Best Of: Navigating Cancer, Insights and Resilience with Dr. Joe Zundell

You're listening to the best of the PT Prophet podcast, episode number 347. Today we're taking it back to the episode featuring Dr. Joe Zundell, and he will be talking about navigating cancer insights and resilience. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance and movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

Welcome back to the PT Profit Podcast. My name is Chris. I'm giving you your intro for today's episode, which is a powerful one, which is a blast from the past recorded a little while ago. Back for episode 234. And in this episode, Beverly talks with Dr. Joe Zundell, a dedicated cancer biologist whose personal journey has driven his professional mission. And in the episode, Dr. Zundell opens up about losing his mother to esophageal cancer and how this pivotal experience led him to pursue a career in cancer research. So when of our most popular episodes, I hope that you enjoy. And without further ado, let's roll that interview.

What's up, Joe? Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you?

I'm good. How are you? Thanks for having me.

I'm doing so good. I cannot wait to get started today. We're already off to a great start. Before we hit record Record, we're just. We're ready to rock and roll. So without further ado, I'd love for you to share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve, and how you got there.

Sure. So my name is Joe Zondel. I achieved my bachelor's in biology from a very small university in Florida called Saint Leo University. But I initially got into. I guess right now I'm a cancer biologist, but I initially got into that through personal reasons, largely because I lost my mom to esophageal cancer. And so I've made that kind of my mission to try and not only educate myself about cancer biology, but gather the information that I've been able to accrue throughout my education and give back to people so that they can understand more about cancer biology and be a little less scared, particularly from a cancer patient perspective, about how they go about their lifestyles, especially if they're cancer patients. Like I said, I got my bachelor's in biology from a small university in Florida called St. Leo. Eventually was able to move to Philadelphia, where I started at the Wistar Institute with another lab. And I was. Was. I. You know, I had a technician position at a nearby institute here called the Wistar Institute, which at the time was partnering with my graduate school, which was the University of the Sciences, and they had a cancer biology program. So kind of fast tracked my role into the cancer biology program there. And I guess the rest is kind of history in terms of how I got into that program. And throughout my thesis work, I've studied ovarian cancer, a specific subtype of ovarian cancer. We can talk about that a little bit later. And, yeah, so I guess after I graduated, I achieved my thesis after about five and a half years of work.

Work.

I published my work in cancer research, a very good journal, and I did a small postdoc at UPenn. Yeah. So like I said, I've basically just tried to get as much education in the cancer biology realm and give back to people and teach them about cancer biology and all the various types of cancers that I've studied.

Wow. Okay. So, first of all, I'm so sorry for your loss, and thank you for sharing. That must have been really hard. So thank you for sharing that. My dad actually got diagnosed with Barrett's disease, which one of the first precursors to potentially having esophageal cancer. But so far, we're. We've been in the clear. Lots of change, but we've been in the clear.

That's good. Yeah. I mean, that whole thing. When I. When I lost my mom, I was 17, so it's kind of like. It's interesting how all that happened, because I was actually into marine biology for the longest time, and I initially went to school on an ROTC scholarship. So I initially intended to join the military, and I got an ROTC scholarship to go to a school in Florida, on the east coast, nearby Daytona. And essentially that scholarship was revoked by the military for weird reasons, so I couldn't continue on the marine biology path there. And so that's when I transferred to that small school near. Near Tampa, basically in Florida. And they obviously didn't have marine biology. And because of my own personal experiences with cancer and my mom, I figured that was what I needed to do, So I kind of dropped the marine bio thing and. And went hardcore into. Into cancer bio.

My family lives in Tampa, so I know the area.

Yep, yep. Lived there for a long time. Fun. Tampa's all Right. Like I said. So I worked at the. The Moffitt Cancer Research center for a bit there just prior to moving to Philadelphia.

Yeah.

Yeah. So when I started at Moffitt, I started with a newer PI there, and basically within a few months of him working there, he didn't really like it. So he's like, yeah, I don't like Moffat. We're going to move to Philadelphia. I was like, young kid looking to get out of Florida, didn't have much opportunity, so I moved to Philly and I guess it's history there. But yeah, anything outside of Moffitt in that Tampa area is. It's a bit rough.

Yeah. I mean, my mom. I mean, so my parents lived in Florida for a while and my mom got diagnosed with lymphoma. So she actually did spend some time at Moffitt. So I'm familiar with this, the area for sure.

Moffitt's my opinion. One of the best places in the world to go for cancer.

That's what I've heard.

It's immaculate. The way that they treat their cancer patients is phenomenal.

That's amazing. Can we just go ahead and dive in? As movement professionals, we are going. And as movement professionals dealing with people on a daily basis, it is inevitable that we are going to eventually, if not already work with people who potentially are at risk or in. Or are recovering and in remission. What are some of the biggest things, for lack of a better word, that we need to pay attention to when it comes to their programming?

