Dhru Purohit Show - A Controversial Yet Promising Approach to Cancer: Is This The Future of Cancer Treatment?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi everyone, Drew Prode here. There has been a ton of traction in the last several years when it comes to the early detection of cancer and a lot of ongoing research on cancer prevention. And yet the scary truth is that almost 50% of us at some point in time of our life will get a cancer diagnosis. In today's compilation episode, I share a segment from my conversation with cancer researcher and scientist Dr. Thomas Safreid, whose groundbreaking research approaches cancer as a metabolic dysfunction and addresses its root cause. Although extremely controversial, Dr. Seyfried's

Starting point is 00:00:34 approach and his science and studies that he's done with this team has provided hope for practitioners and cancer patients all over the world, including one of our guest featured on today's podcast, Den Stacy, who after being diagnosed with stage four cancer, embarked on a journey inspired by Dr. Saferied's research to ultimately become cancer-free. I had the opportunity to say, down with Den and his team from the Hippocrates Research Foundation, a nonprofit that continues Dr. Thomas Safreid's work by helping cancer patients combat their disease through the education on the metabolic approaches to the treatment of the root causes of cancer. I'll also be sharing a portion of my conversation with them in today's episode. Now, quick disclaimer, before we jump into

Starting point is 00:01:18 our conversation with cancer researcher and scientist Dr. Thomas Saferied, as always, the information provided on this podcast and in my content is for general knowledge and information purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice. Cancer is very complicated and everybody's situation is unique and different. I know this firsthand. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer almost 10 years ago and we had to work with a team, which also included a functional medicine doctor, her oncologist, and a few other holistic practitioners to come up with the right approach for her. talked about this in the past, but that right approach for her was a combination of traditional therapies, which included an accelerated radiation therapy for her. She didn't end up doing

Starting point is 00:02:02 chemotherapy because luckily the cancer was caught very early and it was not an aggressive form that was there. And she did all the recommendations and followed all the recommendations from her functional medicine practitioner, including reducing her heavy metal exposure, including cleaning up her diet, including exercising more, including improving her insulin. So this is all to say that while I present Dan Stacey's information and the folks at the Hippocrates Research Foundation and Dr. Thomas Safreed, who I have a lot of respect for, everybody needs to put their own team together. And the goal is hopefully this episode inspires you to at least do some more research in terms of what's out there. So with that being said, let's jump into my first conversation with Dr. Thomas Safreed.

Starting point is 00:02:50 What I'm sort of hearing big picture as a layperson, not a medical expert to make sure that I have the correct understanding is that long before human beings were around, cells had this methodology of getting energy through fermentation, as you've described. And that's sort of built in to the survival mechanism of not every cell, but a lot of cells that are there. And through a combination of things, which you're going to get to in a second, things that are driving this, we have created a situation where we forced We forced normal cells to, in a way, become cancerous. We call that a disease, but if we really look at it, it's almost a survival mechanism of the cell switching from one way of going about creating energy to being forced to

Starting point is 00:03:40 consuming energy through another pathway, this fermentation pathway. But in that process, the cells, the cancer cells, which were previously healthy, they now have become out of control and they have dysregulated, unregulated growth, which ultimately ends up leading to a whole cascading situations of problems. Is that accurate? Is there anything I missed in that? No, no, I think that's pretty good. I think you did a good job on that. And I think that the mutine, during this process of mitochondrial dysfunction that happens gradually, the mitochondria throw out what we call reactive oxygen species, R-O-S. These are radical species that can damage proteins, lipids, and the DNA, the nucleic acids, RNA and DNA, can be damaged by these ROS.

Starting point is 00:04:33 So they are largely come out of the mitochondria, because as the mitochondria of the cell becomes more and more dysfunctional, they produce, rather than producing ATP, the energy that's, they normally would produce, they produce ROS. And the RAS are carcinogenic and mutagenic. So the mutations that you see in the cancer cell are downstream effects of the damage to the reactive of the mitochondria. So the field of cancer is focusing their energies and their attention on downstream stuff that is not relevant to the majority of cancer. So when you hear people speak of the ALK mutation, the P53 mutation, and all these mutations, they're all downstream effects. They're not the cause of cancer.

Starting point is 00:05:32 They're the effects of the production of reactive oxygen species because the mitochondria have become abnormal. They're throwing out these radicals that are damaging lipids and proteins and causing mutations in the nucleus and the field, almost the entire cancer, field is focused on all this kind of stuff. And I'm saying, and others in Warburg said, no, no, no, you've got to go back and figure out where the energy is coming from, because you're collecting mutations in the nucleus that are largely irrelevant, but they're coming because of the acidification in the microenvironment. They're coming because of the reactive oxygen species.

Starting point is 00:06:09 But the most important question is what is the fuel that is driving the dysregulated cell growth? Okay. What's the energy? What are these cells using to divide? And as you said, when we go back in time, we find out that all of the cells that existed on the planet were using those ancient fermentation pathways because there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. So they grew disregulated growth. And the interesting thing is they would grow without regulation until the fermentable fuels in the microenvironment were dissipated. And then these cells would up and die. So that told me right away that the way you kill cancer cells is you deprive them of their fermentable fuels. And because that's what's driving the dysregulated growth.

