On Episode 4 of the Conscious Breathing Podcast with Steve Scott, Dr. Daniel Thomas shows us the next generation strategies he is successfully using with his cancer patients who come from all over the world to get treatment from him at his medical clinic in the Orlando Florida area.

Dr. Thomas is a highly educated, experienced, and forward-thinking physician. For over 30 years, he has helped people all over the world by providing innovative solutions to reverse disease, improve mental and physical vigor, and increase lifespan. His expertise is in the practical application of cutting-edge biomedical research. Dr. Thomas spends 20-30 hours a week poring over the latest scientific literature in search of promising therapeutic strategies.

In this show, he goes over his 8 step treatment protocol. You’ll learn why the most aggressive tumors are hypoxic and how carbon dioxide treatments may be an effective tool in the battle against cancer.

If you or a loved one has cancer, make sure to listen to the entire show and learn some strategies you may have never heard of before.

Episode #4: Dr. Daniel Thomas on Next Generation Cancer treatment

Published: November 14, 2021

Podcast Transcript

0:00 

Daniel: One of the hallmarks of cancer is hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, in the tumor environment. Some parts of the tumor will have normal levels of oxygen that’s called normoxia, like normal oxygen level, but the majority of the areas are hypoxic, where they’re inadequately oxygenated. Those are going to be the most aggressive cancer cells. Those are going to be the cancer cells that will spread and metastasize and they’re the ones that are most resistant to treatment. Those are the cells that are going to have the most aggressive metabolic pathways activated.

0:34 

Steven: Hey, welcome, everyone. We have a really exciting show for you today with Dr. Daniel Thomas. He’s going to discuss his next generation cancer treatments that he uses for his patients. But before we get started, we’re just going to breathe for a few moments using the Relaxator.

1:18 

Our special guest today is Dr. Daniel Thomas. Dr. Thomas is a highly educated, experienced and forward thinking physician. For over 30 years, he has helped people all over the world by providing innovative solutions to reverse disease, improve mental and physical vigor, and increase lifespan. His expertise is in the practical application of cutting edge biomedical research. Dr. Thomas spends 20 to 30 hours a week poring over the latest scientific research in search of promising therapeutic strategies. He will be talking with us today about his unique approach to fighting cancer at his medical clinic in the Orlando, Florida area. So, welcome to the call.

2:00 

Daniel: Thank you, Steven.

2:03 

Steven: Why don’t you just start off kind of telling us your background, how you got interested in cancer? Was it something you were interested in as a child or in medical school? Just kind of tell us about your background of how you got interested in cancer research.

2:20 

Daniel: Well, my purpose for being a physician in the first place is just a very strong desire to provide patients with innovative solutions and real hope, especially to those suffering from challenging and aggressive cancers. Now, my education is as follows. I graduated from college in 1982, with a degree in biochemistry. And then I immediately went into medical school. That, of course, is four years long. Then after that I began my hospital training that’s done after medical school. Now, I had a month off before I started that hospital training. So my wife was a nurse and we worked together. We had the opportunity to spend a month at the Gerson Cancer Hospital in Tijuana, Mexico.

3:05 

What I saw there really, really opened my eyes. They were getting some outstanding results of patients. I think they were all pretty much stage four, late stage four and getting really outstanding results. I spent that month at my mother’s urging, because ever since I was a little boy, she was always interested in holistic health, nutrition, things like that. She always had the most current copy of Prevention Magazine on the coffee table. It sparked my interest further, but my education didn’t stop at those points.

3:37 

I later earned a postdoctoral master’s degree in Metabolic Medicine. That was followed by a fellowship in Integrative Cancer Therapeutics. As you mentioned earlier, about my reading to stay current, I do read a lot. I read sometimes more than four hours a day every day, including weekends, outside of the office, just to stay current. That’s a little bit about my background.

4:03 

Steven: The things you read, is that like medical journals or books?

4:07 

Daniel: That’s a good question. The majority of my reading are science journals, not medical journals. The reason is that so often, and we’ve seen this in our lifetime, that the length of time between when a scientist makes a significant discovery, something looks very promising to that scientist. How long does it take before that discovery becomes part of mainstream medical care, like every day medicine? Sometimes a decade, sometimes more. If you’re a stage four cancer patient, you can’t afford to wait 10 years or more. It’s like, you need solutions now. Virtually all my reading is I go right to the source. These are articles that are not authored by physicians, medical doctors, but by scientists.  Their degrees are PhDs after their name, that MD or DR, so that’s the majority of my reading on science journals.

4:58 

Steven: Yes, very interesting. I guess over the years, like at the Gerson Institute…

5:06 

Daniel: Gerson Institute.

5:08 

Steven: I’ve heard of it. I just couldn’t think of the name for a second, but what kind of approaches were they using to treat cancer at that time?

5:16 

Daniel: They were taking a very intensive nutritional approach. It was a nutritional therapy, where people were put on a plant based diet and they were fed hourly juices. They would actually prepare for them about 13 to 14 juices a day. That was sort of their nutrition. They would have one meal a day. It was like a juice fast, and it was a vegan diet.

5:38 

Steven: Was it like orange juice or tomato juice?

5:41 

Daniel: Oh, no. It was mostly vegetable. It was carrot and then sometimes they would add an apple to it, like a green apple, but it was mostly carrot. Sometimes in greens, they would sometimes throw in some kale or chard into that, but it was mostly a carrot/green drink.

5:57 

Steven: Okay, interesting. They had some pretty significant results that you saw from while you were there?

6:05 

Daniel: Oh, yes. In fact, the history of the Gerson therapy, Dr. Max Gerson, who developed the therapy, he was a German physician and they came to the US. He had actually developed this nutritional approach originally for tuberculosis. This was in the days before they had antibiotics. He needed to sort of think outside the box, what he could do as a physician to improve a patient’s immune system to fight the tuberculosis lung infection. But then he noticed that some of the patients, who also had cancer, their tumors were shrinking at the same time. Then it evolved from a treatment for tuberculosis and evolved into an intensive treatment for cancer.

6:44 

Then his daughter, Charlotte Gerson, who was a nurse, carried on his work. She actually died about three years ago, at about 97 or 98 years old. She was a woman that just absolutely lived what she preached, as far as a healthy diet and lifestyle. She was a very robust, strong German woman right up to the very end. We got to know her during that month that we spent in the Gerson house. Not Dr. Max Gerson, he had died many years ago, but his daughter carried on his work.

7:16 

Steven: Very interesting. Now, you said the main approaches were nutritional, that with the juices. Was there any other aspects to his protocol or?

7:26 

Daniel: Th   ey would use some pancreatic digestive enzymes, at least at the time. That was their primary approach. I haven’t kept up lately, because everything that I know and that I do now for cancer, I wouldn’t just do the Gerson Therapy. There’s a lot of metabolic pathways that aren’t blocked or aren’t addressed. I mean, our knowledge of cancer today is so much better than it was when the Gerson therapy was developed. But they still exist. There’s still a hospital down in Mexico where they do the therapies. But there’s so many other options that I feel are essential, that need to be implemented, that I wouldn’t just do that. But it is a mostly nutrition type of therapy.

8:03 

Steven: Do they do it in conjunction with other types of traditional cancer therapies, like chemo, or radiation, or surgery?

