Mom Has CANCER, Now What?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: The moment that the doctor says cancer to you or your loved one, the way that you look at life and food can change immediately. Here's a story about what's going on in our family. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Welcome insteadters to episode 38 of the Duster Mud podcast. And today we're going to talk a lot about doing things instead. So. So this is going to be a. [00:00:28] Speaker A: Different kind of conversation. [00:00:29] Speaker B: Yeah, a big instead discussion. [00:00:31] Speaker A: So about three weeks ago, Rich's mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. And since then, all of us have been doing the thing that most people do in this situation. And it's begin the process of diving into research. And you have been diving in pretty deep. So let's tell the stories and talk about what we've learned about it. [00:00:59] Speaker B: Well, I'm not a medical doctor. [00:01:01] Speaker A: Me either. [00:01:02] Speaker B: So immediately you start to feel helpless. [00:01:06] Speaker A: Yes, you do. [00:01:08] Speaker B: And like you want to do something, but you can't. And so I guess maybe in order to combat a feeling of helplessness, I started just diving in immediately into what's going on. What's the current research saying? Is there something that other people aren't thinking about? Is there something that people aren't talking about? Is there research that's out there that hasn't made it to mainstream yet instead? Right. [00:01:48] Speaker A: Well, it seems fairly apparent on a lot of different levels that things aren't working. [00:01:55] Speaker B: What do you mean really? [00:01:56] Speaker A: Well, we don't have a cure. No, there's not a cure. There are things that we do once a diagnosis like this has been made. There are actions that are taken. There are surgeries, there are therapies, there are treatments, lots of treatments. And they have come up with really good ways of making it go away, at least for a period of time. In a lot of people, depending on what flavor of cancer that it is, the medical community has done a good job at trying at best, to put it at bay to increase someone's lifespan. However, it seems like to me that there is a lot of it in this world. [00:02:49] Speaker B: Yeah, it's been increasing exponentially. [00:02:52] Speaker A: There is a lot of it, and there's not a cure. To me, that's the problem. Okay. We can't find a cure for cancer. Okay. But why is there so much? Is there any new information that's out there in the world as to why is there so much and how can we prevent that? And what does it mean? [00:03:11] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Sure. [00:03:13] Speaker A: So those are the questions, I think, that we sort of come at it with. [00:03:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:23] Speaker A: Not emotional. Let's think logically about this thing with real numbers. With real statistics. And I know that whenever you were looking into all of it, I know you went and found some numbers. [00:03:39] Speaker B: I also found some interesting information. If you or anyone that you know or love is on a ketogenic diet, stick around till the end and we're going to talk about some. It's not even a really cause for concern, but just some knowledge that you need to go armed with if you're ever in this situation and you're ketogenic. [00:03:58] Speaker A: Okay, cool. All right, so let's dive into a little bit of the research that you've found. [00:04:05] Speaker B: Okay, well, I would say first we went immediately to the doctor and got our blood work done, which you saw during the last podcast, and put in for consultations to have our cancer screenings done. [00:04:26] Speaker A: That's true, yes. [00:04:27] Speaker B: Colonoscopy for me. [00:04:29] Speaker A: Colonoscopy and mammogram for me. I was looking it up. I thought I was behind because I just turned 51 and I haven't had one yet. And I thought, oh, everybody's getting all in a tizzy because I haven't. In all fairness, I was looking at the recommended guidelines for women, when to get them. It is every two years, 50 and over. When I saw that, I was kind of relieved a little bit. I'm like, okay, I'm not that late. Okay. I'm right on time according. That's what the affordable care act says and will pay for. [00:05:04] Speaker B: Okay. [00:05:05] Speaker A: And that is the recommended sort of guidelines. Now, if you are at higher risk, and your doctor thinks so, between 40 and 49, you can start doing it more frequently. Yeah, that's not the case for me. [00:05:20] Speaker B: Right. And as far as colonoscopy is concerned, I had one before the surgery that I talked about last week, which was just over ten years ago. So I have had a colonoscopy before. I have not had one since and. [00:05:33] Speaker A: I've never had one. But we're 50 now, and I guess now it's time. [00:05:38] Speaker B: Here we go. Here we go. But when we were looking into having. [00:05:45] Speaker A: Here, it's a really crappy experience. Sorry, I'm not really looking forward to it. [00:05:54] Speaker B: For me, the thing that I was thinking about was it was not a crappy experience at all. It was a total nothing. [00:06:05] Speaker A: But that whole prep thing, the prep, for sure. That's what I'm talking about. [00:06:10] Speaker B: That is not a good