Starting point is 00:06:59 They're disregulated because the mitochondria are no longer in control of the system. And now they're just growing as long as they have fermentable fuels, just like our ancestral cells 2.5 billion years ago. So now, why did biology start to have integrated action? And that was with the symbiotic interaction between one type of protista bacteria that could harvest the energy of oxygen in the cell, which led to metazzoans, which are more than one cell. They're multicellular. Multicellularity arose with the origin of the mitochondria in the cytoplasm. that led to regulated growth. So you have to go back really long in evolutionary terms

Starting point is 00:07:48 to find such systems where preceded mitochondria in the evolution of organisms on the planet. And these cancer cells are going back that far. So they will grow out of control as long as they have fermentation fuels in their micro-environment. And as we have shown, and Warburg had shown, glucose is a prime fermentable fuel in the micro-environment of the tumor cell.

Starting point is 00:08:15 And as we have now shown, the amino acid glutamine is another fermentable fuel in the tumor micro-environment. So the solution to the cancer problem now becomes very clear. You need to restrict the availability of the fermentable fuels while transitioning the body over to fuels that cannot be fermented, like fatty acids and ketone bodies. So this is a clear strategy to manage cancer without toxicity. You target simultaneously the two fuels that are driving the beast, both fermentable fuels, and you transition the rest of the body.

Starting point is 00:08:57 Glucose and glutamine are the fermentable fuels in the microenvironment, and then you transition the body over to ketone bodies or fatty acids, which cannot be fermented. So these two fuels cannot be fermented by cancer cells, which require fermentation for growth. So it becomes very clear. But ketones do not kill cancer cells. Ketones and fatty acids are for the good of the normal cells of our body. They don't need glucose and glutamine if they can respire fatty acids in ketone bodies.

Starting point is 00:09:24 They don't have dysfunctional mitochondria. The cancer cell does. So we can marginalize the cancer cell simply by depriving it of its fermentable fuels and protecting all of the normal cells in the body by shifting them over to ketone bodies, which now becomes a non-fuel for the cancer. So by it makes sense. It absolutely makes sense. And really connecting the dots here for the audience, it's following along, your early work

Starting point is 00:09:46 in the field of epilepsy and showing that essentially a ketogenic diet, right? Because again, we're talking about that. And, you know, ketogenic diet is the most studied diet when it comes to brain health. And specifically people dealing with epilepsy. It was the first treatment, right, that was used. for targeting, I believe it was kids originally. Yeah, it was Wilder in 1921. 1921.

Starting point is 00:10:17 Yeah, but he, Wilder studied epilepsy, but he realized that if you put kids on water-only fasting, the seizures would go away. Right. But he realized that when you don't eat food, what's the major changes in the blood? And the blood sugar goes down and ketone bodies, which are water-soluble breakdown product of fats.

Starting point is 00:10:37 So the fats in our body are mobilized. These fatty acids then go into the bloodstream. They go to the liver, and the liver chops them up like a woodchipper, and make small molecules called ketone bodies. And these are water-soluble products of the breakdown of fatty acids. And they go to the brain. They can replace glucose in the brain. They can be burned by the heart, by muscles.

Starting point is 00:11:06 So the combination between ketone bodies and fatty acids can be respired. If you have a good respiration system with respect to epilepsy, now here's the interesting thing. So Wilder says, well, we can't cure epilepsy by starving people to death. So let's build a diet that does what a normal diet, a normal water-only fasting would do. And if you eat diets that have very low carbohydrates in restricted amounts, blood sugar goes down and ketones go up. So it was kind of a calorie-restricted fat diet. You can eat avocados and you could eat certain things that would give you fats. And that seemed to manage epileptic seizures.

Starting point is 00:11:49 And then, of course, in the 1930s, certain drugs came on that made it a lot easier for patients say, oh, we have a drug now that can do what a ketogenic diet does. So let's forget about the ketogenic diets. But Jim Abrams and his son, Charlie started the Charlie Foundation. because Charlie was, his son Charlie Abrams was almost killed by various drugs and treatments that he was taking when he could have done a ketogenic diet. So it was resurrected at the late 90s by Jim Abrams. And we were all working on epilepsy.

Starting point is 00:12:26 And we found no uncertain terms that management of seizures was directly linked to the blood glucose. And the difference between cancer and epilepsy. is we really don't know how ketogenic diets stop epileptic seizures. We know it changes the energy metabolism of the brain, but the mechanisms, the clear mechanism is still under massive investigation. And it seems to work against a variety of different epilepsy. So some people inherit an epilepsy, some people get it from a viral infection, some people get it from a bang on the head, some people get it from tumors.

Starting point is 00:13:04 it seems like a ketogenic diet seems to reduce the excitability of the brain in many different interesting mechanisms, which are under investigation. But we do know that sometimes these children that have managed seizures for quite a long time, months, many months, all of a sudden take one sip of a Coca-Cola or a fruit juice or something, spiking the blood sugar, leading to an explosive breakthrough seizure, which is very clear. So my colleagues and I in the epilepsy field knew this, that how is it? Is it possible that you can have a child managed with seizures for such a long period of time? And all they have to do is take one sip of a fruit juice or a bite of a cupcake, and within

Starting point is 00:13:44 minutes they're blown up into a major seizure. So it was clear that you had to maintain low blood sugar, low stable blood sugar, to manage an epileptic seizure. In cancer, we don't see an explosive growth of cells as the result of taking a bite out of a cupcake or a sugary drink. You can't see it. You can't feel it. But you know it's happening because we know the cancer cell can't live.

Starting point is 00:14:12 One of the fermentable fuels is glucose and sugar is fructose glucose. So it's broken down. So the glucose immediately goes to the tumor cell and is used for the growth of the tumor cell. But you can't say, well, you know, the guy says, I, you know, I've been ketogenic diet. I think I'm okay, let me just bite this cupcake. You can't see whether your tumor cell is going to be growing, like you can see a breakthrough epileptic seizure. It's very clear.

