How to Prevent CANCER: 15 Proven Ways to Lower Your Risk

26:26Secondarily, they drink a lot of ginger tea. So it's like green tea and ginger tea. The cancer benefits of those two herbs are so incredibly powerful. I also started looking at, they eat a fair amount of fruit. They do a lot of seaweed. They do a lot of actually purple, sweet potatoes. There's a lot of those types of foods that they have in their diet. But what I've seen from the clinical research is you want to do a lot of vegetables, moderate amount of fruit, but you want to do ones that are high in antioxidants. So you want to do some that are dark blue and black, like blueberries and blackberries.

27:00Get the red fruits and vegetables, like pomegranates, beets, and raspberries. The dark green ones, right? The dark green leafy vegetables like spinach, cruciferous vegetables, and herbals that are green, like basil. White, like onions and garlic. In fact, I remember reading probably the herb at the time that had the most anti-cancer properties was garlic. And then you want to do things that are orange, right? Like turmeric and like pumpkin. And then foods that are brown, like dark chocolate. But you want to do a lot of these different colored superfoods and get more antioxidants in your diet. Because what antioxidants really do is they protect your cells from damage.

27:41Part of the reasons why your cells become cancerous is something called oxidative stress. Your cells get stressed and damaged over time. And I've talked about this many times before, but the best example I can always think of is an apple, right? An apple, the highest antioxidant content is on the skin. And when you break that antioxidant threshold and you bite into an apple, the flesh that's under it has less antioxidants and immediately starts to turn brown. So if your cells lose that antioxidant protection, they start to age, they start to turn brown, they start to become diseased and decay and rot, that's what happens.

28:17This is why you want to make sure you have a high antioxidant diet via fruits, vegetables, and herbals to protect you. And so with my mom, practically, we started adding in things like pomegranates and raspberries and blueberries. and we started doing lots of these steamed green leafy vegetables and cruciferous vegetables and lots of herbs like turmeric, as I mentioned before. All right, the number eight thing we want to focus on when it comes to fighting cancer are key immune-boosting nutrients, right? When I look at blood work today, I do really advanced blood panels in my clinic, and I'm able to see with patients both extracellular and intracellular nutrients, and there are major deficiencies in a lot of people that they don't know about.

29:02Listen, if you have one major nutritional deficiency, your risk of cancer can go up dramatically. You know, as reported by the Clinical Nutrition Journal, low nutrient intake accounts for at least 10 % of all cancers, but it might be a lot more than that, at least be a big contributing factor. and nutrients especially like vitamin D, vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium, zinc, carotenoids, and polyphenols, if you're deficient in any one of those nutrients, your chance of cancer can go up dramatically. According to study, 40 to 60 % of adults are deficient in those nutrients. Think about that. At least half of people are deficient in one or many of those nutrients right now.

29:49And the problem is that most doctors do not test you for nutrients. They're doing kind of the same old blood work they were doing back in the 1970s, right? CBC, CMP, what are your cholesterol levels, right? They're not looking at what are your levels of zinc and selenium and magnesium? Do you know right now what your numbers of those are? Most people don't, right? And vitamin D may be the most important, but all of them are important. and vitamin D in particular is a critical nutrient, maybe the most critical for immune regulation. Now, zinc is a really big deal as well and all the others, but vitamin D is incredibly important and the medical literature proves this time and time again.

30:29And I wanna say something generally speaking, something like 94 % of people are not getting enough vitamin D, okay? And there are other statistics saying maybe 40 to 60 % of adults are vitamin D deficient, but overall, and let me say this as well. You know, I think these numbers are off the 40 to 60 % from this standpoint. I think they're true in terms of the modern blood work. That many people are deficient. But blood work today, when it looks at most nutrients and values, it tells you what's normal, not what's optimal for healing or fighting cancer, right? You typically want to be, according to most doctors of functional medicine will agree, that you want to be around 50 to 80 nanograms per milliliter.

31:11That's what you want to be, that 50 to 80. And a lot of people are in the 20s, teens. But your doctor, if you go in and you're at 30, they may say you're normal and fine, but that is absolutely not optimal for fighting cancer and beating cancer. I mean, this is one in particular, when I look at my mom, what her levels are, it was low. And we really focused on her getting more sunshine. We also focused on this, her supplementation. You know, when you're taking vitamin D, here's a few things I just want to mention too. You want to take a vitamin D supplement, at least 5 ,000 IUs daily if you're low.