experience. [00:06:13] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a download. It's got to be good for a pound, though. [00:06:17] Speaker B: Yes. [00:06:17] Speaker A: I'm quite sure the scales will say something different. I'm quite sure for all of you like number keepers. Go get a colonoscopy. It'll look great. Okay. [00:06:27] Speaker B: In processing, weight should be fine. [00:06:29] Speaker A: That's right. [00:06:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:32] Speaker A: Okay. Sorry to interrupt, but I had to. [00:06:36] Speaker B: I don't even know what I was talking about. [00:06:41] Speaker A: You'll get it back. I believe it. [00:06:45] Speaker B: I did get it back. [00:06:46] Speaker A: Oh, good. [00:06:48] Speaker B: As we were looking into it and they were talking about preventative cancer treatments or preventative screenings. [00:06:57] Speaker A: Mind boggling for me. So it's considered preventative care. According to the American Medical association, preventative screenings are preventative. That's early detection to me. Mammograms and colonoscopies are screenings for early detection. I think it's just in the wording, but I don't see that as preventative. I see it as just finding it early. [00:07:29] Speaker B: What you already have, as we were talking to Rebecca about it, she spent years in the healthcare system and she was saying that from her studies, they refer to it as preventative because you're preventing additional costs to the system that would come by not catching it now. [00:07:53] Speaker A: Not preventing the disease itself, preventing it. [00:07:56] Speaker B: From costing more, getting to the system. And she was deep in the healthcare system. So it was all about keeping you. [00:08:06] Speaker A: Out of ICU, keeping you out of. Well, it was significant. [00:08:09] Speaker B: It was about billing. [00:08:12] Speaker A: It's cheaper to do it now than it is to do it later. [00:08:15] Speaker B: You prevent additional cost. It's prevention. [00:08:20] Speaker A: We all thought that they were trying to prevent something for us. [00:08:23] Speaker B: No, I don't think so. [00:08:24] Speaker A: Interesting. [00:08:25] Speaker B: I think if you look at it from the personal level, you have to look at it the way you did. Early detection. It is an early detection. It is a screening to try to detect something before it gets worse. [00:08:35] Speaker A: I'm not knocking early detection. Love it, find it, get it soon, please. But just the fact that they call it preventative was just kind of got to kind of take. That didn't make any sense to me. [00:08:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:49] Speaker A: So let's call it what it is, early detection. We need to get our early detection test to see if we have anything that's going on. Gone awry in our bodies. [00:08:56] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. [00:08:58] Speaker A: Doesn't address the why it's gone awry in our bodies. [00:09:01] Speaker B: No. [00:09:02] Speaker A: Which. There might be some reasons why our bodies seem to be going awry. [00:09:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:11] Speaker A: Now, in all fairness, not all cancers are created equal, and some are due to medications that people have to take in order to lead a life. And that's a risk that we take, and that is what it is. But whenever you see it being cancer as a whole, so ubiquitous across this entire society, something else is at play. [00:09:41] Speaker B: Now, this conversation as we're having it, though, it makes me think there are things that we are doing as preventative measures. [00:09:52] Speaker A: Okay. What are they? [00:09:55] Speaker B: Diet and lifestyle, we believe can be preventative. It's not like a force field or some kind of super shield or something that says, you won't ever. [00:10:10] Speaker A: But you don't have a super shield. I wish I have one. [00:10:14] Speaker B: Do you? Is it me? [00:10:16] Speaker A: Yes. No, it's not. You're right. [00:10:24] Speaker B: But we believe that the actions that we're taking in our diet and lifestyle are preventative. So if you want to talk prevention, I believe there are things that can be done. [00:10:40] Speaker A: It's hard to prove a negative. [00:10:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. Yeah. I'm not saying can't prove it. It's proven right. But I say we're taking actions, and in the actions that we're taking, part of this whole lifestyle that we've been talking about for months now is just that it is a preventative measure. I don't want heart disease. Heart disease. [00:11:08] Speaker A: I don't want type two diabetes. [00:11:10] Speaker B: I don't want to be obese. I don't want metabolic syndrome. I don't want cancer. [00:11:19] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:20] Speaker B: And all of that can be all wrapped up in saying we are acting in a way that is preventative, but it doesn't have anything to do with a colonoscopy and a mammogram. Those are early detections. [00:11:36] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:37] Speaker B: Not preventative. I think that that is important both to detect early and to work and do everything you can to prevent in the first place. [00:11:50] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:52] Speaker B: And there's some numbers to back that up. [00:11:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Because