So regarding cancer patients, I think that people who are working from a PT perspective need to be very careful because cancer therapies can put a lot of stress on the body, especially as cancer patients go throughout their therapies, not only during treatment, but after their treatment. Now, specifically regarding things like radiotherapy, often with certain radiotherapies, and I was even just reading about this the other day. I'm not a PT myself, but, you know, I do a lot of reading in this area. And, you know, patients, due to radiotherapy, they can develop fibrosis within specific areas of the joints, depending on, you know, where the cancer is. But radiation can cause fibrosis in certain areas of the body, and so that might affect the motility of cancer patients. It isn't a one size fits all approach when you're regarding some exercise for cancer patients, it's important to adapt accordingly. When you're working with someone who is in remission, relating to what therapies they've had and examining their mobility to see what exercises they can do consistently to be able to achieve overall good health. I would say that's the biggest contributor. And not treating them like, like they're, they're somebody who hasn't had cancer.

Interesting. Because, you know, it's interesting. I'm curious your opinion, and this is just my, my perspective. I'm curious what you have noticed is because oftentimes people will treat them like they're broken or that they're too scared to work with anybody that has any type of some, something different than, than what they'. See. Yeah, that level is.

Yeah, no, I completely understand that. You know, when you're, when you're working with anybody who is sick, I guess it would be true for anyone even if you had like, you know, if you were very obese or something like that. I think people tend to view these people as fragile. They need to be very careful. And that's particularly true with cancer patients because one common thing, especially regarding specific therapies, again, sometimes cancer patients exhibit this, this characteristics called kexia, which is, which is chronic muscle wasting. And you know, after their therapies, they, they become very, very skinny and they look quite frail. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to treat them like they're very fragile. You actually need to be able to supplement their diet with, you know, a lot of various things and, and treat them in such a way where your intent is to build that muscle. Because, you know, the therapies they can, and even just having cancer can wreak havoc on the body in terms of promoting catabolism of muscle tissue versus anabolism. So I understand why people view them as fragile, but, you know, I, I feel like pts need to adapt accordingly and not only listen to their patients, but, you know, challenge them. It's okay to challenge them, assuming you're obviously not putting them through like some crazy CrossFit training and trying to get them to do some like kips or something like that. You just, you know, you have to play it very incrementally slow over time, get them back into lifting, even if just body weight as an example. So not to continue to ramble here, there's this one person I follow in particular. Her name's Helen Beeley. She actually lives in Australia and she does a phenomenal job. She had cancer a while ago. I believe she's in remission now. She's been in remission for quite some time. She goes frequently for checkups. Excuse me. But she works with cancer patients to help teach them ways in which they can be active despite any Sort of motility issues they may have. So she does, on her Instagram, she does a lot of body weight exercises that people can implement to help them, Even if it's just getting up and sitting down from a chair to work out your legs and get the blood moving a little bit, because also your skeletal muscle is very, very tightly linked to your lymphatic system. So she tries to help get cancer patients moving. And it's something I admire as well. And I think a lot of pts really need to take that approach that you don't always need to be lifting weights in the gym to be getting a healthy workout in. Especially regarding cancer patients, I love this.

And I also love something that you talked about, too, is that we need to be mindful of the different types of therapies that cancer patients are actually undergoing. I'm also curious that there are different levels of cancer in people who are affected by cancer in terms of the aggressiveness, the aggressive types of cancer, and how much of it and where it is. I know that this is a big question, but what are the. In the levels and in the order of therapies that treat cancer? What do we need to be paying attention to in terms of defining our boundaries of what is safe for the patient and for the person?

So let me rephrase the question, because I want to be sure that I'm understanding it correctly. So you're asking me whether or not what stage of disease or what stage of treatment helps to dictate how a cancer patient will be treated regarding exercise, Is that correct?

Yes.

Or movement.

And different types of cancers itself are going to affect the bodies in different ways.

Absolutely. So I think that that's one thing where I think every cancer patient needs their own specialized PT to be able to deal with their own specific needs. This is where it kind of has to be personalized. Because despite our chemotherapies that we often give cancer patients, they have a generalized mechanism of action, but there is so much variability between patients that it's hard to really say how they're going to react to a specific treatment. And so not only do we need personalized approaches to treatment, but we also need personalized approaches to physical therapy regarding these people as well. So I think it's, again, it's not a one size fits all approach that these people need specific things. And it's really hard to hone in on what therapies will have a certain effect on motility because one patient might react completely different than another patient depending on severity of disease. It's really hard to pinpoint exactly what that patient needs unless, you know, they're working with a specific person to kind of figure those things out.

Sure. And I get that. I definitely get that. I just mean more in terms of like, if they've had, you know, if. If they've had certain levels of, you know, how many rounds of chemotherapy that they've had. Now there's different versions of chemotherapy. Some of it's not radiation, but it's still chemo. So, you know, do the different, like, what are the different types of therapies that we need to be at least asking about that is going to have an. On their mobility.

So I feel like most chemotherapies will have a pretty strong effect on someone's mobility because not only just mobility, but like their overall metabolism of the. Of. Of how they metabolize generally. And, and of course, it's gonna depend on the cancer. So again, there's. There's really no easy way to answer that question.

Got it. Okay.