8:12 

Daniel: It can. When I was there, these were patients where they had failed conventional therapy. This was in 1986. There wasn’t as many drug trials back then, going on, as there is today. A lot of times what patients will often do, is if they continue to fail chemotherapy or radiation or immunotherapy, then the oncologist will try to find if there’s a trial that they can enroll in, if they would qualify for, to see if that could be a treatment option for them. But at the time that I was at the Gerson clinic down in Mexico, these were patients that had failed conventional therapy and have run out of options, but they were not willing to throw in the towel quite yet. They weren’t ready to call hospice. Then that caused them to search out to see what other options could there be that could help them beat the disease.

9:04 

Steven: In your mind, I guess, what do you think is the cause of cancer? I’ve heard some people talk about metabolic pathways that cause cancer, or genetic pathways. What is your opinion on the etiology of cancer?

9:19 

Daniel: That’s a great question, Steven. That has sort of been the two prevailing thoughts, what is the origin of cancer. Just like there’s two prevailing sort of theories on how we got here, evolution versus creation. It’s very similar in cancer, there’s two competing thoughts. One, in which most oncologists subscribe to, is that cancer is a genomic disease, meaning that it’s just a random genetic mutations. Sometimes that can result in a malignancy. Then the other thought is that, no, at the end of the day, cancer is a metabolic disease. There’s been a lot written about it lately. There’s been several books, bestselling books, on the subject.

10:03 

Scientists have been taking a look. Either side has very strong arguments. If we were sitting in a jury, Steven, and if they both had to present their arguments to us to vote in their favor, they would both present really sound arguments. I mean, the genomic theorists would present their side and we’d say, wow, that sounds like it’s believable. I think I’ll vote that way. But then we’ll say, okay, let’s hear the other side. Those that subscribe to that cancer is a metabolic disease will give their arguments. We would say, wow, I’m not sure which way to vote. They’re both compelling arguments. But scientists have found out recently. Because you look at this and say, well, are they both correct? Are they both wrong? Or is one right or is one wrong? It has to be one of those scenarios. It turns out that both are correct. They’re actually equally correct.

10:49 

The substance that actually is the unifying sort of explanation to both these is iron. Iron is actually at the very center and it completely explains that cancer is equally a genomic disease and a metabolic disease. This is a recent discovery. Part of our approach to cancer is we focus on that. Cancer is literally addicted to iron. I mean, it’s more than they just like iron, or they sort of want it. They have to have it. There is no other substitute for iron. It’s not like there’s another metal that can take its place, like magnesium, or zinc, or manganese. It has to have iron, but it equally explains both theories. So part of our approach is capitalizing on cancer’s love affair of iron, so to speak, its addiction, and turning it into its worst nightmare.

11:40 

Steven: If cancer is addicted to iron, would it be consuming iron? Would you have lower levels of iron, because the cancer is like eating it up, or using it, or utilizing it? Or what do you see as far as iron levels of people who have cancer?

12:00 

Daniel: They’re actually very high. How our body normally regulates iron is, it can control the absorption and it can control the excretion. Our body can, like a dial, like a volume dial, it can dial up or dial down how much it absorbs and then how much it excretes. What cancer does is, cancer literally is devious. It hijacks the body. Some of these normal control mechanisms are taken over. Cancer, because of its exorbitant need of iron, and has to have a lot of it, it’ll dial up all the way max, your absorption of iron. You’re absorbing more than you should from your diet. Then it turns down the excretion, so the levels build up. Generally, ferritin levels is what we measure to look at the body’s total storage of iron. Ferritin levels tend to be off the chart high.

12:47 

Then the other thing too, they know about cancer, is that cancer cells, compared to normal cells, have seven times, or greater, number of transparent receptors. These are receptors on the surface of cancer cells, that are responsible for shuttling in iron. Now, normal cells have the same transport receptors, but they have a fraction of the number. Cancer’s need for iron is so great, that they have to suck it in continuously. They have more entry points, more doorways, so to speak, to allow iron to go in. We know for a fact, cancer is truly addicted iron and has to have huge quantities of it.

13:23 

Steven: I guess it’s one of the signals that you have cancer, potentially high iron levels? Like, maybe previously you had normal iron levels and then all of a sudden that went up. Would that be a sign that you could potentially have cancer?

13:37 

Daniel: Yes, it can. Sometimes there’s a genetic tendency towards this. The disease is called hemochromatosis. About 15% of people that have ancestry to Northern Europe, like Scottish, or Irish, or Northern parts of the European continent, they actually carry a gene for this and they can have very high ferritin levels. It can actually be a sign that you may have cancer, but if you don’t, it definitely increases the risk, of not only cancer, but high iron levels are bad for the brain. They are a risk factor for dementia, like early onset, heart disease and liver failure.

14:15 

There’s people walking around with high iron levels and they don’t even know it, because a lot of times there are no symptoms. Most physicians don’t check iron, because it’s not part of just a standard blood panel. It’s a separate test that you have to request, to have it checked off separately in the lab order. Any of your listeners, I would urge them, that the next time they do get blood work with their doctor, to request that they also check their ferritin level. A healthy level, an optimal level for men, is 50 to 75. In women, it’s 30 to 50. Now, the lab will say the upper end of normal is quite a bit higher, but it’s really not an optimal level. 30 to 50, for women, is a good ferritin level. For men, 50 to 75.

14:59 

Steven: In that case, do women… I guess it’s like giving blood, is that something helpful to reduce your iron levels, or like, for example, women have their monthly period, is that something that gives an advantage to women in cancer?

15:14 

Daniel: It does. That’s a very interesting observation. It is, so especially with heart disease, because the data is very strong that excess iron levels are very toxic to the heart and blood vessels. The reason that women have less heart attacks than men, before menopause, is because they’re doing monthly bloodletting. It’s like, literally, they’re giving a mini blood donation every month. It does keep the iron levels down. It does protect the heart. Now, at menopause, of course, when they no longer menstruate, then their iron levels can build up and then they quickly catch up to men, as far as the incidence of heart disease. But yes, you can donate blood. You can actually donate a pint of blood, which is like 500 milliliters, at the local blood bank. That’s the best way to remove the excess iron.

15:57 

Now, in cancer patients though, many times they come to us already anemic, meaning their hemoglobin is low. They can’t afford to give blood in that way. There are some supplements that we use that can gradually pull down iron levels safely. Just takes a little bit longer, but it does so in a way that does not make them more anemic.

16:15 

Steven: Okay, what are some of the supplements that you use for that?

16:18 

Daniel: One is a supplement called IP6 Gold. It’s a form of inositol, which is in the B vitamin family. It will chelate or grab, and then help remove, slowly, excess iron levels. And also excess copper levels. Having too much copper in your system can also stimulate the growth and spread of cancer. Not as much as iron. Iron is a major factor, but that supplement is sort of our plan B to lower iron levels. There are drugs that will directly chelate, like some people may have heard of EDTA chelation, for taking out lead or mercury. There are drugs that will specifically bind to and remove excess iron, but they’re very, very toxic to the kidneys. Most physicians don’t like the use of them, including myself. They’re quite kidney toxic, but they are available. There are commercial drugs that can do that, but I generally prefer either having a patient donate blood, as long as they’re not anemic, or take the natural supplement that works as well, just take a little bit longer.