it seems like we're kind of out there on our own with this, because the food industry and the policies that are there are not very supportive of what you just said. Something needs to change. [00:12:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:10] Speaker A: So what are your numbers before we go down that rabbit trail? [00:12:13] Speaker B: Well, I just have a little book here. [00:12:15] Speaker A: Oh, jeez Louise. Okay. [00:12:22] Speaker B: What? [00:12:23] Speaker A: Nothing. Let's go. [00:12:25] Speaker B: You're not going to tell me science is boring? [00:12:30] Speaker A: I like science. Just like we're trying to have a podcast here. We don't want to go through every single number there is on the NIH. Or maybe we do. Do y'all like the numbers? I need to know. Do y'all like the numbers? If you like the numbers, y'all need to say you like the numbers. [00:12:48] Speaker B: I like the numbers. [00:12:49] Speaker A: Because I can get him to stop saying all the numbers. I'm kidding. Let's go with the numbers. I love the numbers. [00:12:56] Speaker B: Some NIH numbers. [00:12:58] Speaker A: Okay. [00:12:58] Speaker B: Per capita sugar consumption has increased in the United States to over 99 pounds per year per person. [00:13:06] Speaker A: Michaela weighs about 100 pounds. [00:13:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:10] Speaker A: Just two feedbacks. [00:13:16] Speaker B: Of sugar. [00:13:17] Speaker A: Of sugar. [00:13:18] Speaker B: Per year. [00:13:18] Speaker A: Per year. You have to. It'd be hard to get through that. No, I wouldn't either. [00:13:25] Speaker B: If you hide it, I don't think it is. The average United States resident consumes over 350 calories, approximately 21 teaspoons of added sugar daily. [00:13:39] Speaker A: I looked at that, and it's about a quarter of a cup. Between a quarter and a half cup per day. [00:13:44] Speaker B: Just almost a half cup added. That's not the sugar that you get, say, in an apple, from an apple. That's not natural. That's added. Continuing now, this is just a research paper from the NIH. The increased consumption of added sugars, particularly sugar sweetened beverages, is a pivotal contributor to worldwide epidemics of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Now that sodas in the US are sweetened mainly with high fructose corn syrup, consumption of high fructose corn syrup has increased more than 1000% between 1970 and 1990, representing the greatest change in consumption of any food or food group in the United States. High fructose corn syrup currently represents more than 40% of caloric sweeteners added to foods and beverages in the US. [00:14:45] Speaker A: Wow. [00:14:47] Speaker B: And now, fructose. We've talked about this a little bit in the past. We spent quite a bit of time talking about glucose and blood sugar levels and the rises in blood sugar levels that's caused by glucose. The fact that our body converts carbohydrates into glucose. Our cells can use glucose as fuel, they can use ketones as fuel. Right. We've had that conversation about glucose. [00:15:12] Speaker A: Now, fructose is the sugar that is found in fruit. [00:15:16] Speaker B: Naturally. [00:15:16] Speaker A: Naturally occurring in fruits. [00:15:18] Speaker B: That's right. [00:15:19] Speaker A: Okay. So it's a natural thing. We didn't make it up. No. Okay. [00:15:23] Speaker B: Although we have found ways to make it, extract it. Right. We're getting it from corn syrup. [00:15:34] Speaker A: Okay. So we've found ways of extracting and concentrating. [00:15:40] Speaker B: Correct. [00:15:41] Speaker A: Something that is naturally occurring. [00:15:43] Speaker B: Right. And now your body, it treats fructose differently. [00:15:50] Speaker A: Okay. [00:15:51] Speaker B: It does not go out as fuel to the cells. [00:15:55] Speaker A: Right. [00:15:57] Speaker B: It is digested in the small intestine. It is able to deal with a little bit of it, and then from there, it goes to the liver. And your liver does. It metabolizes what it can, but then it basically immediately starts shoving it into fat. Your triglyceride levels rise after consuming fructose. So a diet high in fructose will cause, like, it is causal. It will cause higher triglycerides. Like, that is one of the things. It starts immediately storing fat, and very quickly, those fat stores fill up and then it leads to fatty liver. So this is how you get to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is one of the ways. One of the main ways, especially in western diets, is from the consumption of. [00:16:58] Speaker A: Fructose, which is something that none of us even had heard of really, 20 years ago. And now nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, they're seeing that more than they are. Alcoholic liver disease. Fatty liver disease. [00:17:13] Speaker B: Right. [00:17:17] Speaker A: Why fructose? Well, people aren't just loading up on bananas and apples. [00:17:23] Speaker B: High fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup has both fructose and glucose in it as well. It's just the levels of fructose are higher. Okay, a couple more things about fructose. One, it does not stimulate the production of insulin. So where glucose stimulates the production of insulin, that will then lower your blood sugar levels. With the injection of fructose, there is no stimulation of insulin. So it ends up the