In this episode of the Human Upgrade podcast, host Dave Asprey and guest Dr. Dominic Denk explore why cancer incidence appears higher in the United States than in Germany. They attribute the disparity to a mix of lifestyle, environmental, and systemic factors. Key points include: the role of obesity and sedentary behavior as major cancer drivers; the impact of widespread glyphosate use in the US on weight gain and mitochondrial function; the contrast between preventive health approaches in Europe versus a treatment‑focused, profit‑driven model in the US pharmaceutical industry; evidence of age‑related immune decline beginning around age 45 and the lack of randomized trials testing early interventions; and Asprey’s personal strategy of enhancing mitochondrial health through supplementation and lifestyle tweaks to mitigate cancer risk. The conversation blends scientific observations, personal anecdotes, and critique of current healthcare incentives, concluding that proactive, mitochondria‑supporting measures may help lower cancer risk despite pervasive environmental toxins.
Chapters
It's weird that it hits people in America more than people in Germany. Is that just because cancer hates Americans?
Maybe there's many reasons behind that. So several things drive cancer incidence and resistance to therapy, of course, cancer disease, obviously of genetic changes. But these genetic changes have to come from somewhere. And one of the main drivers behind cancer incidence and therapeutic resistance is obesity and lack of movement. And just compare the. I know, obviously in some stereotypes, way along the way. I guess that is an issue in the United States and an increasing issue.
Because Americans are lazier than Germans. I mean, those. Those are some fighting words, my friends.
No, not necessarily. Not necessarily. But there. There is a change in nutrition and how certain products are manufactured in the Western world. Not the US but also Western Europe that is different from other countries.
And there's also a massive amount of glyphosate in the US that directly contributes to obesity, even if you exercise. And it also, in studies, reduces mitochondrial function. So if you're spraying something all over the place so you don't have to pull weeds, well, who would ever imagine that cancer rates could go up? Oh, wait, wasn't there a lawsuit about that that almost took Monsanto slash Bayer down. Yes, there was. And I think RFK had something to do with that, which is even better. So I can just say that there's a lot of environmental things that are contributing. But end of the day, if you want to not get cancer, doesn't it make sense to, before you have cancer and before you get old, to start taking?
Might appear that could be the idea indeed. So what we're working on right now is, of course, work on aged adults where it has been shown that there is a decline in immune function starting around 45 years of age. I think we've seen other people that there's a decline there, but maybe there is a way to prevent this decline in immune function if you intervene early on.
There are ways.
Nobody has tried that, really, in randomized trials. But that is the next frontier of research we should be doing to. Obviously, as a doctor, prevention is the best medicine, and we should do something more about that.
Oh, man, you European doctors. So in the US Prevention is the worst business model, but it's not the doctor's business model. It's the largest pharmaceutical company's business model over here. So doctors here are trying to heal people, but it turns out prevention is a bad business model. So maybe that's behind the US Rise in cancer. I've kind of had enough of that. Like, we got to stop spraying these poisons. Everywhere and trying to convince other countries to do the same because it's kind of mean. So my strategy, as someone who's in the US a very large amount of the time, is to do everything I can to make my mitochondria work better, even if I'm exposed to the inevitable long list of more than 10,000 substances that have never been tested on humans that are floating around and many of which we know are not good for us. So it's like, there's got to be a way to do it. And I take even more when I'm on airplanes and if I go to Europe where there's different, different microbiome I'm going to take, even because I like my system to run as. As well as it can. And my resilience has gone through the roof. I'm 50% less than I used to weigh. My brain works ridiculously well compared to the brain fog I had in my 20s. And I believe it's all from mitochondrial enhancement and a few other things. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.