Again, it has to really. It really has to be a personalized approach to depending on a patient to patient basis. I can't. I realistically can't stratify it.

Yeah, I definitely get that. I definitely get that. Okay. So I'm just such a process and processor in my mind. I'm always like, step one, step two, and I'm always looking for those. And I get that that's not always going to be the case.

No, no. So it's very good to have a plan when you're going about these. And it's. It's very good to have steps. It's just those steps would have to be dictated on a patient by patient basis. So, like, you can have an overall template of things that you should be able to do. So first I would assess just by doing basic exercises like what that person's motility is like. Again, have them do those stand up, sit down exercises to gauge whether or not they can even do those. If they can't, look at how they can move their arms, look at how they can move their legs. Because one common thing we see with a variety of chemotherapeutics is it can give people numbness in the hands and the feet and the legs. So that's something that you also have to be very, very careful of. So I think by starting at the baseline to judge what a cancer patient can physically feel in relation to how they'll move is where you should begin. So good. And kind of gauge it from there how you develop their exercise program.

Okay, so I'm curious. I'm curious your opinion and your experience and how you've been able to navigate it. But usually for me, when I hear anybody have any type of conversation around cancer specifically, it tends to just not be a very happy conversation. It's a very heavy, sad experience and a lot of broken spirits. How on earth are you working in this, day to day in, day out, living in the experience of, for lack of a better word, miserable experience, unfortunately.

So, again, a lot of this stems from. From personal things. So I can give my own personal take on this. And like I said, I. I worked at the Moffitt Cancer Research center for quite some time. And actually one of the. The hardest parts about going to work every day was I had to cross through the. Just to get to the. The research lab portion, because you had to cross in the lab and then go up the elevator and then cross over this bridge to get to the research labs. And going in there, you see the cancer patients every day. And now that was very tough for me because of, you know, what I had to witness my mom go through. And it was, you know, every time I see a bald head, you know, it. It makes me very. And so it took me some time to even just be able to get to the labs. I actually, I would walk around the building just to get to that point. Took me a lot of courage to actually be able to walk through. So one of the things that I employ when I. When I'm talking to cancer patients or even working with them, and I don't. I don't work with cancer patients often because I'm a research scientist, but when I do talk to them, particularly on my Instagram as an example, I try and lighten the mood by utilizing graphics and, and being empathetic and not treating them like they're fragile. They're still people. They have needs and demands. And by treating them like people and trying to, like, bolster their morale by not being so negative and utilizing, like, good imagery to depict various mechanisms of actions for drugs or, you know, just how their cancer might be affecting them, it kind of empowers them. And so they feel a little bit better, and they're able to provide me good feedback about how I can educate them better about their particular cancer if I'm able to, or what resources I can point them in the direction to help them acquire answers for their disease. So it's a very dire circumstance to be able to discuss. But I think that, you know, there are ways we can market ourselves to be able to bring light to the situation without being so dreary about it and just treating them like they're people. It sucks. You know, I tell them the first thing is like you're going to experience some shit going through chemo. It's not going to be fun. That would be true with any medication. If you had any disease. Cancer sucks. I'm not going to lie to you. But this is how you can be prepared to go about that. And these are questions you should be able to ask your doctor. And of course, if there's anything you don't, you know, these are, what I say to people is that they should feel comfortable to come to me and I can try and give them resources they need to answer, answer those questions. So that helps them feel a little bit more comfortable and that's good.

What are some of the questions that you think that people need to be able to ask their doctor that you feel like they miss people or that people miss or don't know to ask?

A lot of them are related to what their, their, their medicine is doing and sort of like off target effects that they might experience if you, if you don't study cancer biology, which is literally most people on the planet, again, this isn't to put myself on a pedestal or anything, but every sort of training that you get along a PhD track, excuse me, is very, very specialized. So when you have cancer patients speaking to oncologists, you can't reasonably expect them to understand what's coming out of the mouth of their oncologist and to no fault of their own oncologists, it's very hard to break down the information that they have to their cancer patients. So I find that one thing that's, that's severely lacking in clinics is the ability to communicate effectively just how a cancer patient is going to be affected by their treatment, largely due to the time that their, their doctors have because they don't have that much time. Usually they're very, very overworked. And so a lot of the questions that I receive from people are like, you know, what will my drugs be doing? What resources can I have? Can you point me in the direction of that will simplify this for me if possible. And you know, are there any specific areas that you'd be willing to cover to help me understand? So I get a lot of requests for discussing specific cancer types and sometimes they're more rare than others and it's, you know, I, I'm not an expert in everything, so it's very hard for me and a lot of times I just have to say I don't know. But I do send them materials from the National Cancer Institute on their website, little, you know, patient descriptions that they, they try and simplify for patients. We do, we do our best in translating research as well.

So I'm curious, and forgive me, this is probably going to sound like a dumb question, but just for me specifically, what exactly is, from a disease perspective is happening in the body when someone has cancer? What's happening?