studies that they have done with fructose, it stays around in your blood for a lot longer. Like in 2 hours, the glucose is typically taken care of. And in excess of 2 hours, the fructose is still there in high concentrations, as it's your liver alone. Basically, that's having to deal with all of the fructose levels, and it also does not cause any production of leptin. So there's nothing that happens with your appetite as you ingest fructose, either. [00:18:33] Speaker A: Okay, so insulin and leptin are your hunger and satiety regulating hormones. [00:18:39] Speaker B: Correct. [00:18:40] Speaker A: So if you ingest a high or any amount of high fructose corn syrup. If I ingest it, let's just say I go after the super gulp Coca cola, and I drink the whole thing. There's nothing. Even though I just had an intake of 500 calories, there's zero in my body that's going to say, hey, you just had 500 calories, you're good for the next 5 hours. [00:19:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Not from the fructose portion. If there's any glucose in it, it would cause some, but it is not. Commiserate with the amount of energy that you consume. [00:19:20] Speaker A: Okay. [00:19:21] Speaker B: And then with that, the. Thus is excess fructose in food likely contributes substantially to current weight gain and obesity epidemic worldwide. [00:19:35] Speaker A: So we're going to penetrate, we can squarely with the data and the numbers and the dates. You could nearly say high fructose corn syrup is the culprit. [00:19:51] Speaker B: We can't go there all the way. There are lots of this, of course, this and this and this. If it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, if it swims like a duck, if it acts like a duck, it could be a duck. Back to our discussion on sugars now. And we dove into high fructose corn syrup as one of the sweeteners. But we'll go back to the 1960s and 70s. We had physiologist John Yudkin, and he identified sugar as a key cause of coronary heart disease. [00:20:33] Speaker A: Yes, he. [00:20:37] Speaker B: Well, we had a discussion about Ansel keys a long time ago, months ago. And we talked about Ansel and how I viewed him as the villain of the story. Right. Judge would be the unsung hero that, unfortunately, in the story, like, if it ended right now, he would never be even recognized as the know, you just had Ansel keys as the villain. And what led to the heart health hypothesis and all of that. [00:21:10] Speaker A: So those two scientists were in the same generation. [00:21:15] Speaker B: Yes. [00:21:16] Speaker A: One found one thing to be true, and another one went and found another thing to be true. [00:21:24] Speaker B: Well, yeah. So what Yudkin did was he identified sugar as the key cause. [00:21:32] Speaker A: Yes, he. [00:21:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'll quote the study here. Fearing the impact such results would have on the sugar industry, the Sugar Research foundation paid two scientists at the Harvard University School of Public Health nutrition department to write a literature review later published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1967. The review questioned the validity of any study in which the research implicated sucrose in worsening coronary heart disease and instead blamed food high in saturated fats and cholesterol. [00:22:21] Speaker A: So big sugar threw money at some researchers at a school and told them, make sure that sugar was not implicated in people's poor health. [00:22:35] Speaker B: Correct. [00:22:37] Speaker A: So Yudkin was hushed. Oh, yeah, big time. [00:22:42] Speaker B: Big time hushed. [00:22:44] Speaker A: Ansel Keys was a very boisterous, very loud at the table. He won the argument. On top of money being thrown at scientists to, quote, say what they wanted them to say. Now, if you remember, though, like, about several weeks ago, we talked about the nutrition people at Harvard doing that more recently. What's up with that? Is it because. I don't know. That's weird. [00:23:21] Speaker B: Conspiratorially. [00:23:23] Speaker A: I'm not going to conspiratorize anything. [00:23:25] Speaker B: I mean, you could say scientists for hire to the highest bidder. Okay, so what happened then? As a result of that, the 1980 Dietary guidelines for Americans recommended lowering saturated fat and cholesterol intake to prevent coronary heart disease. Soon, much of the fat in processed food was replaced with sugar, and sugar became nearly unavoidable in the american diet. The sugar industry continues to fund research on coronary heart disease and other chronic diseases, indirectly influencing decades of american policy and health and lives. [00:24:08] Speaker A: Yes. It. It makes you wonder how goodness. We could get to a place in our lives where we can't trust things. My goodness. [00:24:22] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So, looking further into this study now, the current review revealed evidence linking added sugar consumption to increased cancer incidence and mortality. Okay, that was. We're getting to the end of the study. [00:24:44] Speaker A: Okay? [00:24:44] Speaker B: So that's what they found. The current nutritional guidelines for cancer prevention. And people with cancer remain silent on the harms of sugar and fructose consumption outside the context of weight gain. And their assertion is perhaps a more precautionary message is