17:22 

Steven: Originally we were talking about metabolic versus genomic. How does iron fit into the metabolic pathways or genomic pathways? Is that related to…

17:33 

Daniel: It is. Excess iron can cause genetic mutation. That’s one of its roles, that if there’s excess, it can cause damage to DNA. Because every time a cell divides and multiplies, or one creates two, two creates four, it has to make an exact copy of its predecessors’ DNA. It should be like a mirror image, an exact copy, but sometimes there’s a little hiccup in that cell replication. If the body’s not able to repair that DNA damage, that can result in a malignancy. But excess iron will cause that to happen.

18:06 

Then in the metabolic theory of cancer, it actually upregulates several of the metabolic pathways, like for instance, cancer when it’s in full growth and trying to spread, it’ll consume lots of sugar. It’ll upregulate enzymes, that allow it to be more proficient in consuming sugar and turning it into energy to fuel its growth and spread. Iron plays a role in assisting, or magnifying, cancer’s ability to get the energy it needs, especially from glucose.

18:35 

Steven: So that’s another feature of cancer, to have a need for glucose?

18:41 

Daniel: Yes, so there’s several fuel choices for cancer. Glucose, for most cancers, is the preferred food. I almost imagine it’s this way, because the way my brain works, I think in pictures. Imagine glucose comes through the front door. It’s a big front door. In fact, it’s like a double wide, big front door. If you close out that front door, because people have been able to arrest their cancer with a very low carb diet and just reducing sugar intake and starchy foods. But cancer says, okay, you closed that front door. I have a little backdoor that I can sneak in glutamine. Glutamine is an abundant amino acid. It will utilize glutamine if it has to. It’s not picky. It will hit its energy by hook or crook. One way or the other, it’ll get its energy. If you close that door too, cancer will say, oh darn, they thought of that one too. Then they’ll open up a little window on the side of the house, just a crack, and they can let in fatty acids. Fat can be a fuel for cancer.

19:39 

If you cut that off, then cancer has no choice but to start digesting normal cells. That process is called autophagy, which means cell digestion. If it can’t get it from the food that we eat, the fuel that it needs, like if we cut off those fuel lines, or take away its food dish, it’ll turn internally. It’ll actually cause normal cells to commit suicide against their will, but these cells will self-digest and then free up the needed glucose, or glutamine, or fat, right at the site that it needs it. So cancer is a beast for sure.

20:14 

Steven: Now, back to cancer’s need for sugar, I guess. Is there a difference between  glycolysis, where there’s lack of oxygen, more of an anaerobic environment, versus aerobic use of sugar, where it’s producing carbon dioxide, versus lactic acid and glycolysis?

20:36 

Daniel: Right, that gets back to the Warburg Effect. Dr. Otto Warburg, many years ago, described this observation that cancer does consume lots of sugar, but it can even do it in the presence of oxygen. A lot of times people think, well, cancer only forms where oxygen is deprived. That’s not necessarily true. Maybe initially it does that, but then it’ll actually, even if you put more oxygen, it can thrive as well. We have to block it from multiple pathways, but yes, they will upregulate the enzymes needed for a glycolysis. That’s deriving ATP from sugar, which is the energy molecule of the body, of course, adenosine triphosphate. That can be, actually, made outside of the mitochondria in the cell.

21:27 

Glycolysis takes place in the cytoplasm, around the nucleus, around the mitochondria, but the big deal is when the byproducts then go into the mitochondria. They can make a lot more ATP. But cancer, you got to be flexible because, depending on the tumor, some will be undergoing glycolysis. Others will be using glutamine, and then glutamine has to be then shuttled through the mitochondria. You have to be pretty flexible. Don’t just be sort of glued to just one theory of cancer. You have to hit it from multiple angles.

21:59 

Steven: Before we get more into your protocols for cancer… One of the things that connected us was, you’re interested in the BodyStream CO2 bath, as well as the carbogen. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about your thoughts about using carbon dioxide for cancer therapy?

22:18 

Daniel: I’ll be glad to explain that. One of the hallmarks of cancer is hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, in the tumor environment. Because you’ve got a mass that’s rapidly growing, it’ll very quickly outstrip its blood supply. In order to get blood supply, because blood brings nutrients, it brings that glucose and glutamine and fat to the cancer cell, so it has to have blood flow. It’ll form these vessels very, very quickly, in a way where these are not normal blood vessels, where they’re made carefully, where the blood vessels are well organized and they provide robust blood flow. These are vessels that are malformed, erratic, and as a result of that, some parts of the tumor will have normal levels of oxygen. That’s called normoxia, like normal oxygen level, but the majority of the areas are hypoxic, where they’re inadequately oxygenated.

23:12 

Those are going to be the most aggressive cancer cells. Those are going to be the cancer cells that will spread and metastasize and they’re the ones that are most resistant to treatment. Those are the cells that are going to have the most aggressive metabolic pathways activated. My interest in contacting you, Steven, was to have my patients have access to equipment and therapies that will improve tumor oxygenation, to reverse tumor hypoxia. It’s well known, through the Bohr Effect, that if you can increase, even temporarily, blood levels of carbon dioxide, you will actually enhance tumor, or just normal tissue oxygenation, including tumors. Whether it’s breathing carbogen, or using carbon dioxide topically, I’m always interested for ways that patients, especially they can use at home, because not everybody can afford a hyperbaric tank.

24:10 

Those are rather cumbersome. They’re very expensive. Most patients aren’t going to spend the $30,000 minimum it takes to get a soft shell. They do have hard shell, which are hundreds of thousands. I was very interested in the equipment that you have, and the data that you have, showing that the CO2 increases, quite profoundly, tissue oxygenation, including the tumor.

24:35 

Steven: As far as different types of cancer, would you more likely use it topically versus, let’s say, if they have breast cancer, would you have them use like the BodyStream topically, versus inhaling the carbogen? Or if you have different strategies of how you want to use the topical CO2, versus the inhalation of carbogen?

24:58 

Daniel: The data is pretty strong for both. I don’t necessarily have a preference. It may depend on the patient. Some patients, if they’re frail, they don’t have a lot of strength, then maybe just breathing the carbogen. It would be easier for them. But the others, that would like to do the topical, or even both, I’m not against both being done. It really depends on the individual patient’s circumstance, how sick they are. Some patients come to us and, even though they have stage four cancer, they’re actually in good health. You wouldn’t even know they have cancer. Others that come to see us are almost at death’s door. They’re cachectic. They have a lot of muscle wasting. They look very, very sick. That might be difficult for them to use the BodyStream device, and then the breathing of the carbogen air would be more appropriate.

25:45 

Steven: I guess it’d be interesting to see what kind of results you get with either of them, as far as their reduction in the size of their tumor, or better energy, or feeling better overall. Have you looked into breathing at all? Like any Buteyko, or different types of breathing methods to help people retain and use oxygen better in their body? Through breathing a certain way versus, a lot of people tend to mouth breathe at night. They’re losing a lot of carbon dioxide at night, or during the day they could be mouth breathing, or breathing too rapidly, getting to the point of almost hyperventilating, or breathing off too much CO2.