So it's going to depend always. I'm going to say this very often. It always depends on what cancer it is and the stage of the cancer, whether or not that person has undergone any. Any treatment for that specific type of. A lot of the times malnutrition can occur. Like I said, cachexia is a common thing that occurs in about most cancer patients. I don't know the exact statistics, but I know that a lot of cancer patients are severely affected by severe muscle wasting or cachexia is the medical term. But a variety of things can happen. Again, it's going to vary depending on cancer, but pancreatic cancer causes a lot of pain and it's typically detected late stage. So the outcomes for that particular cancer are that it mostly kills most people that get it. So a lot of the times, you know, those people are under a lot of pain, and so their therapies are guided towards pain management. And it can, you know, it can kind of offset their. Their metabolism in a way where they aren't digesting the things that they're consuming in a. In an efficient manner. And that's one of the reasons why it can often lead to muscle wasting in a lot of the cases. Yeah. But again, there are variations, a lot of variations between cancer types and staging.

So the actual disease of cancer comes into the body and then and starts to just wreak havoc, like kill our white blood cells. Like, it starts to. Like what. What specifically? Like in the example you gave it. Why does it cause pain?

Well, it depends on how close it is to specific nerve endings and specific processes that are affected that can lead to not necessarily localized pain, but distal pain associated with where the tumor is. But I think a lot of. If I'm gauging your. I guess, for lack of a better word, your confusion from is maybe a lot of people don't understand what cancer is. Would you say?

Yes. Yes.

Okay. So cancer is essentially a blanket term, is, I guess it's many diseases that's often affected by or begins through a variety of different ways. One way is through specific gene mutations and there are also environmental causes that contribute to specific diseases. So as an example, if I smoked a pack a day, I strongly increase the likelihood that I'm going to get lung cancers or specific types of lung cancers because there are even one lung is an organ, but you're going to have varying types of cancers depending on that organ. So there are certain things that we can do in our lifestyle that can help reduce the risks associated with specific cancers. But depending on who we are as people, we can inherit mutations from our parents that can increase our likelihoods for specific types of cancers. And there are a variety of heritable mutations that can lead to specific cancer types. For example, one of my friends who has hnpc, which is a mutation in a few different genes that increases his likelihood quite significantly for getting colorectal cancer. And so as a colorectal cancer essentially patient, he doesn't have colorectal cancer yet, but he will likely get it in his lifetime. But he has to be very careful about the things that he consumes. So he has to eat a very high fiber diet, specific types of fiber, non fermentable, particularly because there are obviously varying types of fiber. So with that particular cancer he's, you know, he has to be very careful about what he's consuming. So that way he doesn't cause too much inflammation within his digestive tract that can lead to masturbating. The effects associated with that mutation.

He's narrated now because he knows he has this mutation, can he remove it or does he just have to manage it?

He has to manage it. So he frequently goes on a lot of HNPCC patients and even like lynch syndrome patients, they go for frequent colonoscopies. Yeah. So he has to go through all the procedures of getting colonoscopies and endoscopies and things like that just to make sure they don't find any, any polyps within his colon. And if they do, because he's getting frequent screening, they can, they can act on them relatively quickly. So that's kind of one positive effect of having that disorder is because he's constantly getting screening and his insurance covers it, but typically it won't be covered by most people who don't have that, that particular disease. So I, I think that there's an issue in our insurance in the United States regarding disease prevention, regarding that. But that's, that's against a different topic.

I mean, preventative care, period, we just tend to be way reactive and we're not, we do not cater as human beings to preventative care. Period, in my opinion.

Well, that's, That's. I mean, something that needs to change and something I try and advocate for as well, especially regarding exercise.

Yeah. So. And speaking of that. So is that when it comes to preventative care specifically, like, if we're talking about, you know, uncovering potential mutations, how would we even know? And when would we. When would we begin to start check. Checking that out, to checking to see if we could have potential markers?

Yeah. So I think it's becoming more and more popular these days to get genetic testing to see if we have heritable mutations that are going to increase our likelihood. Likelihood for specific types of cancers. I think that's one thing that can help. But again, genetics is a big fraction of the picture regarding cancer likelihood, but it's not the entire thing. Alongside our genetic history, we also need to consider our environmental history. And what I mean by that is like, yes, a specific patient might have a mutation in a p53 tumor suppressor gene. It's a very important protein in helping us reduce our risks for cancer. Some people have a lot of mutations of P53, but let's say they have a mutation in that gene. But this person also eats a pretty poor diet. They don't exercise, they. They might smoke or something like that. So oftentimes it's kind of this. We need to mitigate these environmental and genetic approaches to reduce a person's risk.

Okay, so in your opinion, as I'm curious, in your opinion, and you know, based on all the research that you studied, what. How much of an impact does. Shifting our environmental life and experience in preventative care specifically, does that really have an impact in potentially preventing cancer down the road? Like, let me give you a tangible example. Like, people when they're avoiding deodorants for a specific reason, because it could cause cancer. Diet Coke because it could cause cancer. Or. Or what about the, like, nitrates and bacon? Like, I'm giving you some extreme examples, but like, that is what specifically what I mean, Sure.