needed. Normal weight individuals may inappropriately believe the harms of sugar do not apply to them. So the researchers here are very kindly and gently saying, maybe we might need some better guidance. Without appropriate guidelines and regulatory changes, the general population will continue to experience sugar induced health problems, including preventable cancers. [00:25:41] Speaker A: Did you hear the word prevent? That's real prevention. Yeah, to me, yes. Okay. [00:25:55] Speaker B: So I wanted to highlight something else that I found. I found a letter that Representative Rosendale from Montana submitted to the chairman and ranking members of the agriculture committee. He wrote this letter January 31, or at least submitted it January 31 of 24. And in the letter, he highlights, our current policies are structured in a way that heavily subsidizes highly processed food, making it more practical for american families to buy unhealthy than healthy food. Our disastrous food policies are wreaking havoc and destroying the metabolic health of american people. 38% of all american adults have prediabetes, 41.9% of men and 34.3% of women. The most recent data says that 19.3% of children are clinically obese, up from 5.2% in 1971, an almost fourfold increase in 50 years. In 1970, the United States spent $74 billion on health expenditures. By 2021, the amount was $4.3 trillion, approximately $13,000 per person. Despite the massive increases in spending, health outcomes have gotten exponentially worse. Instead of taking responsibility for their destructive actions, big food and big pharma are finding new ways to profit from America's obesity epidemic. Another thing that he highlights, specifically, SNAP has 10% of all dollars spent on sodas. That's the supplemental nutrition Assistance program, SNAP. [00:27:56] Speaker A: So 10%. [00:27:57] Speaker B: 10% of all SNAP dollars are spent on soda. In 2022, the SNAP benefit budget was $113.9 billion. [00:28:12] Speaker A: So this is a welfare food stamp. [00:28:16] Speaker B: Program, a government subsidized food program, which that $113.9 billion in FY 22 means that eleven point $39 billion were spent of government money, which is taxpayer money were spent on. Soda. [00:28:40] Speaker A: That's a lot of coke. [00:28:42] Speaker B: It's a lot of soda. [00:28:43] Speaker A: Wow. [00:28:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:45] Speaker A: Okay. Representative Rosendale from Montana is working with Congressman Josh Brasheen on the Healthy SNAP act of 2023. Congressman Brasheen is from Oklahoma. They are working to get HR least introduced and through. And this is all about the Farm Bill, 2024 farm bill that's currently in construction. I guess that's right. [00:29:23] Speaker B: So what I will do, I'll leave a link in the description down below. And on our website, I generated a draft letter and put it on our website that basically summarizes this letter that Representative Rosendale submitted. It sort of takes, that summarizes, it changes the words, and it's a draft out there for you that you could use if you wanted to write to your representative or senator and let them know that you are concerned with the health and welfare of our nation and the fact that us taxpayer dollars are going to subsidize these things that are making our health considerably worse. [00:30:14] Speaker A: Yeah, we're really big into call your congressman, write your congressman, communicate with your congressman about how it is that you feel about the things that are going on in this country. After living in Washington, DC and working there for five years, it became really apparent to us that information from constituents to the representatives and the senators that are there, it actually does impact. Call them, let them know what you think. If nothing else, it makes you feel better about the situation. [00:30:49] Speaker B: Right. [00:30:50] Speaker A: So go to that link, print it out and send it to your congressman or email it to them. [00:30:57] Speaker B: So I'll go back to the last line of the study that I read. Without appropriate guidelines and regulatory changes, the general population will continue to experience sugar induced health problems, including preventable cancers. So this is a way that we can at least make our voice known that we are not happy with the current guidelines and regulations and a way that potentially we could help prevent cancers. [00:31:30] Speaker A: Okay. One of the things that is out there, and this is not in prevention, this is in detection. As we move forward in the conversation talking about glucose and how our cells respond to glucose, there are tests out there that actually use the mechanism of the cell to help us understand where the cancer is, what type of cancer, how proliferated it is through our bodies and all of that. The PET scan, I would like to talk about the PET scan, what it does, and why it works. [00:32:06] Speaker B: Okay. The PET scan is the positron emission tomography PET, PET scan. And what it does is it's able to look at blood flow, metabolism, neurotransmitters, and radio labeled drugs. So what they're able to do is they take a small amount of a radioactive material, and they mix it into a glucose solution. And then that solution is then put into your vein. It normally takes ten to 40 minutes to complete. And one of the things that it does is it measures the rate of