Starting point is 00:14:39 But not a growing tumor cell. You just have to know that to manage cancer, you have to keep that sugar under control. And the second fuel is glutamine, which there's no diet. And everybody keeps asking me, oh, you know, glutamine is so healthy for us and all this. And it is. people need to know that

Starting point is 00:14:57 glutamine is not a risk factor for cancer. Glucose is for creating inflammation, but not glutamine. So you need specific drugs to target the glutamine for cancer. You can't do it with any diet. People, oh, you know, I take glutamine for weightlifting and all this other stuff. That's great.

Starting point is 00:15:15 If you don't have cancer, don't worry about it. So glutamies are an important metabolite. So to connect the dots, just like I did earlier with cancer and really talking about it in a way, to look at cancer as a survival mechanism as a cell. We see if it is this destructive disease, which it absolutely is and it causes havoc for people. But from a biological level, this is just a cell trying to survive.

Starting point is 00:15:36 So it's tapping into an old evolutionary pathway, which is this fermentation process. So to bring that same sort of thinking over to these two fuel sources for cancer, specifically glucose, really what you're saying, if I understand correctly, please correct if I'm wrong, is that a ketogenic diet as a therapeutic, approach to cancer in a way is cutting off the fuel source that is used in this fermentation process. So still providing fuel for our healthy cells, but taking away the primary fuel sources that cancer uses to grow and grow rapidly inside of the body.

Starting point is 00:16:13 Is that a correct understanding? Yes. Yes. And the second part you said is absolutely essential. They have to know that the ketone bodies from the ketogenic diets are serving as fuel sources for the normal non-cancerous cells in our body, actually making them even healthier than they were. There's another interesting biochemical mechanism by which burning ketones enhances

Starting point is 00:16:38 the health and vitality and energy efficiency of normal cells. So that's one issue. That is, the normal cells burning ketone bodies get healthier when on, that's why one of the health benefits of ketogenic diet. I hate to say a ketogenic diet because it is, it is that, but it's more than that. It's a general health, it's a health system for the body. Right, because there's stress response is a major part of it, as you've talked about. There's many other things. It's not just that we're going to throw this one diet, although diet is a key part of removing the fuel source of cancer in your work and approach.

Starting point is 00:17:26 But this is a whole system. And maybe when we have a few minutes here in a little bit, we can talk about what the whole system is. Yeah. Well, I think you're right. I mean, you have to break it down into its various parts. Right. So, you know, and ketosis in a diet can be achieved with carnivore diets, Mediterranean

Starting point is 00:17:45 diets, even vegan diets, although not as effective, but they can still generate. a state of ketosis, which is then putting pressure, making normal cells healthy while at the same time restricting the fuel that's absolutely required for the growth of the tumor. So again, you have to bring the body into a more metabolically stabilized state. Once the body is into that state, then you can then use low doses of various kinds of drugs and procedures that will work synergistically with the body. this new ketotic state making these tumor cells more and more vulnerable to death by putting them under metabolic stress. And that stress is enhancing the healthy cells of the body while

Starting point is 00:18:35 slowly degrading and eliminating of the tumor cells. Right. It's not that you're out there somebody saying that, oh, you know, just by cutting off the fuel source, these cells are going to die. No, there might need to be approaches like drugs. And there's a lot of great ones. that are out there and we're lucky through modern medicine to have access to them, but there could be a protocol to introduce low amounts that then can actually kill the cancer, depending on what type of cancer people are dealing with. Yeah, and some of these drugs, you know, can be used in very low concentrations because the tumor cells now, when they're under this metabolic stress, become extremely vulnerable to killing. So we're not saying we can throw out all these chemotherapies

Starting point is 00:19:17 and all this other kinds of stuff. We just need to know how to use it more effective. and in the right way, so that a patient can just take a small dose of this stuff when the body is in ketosis and then eliminate the tumor without toxicity. We know this. So that's why some of my colleagues in the clinic in Istanbul are using very low chemo drugs together with ketogenic metabolic therapy. It's a process by which we're both enhancing the health and vitality of the normal cells, while slowly degrading tumor cells without producing significant toxicity in the rest of the body. It's a beautiful strategy.

Starting point is 00:19:57 You've just got to know about it. You have to understand what you're doing, why you're doing it, and you have to understand the nature of the biological processes, which makes this metabolic approach the most logical and likely will be the most effective way to manage cancer for the majority of tumors. Now, back in 2012, Dr. Seafre published a groundbreaking book, titled Cancer as a Metabolic Disease on the Origin Management and Prevention of Cancer. In that book, Dr. Safreed lays out his groundbreaking research and breaks down his press pulse protocol, which is a novel therapeutic strategy for the management of cancer.

Starting point is 00:20:39 Now, that protocol includes a whole host of things, including metabolic therapies like caloric restriction, fasting, a ketogenic diet, and a few additional therapeutics including hyperbaric oxygen and drug management. And this protocol has been proven in Dr. Seafreid's research in mice to slow down and even reverse tumor growth. But here's the thing. If you interview Dr. Thomas Seafreed, like I did, it's hard to get a true sense of everything involved in the protocol for human beings.