I mean, there are some truths to those things, but I think displaying the context is of those things is where it becomes important. We have a lot of control over things that we can physically control. As I always say, control the controllable. Right. You can't. You can't. You can't always change the genetic components. Right. So you can change the output of those things by controlling your environment, but you can't inherently change the genetic component without some sort of illegal intervention, at least here in the United States. And this is something that a Lot of people, it's scary. A lot of people, especially cancer patients, they get scared when they get that diagnosis of cancer. They consider alternate therapies. They hear about those stem cell therapies in Mexico or over in Germany or wherever and they, they want to get those therapies. And a lot of times they're in very poor clinics and it doesn't do anything. So a lot of the times, and this is why I say control the controllables too, is because I think it's important to display to a lot of people that alternative therapies, they can be helpful, but very, very minimally so and only in the right hands. There are really only a handful of things that we can do to help reduce risks. And none of them are fancy and they're not sexy. It's not like, oh, I need to wear blue glasses or I need to avoid wearing deodorant or I need to do half the. That you hear online. I need to do coffee enemas is another thing. You know, it's like there's, there's all this crazy you hear online that at the end of the day they don't do anything for anybody except line the pockets of people that knowingly dissuade people upon this seemingly fancy crap. Trying to dissuade literal crap, like literally in many cases. Yeah, so like buy my probiotic. It's going to help reduce your cancer risks. Look at the probiotic and it's not even enough units of a particular bacteria type to help reduce inflammation. And then they apply all of these contexts to everybody like it's going to make a difference. A lot of people need to stop focusing on these fancy biohacking quick fixes because that's not the answer. The answer is very simple. But people don't want to commit to consistent exercise. They want the lazy crap. They want the wearing the blue light glasses, they want the, the coffee enemas. They want the supplement from so and so's supplement company. They want the, they want to reduce their seed oil consumption. You know, it's all these things which, you know, again, there are some truths to them, but they place so much emphasis on all these, these fads that it distracts them from understanding the, the really important stuff. Just like, you know, honing in on just how important even the basic minimum amount of just basic exercise is per day. Just consuming, trying to add in a little bit of fiber vegetables in your diet, you can consume processed meats, you can consume processed foods. Bacon having a lot of nitrates in it, carcinogen so what if you consume a lot of red meats but you also consume a lot of vegetables? That carcinogen is not going to have a really strong carcinogenic effect on you because you have a really, well, nutrient dense and rich diet. So a lot of people use these fancy things they go after and it distracts them from the things that they really need to learn about how they can reduce disease risk. And this is just, this isn't even just about cancer at this point. This is about any disease. Obesity, heart disease, which arguably kills more people than cancer. Yeah, it's not fancy, it's not sexy, but people need to stop and remove, I guess, their heads from their asses. That's, that's all I have to say about that.

I mean, it really is, sometimes it really is as simple as basic exercise, water, fiber, vegetables, sleeping, reducing your, you.

Know, so like at the core of those things though, they're, they're actually intrinsically complicated because the things that are governed by having a decent sleep schedule, circadian biology. My wife is in a lab right now at UPenn studying circadian biology mechanisms in relation to diseases like obesity, the mechanisms that govern that disease progression as a component of circadian biology, the interplay between the liver, the kidney, the spleen, the bladder, various organs in the body, the interplay that's governed by circadian biological mechanisms is so complicated. And a lot of it comes from just the simple, I guess, behavioral change of trying to have a consistent regular sleep schedule, trying to get seven, eight hours of sleep, trying to expose yourself to natural light. Now, I'm not saying that that's not fancy, because it is, you know, and there are a lot of people on, on social media that try and make these things fancier than they are. Like, oh, when you wake up 30 minutes you need to be in the sauna and then 30 minutes later you need to go and face the sun and stay there for 30 minutes. And you know, it's like, it doesn't need to be that fancy, but I think if people focus on just getting those, those basic principles down, your bodies will do the rest. We have intrinsically very complicated mechanisms about how our bodies deal with things that all we need to do, and it is hard, is adopt specific behaviors about going to bed on time, shutting the lights off, making sure that we're, you know, playing on our complex mechanistic biology of being diurnal organisms, being asleep at night and awake during the day, or catering to specific human needs regarding our diet. You know, we don't need a carnivore diet. We don't need to be vegan. But if we do choose to, you know, do those diets, we need to supplement with things so that we do stay in accordance with human nutritional needs. That's a fact. Those things are fancy enough. The behavioral changes are hard and getting people to stick to those behaviors is even more challenging, apparently.

Well, you know, it's interesting because you do bring it up a really, you did, you do bring up a really valid and important point to discuss is that those environmental components, we, we have to be able to control the controllables and for better, for worse, we've got a lot of people that are on shift work. Like I think of my husband, who is required, and I think of doctors as another example, right, Is that they are required to work outside of our natural circadian rhythms and then that like wreaks havoc on their system and we have to just manage it because that's the expectation. Now I recognize and realize that everything is choice, right? And those are choices that those that my husband made, that those people make. And we still have to manage what is expected and required of that, which to me is just another failing in our world.