26:28 

Daniel: Part of my reason is to be able to tap into your expertise on that, because I’m beginning to learn more about that. I certainly understand the importance, and have for years, the importance of oxygenating the tumor environment to get better results. Oftentimes when we’re doing IV therapies in the office, whether it’s IV vitamin C or IV curcumin, or a variety of things that we do for patients that need IV therapies, we actually will infuse ozonated saline. We take sterile saline water and we infuse medical grade ozone, because that will also increase blood oxygen levels and tumor oxygen levels. It increases the amount of diphosphoglycerate, because that also moves that Bohr curve to the right, just like carbon dioxide will, or increasing temperature. We will actually incorporate hyperthermia.

27:21 

We sometimes will stack these strategies with carbogen and ozonated saline and hyperthermia to really, really get that Bohr curve shifted to the right, so we get even greater oxygen levels in the tumor. Because when you do that, then tumors become very, very vulnerable. When you actually can really almost hyperoxygenate that hypoxic tumor environment. It really puts them in a bind. It makes them less aggressive. They become much more responsive. Even if they didn’t seek alternative therapy, if their oncologist would incorporate some of these things, they would find that their tumors would become more chemo sensitive, or radio sensitive. I mean, there’s so much data now showing that by increasing tumor oxygen levels, you increase the efficacy of chemotherapy or radiation. These have applications, not just for what I do in the alternative cancer treatment field, but even conventional oncologists. I think it would be in their best interest to educate themselves on these things.

28:20 

Steven: For sure. You talk about hyperthermia. Is that like doing a sauna, or is it just heating the tumor itself, or is that heating the whole body?

28:30 

Daniel: It isn’t just a sauna or like a bio mat. Those do heat more the surface of the skin. We have two actual hospital medical grade hyperthermia machines, like bonafide hyperthermia machines. They’ll actually heat tumor tissue at a much deeper level, deeper into the body than, like say, a heating pad, or a bio mat, or a sauna might do. We do apply it, because that increases tumor blood flow, number one, because anything that you’re taking is only as good as the amount that actually gets to the tumor, or that permeates it. When you can increase, even temporarily, blood flow through a tumor, because again, they have very erratic blood vessels, so that blood flow is not uniform. You can get some temporary uniform blood flow by applying hyperthermia.

29:15 

You’re going to get more delivery of, either the chemo drug, or the natural compounds, to the tumor and you increase oxygen levels and many other things. Then if the heat is high enough, you can actually get a direct cytotoxic effect, where you directly outright kill the cancer cells from sufficient heat, because… because cancer does not have perfect blood vessels, they can’t dissipate the heat as efficiently as normal cells. Normal cells have a well-developed blood network, so any heat that builds up is just whisked away. It can literally just cause that heat to exit, because of the robust blood flow, but cancer doesn’t have that same robust blood flow. It’s very poor, so the heat tends to stay there. It doesn’t dissipate, but that’s good, we use that to our advantage to, in a sense, superheat them and cause them to die.

30:05 

Steven: I thought I read somewhere, I could be wrong about this, that heat actually affects how oxygen binds to the hemoglobin. With heat, more oxygen will be released and be able to be utilized by the cells. Have you heard that or read that?

30:23 

Daniel: That’s exactly right. It does the same thing that increasing carbon dioxide does. When you read about the Bohr Effect and how hemoglobin has a lower affinity for oxygen, when you have extra carbon dioxide, or heat, or extra diphosphoglycerate. That’s a compound that also coaxes hemoglobin to release the oxygen to the tissues, instead of being selfish and binding to it. We can do that with the ozonated saline, to increase blood levels of diphosphoglycerate, by having them breathe carbogen or receive topical carbon dioxide, or just increase the temperature of the tumor through hyperthermia. It all is synergistic with each other. It’s all converging on the same pathway to get an even greater response.

31:09 

Steven: When someone comes to your clinic with cancer, what is your protocols? You probably do some nutritional things, you do all these different therapies with the heat, with the carbogen. What’s a typical cancer patient protocol that you take them through?

31:26 

Daniel: The kind of cancer patients we work with, well, we treat all types of cancer, because sometimes people will contact us and say, well, I have a certain type of lymphoma. Do you treat that? Or I have a rare type of brain tumor, do you treat that? I mean, in the last 34 years, we’ve seen pretty much all the major cancers, of course, like breast cancer, prostate, colon. But we’ve had the opportunity to treat some very rare cancers, that you might only see once in your career. We treat all cancer types.

31:57 

The type of patients, that tend to seek me out, are those who are very smart and savvy. And who realize that, especially for a late stage cancer, conventional therapy alone is often not enough. They realize that the best treatment outcomes are seen when patients combine or integrate the best of Western medicine, or conventional medicine, with the best of alternative medicine. Those are the kind of people that come to see me. They’re very motivated. They want to get better. Nobody wants to die before their time.

32:30 

Steven: What would you say are the best of the Western approaches to cancer? Chemo, versus radiation, versus certain drugs and surgery?

32:43 

Daniel: Here’s how I approach it. When someone comes to me, and sometimes they’ll contact us and say, Dr. Thomas, I’m sort of philosophically against chemo or radiation, especially chemo. I don’t want to put a “poison” in my body. I understand that. I mean, I do. From my standpoint, I totally get it. But I also tell them this, I say, look, your life is so important, not only to you, to your family, do you really want to leave any options off the table, that could literally save your life? They’re like, well, no. I mean, I want to do whatever it takes, like whatever it is.

33:15 

The good news is that, part of my training in the field of integrative cancer therapy, is to help limit the side effects that they’re getting from conventional therapy. Because people do fear the side effects. We’ve had people, family members, that went through it, or were familiar with it, or maybe experiencing it. But what if there’s a way to reduce those side effects, where now the therapy is much more tolerable and less likely for those cancer cells to develop resistance, because that happens. That’s a challenge that oncologists deal with every day. It’s called chemo resistance.

33:48 

And then, the other side, radiation oncologists. It’s called radio resistance. I mean, those are actually words that they use in their vocabulary. You want your tumors, cancer cells, to be radio sensitive and chemo sensitive, or immuno sensitive. Cancer has lots of tricks up its sleeve to evade the immune system, so you want to, sort of, break down those barriers. So I’m not against conventional therapy, but the best results, and best outcomes I’ve seen over the last 30 plus years, are those patients who really take the best of both. You blend both, because not only can we get better results from their traditional conventional therapy, we can reduce the side effects. I’m open to anything that gets the patient better.

34:29 

My approach, my expertise, is going to be in the more natural, the more, I call it next generation medicine, because a lot of what we’re doing is… I don’t even really like the term alternative medicine, because a lot of time that’s sort of a dirty word. It’s like, oh, you’re not doing it. You’re doing an alternative. Like it’s a downgrade. That somehow you’re not being very smart by rejecting Western medicine. A lot of the things that we’re doing, I know, will be part of Western medicine. It may take a while, but everything that we do is data driven.

35:01 

I don’t make up any of this stuff as I go along, Steven. I’m humble enough to know that these scientists are brilliant. Thank God for these young men and women with PhDs, who are so passionate about pushing the state of the science. I rely on their studies, and I talk with them to pick their brain, and then we move forward with very cutting edge therapy. A lot of what we’re doing is almost even beyond alternative medicine. It’s really next generation medicine, and that I do believe will be part of mainstream care.

35:25 

Those are the type of people that come to see me, that want a doctor that is willing to think outside the box. They want a doctor who’s willing to go the extra mile, to do whatever it takes to get them better. Sometimes we do blend the best of both worlds.