Starting point is 00:21:13 And that's because the protocol is super indebted. incredibly technical and also in the category of highly experimental. And the last thing Dr. Seafreid wants to do is to give anyone a false sense of hope by only covering little bits and pieces of his protocol. But today we have an incredible guest on the podcast. His name is Den Stacy, and he's walking us through his step-by-step

Starting point is 00:21:40 and of one experience following Dr. Seyfried's recommendations and protocol through the support of his step his team at the Hippocrates Research Foundation. Now, even though Dr. Seafreid's work in mice has been repeatedly proven, there are no, let me say that again, there are no clinical trials in humans and the metabolic therapy approach to cancer management is considered highly, highly experimental. But even with that said, organizations like the Hippocrates Research Foundation are documenting a growing body of case studies so that, the awareness and interest in Dr. Seafreed's protocol and the metabolic approach to cancer management

Starting point is 00:22:22 continues to grow. Let's jump into this episode starting with the mind-blowing email that Dan Stacey sent me about his experience on Dr. Thomas Seafreid's Pulse Press Protocol. Hi, Drew. I hope this email finds you well. My name is Dan Stacey, and I have an incredible and inspiring story to share with you. In October 2022, I was diagnosed with Stage 4, pulmonary artery intimal sarcoma, with a metastatic growth in my right lung. Despite the grim prognosis, I chose not to undergo chemotherapy or radiation, and instead delved into the science of Dr. Thomas Seafreed. With the guidance of an amazing team of mentors turned friends, I constructed a human-scale press pulse protocol inspired by Dr. Seafreed's ground baking research, which initially

Starting point is 00:23:10 was conducted on mice. Remarkably, what seemed like an insurmantable battle against cancer, has taken taken an extraordinary turn. In my recent PET CT scan, they found no traces of cancer in my body. Yes, you read that right. I'm currently cancer-free. During many previous podcasts, Dr. Seafrid has mentioned the value of people hearing from someone who has put his science into action. Well, that person is me. I have comprehensive PET-CT scans and other records documenting my entire journey, undeniable proof of the effectiveness of this approach. You are more than welcome to review them all. Until now, I've chosen to keep the specific details of my day-to-day quasi-private,

Starting point is 00:23:53 hesitating to share my protocol or its success publicly before achieving this momentous milestone. But now I believe it's time to spread the word. Drew, I would be honored to have a conversation with you and share my experience with Dr. Seafred Science and the HRF team. Let's discuss how it works, the challenges I faced, and the incredible difference it made in my life. Beautiful. Well, Dan, welcome to the podcast. We have this incredible team that supported you

Starting point is 00:24:18 with us here, and I'd love to start off with some introductions. Can we start at this end over here? I'm Dr. Michelle Howard, and I'm one of the co-owners and founders for Hippocrates Research Foundation. Beautiful. I'm Dr. Greg Howard, married to Michelle Howard. And yeah, we started Hippocrates Research Foundation a couple years ago with Daniel Arego. Daniel? Indeed. And I am the third co-founder along with Dr. Howard and Dr. Howard at Hippocrates Research Foundation. Fantastic. Well, it's an honor and pleasure to have you all here. So, Dan, you know, one of the things that people didn't get from the Dr. Seafreid interview that we did was they didn't get sort of, you know, let's say we're at 30,000 feet above a view of like cancer as a metabolic

Starting point is 00:25:03 disease, metabolic and mitochondria disease. You go a little bit further down and you're like, okay, what are you actually doing on this thing? Sure. Right. And I'm, and I'm, you know, I'm sure you've had, of course, you have to explain to your kids. You know, they see you. So before we go deeper into the weeds here and some of the, you know, finer sort of tweaks in the ins and outs, how would you describe the protocol as you understood it to people around you who didn't come from a science background and hadn't read all the C-Feed's work? Yeah, I think that the easiest way without getting into the weeds at all, which these guys are much more qualified to do in a much more articulate way, is just to understand that. what we now understand is that cancer has two fundamental fuel sources. Cancer ferments glucose and glutamine.

Starting point is 00:25:52 And so just about anybody of any age, if you tell them this fact and say, well, what do you think we should do about it? Most of them will immediately say, well, why don't we take away those fuel sources? Everything that a cancer cell has to do makes cell membranes, divide, spread. everything that happens is entirely dependent on access to its fuel source. Energy metabolism drives every other part of that. And so number one, you have to inhibit these two fuel sources. What are they? Well, they're glucose and their glutamine.

Starting point is 00:26:26 So the first part of the protocol is figuring out exactly how far you've got to lower glucose and exactly how often and how far you've got to limit glutamine to take away the two fuels that drive cancer, growth, spread metastasis and everything that it wants to do every day. And so I'll jump in. So a lot of people don't know where the source of glutamine. Glutamine is your amino acid that makes your muscle. So we need glutamine.

Starting point is 00:26:50 Right. It's a healthy part of the body. It's a healthy part of the body. So that's why Dennis is kind of a big guy. He's got a lot of muscle on him. So when we're inhibiting glutamine and glucose, you're going to lose some weight. And you're also going to lose some muscle. So we can't really start with someone that's emaciated with no muscle.

Starting point is 00:27:06 There's no place to go with that. So he was really, everything about his case was perfect for us. He hadn't had chemo radiation, so he wasn't all beat up. He had some weight and muscle that we could, you know, wasn't going to hurt him to take that down a little bit. And so, yeah, he was perfect. But yes, but that's the fundamental, glucose and glutamine. And then everything else kind of stems from that. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:27:34 And to add to that, as Daniel's pointing out. out by very carefully and meticulously measuring fat grams, protein grams, and carb grams, you can use food as a drug to manipulate metabolism such that your blood glucose drops into a therapeutic range, which is 55 to 65 MGDL. But with glutamine, as you're pointing out, it's this very important thing. It's used in 121 processes in the body. Your immune system relies on it, which is a very important part of healing from cancer. You're, gut biome and your GI tract rely on it. So it's not something that you can day after day, hour after hour inhibit. This is where the name press pulse comes from. We press on cancer