31:42Most people, if you're low, I recommend 5 ,000 IUs twice daily. You want to take it with a little bit of fat. It should be combined with vitamin K2. And I also think nutrients like magnesium may also support the absorption to a degree. So again, you want to get sunlight. You don't want to ever get burnt, but you want to get sunlight regularly. And by the way, I do want to mention the darker your skin is, typically the more sunlight you need to get optimal levels, okay? So you don't want to get burnt, but you do want to get a good amount of sun as much as you can on your full body, okay? So again, really focus on vitamin D3 in your diet, getting lots of sunshine.

32:20Now, I want to mention this. As I look at blood work when people come to the office, I've had some people, many people, who were getting some sunshine, they were supplementing with vitamin D, and their levels still weren't optimal after supplementation. Now, here's what's happening with those people. They are not producing enough bile. They don't have enough bile flow from their liver and gallbladder, and that's important for the breakdown and absorption and utilization of vitamin D. So if your liver and gallbladder aren't healthy and active and working properly, you can have poor absorption of vitamin D, and then to fix that, you can take supplements like Tudka.

32:57Of course, stress reduction is huge there as well. Doing everything you can to support liver and bioflow, doing things like artichoke and burdock root and turmeric tea and dandelion. So there are things. So if you keep over time, you really want to start with sunshine and vitamin D supplementation. But if it's still not getting high enough, then we need to work on the liver, gallbladder, and bioflow, and that will fix the low vitamin D levels. Now, I want to mention, as we talked about all these other nutrients, that's where, in addition, listen, you want to get most of your vitamins and minerals from whole organic food, right?

33:31Organic celery, organic beets, right? Organic spinach. You want to get organic produce, fruits, and vegetables. That's where most of your nutrients can be coming from. But many of you need to fill in the gaps if you know there's a deficiency. And so going and supplementing with a zinc and copper combo and selenium, if you definitely have autoimmune disease or hypothyroidism, that's another indicator that you definitely need selenium. So doing everything you can to make sure you're filling those nutrient gaps. And one of the things, again, I've done is I encourage people to get cellular blood work to look at the vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and that can help tremendously.

34:09By the way, at the Health Institute, we do basic cellular blood work, and we can look at things like B12 and CRP and other things that put people at risk. We're also putting together an even more robust panel. So if you want to get on that list, make sure to join the email list for the advanced blood work panel, which we'll be coming out with really, really soon. Number nine is this, eat medicinal mushrooms. Now, listen, I don't care what anyone says about you. You're not weird and crazy for using medicinal mushrooms. Okay. In fact, one of the first things I was shocked to find out when I started studying and reading up on how can my mom beat cancer was how in all of Asia, one of the number one therapies they were utilizing even 20 years ago to fight cancer was consuming more medicinal mushrooms like shiitake and maitake mushroom and reishi and cordyceps.

35:02They're not woo-woo, they are science. In fact, they've been approved as an adjunctive to standard cancer treatment in Japan and China for more than 30 years. They stimulate cytokine production and contain a compound called beta glucans, which improves cellular communication, boosting NK cells and T killer cells. Mushrooms are amazing at fighting cancer. One of my favorites is turkey tail mushroom. In fact, according to the National Cancer Institute, turkey tail mushroom extracts are especially helpful in supporting immune therapy in an oncology setting. And so a lot of people are using these, both doing it all natural or combined with traditional cancer therapies.

35:47The mushrooms that tend to have the most research and anti-cancer benefits include reishi mushroom, turkey tail, maitake, shiitake, and lion's mane. In Asia, what they encourage you to do is consume mushrooms three to five days per week, use a high quality extract or blend as a supplementation, or even do them as a tea or coffee, right? But however you can get mushrooms in your diet, is a great way to go. Like for my mom at the time, we were having her do this immune blend that I think had reishi and cordyceps and maybe mitake in it. And that's what she was doing on a regular basis. By the way, turkey tail has great antiviral properties.