35:37 

Steven: Would integrative medicine, would that be a term that you would use?

35:41 

Daniel: Yes. My field, it would be considered integrative medicine, because they’ve gotten away from the word holistic. Nowadays, I guess with diet, people don’t say, oh, I’m a vegan. I eat plant based. I guess it’s like a same thing, but just new terminology. The terms today people use is, I’m going to see a functional medicine doctor, or an integrative physician. It’s someone who’s trained traditionally, but then went back and got trained in the more natural approaches and they kind of blend the two, depending on the situation. Yes, it would be integrative.

36:16 

Steven: Is diet something that you recommend to patients… changing? Do you think it’s better to be more plant based, or keto, or is it different for different people?

36:28 

Daniel: That’s a really good question. I mean, we’re all different. I don’t know if there’s any one size fits all. There’s probably one size fits most, but not one size fits all. But how we approach cancer, because cancer is not a single mechanism disease, it’s sort of multi mechanistic, and we hit it from multiple angles. We have a literal arsenal and that arsenal includes diet, exercise, supplements, off-label medicines, or repurposed medicine, are sort of the same thing where we’re taking old medicines, but finding new uses for them. Everyone has heard about, of course, Ivermectin on the news, being a repurposed medicine for COVID. There is evidence that works and there’s published data, but there’s such a strong push obviously towards the vaccines that they sort of downgrade the role of Ivermectin.

37:16 

That’s an example of using a medicine in a way that was not the original intent of the medicine, but they found other uses for it. We use off-label or repurposed medicines. Then other therapies, like the carbogen, the BodyStream topical carbon dioxide,  hyperthermia, IV therapies. But because cancer is not a disease of a body part, it’s really a disease of the entire body, we hit it methodically from all these multiple angles I was mentioning.

37:47 

Our approach is kind of twofold. Not only do we want to eradicate the cancer that you have, and get you into complete remission, and to get to a point where it’s called no evidence of disease. That means where you have a scan, and then that scan shows no more cancer, where previous scans did. That’s called no evidence of disease. Then they generally will follow you, for a while afterwards, with periodic scans, to make sure you stay in remission. But it’s one thing to attain remission. It’s another thing to maintain it. It’s like there’s 101 ways to lose weight, keeping it off can be pretty challenging as well. The maintaining remission is just as important as attaining it. We’re entrenched in both arenas. Getting rid of the cancer you have, with an eye in the future, to prevent the disease from returning.

38:41 

Steven: Back to the hyperthermia. How does that work exactly? How do you heat up the tumor? And what temperature do you heat it up to usually?

38:51 

Daniel: That depends on the tumor, but generally, this is a device that uses radio frequency. In fact, most of the studies, when you read about medical hyperthermia, because there’s different ways. There’s microwave technologies, radio frequency. There’s another method, or two, that are being looked at, but the most of the data is on using radio frequency, that at certain frequencies you can heat tissue. Generally we’re heating a tumor to about 43 degrees centigrade, which would be about 107.5 to 108 degrees Fahrenheit. Okay, I’d have to do the conversion, but it’s going to be something close to that, so about 40 degrees.

39:33 

The neighboring, normal tissues, we’ll heat up a bit, but not near as much. We keep the normal tissues on the cool side, but that’s what a true medical hyperthermia machine will do. It can actually differentiate and just selectively heat up, or superheat, the tumor tissue, and only mildly warm. We’re getting the tumors hot, but we’re only making the normal cells warm. Warm does not harm those cells. Hot can harm cells. It’s a device that, it looks almost like, maybe the size of this mouse pad. It can be applied over the area. It actually feels good. It actually almost feels like a heating pad. They don’t really get a sense that it’s heating quite deep into the center of the tumor, and it’s not heating normal cells, so they don’t really feel any sort of burn. In fact, they should not get burned when it’s done properly. It’s a device. It’s generally applied for about 30 to 45 minutes.

40:30 

Steven: If someone doesn’t have access to one of those machines, do you think sauna, like infrared sauna, does it penetrate deeper than regular sauna? Do you think that’s beneficial?

40:38 

Daniel: There’s some benefit, but it just doesn’t heat it deep enough. You won’t get that differential heating, that you would get with a true medical hyperthermia, where you’ll actually more like superheat the cancer cells, but only mildly warm the normal cells. Now, I do like saunas for detoxing, for sweating. I mean, I think that’s a part of a good health protocol. And I would certainly emphasize it to prevent cancer from coming back, for preventing recurrence. Or when someone comes to me and says, look, I don’t have any cancer, but I have a strong family history of it. Can we do really thorough bloodwork and can we look at my diet and lifestyle, so if there’s anything I need to be proactive about, I can do that. I will emphasize things like that, if they’ve never had cancer and they want to prevent it outright from coming there in the first place, or once in remission, then saunas do play a part for overall health long term.

41:34 

Steven: Your protocol, how does it balance… What is more important, treating the whole person, the health of the whole person, or treating the tumor itself? The whole person being the external environment of the tumor, versus the tumor? Is either of those more important?

41:52 

Daniel: They’re pretty equally important, but to eradicate cancer and to prevent its return, you really have to overcome the physiologic barriers to successful cancer treatment. That’s a lot of times why the statistics, and that bears us out, the results in conventional therapy, aren’t as good as they could be, because we’re not paying enough attention to the barriers that are preventing successful treatment. In my opinion, they don’t need to develop stronger and stronger chemo drugs. If you’re just looking at the conventional side. We have an arsenal. We have many drugs, they don’t need more drugs. You just need to make those drugs work better, or you need to tear down the barriers of those working better, or you need to reduce their side effects.

42:37 

We have plenty of ammo. I don’t think we need to develop more ammunition. We just need to use what we have in a better way. Our approach is sort of eightfold. Do you want me to go and describe that now, what sort of the approach that we take?

42:51 

Steven: Yes, that’d be great. I’d love to hear that.

42:53 

Daniel: To get rid of the barriers that stand in the way of successful treatment, you have to focus on these eight areas. Number one, and we talked about this earlier, you really have to target cancer’s addiction to iron. That’s going to be front and center, but cancer is also addicted to methionine. I’m working very closely with a PhD scientist, named Dr. Robert Hoffman, and he’s almost 80 years old, but he’s the leading authority on the role that methionine, which is an amino acid, plays in cancer. And cancer is almost as addicted to methionine as it is iron.

43:30 

Steven: That’s found only in meat products. Is that correct?

43:33 

Daniel: Well, they found it in much higher amounts. When you’re talking about what sort of diet to advocate, for most cancer patients I do advocate a plant based diet. Many studies have been done over the years, I mean, some of these studies go back much older than you and I are, where they’ve looked at types of diets in different populations around the world and the rates of cancer. They do know that vegetarians do have lower rates of cancer and heart disease. Vegetarians do get cancer, but fortunately it’s at a much lesser rate. Then they too, on average, live about seven years longer than a meat eater. When I read about that data, that was years ago.

44:12 

I was a teenager at the time. I was 15 or 16. I became a vegetarian just based on the longevity research. I thought, “Really, seven years longer? That’s almost a decade. Man, sign me up!” I mean, to me it was an easy decision. They didn’t have back then all the products they have nowadays. If you get a craving for a cheeseburger you can get like a Beyond meat burger and Nelson bacon cheese. You didn’t have all those choices like they do now. It’s easier to be plant based now. But I do advocate a plant based diet, because you’re getting less methionine. Because too much methionine actually does shorten lifespan, that’s why vegetarians live longer, because they’re consuming less methionine. They get on average about half the methionine of a typical meat eating American. So, I do like that.

