About three months ago, I was diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer. Stage four. I’m 43. Fit and healthy. Eat well and don’t smoke. A liquid biopsy found that the cancer was caused through a gene mutation called red fusion positive. The good news is that a targeted therapy drug available is available. And I’m currently on this drug called Super Catnip. It is working great. And my second PET scan showed already a 90% tumor reduction, which is incredible. Here’s my question. Targeted therapy, drugs like catnip, not immunotherapy, drugs. Is it much talked about anywhere, I assume, because they’re still so new? I would love it if you could cover this subject in one of your podcasts and particularly share your knowledge of the many tips you’ve covered in previous podcasts to name a few. Vitamin C or muscle tone via IV or supplements like curcumin, etc. can work well with drugs like super catnip. And is there a difference in cancers whether they’re caused by lifestyle and environment, environment like pollution versus cancer caused by mutated genes like the one I have. I understand that all cancers are caused by gene mutation, but is there a difference? Again, thank you so much for all the work you do. Warm regards, Vanessa.

Speaker1:
And Vanessa’s question was a good one. It was whether targeted therapies are compatible with everything else in this integrative approach to cancer that we talk about, and I really haven’t talked a lot about targeted therapies here on this podcast is not because I don’t think they’re good. Some of them can be very good, but they’re just so specific to a very specific genetic mutation that’s identified on testing that I really didn’t want to confuse people by getting into the weeds of a lot of these targeted therapies. But just for the sake of defining what we’re talking about, when we talk about targeted therapy, we’re talking about a pharmaceutical that targets a specific protein that’s unique to that patient’s cancer. And that protein is typically going to govern how that cancer cell grows, how it divides or how it spreads. And this is really what’s known today as precision medicine. So when we talk about targeted therapy, we’re either talking about what are known as small molecule drugs or what are known as monoclonal antibodies. And so the monoclonal antibodies are any drugs that end in Mab. Mab those are immunotherapy drugs that are being highly publicized today. You see a lot of commercials on television with various immunotherapy, drugs, KEYTRUDA, Opdivo, Yervoy, Herceptin. There are a lot of immunotherapy drugs. And immunotherapy is something that I use in my practice and they do fall under the heading of targeted therapy because in this case, they’re targeting specific proteins.

Speaker1:
What Vanessa is talking about in her case is the other type of targeted therapy, the small molecule drugs and these small molecule drugs typically end in naive nib. Some examples include imatinib. Rucaparib. Afatinib. There are dozens of these drugs today. And because they’re targeting these unique mutations that affect certain proteins, they’re very versatile in that they can typically be used either as standalone therapy, which we call monotherapy, or they can be used alongside other treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy and occasionally immunotherapy as well. And typically because cancer can become resistant to these targeted therapies, it is advantageous to combine them with other treatments. So for that reason, they’re typically very compatible with other treatments in our integrative oncology approach. And when we talk about side effects, they certainly can cause side effects. The most common tends to be gastrointestinal issues, diarrhea, sometimes liver issues, which can cause an increase in liver enzymes such as AST and alt, which signals liver inflammation. There can be a lot of other side effects as well. There can be issues with blood clotting. You can get high blood pressure, certainly fatigue, mouth sores. There can be a lot of side effects from these medications. But typically when a patient’s testing indicates that they are a candidate for these targeted therapies, I’m going to recommend that that be part of their protocol.

Speaker1:
In terms of other therapies that seem to work well with targeted therapies, I’ve certainly found that good nutrition is important. So we’re talking about a diet that’s that’s organic, that’s obviously plant focused, has a lot of key phytonutrients in it. Certainly there are some supplements that can that can work well with these targeted therapies. Melatonin especially is a well researched supplement that seems to be very compatible with these treatments. I really haven’t found anything that’s not compatible with these drugs. Again, it’s going to depend on the specific drug and how it’s targeting. But generally speaking, there are no major contraindications with other treatments. But as always, ask your oncologist if you’re planning on incorporating any sort of alternative or holistic treatment alongside targeted therapies. Vanessa, thank you for that. Great question. I wish you all the best in your treatment. I’m sorry to hear about your diagnosis, but it sounds like you’re doing a lot of great things and I’m confident you’re going to have a good result. I hope this is helpful. Our next question is from Debbie from London, England. And Debbie stated that her brother in law was recently diagnosed with stage four cancer involving the stomach, bile, duct and liver and was told that there is no chemotherapy available. And Debbie asks any recommendations I have regarding treatment for him?