36:25If you're dealing with a virus in addition to wanting to prevent, turkey tail has just amazing benefits. Number 10 way to combat cancer is protect your sleep. Sleep is one of the most powerful cancer protective tools that you already have. During sleep, your body repairs DNA. It resets your immune cells and it regulates inflammation. This is where your mitochondria and your cells get recharged so now they can go in and fight a battle. Think about this for your immune system. If you are not getting sleep, your soldiers in your immune system, these cells are not getting sleep. They go out just like if you're groggy and tired all day and not thinking clearly, your cells are kind of doing the same thing.

37:10They're fatigued, they're tired, they get worn out more easily, fighting off the Epstein-Barr virus or lung COVID or cancer or whatever immune pathogen it's having to deal with, right? Sleep is crucial for repair and healing. In fact, I remember reading a study years ago where if somebody slept less than seven hours of sleep a night. Their chance of getting a cold or flu went up like three times and the duration was so much longer versus someone who got more than seven hours a night. Their immune system was so much stronger and robust. So sleep makes a major, major impact in your overall health and fighting cancer, right?

37:48Because again, if you're tired, then your cells are also likely tired. And so biggest action steps here, number one, put your phone down. I really think that, Listen, once you have dinner and do an earlier dinner, five o 'clock ideally, if not six o 'clock, but just as early as you can, do an earlier dinner. And then afterwards, no phone at all. There should be no phone rule after that. And then it's just connecting with family, playing games with the family. It's reading a book, listening to an audio book. If you do a TV show for an hour right after, that's fine. Put on those blue blocker sunglasses, but start to prep your body for winding down.

38:24the blue light, the screen time, all that is probably the biggest destroyer of sleep today. You want to aim for seven and a half to nine hours per night. Keep your room dark, keep it cold, keep it quiet, and maintain those good sleep-wake times, right? Be in bed long enough in order to get good, deep sleep. Hey, guys, I'm here with my good friend, Dr. Dave Jockers. In fact, we've been friends for more than 20 years. He runs the podcast, the Dr. Dave Jockers Functional Nutrition podcast. Dr. Dave, tell us a little bit about what your podcast is about. Yeah, absolutely. We dive deep on functional nutrition, really how to personalize your nutrition plan for better energy, mental clarity, better hormone balance.

39:04And we talk a lot about cellular health, mitochondrial function, cell membrane. We do a deep dive on every major nutrition topic and natural health topic. So everything you need right there at your fingertips, Dr. Jocker's Functional Nutrition podcast. I want to encourage you, run out and listen to the Dr. Jocker show. Again, I'm a big fan of it. I think you will be as well. Number 11, way to fight cancer. This one might surprise you a little bit. Prioritize omega-3 fatty acids and other healthy fatty acids in your diet. Omega-3 fats regulate inflammation, which actually is a major driver of cancer risk.

39:43Research from the Nutrition and Cancer Journal found that one gram a day of omega-3 fats significantly reduced inflammatory markers that were linked to cancer, okay? So what you want to do there is eat more wild-caught fish, salmon, sardines, mackerel, halibut, tuna, but get more of these omega-3s, okay? And then use a high-quality fish oil, right? So do those things to get... What I do, if I'm eating salmon that day, because I, by the way, I eat a lot of salmon, right? I don't always take an omega fish oil every day, but the days where I don't eat wild-caught fish, every single one of those days, I do a wild-caught cod liver oil or fish oil or some sort of really high quality fish oil.

40:30By the way, you get what you pay for with these fish oil supplements or omega-3 supplements. A lot of them are not in the right form. So you tend to want to spend more money getting one that may have astaxanthin in it or might have what we call the triglyceride form. There are forms that are less processed, easier to digest. Let me say this. Have you ever taken a fish oil supplement and you get like fish burps, like you can kind of taste it later? The problem there is you're probably not fully digesting it well, okay? And some of it might do with your liver and gallbladder not producing enough bile or bile flow.

41:05That could be the issue there. But some of it, there's a lot of bad fish oil. Do not go to your local drugstore and pick up the cheapest fish oil on the shelf. You really want to get a high-quality omega-3 fish oil if you want to get the right bang for your buck and get the results. Now, I want to mention as well, in addition to fish oil, you want to use extra virgin olive oil. It should be the oil you kind of use for almost everything. If you're doing more high-heat cooking for a long time, you may consider using an avocado oil. if you want to kind of mix it up and have something to where maybe you feel like you tolerate coconut oil well, that's okay too.