But yeah, so like, as an example of that too is like my, my sister, she's a baker. So I don't know if you've ever heard of baker's hours, but I imagine, you know, they have their really shit hours. So she would wake up at like 3 to 3 in the morning, go to the kitchen, prepare all the food to be out by 5 to 6am when they open and get off at like 3. So she's already worked like a 12 to 13 hour day at that point. She goes home at 3. She's got three kids now, two dogs, a husband, a house. You can't reasonably expect these people to be healthy. So over time, like we have migraines that run in our family over time, my sister's migraines just have gotten progressively worse because her, you know, it's hard to put causation towards this too, but like there's a very tight link between circadian biology and like migraines. So over time her migraine, her migraines got progressively worse and it's because her, her sleep schedule was completely, completely. And so I told her, I was like, you literally, you have to quit this job. Because they weren't giving her appropriate health care for one and they weren't allowing her to change her schedule in a way that would be healthy for her to continue doing this. Job for a long period of time like they wanted her to do, and they sure as hell weren't paying her for it. So she quit recently and now she started her own business where she's baking cookies from her home. She gets to control her hours. She gets to sleep in accordance to how she should be sleeping as a human being. And her migraines are a lot less. Go figure.

Yeah, imagine that.

Shocker. Who knew? All of these things that we've published about for shit a millennia now about sleep health too, that, you know, getting an appropriate sleep schedule would help reduce things like headaches or metabolic issues. Who knew?

No, it's so true. So true. Okay. You also talked about biohacking. So I feel like if you're on the Internet for a minute, you're gonna see people jumping in ice baths, you're gonna see saunas, you're gonna see these weird infrared things. Does that stuff really work?

I will always say this, and it's something I get crap for a lot, is that I'm not fancy enough. I'm too reasonable, I guess. And I hate to put a little bit of attitude here too, but there, there are approaches to those things where they can be useful in specific contexts. People don't really care to learn those contexts. They want to apply it to their whole life. Like they're actually biohacking some sort of specific biological mechanism that's going to turn them into a superhero. It's not the case. It's not going to work. Ice baths can be useful for athletes who have chronic injuries to reduce chronic inflammation of specific muscle groups. If they have that, if they're an athlete now, everybody jumping into an ice bath is not going to, you know, turn into Superman if they, you know, yeah, yeah, if they go into it for like 15, 30 minutes a day. But if, you know, if you enjoy it, if you enjoy going to an ice bath and it's. And it actually, like, helps you relieve stress. So, like, this is where the trade off is, right? So let's say you're an athlete and you're going into an ice bath every day for 30 minutes. It might actually blunt the training that you're going to be going through in terms of your ability to endure. But let's say, let's say it gives you stress relief and you actually enjoy it. The trade off there might be that it gives you stress relief, that it's much better for you to do it than the potentially minimal negative effects it's going to have on your, your performance in your sport. So there's a trade off and people, I think, need to understand that. So there are benefits to ice baths and saunas, but they're not as typically, they're not as fancy as people try to make them out to be. Like they're going to give you some superpowers. The context always, always matter regarding these things. I've gone in saunas before, I enjoy them for stress relief. You feel pretty good after, you know, after an exercise. But I'm not going to sit there and claim that they're going to enhance your training experience all that much. Because to me, what matters the most is the type of training you're doing and that you're not getting injured. I'd rather focus on those things than my time spent in a sauna or in a cold bath, if that makes sense.

Yeah, makes perfect sense. So you see all these trends. I mean, it's absolutely insane, but people swear by it. Good for them, that help them sleep at night, fine.

You know, I think that if the placebo effect works for you and it makes you feel better, like I said, that's where stress relief comes in. If you have so much anxiety about getting to the gym that at the end of the day putting on that infrared light or whatever gives you solace at the end of the day, fucking fine. As long as it keeps you going to the gym, I don't care. Go into the ice bath, go into the sauna, do your shit. But just consistently go to the gym. But don't act like that thing is going to be great for everybody. Which is the problem.

Yes, yeah, that is, that is true. Okay, so now as a researcher, what are some of the most, what, what would you say in the last, I don't know, six months, 12 months that you have discovered or realized that has been a game changer for, for the future of disease.

So in the past six to 12 months, have actually gone through a lot of change. Change. So I started my postdoc just after I did my, my thesis work last January. And I only lasted about eight, eight months through that postdoc experience because I, I quickly realized, and maybe this is a more of a systemic thing that the academia that has developed nowadays isn't, isn't a good environment, I think, for people that want to become good educators anymore. So for me, I will say on personal growth, it was very hard for me to leave that environment because I've always been the type of person that wanted my own lab, having my own group, doing my own science, getting my own grants from the government and Doing truly good science. But the way things are now in academia, it's more so. And I hate to say this because there are a lot of good scientists there, but oftentimes it's about fancy mechanistic crap to get clout, to get money from the government that it's not often about treating patients. So every cancer, every, yeah, publishing every cancer grant that I've ever read, they're always. Every cancer biologist acts like the research they're doing is an unmet clinical need and it's not always the case. So every grant that you'll read, oh, there's this amazing mechanism we discovered, this outlines a new therapeutic target for an unmet clinical need. And the government's like, oh my God, I gotta fund this research. Unmet clinical need. So it's frustrating to see that over and over again. So I realized academia is not the place for me anymore because I felt like the work that I was doing wasn't about the cancer patients anymore, it was just about appeasing what the government thinks is fancy enough to fund. So that way they can continue to have this self fulfilling process. A prophecy of, of continuing to get all these big publications in these big journals that essentially will put some really interesting physiology. Sorry, my cat's crazy here.