Speaker4:
Hello, Dr. Segal. Very much appreciate your podcasts and listen to them regularly. I wondered if you could help. My brother in law has been diagnosed with stage four cancer. It’s the pancreas. This sorry. The stomach, the bile duct and the liver. He’s been told no chemotherapy available. Are there any suggestions you could make? Please. Much appreciated. Thank you.

Speaker1:
Debbie, first of all, I’m so sorry to hear about your brother’s diagnosis. I know that’s a tough thing to hear as the patient as well as a family member. And so I’m really sorry to hear that, especially since it included a statement from the doctor about having limited treatment options. Obviously, it’s not an ideal situation, but there can certainly be some other good options to consider depending on how advanced it is. Certainly immunotherapy might be an option. That would be a question for the doctors. But, you know, there’s different immunotherapy drugs which can target specific mutations that are identified on testing. So if if a standard biopsy was done, it may have revealed some some mutations that could be targeted. Sometimes that’s going to require some advanced testing. So that falls under the heading of what’s known as molecular testing. So there’s various labs here in the United States that will do that sort of testing. I’m not sure what’s available where your brother is, but the one I like here in the United States is from a company called Natera. They have a test called the Altra test Altra and that takes a piece of tissue that was obtained during surgery or during a biopsy, and it can test for a lot of different mutations that can sometimes reveal some treatment options. There are some other companies that do the similar kind of thing.

Speaker1:
There’s a lab called Caris. There’s another one called Guardant 360. There’s another one called Foundation Medicine. These are some of the major ones in the United States that do this sort of testing. So if that’s available, I would highly encourage that. That can reveal some immunotherapy drugs. It may even reveal some chemotherapy possibilities that aren’t necessarily used for his type of cancer, but have been used for similar types of cancer that could be worth considering. And then certainly there’s always the possibility of a clinical trial as well. And of course, the clinical trial we’re talking about either a brand new drug being studied, it’s never been used, or it’s an existing drug that perhaps has been used for another type of cancer that is just now being studied for that type of cancer. So a clinical trial has pros and cons. Obviously, the potential benefit is that you could find a treatment that works especially well for you. The downside is it’s often a drug we don’t know a lot about yet. So especially if it’s in early stage, clinical trials is a phase one or phase two. We’re still learning about the drug. We’re trying to decide whether it’s safe or not. We’re trying to determine proper dosing. So the patients who are in those early stage clinical trials truly are guinea pigs, so to speak, because we don’t know a lot about the drug, but if you don’t have any other options, it may be something to consider.

Speaker1:
And then aside from sort of conventional options, I think there are a lot of things your brother in law can be doing on his own. I think making some dietary changes can be important. I don’t know what type of diet he eats, but eating is is natural a diet as possible since it’s a digestive based cancer. I’m assuming his digestion is possibly compromised. He may not be able to eat and drink as much. I would absolutely try to get some good quality smoothies into him. So we’re talking about you can make them at home if you have a blender, but you can put in some kind of a base, whether it’s almond milk or coconut milk. You can even use water, add some good produce. Whether you want to make a fruit smoothie or a veggie smoothie, you can usually sweeten it with a green apple or a banana or even a few pitted dates. But you can put a lot of good stuff in there. There’s a lot of smoothie recipes out. There you can kind of Google, but basically just make sure it it has enough stuff in it so that it’s a valid meal replacement.

Speaker1:
So get some good fruits and or vegetables in there. You can if he’s needing calories and is not really able to take in a lot of food, you can certainly add some some nut butters in there, things like almond butter or a little peanut butter that can add some good caloric density to the smoothie and then certainly some protein as well because we want to try to prevent muscle wasting as much as possible. So a good plant based protein, I’m I’m a fan of organ, which was actually developed by a doctor who had cancer himself and just really wasn’t pleased with the protein options out there. And so we created a protein powder called Auxin. So it’s it’s organic, it’s all plant based. It doesn’t have any GMOs or anything like that, but it’s a really good quality protein powder. You got a couple of scoops of that in there and really just build a really high quality menu around smoothies. Certainly, he’s able to eat solid foods as well if he chooses to. But but regardless, I think smoothies could be a real just powerhouse of nutrition for him, especially if he’s not able to eat and drink like he used to be able to. There’s also a product called Liquid Hope that I can recommend.