consumption of glucose in different parts of the body. So as the radioactive material is in that glucose solution, the cells that are metabolizing glucose faster start drawing that in the fastest. So it draws it in, those cells draw it in faster than cells around it, and then the rate of consumption of glucose. You're able to distinguish between benign and malignant tumors, because malignant tumors metabolize glucose at a faster rate than benign tumors. So what the PET scan does is it shows you the area, those cancer cells, because they are consuming glucose, they are metabolizing glucose so much faster than the cells around them. [00:33:42] Speaker A: Right? So all of our cells use glucose and they uptake glucose. They have to have it. I understand that, and I know that there are hugely and widely mixed thoughts, science, whatever out there. The research just isn't. I just don't think the research has made its way well enough into what does sugar really do to cancer cells at this point to be able to definitively say, does sugar cause cancer? Does sugar make cancer worse? I don't know if we really know. I know there's some people that say it absolutely does, and some people say absolutely doesn't. [00:34:27] Speaker B: I obviously have been thinking about it quite a bit, and initially I was frustrated at that lack of definitive, definitive knowledge. [00:34:38] Speaker A: Right. [00:34:39] Speaker B: And as I was looking into it, they can't do your scientific studies on humans. We can't give a human brain cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, and then feed them glucose only and see what happens to the cancer cells. Right. We can't do that. We can't harm humans in that way. And that's the way that you would run an actual study. You would give these guys cancer and not these guys, feed them the same thing and see what happens. [00:35:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Does it go away or not give. [00:35:16] Speaker B: Both of them cancer and then feed one, one thing? But we can't do that to humans. [00:35:22] Speaker A: Right? [00:35:23] Speaker B: So the only data that they have then, is in humans that do have cancer. Now, can we study that or we give mice, cancer. And then we study, which is medical research. Right? So, although a little bit frustrating that there are no definitive studies, the super secret, double blind whatever studies, right? [00:35:53] Speaker A: Okay. [00:35:53] Speaker B: We don't have those, but we have a whole lot of data. A whole lot of data that is all walking like a duck, quacking like a duck, floating like a duck, swimming like a duck, laying eggs like a. [00:36:06] Speaker A: Duck, might be a duck. [00:36:08] Speaker B: Right? It's all doing that. [00:36:10] Speaker A: Okay. [00:36:10] Speaker B: When I had my issues with Crohn's disease, the doctor, the way he said it to me was like, I didn't have anything that said, bam, you have Crohn's. [00:36:22] Speaker A: Right. [00:36:23] Speaker B: I had lots of things pointing towards it, right. And what he said was, if it sounds like a horse, if it gallops like a horse, if you hear the hoof, if you hear the hoofs clumping of the horse, I'm not prone to call it a zebra. [00:36:38] Speaker A: Right. [00:36:41] Speaker B: It's probably a horse. So I'll go back to that other study there. In conclusion. In conclusion, research suggests a direct link between sugar and cancer. Preclinical studies, which is studies like in mice and stuff, and studies of people with metabolic syndrome show that high sucrose or high fructose diets activate several mechanistic pathways, including inflammation, glucose, lipid, metabolic pathways, suggesting a causal link between excess sugar consumption and cancer development and progression. That is independent of weight gain. [00:37:35] Speaker A: Wow. So if that be true, then to me, the number one preventative thing that we can do for ourselves to try to prevent cancer from growing in our bodies and getting all together and having a party, is to stop feeding it sugar. [00:37:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Our bodies. [00:38:02] Speaker A: Right. Stop feeding our bodies sugar. [00:38:07] Speaker B: Yes. The excess high concentrations of sugar, especially in the high fructose corn syrup, is wreaking havoc on our bodies. Not just cancer, all of that other stuff, but to include cancer. [00:38:29] Speaker A: If we can go back to your mom, she has not been on a ketogenic diet. We've been doing this thing. And our parents take their paths over which they may, but they have not really. They eat a calorie restricted life. They've very much followed a whole food decent diet as far as the american dietary guidelines are concerned. They don't eat horrible. They eat relatively just fine. [00:39:06] Speaker B: Whole food. [00:39:07] Speaker A: Yeah. They cook at home and they eat regular food by no stretch. Would anyone consider what they eat unhealthy? [00:39:17] Speaker B: Correct. [00:39:18] Speaker A: However, she's an intelligent person. She has a master's degree. She was a professional. And the first thing that she did whenever she received word that she was diagnosed with breast cancer was start researching. She started researching. And one of the first things that she found was the relationship between cancer and sugar. [00:39:38] Speaker B: Yes. [00:39:39] Speaker A: And she immediately stopped eating