41:43But really extra virgin olive oil should be the oil you're using predominantly there with those omega-9 fatty acids. So you want to focus on the omega-3 fish oil and things like extra virgin olive oil for the greatest anti-cancer benefits. Number 12, when it comes to fighting cancer, you want to optimize the health of your gut microbiome. 70 % of your immune cells live in your gut. So think about this again, okay? Just how important this is. One of the biggest drivers of cancer is a weak immune system and your immune system not being able to handle it, okay? So that is a, your gut and your liver, your detoxification system and your immune system are the main systems responsible for dealing with cancer, okay?

42:26And then 70 % of your immune system lives in your gut. According to research published in the Frontiers Medical Journal. They said, the gut microbiome and its metabolites can act as a cancer inhibitor or promoter. Approximately 20 % of cancers are believed to be caused by the effects of microorganisms in your gut microbiome. And I've seen numbers way higher than this in other studies. Two people can be exposed to the same risk and have very different outcomes based on the microbes in their gut. And think about this. In your gut, you've got bifidobacterium, you've got lactobacillus plantarum, you've got all of these different bacteria, acromantia, all these different bacteria living in your gut.

43:12You know what else is living in there though for most people? Low-grade funguses and yeast and parasites and all of these things are in there together. If you have enough of the good guys, the type of bacteria that helps strengthen and bolster your immune system, they'll keep the parasites away. Pretty much everyone has a parasite. Some of you just have so few that your immune system is controlling them and dealing with them all the time. Some of you, your body, it's a low-grade parasite or it's long COVID, it's a virus or something, or Lyme. It's just constantly sort of beating you up. It's constantly harming your cells.

43:50And then it's taking the focus off cancer cells because your body's having to deal with those so then cancer can proliferate, right? There's a study in a medical journal, several medical journals that found that if you have a parasitic infection, your chance of getting brain tumors specifically goes up dramatically. You know, I had a cousin and one of my best friends, and he's a missionary, and he did a lot of mission trips to India and Pakistan. And he was diagnosed with glioblastoma. Now, praise God, he's still alive. He went on an all-keto diet and did really advanced natural therapies. But again, we believe that the reason why he was diagnosed with that is that he had a parasite for many years because of all of these mission trips that he had gone on to India and Pakistan over the years.

44:38And so he got on even things like ivermectin and other things. So part of his anti-cancer protocol was a anti-parasite protocol first of wormwood and black walnut and ivermectin, all those things to kill the parasite because we knew if his immune system is going to fight and beat cancer, we also have to get rid of the parasitic infection. But your gut microbiome is key to this. So one thing you want to do is you really want to up your intake of the good type of fiber we talked about earlier, onions, garlic. By the way, the great thing about onions and garlic is they have anti-parasite properties, anti-cancer properties, and they promote the growth of good bacteria.

45:19So a lot of onions and garlic and leeks, asparagus, lentils, berries, pomegranates, apples, papaya, these things are fantastic, right? So they're gonna help your gut microbiome, get it rid of the sugar, the refined grains. Those are gonna feed the wrong bacteria, right? That's gonna cause overgrowth of things like yeast. We don't want that. Also include fermented foods, A little bit of coconut yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, kvass, some of those fermented vegetables have great benefits as well, supporting the gut microbiome. And then I would say doing a high-dose probiotic supplement, like a soil-based organism.

46:00Like I put patients on a probiotic that has a trillion probiotics, literally. I mean, very, very high-dose probiotics and soil-based organisms because those can help clear out the bad. And then I tend to do, I'll actually do two probiotics and alternate and do more of a larger multi-strain probiotic to help reestablish some of the good along with the right diet. But optimizing the health of the gut microbiome has been shown to prevent cancer because 70 % of your immune system is there. Number 13, we just have a couple more to go. In order to fight cancer, you need to reduce your toxin exposure and anything that's going to disrupt your endocrine system, right?