Speaker1:
You can look online for that, but it’s basically designed for, again, just caloric intake for people who are having trouble swallowing or digesting their food. And so it’s designed to either be something the patient can drink or if the patient has a feeding tube, it can even go in the feeding tube. But it’s called liquid hope. It’s really high quality nutrition. And I found that it’s a lot better than a lot of the sort of meal replacement liquid feeding options that are out there. So that’s something to think about on the nutrition side. There aren’t really any supplements, I would say he has to have. Absolutely. But certainly the most well researched supplements in terms of an anti cancer effect are things like curcumin, quercetin, green tea extract. Those are really the the best researched anti-cancer supplements. And then certainly I think vitamin D is really important. In his case, probiotics are probably going to be important and digestive enzymes may be important as well, depending on how he’s able to digest his food. So those are just some ideas I have. Obviously, I don’t know anything else about your brother in law, but I think these are some things that can really help him get started. And there there things he can also do on his own. He doesn’t need a doctor to do these things.

Speaker1:
And so hopefully this will empower him and as well as his family, including you, to to kind of feel like you’re doing what you can. Even if the doctor maybe hasn’t provided a lot of hope, there’s still some really good things that that you guys can be doing there every day at home to really strengthen the body and hopefully give it some some good tools to to help fight. But again, I’m very sorry. I’ll be keeping your brother in law in my prayers. Our next question is from Christina from the United States. And Christina was recently diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer. She was initially diagnosed as stage two be at 36. And her pathology during surgery found that she was also her two new positive. So Christina has two questions. Her first question is, how common is it to have this dual diagnosis and does that make things better or worse for her? And her second question is that she was really doing a lot of great lifestyle interventions before her cancer diagnosis. She was eating really well. She was exercising. And because she was already doing all that and then got cancer, her question is, is it really necessary to keep doing those things now that she already has cancer or is she just wasting our time?

Speaker4:
Hi there. I have two questions. So, first of all, I will tell you that I have triple negative breast cancer was originally diagnosed with stage two be at age 36 at my surgery. That was changed to a dual diagnosis of both triple negative and HER2 positive. So first question is, could you speak about dual diagnosis? I know it’s not super common, but definitely does happen and I’d like to know a little bit more about it. Like, does that make things better for me because I have more treatment options now than I did with Triple Negative, or does it make it worse for me because I’ve got two very aggressive forms of cancer. And then my other question is, I’ve been doing a lot and listening to your podcast and reading everything I can. I’m doing every single lifestyle thing I can do to try to increase my probability of a good outcome. But I was already doing a lot of those things before a diagnosis. For example, I was already eating plant based diet for 15 years before I was diagnosed. I was already very active. I already aged very well, very healthy. But I mean, I’m doing everything I can now to be extra, extra, extra healthy. But am I wasting my time if I’ve already been doing it? And, you know, genetic counseling has told me that I do have a very strong likelihood that there’s a genetic component here. I’m not bracket positive, but it does look like there is. So essentially, that’s my question. Thank you.

Speaker1:
So, Christina, thank you so much for these questions. These are these are two really good questions. And I’m sorry about your diagnosis. You know, obviously, you’re young and I’m sure your diagnosis came as a real shock to you. And as you mentioned in your your question, there does seem to be a genetic component. And because you’re already doing all these good things, I do think you had already reduced your risk somewhat of getting breast cancer as a result of living, right, so to speak. So I don’t think everything you did was a waste. I choose to believe that everything you did helped slow that cancer growth somewhat so that it could be detected at an earlier stage. Whereas if you had been not eating well and not exercising and not controlling your stress and all the things we talk about, I believe you either would have had cancer develop sooner and or you would have been diagnosed at a later stage. You may have been a stage four. I believe the things you did have been helpful. I think it led to your cancer being caught earlier. And I think it puts you in a lot better position once you got cancer to be able to fight it off better. So I would encourage you to continue doing all the things you’re doing. I know it may seem like it may feel like you’re you’re spinning your wheels and maybe wasting your time.