44:53 

Steven: What do you think is going on with methionine? Why is it so important in cancer?

44:58 

Daniel: It’s used in so many different pathways. One of the things it uses it for, is when cancer cells are dividing and multiplying, and if there’s any hiccups in its DNA, where it might stop itself from dividing, it actually helps repair that damage. It’s a way to ensure that cancer can proliferate and just keep dividing and multiplying. The tumor will get bigger. It can spread. It’s an essential amino acid for that.

45:24 

It doesn’t act as food. It’s not like glucose, or glutamine, or fat. It doesn’t feed the cancer. It’s not a food or fuel source, but it is an essential amino acid. Like iron, there’s no substitute. It has to have methionine. It’s not like another amino acid can do what it does. By going on a low methionine diet, which is what a vegan diet is, you really start making a dent in cancer. Our first approach is we target cancer’s addiction to methionine and iron, and then its resistance to, what is called, ferroptosis.

45:54 

Ferroptosis is iron mediated cell death. Some of your listeners may have heard of the term apoptosis. That’s when a cancer cell literally dies. That’s our goal, is to push a cancer into apoptosis. Ferroptosis is a subset of that. And it’s actually more desirable. I’ll tell you why. It results in the death of a cancer cell, but it also gets the immune system involved in a very profound way, that apoptosis does not. You get the troops onto the scene of the battle. You get your immune cells involved, so there’s that advantage. But cancer has many ways to resist ferroptosis, because this is iron mediated cell death. We spoke about how cancer cells have a whole lot more iron going on.

46:39 

Steven: That varies as for ferritin?

46:41 

Daniel: Yes. It’s like a ferrous metal would be iron. Ferritin is higher, and then ferroptosis, iron mediated apoptosis. But cancer has so much iron. How does it not allow all that iron to kill it, because a lot of iron is very toxic? It has many, many ways to stop all that iron from causing its demise. We can break down those barriers. We can remove its resistance to ferroptosis. That’s the first approach, targeting cancer’s addiction to iron and methionine, and its resistance to ferroptosis, which is iron mediated cell death.

47:17 

The second thing we do is, we talked about cancer’s need for glucose or glutamine. We actually inhibit cancer’s ability to gorge on glucose or glutamine. We really want to sort of cut those fuel lines.

47:33 

Steven: So this would be number four in your set protocol?

47:37 

Daniel: Pardon me?

47:38 

Steven: The glucose part, is that number four in the eight…

47:42 

Daniel: No, that would be number two. The first one is targeting iron and methionine addiction and resistance to ferroptosis. Then, number two would be inhibiting cancer’s ability to metabolize glucose, or glutamine, for energy.

47:57 

Steven: How do you do that?

47:59 

Daniel: Well, we can use certain repurpose drugs like Metformin, for instance. Metformin is a very good glycolysis inhibitor and cuts a fuel line to glucose. Glutamine, we can block by using a natural compound called sodium selenite. It’s a form of selenium, but it’s a more potent form. It actually targets cancer stem cells, which I’ll talk about in a little bit, and it targets glutamine metabolism. So we block that. There’s recent data that is saying, we maybe shouldn’t be too aggressive in shutting down fat metabolism by cancer, because fat is needed by every cell. Our cell membranes, just the outer membrane of our cells, is a double layered lipid or fatty layer. Cancer cells need that same layer, but the thing is if you really block cancer’s ability to get fat, to make new cell walls, then you’re not going to be able to induce ferroptosis, because what ultimately iron mediated cell death does, is we know that iron is very oxidative. That’s why iron rusts. It’s a metal that’s prone to oxidation.

49:07 

If you inhibit fat from getting to cells, you’re going to hit ferroptosis. Because how it kills a cancer cell, is it induces oxidation of the fats in a cancer cell. It literally takes the fats, that are part of the cell structure, and turns them rancid. It’s like when oils go bad and they oxidize. That’s what iron does. Iron actually targets the lipids, or fats, in a cell, in a cancer cell, and it causes those to oxidize and turn rancid and then the cell dies. I’m not a fan of blocking lipid metabolism, because if you do, you may actually stop ferroptosis, which is a desired pathway we want to stimulate to kill cancer cells. That’d be number two, just inhibiting glucose and glutamine and not really getting aggressive on the fat metabolism.

49:52 

Number three would be, what we talked about earlier, is just increasing tumor blood flow and reducing tumor hypoxia, and all of its sort of associated effects. That’s definitely a bullet point of how we approach cancer.

50:06 

Steven: Is there a way you measure that currently, the tumor hypoxia?

50:10 

Daniel: Well, no. I mean, you can do that experimentally. When we read these studies, these animal studies, where they do these therapies, they actually have probes in the tumor, so they can actually measure the level of oxygen in the hypoxic areas of the tumor. We’re really not going to inject a patient, but there’s so much animal data supporting that this does in fact work, that we can be confident that when applied to humans, it will do the same thing.

50:35 

Then number four, is you have to reduce inflammation because, I’m sure a lot of your listeners have read that inflammation is a major driver of all disease, not just cancer, but heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s. You have to lower inflammatory markers. Those can be directly measured. That’s the good news on that. You can directly measure things like C reactive protein, homocysteine, fibrinogen and other things like that. There’s multiple natural products that can reduce that. So, reducing inflammation.

51:06 

Then number five, you have to get the immune system in a profound way, because that is sort of the silent partner in all of this. All the work can’t be just done by your physician or you, so to speak, as a patient, by eating a good diet. We need your immune system, sort of, off the sidelines front and center. There are ways to stimulate the immune system, and then not only stimulate the immune system, but remove the barriers that can inhibit a strong immune system from working. It isn’t enough just to get the immune system revved up. You have to remove those barriers that would prevent it from doing its job. So we focus on immunotherapy.

51:41 

And one new area they’re finding, is suppressing the metastatic potential of cancer. Because what kills people, Steven, isn’t the primary tumor. If all cancer did was just a tumor grew, well, then the best thing would be surgery, just remove the tumor and it’s a done deal, right? It’s because cancer spreads. It’s the metastasis that ultimately causes people to die, when it goes to other sites or other organs. A big player in that is… circulating tumor cells will spread through the lymphatic system. Not everything is spread through bloodstream. Part of that is spread through the lymphatic system.

52:20 

One of the compounds that we use to stop that, and there’s excellent data behind it, is lithium. Not the low doses that you would get over the counter. We’re using like prescription lithium, but not the levels that you would give for someone that has, say, schizophrenia or PTSD. I mean, it’s a mental health drug. And in normal amounts they would use for those patients it’s quite toxic, but there’s data saying that using low doses of prescription lithium can work, oftentimes, just as good, but without the side effects. We’re using a 90% reduction, to help prevent the lymphatic system from spreading cancer.