46:36According to the Asian Pacific Organization for Cancer Prevention, they said environmental and occupational toxin exposure contributes to an estimated 7 % to 19 % of cancers worldwide. We've all seen this before. Somebody lived in an area where there was great toxin exposure. By the way, one of the things we're seeing now is golf courses are so heavily sprayed with chemicals and glyphosate. We're seeing now some evidence that people live close to places like golf courses or certain types of industries that are creating toxins in the environment. That is causing cancer in people, okay? And it's really, I think it's a higher amount than people realize.

47:19What many of these toxins do is they're endocrine disruptors, right? So endocrine, that's hormonal. They disrupt your hormones. They block your hormones. They disrupt estrogen and insulin signaling, right? And so this could be everything from glyphosate on your food supply, so pesticides, heated plastic, right? So eating out of plastic stuff all the time, synthetic fragrances, harsh cleaners, and just, of course, heavy metals, environmental toxins, right? These things add up. So here's a few things you can do to get rid of the toxins in your life. Number one, get a water filter for at least your drinking water, okay?

47:55There are so many toxins in our drinking water. So just get a reverse osmosis filter for the tap water, your sink in your kitchen. That alone will do wonders. Okay, so that's one thing. Switch to glass or stainless steel. Get rid of all the plastic stuff. Choose fragrances or cleaning products and anything that's using essential oils and vinegar and baking soda and things that are natural, right? Avoid nonstick cookware, right? All the chemicals there on things like Teflon. And then you also want to make sure you ventilate your home well. You know, I read a study saying that indoor air is at least two times, but sometimes 10 times more toxic than our outdoor air.

48:30So making sure that your air is filtered well in your home, open up the doors and windows if the weather's nice, do things to get more fresh air and get outdoors more. All right, two more here I want to dive into, and then we'll wrap up. Number 14, heal emotional trauma and what we call stuck stress. According to Chinese medicine, we're talking about what Japan and a lot of these areas still follow as part of their medical treatment, why disease is so low there. But according to TCM, unresolved stress creates what we call stagnation. I talked about this earlier, right? So stagnation is where blood and oxygen stop going to an area as much, okay?

49:11There's kind of this stagnation there where it stops happening, right? And I think there's a Christian view here that's really in alignment with this. Lack of peace, lack of spiritual growth, lack of purpose, that's also going to cause issues with emotional healing. I just had a guest on here, by the way, and he was fantastic. It was so good. We talked about the connection between confessing your sins and being healed. And he went through the multiple verses throughout the Old Testament and New Testament, all of scripture that went through. And I was actually surprised because I had known a few verses, but then he started saying how many of them were in terms of if it talks about if you want to be healed from any disease, that the number one thing that it really talks about in the Bible is, and especially when we're looking at the Old Testament moving into the new, is confessing your sins to the Lord, confessing your sins to God, to Jesus, confessing your sins to others, to a pastor, to a priest, to a spiritual mentor, but confessing your sins.

50:13Think about this. It's like if you're harboring in your heart unforgiveness and resentment, but also things like fear and worry, like if you're harboring those in your heart, those actually live in organs according to ancient medicine. They would say that fear lives in your adrenals and reproductive organs. By the way, we know this is true because if you get really fearful, your adrenal glands start putting out way more cortisol and stress hormones. So we know that different emotions impact organs differently. We know worry. You could say, oh, my stomach's tied nuts. That affects your digestive system.

50:50But different emotions, by the way, unforgiveness impacts your detoxification system and your immune system. Those are the two systems. And those are the two systems most connected to cancer. All right? So going through a process of confessing all your sins to God, confessing all your sins to somebody who is spiritually qualified to deal with this, again, a pastor, a priest, a spiritual mentor, someone in your life. By the way, I did this process when I was in my 20s and again around 30, and it was so healing and freeing for me to be able to confess to a man that was older than me, an associate pastor in a church, and go through that.

51:28It was so healing. And we did that with my mom, by the way. My mom went through a practice of forgiving everyone that wronged her, giving all of those things over to God, and it was freeing to her. And I believe it's why she's alive today, because I think it is a critical part of healing from cancer. Just like a parasite or a cancer cell could live in an area causing disease in an organ, causing it to die, think about fear, think about worry, think about unforgiveness or resentment towards someone else, it's doing the very same thing in that organ. And it just lives there, stuck in that area causing disease.