Speaker1:
But I really do think it’s important to keep doing what you’re doing, because it’s not just about preventing cancer. It’s also about being able to survive cancer. And I’m confident that the things you’re doing will better equip you to be able to do that. So keep on keeping on. You’re doing a good job. You know, I know everything you’re doing is a lot of time and effort and it’s easier just to say what I want to and not exercise and and all that stuff. But I really do think what you’re doing is making a difference even at this point after your diagnosis. Your other question, which is your first question about this idea of dual diagnosis, it brings up a really important concept. And so thank you for bringing it up. So when we talk about a biopsy, you know, when they went in and they first took a biopsy to determine that you had cancer, they told you it was triple negative. Remember, they’re only taking a little piece of a tumor or a piece of a lymph node. We’re assuming that the tissue that was removed during that biopsy is representative of representative of that entire tumor. That’s rarely the case. If you look at it, a cross section of a tumor, it. It’s very chaotic. It’s not always the exact same tissue type all the way through.

Speaker1:
And you’re a great example of that. You were told that you were triple negative, but then once you had surgery and they removed the entire mass, they were able to look at more areas of that mass. And they found that actually you aren’t triple negative, you are also HER2 positive. So I would argue that you’re not triple negative at all because they found the HER2 knew you are no longer triple negative, you are HER2 positive. And for those who don’t know about breast cancer who are listening, we typically will test for three major receptors with a breast cancer diagnosis estrogen receptor. You’ll see that mentioned as our progesterone receptor, which you’ll see noted as PR and her two new, which is another receptor. And so each of these three receptors provides a target for treatment. And if and if a if a patient has none of those three receptors, then it’s what we would call triple negative. And so because you have the HER2 new receptor there, I don’t consider you triple negative. I just consider part of your tumor as showing that HER2 and part of it not. And that’s not uncommon at all. If you had a biopsy and they had seen that HER2 new receptor from the start, they would have never mentioned triple negative to you at all. So triple negative kind of has that connotation of of being more aggressive and more sinister.

Speaker1:
And the reason largely is because it doesn’t have as many targets for treatment. It’s not to say you can’t treat it because you can. And chemotherapy works and other things work on triple negative, but it’s certainly advantageous to have one or more receptors that you can target. So the fact that you have the HER2 new receptor to me means you’re not triple negative at all. So it may feel like a dual diagnosis, but it’s it’s really just one type of breast cancer and it’s HER2 positive and it’s a good thing because you can have something like Herceptin or Perjeta. And even if for some reason those did not work, then there is other things like Kadcyla and there’s different things on down the line that target that HER2 new receptor. So I’m glad you have the HER2 positivity. It’s an advantage and I think targeting that HER2 new receptor is something that you’re going to want to do as part of your treatment protocol. And just for people listening who were in a similar situation, this is also a reason why I do what’s known as serum testing for her two new so. So when we do a biopsy and get tissue it can be tested for her to new but LabCorp actually has a blood test for her to new and it’ll actually give us a measurement of her to new in the blood.

Speaker1:
And I found that to be really helpful with breast cancer patients and sometimes even with patients who have a different type of cancer like colon cancer, because her two new can be present in that cancer and not be captured in that biopsy. In your example, is is a prime one. That’s exactly what I see a lot is a patient gets a diagnosis. It’s her two new negative on the biopsy. But then we do serum testing for her two new it’s called a serum, her two new. And it’s just again, it’s drawn it’s a blood draw. And it’s and it’s it’s a test we do on on blood. And I’ve seen her to new be elevated in those patients and so in that case I will use a treatment to target her to new like Herceptin. So a serum HER2 new would be interesting to get for you because it would give you a level of HER2 new and if it’s elevated then that’s something I would encourage you to have your oncologist check again after you’ve done some treatment to see if that normalizes. And it’s not to say that you have no cancer if that level is normal, but there is a reference range that someone without cancer is expected to have. So if you can get an elevated HER2 new down to the normal range, that could be significant and certainly showing you that you’re on the right track.

Speaker1:
It’s certainly possible that you’re HER2 new in the blood is normal right now. That’s not to say that you know you still shouldn’t do treatment to target that HER2 new receptor because I think you should. But I’d just be curious to know what your HER2 new in the serum would be as well. Now that you know for sure that you have had it in the tissue from the surgery you had. Christina, thank you again for your question. I wish you all the best in your treatment and I’ll be keeping you in my thoughts and prayers. Thank you for being a loyal listener and thank you all for being loyal listeners. I really appreciate this time we can share together. I’m glad this podcast is helping you. Before we close, I would like to recognize some listeners in our newest countries, and these are listeners who are among the first in their respective countries to find the Cancer Secrets podcast. So those of you who are in the following countries welcome Myanmar. Senegal. Nambia. Palestinian territory. Macedonia. Sierra Leone. British Virgin Islands. Dominica. Armenia, Zambia, Paraguay. Liechtenstein, Ethiopia and Cameroon. We’re thrilled to have you as listeners of the Cancer Secrets podcast. I also want to thank those of you who have been kind enough to leave positive reviews of the Cancer Secrets podcast.