Starting point is 00:28:19 by limiting access to glucose and we do that in a sustained way, creating metabolic stress. And then we pulse in instances where at specific times and in specific ways and in combination with other parts of the protocol like H-Bod and the use of other substrates, we inhibit glutamine, just for a few hours using whatever method we do. In my case, it was a drug called Dawn. And that allows you to safely remove glutamine from the equation for just long enough to create a problem for cancer. On a daily basis, just to add to what you were sharing,

Starting point is 00:28:56 and this is part of the meticulously following the protocol, you know, we're all sitting here. I didn't really breakfast this morning intentionally. I fasted. I do wear a continuous glucose monitor. I don't have one on today, but if I probably would check finger prick or continuous glucose monitor, I know me right about this time. I'm probably by glucose as somewhere on the range of maybe like high 70s, low 80s. Sure. Just because I generally have a good metabolic health

Starting point is 00:29:24 and everything. You know, the level that you are needing to get your glucose in, as you mentioned, is beyond sort of what we'd be normally considered a healthy range. That's right. And it's to get into this therapeutic range. Right. And as I understand it, you want to keep it there for a long period of time. For as long as it takes. So that means that you are twice a day, again, following the C-free protocol. And Daniel, you and your team were doing this with dogs initially, right, that had cancer.

Starting point is 00:29:56 Twice a day, you're checking in using a finger prick test to see, are you within range? That's right. And I mean, when you're really getting into it and you're really trying to find your stride, I mean, sometimes you're going through eight test strips a day. Like, you're just, you're trying everything you can to really get a handle on how your body's responding and what you're doing and whether this type of food is having an impact on blood glucose. So eventually near the end, yeah, you can get away with one or two, but I was testing quite a bit. Yeah. And it's not just, Dr. Howard, it was not just the food component that plays in.

Starting point is 00:30:31 A big part of C-Freid's protocol is also making sure that you significantly wrote, reduce the stress component in your life. Why is that so key? Well, so Dennis, he told us something that we didn't know. Apparently, if you play some video game, you can raise your blood sugar 50 points and it'll stay there. Yeah, it's a funny story. It's a micro-stressor. Your blood glucose goes up. Well, you know, C-Fried's protocol very specifically in that 2017 paper, it very specifically says, you know, stress reduction, mindfulness, meditation. These are things that you, you know, we know C-free. This isn't just an afterthought add-in.

Starting point is 00:31:11 It's critical. It turns out that stress causes your body to produce cortisol, the stress hormone. And cortisol drives something called gluconeogenesis, which is the manufacturing of new sugar, new glucose, in your liver. And so if you're not managing your stressors that can be job stress or child stress or any manner of stresser, you're bought you know if you get even a little bug or a little cold you'll notice especially when you're in these very rarefied ranges of blood glucose in the therapeutic range you'll notice these sudden changes and so dr howard's actually referring to this very funny story where a friend of mine knew i was sort of at home hold up trying to heal wasn't able to see people and he thought he would be very helpful

Starting point is 00:31:57 thank you very much jay and went out and bought a ps5 so that we could play uh ps5 golf together But it was a Rue. He really wanted to play this game called Warzone, which is this very aggressive, high-speed, high-octane game. And so I agreed that I would play around with him. And at the end of a few hours of this game, I went from my blood glucose at 62 to blood glucose at 120, where it stayed for almost an entire day.

Starting point is 00:32:24 And this is just illustrative of the fact that external stresses drove blood glucose production in the liver just from a game. It's a very, at these ranges where you're trying to maintain blood glucose, stress management is critical. So dealing with family stress, dealing with work colleague stress, dealing with child stress, dealing with anything that's going to upset that apple cart is critical. And even, we noticed with Michelle, she works out like three hours a day for the Iron Man. And that will raise your blood sugar while you're doing it. And maybe after like three hours, it'll start to come down.

Starting point is 00:33:04 But she might be at 60 or 70. And then when she's running, it'll be 110. And it'll stay pretty constant. And so, yeah, a lot of people, it's interesting with the, you know, they're taking sugar and goos and all these things while they're running a marathon. Well, your sugar's already pretty high. And that probably doesn't do anything. It might give you a little sugar rush, dopamine release so you feel better.

Starting point is 00:33:30 but metabolically, are you making yourself faster? No, probably not. You already got enough feel already. So just adding to this sort of view for somebody who's following along and they're like, okay, I'm trying to piece together exactly what he did and how he's in this situation. So it's a dietary piece. There's a strict adherence to keeping your blood sugar within range. And there's also this other piece, which is, we talked about the stress piece.

Starting point is 00:33:55 And then every so often, you're going and doing. hyperbaric. Yeah, which is- I mean, it's phenomenally interesting. Not enough is said about H-pot in many different disease models, but in cancer, it's extraordinarily interesting. Daniel was mentioning a scientist earlier, Dom D'Agostino, who did some phenomenal work on this and was able to show with a probing electron microscope inside a hyperbaric oxygen

Starting point is 00:34:24 chamber, glioblastoma cells tearing themselves apart because of reactive oxygen, species at I think 2.5 to 2.8 atmosphere is absolute. So when you get into a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. A hard chamber. A hard chamber. There's soft chambers. There's hard chambers. Yeah. The soft chambers are, you know, they're great for all kinds of things. You know, they have their own benefit and their own use. But for cancer, when we're telling people to get HBot therapy in conjunction with the press pulse, we need the hard chambers because they can go to these depths. And while you're in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber at depths above 2.2 to 2.8 atmospheres, what happens is reactive oxygen species act very much like radiation therapy does to tear up cancer cells. Radiation therapy is

Starting point is 00:35:15 effectively knocking an electron off an oxygen molecule and it's causing a disregulated spin that flies around and tears up the cancer cell. Well, you're doing the same thing with oxygen, but radiation isn't preferentially targeting a cancer cell. It's doing that to every cell in the immediate vicinity. What we found is that hyperbaric oxygen, largely because the rest of the body has protection from the ketone bodies that are being burned in the cells, you get the same effect as radiation

Starting point is 00:35:51 from reactive oxygen species generated in hyperbaric oxygen at those depths and pressures. And how often, are you going in the protocol? Yeah, Seafreed calls to calls for going five days a week. It can be a little bit cost prohibitive. For me, I couldn't afford the time or the treasure to go five times a week, but we were able to figure out three times a week. And so for, for the entire duration of all the protocols, which we break up, we have, we probably did four protocols in total over six months. For the entire time, we'd be going three days a week.