sugar. [00:39:43] Speaker B: Yes. [00:39:43] Speaker A: And switched to a ketogenic diet. [00:39:46] Speaker B: Yes. [00:39:47] Speaker A: That has to be one of, if not the best thing that a person can do for themselves if they're diagnosed with cancer. In the event they find themselves in that position, it sure as heck can't hurt. [00:40:06] Speaker B: Right. [00:40:07] Speaker A: So she has taken action for her health. [00:40:11] Speaker B: Yes. [00:40:13] Speaker A: She can't get to a doctor yet. They're just kind of slow coming, the doctor's appointments. [00:40:18] Speaker B: Right. [00:40:19] Speaker A: And so what can I do? What action can I take? Because I feel like my body's being invaded, which it is, and I would like to do something about it. And the one thing that she felt like she could control was what she put down her throat. [00:40:32] Speaker B: Yes. [00:40:33] Speaker A: And she immediately, through finding this type of research, stopped eating that stuff. If that is our reaction when that happens, then it seems to me we could all make that decision before preventative, before that. Now, maybe we do still get it. Maybe there are other underlying things that give us weird cells in our bodies and they do the thing they do. I get that. But if it has become so prominent and it is because of this substance. Can I use an analogy real quick? [00:41:15] Speaker B: Sure. [00:41:15] Speaker A: Okay, good. Okay. High fructose corn syrup within our food system that no one asked for at all is likened to me, is likened to fentanyl. In cocaine and heroin. We all hear about this drug problem that we have, and the cartel out there, or whomever, is making all of these illicit drugs. And the problem within the illicit drug community is that they're lacing it with fentanyl, and people are overdosing and dying from fentanyl overdose. Not heroin overdose or cocaine overdose, fentanyl overdose. [00:41:59] Speaker B: But they didn't take fentanyl. [00:42:01] Speaker A: They did not take fentanyl. They took cocaine and they died of fentanyl overdose. They didn't ask for fentanyl. That's not even what they wanted. Now, a couple of things. Number one, why is the fentanyl in the cocaine? Because it's highly addictive. If they can get the blend right, they have repeat customers. When they mess it up, they die. Now, if you've got a repeat customer, yay. Number two reason that they do it is because it's cheaper, it's way more concentrated, so they can cart it around, move it where they need to go, need it to go in smaller bundles. It is far more potent. So they can take that far more potent thing, disperse it amongst get a higher rate of addiction and have repeat customers. Now, those people wanting to do those drugs did not ask for the fentanyl. Okay, go back to the high fructose corn syrup. Nobody asked for high fructose corn syrup to be in our food system. Why is it. Why do they put it there? Because it's cheaper and it's more concentrated and it creates a repeat customer. [00:43:25] Speaker B: Highly addictive. [00:43:26] Speaker A: It's highly addictive. It is way cheaper and there's more of it. They can cut it. It's far sweeter than your regular sucrose. So your food, in my opinion, is laced with high fructose corn syrup that you didn't ask for. And that will just tick you off. And that is what those congressmen from the great state of Montana and Oklahoma and the people who are trying to put together a farm bill and get this stuff that you're paying for, by the way, with your taxpayer dollars. [00:44:10] Speaker B: Well, you're also subsidizing to the tune of $2.2 billion, the corn industry. [00:44:16] Speaker A: So we're paying for it multiple times over. [00:44:19] Speaker B: Correct. [00:44:19] Speaker A: And then guess where you're paying for it. You're paying on the back end in. [00:44:22] Speaker B: Healthcare, in the $4 trillion plus health care bill. [00:44:26] Speaker A: So the fact that our food is laced, we can control this, though. We can stop buying it. We can stop using it. I don't care if fentanyl is in cocaine. I don't use cocaine or heroin. So I don't care. It doesn't affect me, honestly, high fructose corn syrup doesn't really affect me because I choose not to eat the foods that they lace it with or that they put the high fructose corn syrup in. So it doesn't really affect me. And you could choose for it to not affect you as well. [00:45:05] Speaker B: True. [00:45:06] Speaker A: Don't eat the foods if it says high fructose corn syrup in it. [00:45:09] Speaker B: Right. [00:45:10] Speaker A: If we all decided, no, I don't want your drugs anymore, it might change their mind if we stopped subsidizing it to be grown in the first place. We could start there, and maybe in this farm bill they'll address that. Maybe we'll see. It is a problem. It's a really bad problem. I think you could call it a very clear and present danger that is on the american society and world at large, because everybody across the world is now being. Their health is being westernized. [00:45:57] Speaker B: Yes. [00:45:58] Speaker A: People who did not used to be affected through their diet, their health wasn't affected so much through their diet. They didn't have the cancer rates that we have, they didn't have the health problems that we have. Brazil, Africa, Asia, India, China, they did not have the same health problems that we have because their food system was different. That's