Speaker1:
Wherever you’re listening to the Cancer Secrets podcast, they probably have a place for you to leave a review of this podcast. And so if you’re enjoying these podcasts, I would ask that you please leave a review. I wanted to share a couple of really great reviews we’ve gotten recently. The first is, is someone who says, Love this podcast. Thank you so much, Dr. SIEGEL, for all the information you’re blessing the world with. I learned so much. I sent it to my sister. Unfortunately, she just got diagnosed with breast cancer. It’s metastasized. So I pray and hope she listens to this podcast. I share this podcast with all my clients. Thank you again. Another reviewer says, my mom got diagnosed with stage two B pancreatic cancer. And to be honest, I never really educated myself about cancer until now. I still feel a little lost about this situation because I’m constantly thinking about how I can help my mom beat this. I’ve been listening to this podcast every day and I have a better understanding about her cancer and ways to change her in my lifestyle, to beat it and prevent it in the future. I’m so happy I found this. Definitely recommend. Thank you so much. And I’d also like to tell you that I do have a book. In case you have not found my book, I have a best selling book on Amazon.

Speaker1:
It’s called Cancer Secrets, and that really was the first sort of outreach project I had. I wrote my book in 2018. It was published in 2018, and a lot of people have purchased that book and been blessed by that book. And as a result of that, I thought, you know, I really need to have another platform to really spread this message of integrative oncology. And so that’s why the Cancer Secrets podcast came about, and I’m excited to keep getting information out there to you because that’s how we can truly change the cancer paradigm is with education, because knowledge is power and the more people who know about this can really make a difference. And so thank you for all of those who are listening, and thank you for sharing it. My next project, which I’ve been working on for a while, is my online course, and it’s going to be called Cancer Secrets University. And it’s something I’m really proud of because over the years of of having my own integrative oncology practice in Atlanta, Georgia, and then writing my bestselling book, Cancer Secrets back in 2018 and then having the Cancer Secrets podcast for these last few years. One of the things I’ve heard repeatedly is Dr. Stegall, I love what you’re doing. I wish I could be a patient, but it’s just not feasible for me to travel to Atlanta for an extended amount of time for treatment.

Speaker1:
So I was thinking about how I could best help those people because I think there are probably a lot of you out there who are in that situation. And I came up with the idea of doing an online course. So Cancer Secrets University is going to be an extremely informative and detailed course. We’re going to take a deep dive into cancer, what it is and all the different ways it can be treated. So we’re going to have about 45 different modules, different lectures on various topics within cancer. These are going to be things in the standard of care, things in the natural alternative world. We’re going to talk about various therapies. We’re going to talk about mindset, nutrition, supplementation, repurpose medications, you name it. It’s going to be in there. And I want it to really be a place where people can go to get the information that they need. So I believe this is a course for anyone with cancer as well as for anyone who is wanting to best support someone in their life with cancer. Even if you’re just wanting to prevent cancer, I think it would be a good course for you because it’s really going to demystify cancer and really get down to the nuts and bolts of what it is and how we need to view it and treat it.

Speaker1:
Because sadly enough, most most of you, if you’re a cancer patient, you’ve not really gotten a lot of actionable information from your oncologist. You’re probably told what kind of cancer you have and what your prognosis is and how they wanted to treat you with standard of care approaches. But you probably weren’t told about much else. And there’s just so much out there that I think is just vital for you to know when it comes to cancer. And so Cancer Secrets University is going to fill that void. It’s going to be out within the next couple of months. That’s my goal. And I certainly will let you know immediately. Once it is, I think we’re going to change the world. I really do. I’m really excited about it. And you’ll be the first to know when it’s released, so be on the lookout for that. Other than that, I just want to thank you again for an amazing four seasons of the Cancer Secrets podcast. I love doing this with you. I feel a real connection with all of you. And so thank you again for all of your testimonials and reviews and your questions. It really means a lot to me. And so thank you. Thank you for being you. And I look forward to a lot of really great content coming your way in season five and beyond. Until next time. Bye bye.

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