52:04And so you can release that by going to the Bible and confessing your sins and then asking Jesus to heal your heart. And when you do that, now all of a sudden your organs, it's like they've been freed as well. Now they can function at the highest level, killing cancer cells and helping you heal. And once we release and let go of those things that are negative, now we can start filling our body with the positive, right? Spending more time in prayer, doing a gratitude practice, building inner peace. You know, chronic stress raises inflammation and weakens your immune surveillance. And there are several studies that link spirituality, right?

52:40Spending more time in prayer and meditation and gratitude and building peace with better outcomes. You know, there's a study in the Journal of Medicine and Life, And here's what they found. Practices like gratitude, prayer, and calm reflection can lower stress hormones, improve nervous system balance, and create positive feelings and buffer against disease progression, including cancer. In 83 % of studies, spirituality was linked to improved physical health outcomes. And then listen to this. In 92 % of studies, spiritual practices such as prayer, participation in religious services such as worship, social support, and belief in a higher power was associated with better mental health.

53:24I mentioned this. When my mom was diagnosed with cancer, the first thing we did is we got down on our hands and knees as a family and we prayed for healing and asked for God to intervene. and walk us through a healing process. It's the first thing we did when she was diagnosed with cancer. And I really believe it is the single most important thing you can do to heal. As we talked about, confess all of your sins, let them go and do that to somebody as well. There's something about doing it yourself direct to God and you should do that. And in combination, you should do that to a pastor, to a priest, someone in your life.

53:56And I think James five talks about this. Go and read James five and you'll see it says, go and confess your sins and have an elder of the church lay their hands on you and have them pray for you for healing, right? So it talks about that directly what to do for healing in the Bible. And then what does Jesus say to be healed? Have faith in me, believe. Hey, your faith or your belief, that's healed you, right? So confess, repent, let go, and then believe and know that Jesus died for your sins and you can be healed, right? So the Bible has the formula for healing. And so I believe that's the core principle.

54:32Now, I also believe, and it's interesting, one of the things Jesus does oftentimes in the Bible is that he also says, once he heals somebody, he says, you know, repent and then sin no more. Okay? He says, sin no more. All right? So there's an element too, I think, there of honoring God with your body and staying away from being gluttonous and starting to know your body is a temple and feeding it that way, doing everything you can to eat healthy and move right and have these good spiritual practices to take care of your temple. And if you can do that, your body can heal and prevent cancer. So here's what I encourage you to do moving forward.

55:11Spend three minutes of prayer each morning, okay? Then write down three things you're grateful for. And then I'd spend three minutes reading your Bible. But just spend 10 minutes, that's all it takes, 10 minutes a day doing that spiritual triathlon, those three practices, and you'll be amazed at what it does for your spiritual health. So in closing, here's what I want to encourage you to do. Just remember this principle. I'm going to eat and act like I have cancer every day so I never get it, right? So even if you don't have cancer, most of you don't, but start taking this action now. Balance your blood sugar.

55:46Start moving more. Increase your fiber intake. increase your antioxidant intake, consume more real foods, get better sleep, reduce toxin exposure, and make building your faith and peace a daily practice. And if you do that, you're going to be better able to fight cancer. Hey, if this episode has resonated with you, I want to encourage you to subscribe and follow this podcast. Subscribe on YouTube, follow on Apple. And I also want to mention, think about one person. Is there someone you know who's had cancer in the past or they have it now, or that you just know is going to enjoy this episode. And I want to encourage you to share it with them.

56:25I'm thinking about one person now that I'm going to, once this episode released, I'm going to text them this episode. And then of course I'm going to share on social media. But by the way, it means so much to me. I know it even means so much to my family. Like I wish my mom and all our whole family knew this years before, because we could have prevented her from cancer in the first place. So thank you to all of you that are subscribing and sharing this show. I am so, so grateful for you. I just want to say thanks so much for tuning into the show. Each and every week, we're diving deep into how to heal your body physically, mentally, and spiritually, and take your health and your life to the next level.

57:03Thanks so much for watching. Thanks for subscribing, and thanks for sharing, and I'll see you on the next episode.