Starting point is 00:36:29 making sure that one of those days you've got your substrates on board, your blood glucose low, your dawn on board, and you're in hyperbarics. And that's a very powerful cancer killing moment. Talk about the drugs for a second. Who wants to chat about the role that the various drugs to suppress? Yeah, it's an essential component, right? In fact, Dr. Seafre characterizes it as a drug diet, combination. Why is this? Well, as Dr. Howard and Dennis have already mentioned, using nutrition

Starting point is 00:37:08 as a drug, right, carefully titrating your fat grams, protein grams, carb grams, so that you lower the threshold of available glucose to disease is one component. One cannot really do this with the glutamine side. So there's any number of novel substrates out there, such as, you know, sodium phenobutrate, mentioned oxal acetate, even each, G-C-G has, you know, green tea extract has some mild effects in this regard. But it's really the 6-diazzo 5-O-XO-L-Nor-Lusine, otherwise colloquially known as D-O-N, that has the most powerful effects. And this is a key component of the pulse side of the press pulse therapy, right?

Starting point is 00:37:54 Glucose control is chronic, in other words, every day. And then at interval, one selectively lowers glutamine using the six-diazo-5 oxo-el-elmoosine. And what Dennis is mentioning is that this is where what C-free talks about in terms of dosing, timing, and scheduling is so important. So you get your glucose into that 55 to 65 milligrams per deciliter range, maybe 40 minutes or a few minutes before you go into the hyperbaric chamber, you dose the, six-diazzo substrate, right? You may have also included other elements like Mabendazol or other substrates like berberine and metformin to further optimize glucose lowering. You enter the chamber with all of those elements of the press pulse protocol on board. And so that is a I think a

Starting point is 00:38:48 comprehensive summary of the level of precision that's required to extract these effects. And an ideal world. old, C. Freed's talking about going to the hyperbaric chamber, you know, five days a week. You mentioned, Dan, that can be cost prohibitive. It can be challenging for people to even find it in the first place. We'll talk about your story, which is kind of interesting of how you found it nearby you. But Daniel, going back to what you were sharing, is that then, is my understanding correct, that, so you're doing the diet every single day, right? Precision measuring the blood glucose, right? Making sure, as part of that, of course, stress, you know, is kept at bay. And that,

Starting point is 00:39:26 the glucose is in range. And then in an ideal world, if you were doing that, you know, hyperbaric five days a week, then every time before going to do hyperbaric, you're taking the drugs or the therapeutics to, again, put the cancer in the most vulnerable place. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It would be at interval. So, yeah. So not with the six-diaso protocol, you're doing that on every fourth day. And then there's an interval period between dosing. This goes back to the dosing, timing and scheduling components. But on the days that you are dosing it, you want to make sure everything is in play, right? You've got your glucose where you want it. You've got your other substrates on board. You dose the D-O-N just prior to entering the hyperbaric

Starting point is 00:40:15 chamber. Okay, what's happening here? You're metabolically isolating cancer in a way where it's two primary fuel substrates, the glucose and the glutamine, are in short supply. You're using Mabendazol, whose mechanism of action is to inhibit the formation of microtubules, very important for cellular proliferation and division within cancer cells. And then you're further impugning tumor viability by massively upregulating reactive oxygen species with the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. So this is where you are quite quantifiably producing tumor cell death. And the great news is, as one can refer to the magnificent work of Dr. D'Agostino, which demonstrates these mechanisms of action.

Starting point is 00:41:02 These are known quantities. Yeah. Dr. Howard, let's talk about both Gregory and Michelle. Let's talk about the team that one would need. Somebody's listening to this. They have a family member. They themselves might have been diagnosed. Or there's a researcher that's listening and is thinking, well, what is the collection

Starting point is 00:41:23 of a team that somebody might need to help implement. Of course, there's your foundation that you guys have put together that is coaching, you know, giving individuals guidance, but you're not their doctor. Right. Right. So what sort of team do they need because they're going to be needing access to prescription drugs in some cases? And there's other factors that are there.

Starting point is 00:41:47 So would you like to chime in? Yeah. Usually these people, they have a functional medicine doctor. that some people refer to that as a concierge doctor that's some doctor that they're not using insurance they're paying this individual to have more access to and um and those type of doctors are uh and we have many of them around the world that that you know and clinics around the world that are working with us so a lot of times they already have um a lot of the pieces um we're working with a group in turkey uh daniel what's what's the name of the uh yeah that's

Starting point is 00:42:23 Dr. Slocum's group at the chemotherapy clinic. In fact, he's published with Seafrit. So there's already a pre-existing collaboration there. Any number of the people that we've worked with have benefited from going to that clinic, which combines the standard of care with metabolic therapies. Yeah. We have a lady that found us roughly six months ago. She was pretty far along.