52:56 

Then number seven is, you have to not only target cancer cells, you have to target cancer stem cells. Those are sort of the dormant babies of the mother tumor, that can create new cancer. We have to focus on that. Then the last thing, is then just promoting the removal of the tumor debris, because people sometimes ask me, they’ll say, Doc Thomas, what happens to a cancer cell when it dies? When it undergoes apoptosis, or ferroptosis, or however it dies? You got this gunk sitting there, like this dead debris. I mean, that’s obviously not a good thing. How does your body remove it?

53:30 

There’s compounds called resolvents, which assist the immune system to clear out, literally, the garbage. It’s like the garbage man, the macrophages. There’s compounds in the body called resolvents, that help coax and promote the macrophages to remove the tumor debris, because if we don’t get rid of it, it can create more cancers. That’d be the eighth and final one, is promoting efficient removal of tumor debris.

53:57 

Steven: Very interesting. Maybe you could speak a little bit too about your success rate with cancer. Do you normally get like stage four type cancer patients, or do you get a wide variety of stage one, stage two? Do people come to you as a last resort, or is it just a wide range of people that have cancer, that have heard of your success and want to get treatment right away?

54:24 

Daniel: That’s a really good question. Sadly, sadly, most of the patients that seek us out are stage four. Cancer has four stages. Actually, it’s five. There is a stage zero, and the stage zero is a stage. It’s just hard to find it because it’s too small to be seen on a scan, because even the best, latest generation CAT scan or MRI machine or PET scanner, there has to be a certain minimum size to that tumor. It’s called the resolution limit. For most scanners, it has to be at least three millimeters wide to be actually seen on a scan, otherwise it just blends in with normal tissue, but normally stage one through four.

54:58 

Stage three and stage four are the metastatic stages, where they spread. Stage four, of course, is where it spread more throughout the body, but sadly, most of the patients that we see are stage four. There’s just not enough public awareness about alternative therapies, or that they can be integrated. People sometimes believe that it has to be one or the other. Either have to go all conventional or all natural, and then people don’t. You can combine the two. The best results are generally seen when you integrate or combine the two, but sadly, people do come to us sort of as a last resort.

55:30 

I might see one or two stage one patients a year. I wish I would see it a lot more, but most of them are stage four, occasionally stage three. They’re sort of late in the stage four, where then they really desperately need options. But our success rate is quite high. We don’t win every case. I wish we did, because some people come to us almost at death’s door, like they’re really very ill. But we win more than we lose, way more than we lose. Having done this now for over three decades, I’ve seen people pull through a situation where you think, how did that even… how was that possible? I mean, they were so ill and their blood work was so messed up and their scans were quite traumatic. And they pulled through and we got them into remission.

56:17 

I’ve seen cases that even surprised me. When someone comes to me and says, Dr. Thomas, my oncologist said there’s nothing more that they can do. That they run out of options and that I’m going to die from this disease. What do you say? Quite honestly, I look him in the eye and I tell him, well, your doctor said you’re going to die. What do I say? Maybe, but maybe not. They say, what do you mean “maybe not?” Well, the “maybe not” comes from having patients pull through some really dire circumstances and recover from their cancer. When you see that enough over the years, you learn not to give up hope, because, I tell patients, you’re still alive. They say, is there hope? Well, you’re still alive. If you’re dead, there’s no hope. Obviously, game over, but if you’re alive, this cancer hasn’t taken you out yet.

57:03 

The fact that you’re still here, means that there’s hope, but the good news is, because the reason our success rate is higher, is we’re not putting all our eggs in one basket. We’re not treating a patient, or having them be treated, just conventionally. We’re integrating, or combining, synergistic therapies, that will improve their chances of beating it. That’s why the success rate is higher, is we’re doing complementary approaches that are synergistic.

57:28 

Steven: You’re just talking about hope. How big of a role does hope actually play in the role of cancer, like overcoming cancer? Does that play a big factor in people knowing that maybe there is hope? I could do this, versus hearing from a doctor that they’re going to die and that there’s basically no hope. Does hope play a big factor in people’s success rate?

57:51 

Daniel: Major, I think we underplay our mindset. I think that is more than we realize, that when someone, a doctor, tells a patient that, it almost seems to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s like, people give up. Maybe from their standpoint, they’re just being honest with a patient and say, look, I’ve done everything. There’s really nothing more I can offer you, that you may have to seek treatment elsewhere, but anyways. So, no, we do give hope, but it’s legitimate hope. It’s not false hope, because our toolbox is much larger. It’s rare that we run out of tools. In fact, the toolbox keeps growing. It’s getting heavier and heavier. I’m getting a hernia lifting it, because I study, and as more data comes out from scientists, we’re able to expand what we’re doing. We have more treatment option. We have more ammunition, not less.

58:42 

That’s where the legitimate hope comes in. It’s rare that we run out of options. But hope makes a huge difference. When people realize there may be light at the end of the tunnel, and there are some additional things that we can do, where there’s strong data behind it. This renewed chance that they can actually beat this disease is so important. The fact that there is a legitimate chance you can beat this disease and you can get on with your life, without this black cloud, called cancer, following you everywhere. It plays a role more than we realize, your mindset, but yes, hope, legitimate hope, it’s so important.

59:19 

Steven: Yes, for sure. I believe that. I recommend learning more about some of our breathing exercises, because I think it can help retain CO2. It can help you relax. It can do other things that could potentially help cancer patients, in addition to things like carbogen and the BodyStream.

59:42 

Daniel: That’s why I wanted to tap into your expertise, because you have a lot more expertise in that than I do. I still consider myself a student of the body. Steven, sometimes when people say, Oh, Dr. Thomas, you seem to know quite a bit. You read a lot and have a lot of education, and I say, Well, thank you, but I feel like we’re not there yet. There’s more to learn. If someone says that we know everything there is to know about the human body, we haven’t even scratched the surface. I mean, these bodies are extremely complex.

1:00:10 

I have a separate master’s degree in clinical neuroscience. It wasn’t a field I was going to go into, but I was just fascinated by. I mean, that’s a whole other area of just… we haven’t even scratched the surface of the surface on just the intricacies of the human brain. It’s good to know that there is new knowledge coming out. That if a doctor sort of says, Oh, there’s nothing new under the sun. There’s a lot new. In fact, the challenge is trying to keep up with it and being open minded.

1:00:37 

Not everything a scientist will tout, or maybe discover, will be super useful. But those things that are my job, is to be aware of it, and whenever possible, when it makes sense, and that it’s safe to do, I’m going to be implementing it on behalf of patients.

1:00:53 

Steven: What are some of the most exciting things that you’re learning about in the cancer research, that seem the most promising right now?

1:01:00 

Daniel: That’s a good question. One thing that has me quite intrigued, I haven’t done that therapy yet, but it’s two compounds that are found in eggplant. Two natural compounds that are found in eggplant. One is called solasonin and the other one is called solamargin. Solasonin and solamargin are natural plant compounds that are found in other plants, but eggplant seems to have quite a bit. There’s some pretty strong animal data that, when that is administered, it can actually work as strong, if not stronger, than chemo, without the side effects, where it has a direct cytotoxic effect, without harming normal cells.

1:01:37 

What has me really intrigued about these compounds, is the data seems to indicate that they may give, or impart, lasting immunity to cancer. Lasting immunity. It’d be like if you got a COVID shot, but that one shot last you the rest of your life. No more boosters sort of a thing. I mean, that’d be good if you can just get one shot and never have to take a booster. It seems to have that property, because again, my interest is not only helping eradicate the existing cancer a patient has, but preventing it from coming back. Because, oftentimes when cancer does come back, it comes back with a vengeance, right? I mean, we probably have known people where that’s happened to. Prevention, or preventing a recurrence, is equally important. The potential that a compound could give lasting immunity of cancer has me quite intrigued.