All right.

Publish some really interesting physiology in these great journals. But at the end of the day they won't really be all that translational and helping patients. And that's the most important thing to me. So when I left my, my postdoc from a very good lab, they do great work, nothing against them. When I left my postdoc I decided to go into industry. Now it's a very different world in industry. So I'm currently at a company which I study specific types of cancer therapies. It's an immunotherapy called bispecific antibodies. And that's really all I can talk about from a safe business perspective. But essentially these therapies help to prompt the immune system against types of cancers depending on the targets we're going after. There is a business angle from it because the company has to make money for their therapeutic. But I feel like there's not as much of a glass ceiling. If I need a particular reagent to do a very high throughput, very large experiment, I can just buy it. Last week I spent $19,000 on just some immune cells that I needed to buy from a company. So in academia you would have to scrounge for resources to be able to get that because you'd spend the entirety of a grant that the government gave you. So going back to your original question about the biggest change or the biggest game changer in cancer research for me this past year is learning and kind of adapting to where cancer research is headed. And for me, a better scientific research environment for me is spent in industry. And that's not always going to be true for everybody else. But I felt, and I now feel like I'm doing more impactful work in industry. I'm able to do more thorough science the way that I've been trained to do it in industry.

That's amazing. I mean, that's really amazing. Why would someone not be happy with that?

What do you mean?

Like, why would they think that being an industry is not. Is like, why? Because it's for profit as opposed to for non profit.

Well, I will say academic work is also a little bit for profit despite.

Well, that's what I was gonna say too. Like, let's not get it twisted here. We're talking popularity metrics.

Like, yeah, I have no problem releasing the system for what it is and I'm kind of known for it. I don't lie. And it's, it's a bit of a fault to my own. It does get me in trouble sometimes because I am a bit blunt about it. But there is this notion in academia or academic culture that going to industry is like, you're selling out.

Got it.

But how am I selling out? This is where I see it. I'm going to a place where I can spend however much money to do thorough experiments, have the appropriate controls to do an experiment. Well, not only that, they're going to give me decent health insurance. I'm not expected to work more than eight hours a day. And if I am working more than eight hours a day, especially right now as a contractor, I'm going to get overtime. And also I'm paid significantly better to give you some, some sort of numbers behind that. As a, as a graduate student, I was making starting out 25k a year.

That's not livable.

As a graduate student, it was not livable. We tried telling the school that and they were basically like you, we can try and release, release or reduce some of your teaching hours that you were also required to do to give you more time to, you know, to do your research and get, get in and get out basically. But you know, obviously you got to take out loans and then once you get your postdoc, you jump from, you know, at the end of your thesis work, you get max 30k depending on your school. They're starting to increase the wages now, especially at UPENN and places like Princeton. But I was making 30k by the end of my, my thesis work. Then you get your doctoral degree. You're one of the most educated people in the world in a specific topic and you're a trusted professional. But yeah, 50k a year is, is a great salary for somebody who just obtained their PhD because you're still in training. So when you go into a postdoc, you're still kind of considered a student. They give you a little bit better insurance than you got in your, in your thesis work. But you're paid 50k to start with. 52, 50 to 52k a year. And it goes up minimally as you progress throughout your, your postdoc where you're expected to spend at least three years. If you want to be a competitive postdoc to get into academia, you need to spend a minimum of five years at least now because you need to publish in very top tier journals like Nature Science and Cell to get to be competitive enough to compete with all of these doctors who are in this market competing for the same jobs. Now somebody coming from the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, which is now not a school anymore because they were bought out by a nearby institution, I don't stand a chance when I'm competing with kids from Harvard, from kids from UPenn, even nearby, from kids from Princeton don't stand a chance. They had significantly better training than I. So you've got this massive influx of PhDs in this market that you're paying like shit. And so unsurprisingly we're seeing all of these people who have their PhDs saying fuck it, I'm going to industry. And guess what? If you do a postdoc in industry, how much is a postdoc at Pfizer going to pay you? 80k minimum. That's a postdoc at Pfizer at least. Minimum.

Yeah.

So I had a friend do his postdoc at Pfizer. So what's the excuse of the NIH to pay 50k to somebody at UPenn for doing their postdoc versus why is the person at Pfizer getting 80k? They're not standardizing the, I guess the jobs that are in that field. So there is this negative stimulus associated with professors in high places at these Ivy League schools that they think.

If I was not making enough money to eat either, I would be hangry as well.