right. [00:46:19] Speaker B: Cancer used to be an affluent country's. [00:46:21] Speaker A: Problem, but that has changed. [00:46:24] Speaker B: As the world's diet has westernized, the world's cancer occurrences have increased. That's correct. [00:46:33] Speaker A: That's enough data. It's a globe. [00:46:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:39] Speaker A: And no, we don't eat a lot of carbohydrates. And I was thinking about this earlier. We don't eat a lot of carbohydrates at all. Potatoes, corn, rice, all of that. But let's just face it, it's not the corn itself. Well, gosh, we know about half. It comes out just like it was. Well, it's true, y'all. But secondly, rice, potatoes, let's be real. Prior to high fructose corn syrup being injected into our food system without being asked, people just weren't dying of rice. [00:47:20] Speaker B: Yeah. It's the highly processed foods, which is what we saw, like with Hannah's rice wrappers. [00:47:25] Speaker A: Right. For sure. Processed and super fast. [00:47:28] Speaker B: The highly processed and the added sugars. [00:47:31] Speaker A: So I go back to get the sugar out of your diet and eat whole food. Even if you don't want to eat a ketogenic diet and you don't want to eat high fat or high meats or whatever, eat whole food. If it comes in a wrapper, just say, no, don't eat the food that they're making and lacing. Oh, my goodness. I'll kind of be done with my rant there, but it's serious business. [00:48:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:04] Speaker A: I think that you had a tip that you were going to give us all as we were. [00:48:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:10] Speaker A: If talking about it, if you or. [00:48:13] Speaker B: Someone that you know or love is on a ketogenic diet has been in ketosis for some time, such that you're now fat adapted and your body prefers ketones. So I know that's a lot of ifs, but there are a lot of people who are now in that situation. [00:48:32] Speaker A: Right. [00:48:33] Speaker B: If you are in that situation and you are going for a PET scan, your healthcare professional really needs to know that you're on a ketogenic diet, that you're in ketosis. There's an article here. The title is why clinicians should know if patients are on the keto diet before undergoing PEt imaging. And the reason is, given that ketones can act as a metabolic substrate for the brain, it's very important to understand if you're in ketosis. So one of the things that PET scan does is not just find cancer cells in the brain or it's able to see the blood flow in the brain. And so you can tell if portions of the brain are damaged or even dead by whether or not they're getting blood flow. And a PET scan will show that, well, in individuals that are in ketosis, your brain prefers ketones. [00:49:37] Speaker A: Right. [00:49:38] Speaker B: And so your brain will not uptake the glucose like someone, a normal person's brain, somebody who's not in ketosis. [00:49:50] Speaker A: Right. [00:49:50] Speaker B: So what they found was that as ketone levels increased, the uptake of that glucose mix that they use for the PET scan, the uptake values decreased. What they said was that serum uptake associated with ketones most likely reflects a true reduction in glucose metabolism by the brain due to the preferential use of ketone bodies as an alternate energy substrate, whether or not there was glucose available. So what it's saying is if your brain is used to using ketones, even if there's glucose available, so when they inject you with the stuff, the serum, even if that glucose becomes available, your brain prefers ketones and that glucose uptake will not be the same as what they're used to seeing. [00:50:51] Speaker A: Okay. And you need to let them know that. [00:50:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Prior to the PET scan, they just need to know that you're. And it may be a case of educating your doctor, even. This is a fairly recent study, so it's something that I would at least have a conversation with my doctor about. Like, if we had to go for a PET scan for whatever the reason was, we would have to educate or inform at least our doctor. Hey, we're in ketosis. We've been in ketosis for over five years. Our brain is not going to respond the way that the standard american's brain is going to respond. [00:51:33] Speaker A: Right. So they may have to make adjustments to whatever it is that they are giving you. [00:51:37] Speaker B: That's correct. [00:51:38] Speaker A: To some degree, yes. Cool. I think that just about covers it. One of the things that we're hoping, and it's kind of in the works, maybe if she will, maybe we can have his mom. Come on. [00:51:56] Speaker B: Maybe. [00:51:57] Speaker A: We'll see. Not sure. [00:51:59] Speaker B: We tried to put together an informative podcast for you based on the information that we've been learning, really, because of what's going on in our family. We really hope that you found it helpful or useful, at least. If you did share it with somebody, that's all we could ask is that you share it and check out the link in the description below if this mattered to you. And as Shelly was ranting, got you ranting as well. And you'd like to pass that on to your officials in DC? I've given you at least a draft or a starter in order to write that letter. [00:52:47] Speaker A: And until next time, bye.