Starting point is 00:42:50 and she was misdiagnosed by standard of care. She was, they thought she had stage two breast cancer, and they did Sentinel node biopsy, which is standard of care. And I think she was clean, so they thought, well, you have stage two. But she was having all this pain in her body. So we just push, push, push. You have to get a total body PET CT scan.

Starting point is 00:43:20 as she did and it turned out she was stage four. She had metastases to her skull to her everywhere, pelvis, and all of her pain was really, she was stage four and really probably only had a couple of months to live. And so it was so urgent and they had means. So Daniel contacted this group in Istanbul, Turkey. We made arrangements to get her there.

Starting point is 00:43:47 And then they were able to do treatments, more aggressive treatments that we couldn't do in the United States. So there's something called insulin-potentiated chemotherapy, where they give insulin and glucose along with chemo, traditional chemo, but you can lower the dose to about a third, what you would normally get. And they were doing some other interesting things over there. So, yeah, we like to find those groups of people around the world in those clinics, and that works best.

Starting point is 00:44:16 So they're overseeing everything, and then we just give our expertise on the diet and the really, you know, they know their piece, we know our piece, and when it comes together, it's just fantastic. So this lady that I'm sure she's back in the United States now, I haven't kept up with her probably as good as I should, but she was over there almost six months in Turkey, but she's going to come back cancer-free and do just fine. And so those are the great success stories that we have around the world. but we have clinics, I don't know, almost every continent, just everywhere around the world.

Starting point is 00:44:53 So if something was to happen to us, there's many, many, many people around the world that know our protocol. I mean, very well, physicians that could just pick up the torch and run with it. And so we want to work with these clinics, ideally. But it takes a doctor there at that clinic that's willing to work with us. But when someone that's just listening to this, how do I get started? It was your question. They need to find a concierge doctor.

Starting point is 00:45:23 And they're usually the ones that will help orchestrate that in the United States. But we're working with, like I said, then Canada, we work a lot of people in Canada. And I'm just, yeah, all over the world. Somebody open-minded who understands and has at least a healthy bias in a good way towards the impact that metabolic therapies and metabolism can have on different disease states that are there. They don't have to have a cancer background, but they have to be open-minded to understand how this methodology works and be willing to roll up their sleeves a little bit to help their patients sort of figure out the ins and outs and the nuances around this.

Starting point is 00:46:00 I think, too, it's been probably some of these people have been more willing to try these things because again, like Den, there wasn't another alternative. And so I think that it's a little easier for people to try to get involved then because they don't feel like they have anything to lose by trying something different. Den, what did your team look like? You know, you had your original surgeon and his team that did the surgery on you in the first place and saving your life from the tumor that was in your heart. And then you got, I'm sure, referred to an oncology team.

Starting point is 00:46:36 team that was there that was tracking sort of your basics. Sure. As many cancer patients, you know, have their main individual. Who was the rest of the individuals that were there that were supporting you from a standard sort of medical side of things? Sure. I guess one of the things I'd like to say is the whole team at Jubilee Hospital in Victoria from the nurses, the physicians, everybody there was incredible. We developed a great bond with the whole team.

Starting point is 00:47:08 They all worked tirelessly to try and do whatever they could to help me. BC Cancer has a huge facility right across the street from Jubilee Hospital, and that team works collaboratively. So I had an oncologist from there, an internist and a whole team of surgeons, and everyone there was phenomenal. I can't say enough about them. I owe them literally my oatham, literally my internist. life and have developed some really great relationships with a lot of them. When it comes to the

Starting point is 00:47:40 oncology side, great oncologist, nice fellow, but like many oncologists, his hands were completely tied in that he's bound by law to recommend and administer standard of care. And so So in the exploration of this as an alternative, he had to sort of bow out. But we were able to maintain a relationship. We were able to continue to communicate. They continue to provide scans even to this day to follow the progress of what I'm doing. More recently, they've actually taken the protocol, my data, the HRF case study. They've added it to the file.

Starting point is 00:48:27 and we've begun to have very interesting conversations around what's possible. But it's very difficult, and I think a lot of people watching who are in a similar situation that I was are going to have to figure out how to navigate their oncologist and the medical community because this is not part of the standard of care. It's something that they can lose their license if they recommend. And so your team becomes people that are brave enough to put themselves out like HRF and Dr. Howard and Dr. Howard and Daniel. Of course, if you're as lucky as I am to have a wife like I do, who's incredibly gifted at, you know, the pragmatic organization of the things that it takes that you have to do every day, the things you have to eat, the drugs you need to take, where you need to be. And of course, all the family and friends that are going to be there to support you financially and emotionally.

Starting point is 00:49:31 And it, you know, it takes a whole village. You know, in hearing your story initially when we chatted, it reminded me that a big part of Seafreed's protocol and why he feels hesitant to get into the deep weeds on podcasts and platforms is he doesn't want to give a sense of false hope. many people who are diagnosed with cancer or are in a situation where they have a loved one who is diagnosed because of this world that we live in in standard of care we're very used to hey go to this hospital right and then they're going to be the decision makers they're going to tell you what to do they're going to tell you what not to do and largely you just show up right this is the opposite and here this is fundamentally the opposite right you are truly the CEO of your own health.

Starting point is 00:50:25 That's right. And you had these different individuals that were there supporting you. Even some people, as you mentioned, your oncology team and your oncologist, who was a nice individual, but whose hands were bound. I had a very similar situation

Starting point is 00:50:38 in my mom's case with breast cancer. Essentially, they said, listen, there's no research on this. This is often what a lot of people hear. There's, and maybe even in some instances, these things may be harmful, right? that's kind of a standard thing that you often hear from very well-meaning individuals. Misunderstandings around.