1:02:25 

I had a small amount of these compounds made. I do have some medicinal chemists. These are men and women with PhDs, in the field of medicinal chemistry, where they can actually synthesize from scratch, because some of these compounds you can’t even get them at a compounding pharmacy, because there’s no raw material available to them. So I get small batches. I haven’t used it yet, but I’m waiting for the right situation where I’ll use it.

1:02:53 

I have administered it to myself. Now, this may sound odd to some of your listeners, but you know, you have to start somewhere. The data was strong enough that I knew it was going to be safe. But I administered an IV, so I had my wife, who’s as a nurse, administer these compounds in an IV, just to make sure, how did I feel during the IV? Did I feel nauseous? Did my heart rate go up? Did my blood pressure go up or go down? I mean, did I have any weird symptoms the following days? I had none of that. I mean, I just wanted to make sure that, is the treatment itself tolerable? Was there anything objectionable that a patient might experience? So I found it was fine.

1:03:30 

So I may start, but that’s one thing that has me intrigued. If you read the literature, where things seem to be moving, the direction is into plant compounds. Scientists are saying, plants probably hold the key to all of our ills of mankind. Not just cancer, but heart disease, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, that the cures may be out there already. They’re somewhere locked in a plant, and it’s our job to discover those and to test them. Plant compounds, I believe, it’s going to be the future.

1:04:03 

In fact, a lot of our drugs today… look at Digoxin, an old heart drug, was an extract from the foxglove plant. Many of our drugs had their basis in natural medicine at one time. This is just sort of a resurgence of interest in using natural compounds, things found in nature, that may hold the key.

1:04:21 

Steven: Okay. As far as the cancers you treat, like leukemia, is that different treating leukemia versus a breast cancer? Do you take different approaches for different types of cancers, or is it pretty similar for… no matter what type of cancer you have?

1:04:39 

Daniel: Some things will be very similar. The things that cancer share in common, whether it’s, what’s called a liquid cancer, like a blood cancer, like leukemia. Where there’s not like tumors, per se, or a lymphoma. And then what are called solid tumors, which would be like a breast tumor, or a prostate tumor, or a lung tumor, or colon cancer. Those are called solid tumors, versus liquid cancers. There are some things that we do that are the same.

1:05:05 

All cancers have an addiction to methionine and iron. It doesn’t matter the type of cancer. That’s across the board. We do definitely focus on blocking that pathway, but then other things will be different. It depends, for instance, on what chemo drugs that the patient may be on, because there’s so much data on different natural compounds that can synergize and amplify the beneficial anti-cancer effect of certain chemo drugs. Then I’ll get very specific to the patient and what they may be receiving, because part of my job is to address those things that the oncologist is not.

1:05:37 

Okay, you’re on a good chemo medicine. How can we get it to work better? What does the data show? What can synergize and amplify the effect, the desired effect? Then what can we do to reduce the side effects? That’ll vary from person to person, depending on what their oncologist has them on. Then we do very, very thorough bloodwork. I should have mentioned this earlier. How we start out with a patient is, of course, in addition to a very thorough medical history. We order a thorough blood panel, where you go into the lab and they’re drawing off like 16 tubes of blood, like a lot of blood, but it’s important, because with cancer, more information is better than less.

1:06:13 

So we go far beyond just the standard, complete blood count, or CBC metabolic panel, lipid panel. They may have had a tumor marker. We go way beyond that. We’re looking at inflammatory levels, different metabolic markers. We’re looking at iron levels. We’re looking at vitamin D levels, because low vitamin D can be a risk factor for cancer. The thorough blood work will vary from person to person, but the blood work then allows it to be personalized, because the blood work can be a roadmap in that patient of the direction we need to go into, to help them beat their cancer. Part of it is going to be similar, the parts that are universal to all cancers, but then it’s going to be a lot of individuality, depending on what the patient is taking in terms of medications and what their blood work shows we need to do.

1:07:00 

Steven: Most of your patients, are they local, or do they travel to see you?

1:07:06 

Daniel: It’s about half and half. We’re in the Orlando, Florida area. Half the patients will travel to see us. A lot live in Florida. It’s just a car drive to us, but we have had patients, I mean at this point, all over the world. How we do it, is through telemedicine. I mean, chances are your listeners, since COVID, have visited their doctor virtually, like either with Zoom or GoToMeeting, or some sort of format, where they’ll have a live visit, just on the computer. We do a lot of that. I have patients all over the globe and we’re able to treat them, because fortunately, most pharmacies, no matter where they are, they will honor prescriptions from a US physician, because our educational system is superb, top-notch as far as education.

1:07:54 

Even though I may not be licensed in that country, they will honor, because again, our approach is incorporating a diet, exercise, supplements, which they can just order online and then repurpose medicine. So I’ll issue a prescription. Then we can file bloodwork. I can order bloodwork. They’ll get it done at their local lab. I’ll go over results with the patient, like a video conference. There’s so much that we can do that does not require them to be here, but for patients that feel like they want to see me, or want to get some of these advanced IV therapies, then they’ll actually come to us and be treated in the office.

1:08:26 

Steven: If someone did want to see you, do you have a website, or how would they go about contacting you, or learning more about your work?

1:08:34 

Daniel: The website address is healthyandstrong.com. You spell out the word “and”. There it outlines like the steps, if they wanted to become a patient, or have that initial consultation. We do that thorough blood work. Some patients don’t necessarily want to be a current patient. They just want me to do that very thorough evaluation and then give them the recommendations that I believe will give them the best chances moving forward, because some people need just guidance. They want to have their bloodwork reviewed. What supplements should I be taking? What supplements should I not be taking? Because with cancer, just as important as knowing what to take, is knowing what not to take, because some supplements could unwittingly, or inadvertently, be causing the cancer to get worse. You don’t want that.

1:09:17 

Some will just do that very thorough, it’s a two hour visit. Then I send a very thorough e-mail, that will summarize over all of my findings and recommendations. There’s different options for people. People that want to be under my direct care, and then those that want me to integrate with their oncologist and do dual care. They have the conventional and the alternative combined. Then those that just need guidance. Like I said, once in a while, it’s fun for me to get people that don’t have cancer. They just don’t want to get it. But most of the people that have come to see us are stage four, but there are some people that are really, really aware of this and, because of their family history of cancer, they’ll seek us out, so they don’t end up getting cancer. Those are more like wellness patients, which I really like.

1:10:03 

Steven: Thanks for being on the call. It was super interesting learning about your protocol. The work you’ve done is amazing. Just the effect you have on people’s lives, just saving someone’s life, who might have died of cancer, and just the effects that has on their family members and their friends. It’s really amazing the work you’re doing. The amount of research you continue to do, I’m sure you’re going to even save more lives and make a big impact on people’s lives that have cancer…

1:10:33 

Daniel: Thank you. Thank you for those kind words, Steven. I’ll be tapping into your expertise, so I’ll be back…

1:10:38 

Steven: All right. Awesome. Sounds great. All right. Take care.

1:10:42 

Daniel: Okay, thank you.