It's not only just, you know, it's not only just hangry, but like, I know, I know. I just got. I. So for me personally, I got so fed up with this expectation that I love science so much. It's. I've made it my life. I love doing what I do and I, I absolutely love helping people learn new topics and I want to be a good mentor to people. But if I'm struggling on my own mentally to pay my bills, you know, being always stressed about money and all these things, I don't think I can be as an effective as a teacher as I hope to be or a mentor. And so I got fed up with it over time. And so I don't feel like a sellout. I feel like I'm doing the right thing. And just because some Ivy League professor at a very top tier school is going to sit there and say that I'm a sellout, I think that they've bought into the system, that they now think that they're superior, that they're in a better position than I'm trying to be in so that I can actually make an impact on the world. So again, it's not shocking that we're seeing an influx of all these PhDs going into industry. We're not selling out. We're just looking for better opportunities where we can actually do the science that we hope to do and make a better change on the world that we initially thought we could do in academia.

And honestly, that's ultimately what it is. Right. In order to make the impact that you want to make in terms of research, in terms of, of developing, helping people. Right. This all stems down. This all comes from this desire to want to help someone who's sick. Right, Right. And, and that's going to take resources, in time and effort and in money, period.

And I feel like, you know, as you acquire training, not just me, but anybody, as you acquire training in a specific, in a specific field, someone should be eventually paying you for the amount of training you've had, but also the time you're willing to put in because of that education you receive. I think it's inexcusable that, you know, certain people that have obtained, obtained their PhD are getting paid so poorly. But it's like you said, for me especially, the most important thing was that the only reason I became a cancer biologist was so I could help people. You know, I was going through watching my mom have cancer was, I don't think I've ever felt so helpless in my life or hopeless. And so the entire reason why I'm here Why I want to do good work is so I can prolong the lives of these people even by a few months. Because I would, I would kill. I would kill for a moment. I would kill for a moment more with my mom. So. Excuse me. It's upsetting. Yeah. I want people to understand that. Yeah, yeah, sorry.

And it could be their mom, too.

Exactly. So that's, that's why I do what I do. I just want to give people a few more moments. And so if I'm not doing that, if you don't put me in the environment to do that, I will find the environment that will help me do that, and that's what I'm doing. So academia needs to change a bit to be able to cater to doing good science and effective science if they're truly to combat disease, as opposed to doing fancy shit like wearing infrared goggles.

Or coffee animals or patting themselves on the back and look how smart I am and really just let's, let's get, let's get to it.

Yeah. You know, I've had discussions with, with some old mentors that, you know, I've gotten in arguments with them and I've, and I've asked them questions about, you know, what they hope for my training. And it's more like a. Just get through it. Trust me, you're in a good environment. I've trained all of these people. I've got this track record of all these amazing people before you, trust me. But when you're in that environment, they don't give you often, they don't give you the tools to be able to do science. And so I felt like I've always butted heads with a lot of my mentors and they just expect you to kind of trust them and just get through that experience. But if you're not providing a good environment for somebody to do good science, I don't care about your credentials or how many people have gone through your lab. I care about what you can do for me right now.

Right.

Just because you have a good track record, it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean you have to continue to be good, to continue to be considered as good work. Everything is a work in progress. If you stop being good at something and you just kind of get lazy and you say, oh, I've got a good track record. Trust that you're not doing anything for the world anymore. You need to retire. So, yeah. Something to consider.

Yes. Powerful. Okay. On that note, I want to be mindful of your time, so thank you so much for Sharing for pouring into us, to educating us, to keeping us informed with, you know, how to manage our patients and our clients when we are dealing with disease is essentially what we're, what we're, what we're doing and being the, being the front of preventative care. Honestly, I feel like.

So one last thing I'm going to leave you with in terms of working with people, one thing that I found effective as well as I, as I want to mention is reduce the amount of jargon that we use as much as possible. Because that's one thing I find that's, that's an issue with oncologists is it's hard to dissociate themselves with the words that they use on a regular basis. If we try and simplify things for as much as possible for everybody, we're more able to convey the important messages regarding disease and risk for the people that we work with.

Amazing. Powerful. So where can people find you? Where are some of the best places to connect with you?

I only have one place and that's Instagram. I was actually booted off of Twitter for reasons I don't even understand because I don't ever use Twitter and all I ever used it for was resharing scientific articles and stuff from colleagues of mine who are also. But I was banned for some reason. So you can find me on Instagram. That's it wouldn't surprise me. So I have an instagram@doctor.joe zundell. I have a tick tock where I kind of just put every reel that I have on Instagram on TikTok. It's the same, same handle. But I honestly, I have no idea how TikTok works. I do the best work and the most effective work on Instagram. I think TikTok is a complete shit show. Don't do anything on there unless you're just watching like I love cat videos and random goofy shit. That's all TikTok is good for. Educational crap is not, not the forum for that. So just, yeah, Instagram, for Christ's sake. But, but God, if you're going to learn something, at least I can do it on Instagram.

All right, I'll be sure to link all of that up in the show notes as well. So thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Thanks Beverly, for having me. I really appreciate it as well.

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