Starting point is 00:50:58 Misunderstandings, right? And not only do patients not walk away with encouragement, sometimes they can walk away with discouragement. Absolutely. That's there. Absolutely. Largely, though, in many individuals' positions, and this was the case for you, as you with the supportive team that you had, including the individuals here, you went down

Starting point is 00:51:20 the pathway, you went down the protocol, and when it came time to retesting, You know, your traditional oncology team was a team that retested you, got the PET scans done. And they came back and they shared something, which was, I don't know how this is happening. Absolutely. I don't know why this is working. But I guess whatever you're doing, keep on doing. Keep going. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, we organized very quickly the first protocol. And when I say I did four protocols, I really mean there's the constant.

Starting point is 00:51:55 press of glucose inhibition, but we pulse these 21-day cycles of dawn and hyperbarics very aggressively. And so each one of those we sort of count as a protocol. So after the first 21-day protocol that was performed that December, December 2022, I went about three weeks later after I'd finished that to get a CT scan, just to sort of follow-up. Because we'd been kicking the can of chemotherapy and radiation down the road, not telling the oncology team, we're not going to do it, just saying, maybe we'll do it later because you can also get fired by your oncology team for making certain types of decisions. So, and that allowed us to continue to get the CT scans and the follow-ups and any help we might need. And so we did one of those first follow-on scans

Starting point is 00:52:42 and the result was that there was no reperfusion in the heart and the stage four metastasis that they saw in the lung and the metastasis that they were seeing in the lymph nodes had been reduced by 50%. And that's in four and a half or five weeks of glucose inhibition and Don administration with HB. That's pretty quick. Oh, well, what's interesting about that, and it goes back to the why you stack all of these things around HBod, it does happen very quickly. We're talking about impugning energy viability in a cell. If you were to hold my head underwater, how many minutes would it take for me to die?

Starting point is 00:53:27 Literally three or four, maybe, depending on how long I can hold my breath, but very quickly because you've taken my cell's ability to use oxygen as energy away. Well, this is how quickly your cancer will die when you're taking those fermentable fuel sources away in minutes. And so two and a half hours in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber where you've turned off glutamanalysis and you've turned off access to glucose.

Starting point is 00:53:51 And you're further stressing this with mebendazol or any of the other substrates you may be using is killing those cancers. And in the same way, when you pull my head out of the water, I'm not rescued suddenly by exposure to oxygen. So very quickly you can devastate cancer, even in just the few hours that you're in hyperbaric oxygen. And so it was surprising then, absolutely. I think we probably broke into tears in the car after the oncology.

Starting point is 00:54:21 We were on our way to hyperbaric oxygen when the oncologist called us. But now we understand it can happen very quickly. You have to do it at an extraordinarily Olympic level. You have to be extremely consistent. You have to change everything. But when you do, it works like a hot damn. Daniel and team, when you're, when you shared her the news, how was your own, you know, feeling?

Starting point is 00:54:47 By no means, is this the first case study that you guys have had a chance? Yeah, the feeling is always there's more work to do. It just, in other words, it's always important to acknowledge what I like to call progress of a kind, but it's not over. And it's still not over. He's got work to do. We've got work to do. Right. In other words, the task is not, and Dr. Howard put a final.

Starting point is 00:55:12 point on this earlier. The task is not to make tumors disappear, right? The standard of care is very effective that you can cut one out, you can burn one out, you can poison one out, right? That really doesn't contribute very much to overall survivorship. One must consistently and chronically impugn tumor viability in a sustainable fashion that makes the rest of the body healthy. That is the task. So when we see improvement in people, yes, acknowledged and immediately back to work. You can never relent your vigilance in this regard. You have to keep your foot on the throttle at all times. And that doesn't mean that you don't make adjustments, right?

Starting point is 00:56:00 You do make adjustments. In fact, that's one of the things that sometimes is easy to miss, which is daily, weekly adjustments are part of your response and reaction to facts on the ground. I'm like, I don't feel well today. Okay, we have to deal with that. Or I have a stressor that I can't do anything about right now, like a cold or a flu. Okay, we have to deal with that. Or I have some other issue. Sometimes, you know, people, they have challenges with metastatic progression to the bone and they have ambulatory issues. Okay, that needs to be dealt with. In Dennis's case, he, had a plural effusion, which is an infection of the lung that had to be dealt with.

Starting point is 00:56:44 So one, you know, this is also, I think, important is that, you know, a human cannot be reduced to a glucose number and a ketone number, right? They're a whole human. You have to deal with them as such. And that is a process of constant attention to detail every day. It's a 24 hour a day endeavor. Dr. Thomas Safefried's work has inspired many, including other researchers, several who have had the opportunity to speak with on this podcast.

Starting point is 00:57:18 And while Den Stacy's story is a remarkable end of one, it's important for me to reiterate that the protocol he followed is highly experimental and not fully tested on human application, which even Dan Stacy and Thomas Safreid would agree with, which means, again, as we mentioned in the beginning, you have to put your own team together and you need to, find the approach that works for you. But as I mentioned before, my hope is that in sharing the information about Dr. Saferead's work and sharing Den's incredible story, we will all benefit from the increased awareness and ongoing research on promising integrative and innovative approaches to cancer. If you'd like to hear my full-length interviews with Dr. Safreid and with Den and his team,

Starting point is 00:58:00 you can find the links to those in the episode show notes below. And if you'd like this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend. Until next time, thanks for tuning in.

Dhru Purohit Show - A Controversial Yet Promising Approach to Cancer: Is This The Future of Cancer Treatment?

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