The Root Cause of Cancer Nobody Talks About

So real science shows we know about mitochondria. We know there's two pathways that feed cancer. One's glucose, one's glutamate. So we know if we're blocking those, we're doing some good things. And I work with oncologists all over the world, patients all over, and I'm not working against oncologists, I'm working with them. If a patient is chosen to do conventional care, chemo, radiation, surgery, then I'm looking at mitochondrial wise, how do I support with the mitochondrial therapies that we have, not only do we help chemosensitivity, that means they can use less work, better and less side effects. It also works with the surgery so we can help them do better with conventional care. The problem is conventional care is not getting to the cancer stem cells. That's why there's a high rate of reoccurrence. It comes back, they say, oh, the tumor's gone. Everybody says I'm cancer free. It's just a really scary statement because stem cells are still sitting there. We have a reason to believe now we can't make the statement, but it's looking like we may be getting to the stem cells and that is going to make a big change as well.

What if what we're using to treat cancer is missing the point? So Today's guest is Dr. Denise Worden. She's an internationally recognized integrative physician, researcher and entrepreneur and media host with more than two decades of experience transforming healthcare through science, innovation and patient advocacy. She is a leading expert in metabolic and mitochondrial medicine and co author of a landmark clinical paper on ketogenic therapy for brain cancer. And she is the founder of Repower Clinical in Arizona. She's also the founder of Prove it Research. It's a contract research organization that provides affordable external validation for medical devices, nutritional supplements and other health programs, helping companies prove what actually works. And she's the creator and upcoming television series host of Health Hot Seat, a groundbreaking debate show with conventional and integrative medicine meets head to head. And she's the co host of the soon to be launched Hungry for Health, a legendary podcast with legendary speaker Les Brown. And so today, Dr. Denise and I are going to pull apart some of the myths and misuse of particularly biohacking techniques, particularly for women that have been largely either unstudied or don't really show the same quality of outcome. For women, we're going to go deep into cancer as a metabolic disease and specifically around mitochondrial function and some of the misinformation that gets said out there in integrative medicine. Dr. Denise is a wealth of knowledge, not only from clinical practice, but particularly research. And she is very much a fundamental believer of and conventional and integrative therapies. And so join me Today with Dr. Denise Wharton. All right, Dr. Denise, we are going to myth bust today. And, and before we get into like, the nitty gritty of the myth busting, I think this is one of the most important things that you speak of, that your, your entire practice and the people you work with and the research that you do is around this metabolic lens where it's powerful and it can also mislead. And you kind of spoken publicly a lot about this metabolic approach to cancer, neurological disease, using things like hyperbaric oxygen, ketogenic diet strategies. And walk us through your reasoning, like what has to be true biologically and clinically before you consider that approach for someone like, tell me like that, because we're, like I said, we're going to start pulling apart some of the stuff that happens in our industry that often gets misled.

Well, and there's a lot, as you know, of misinformation out there. But as far as the mitochondrial theory of cancer, there's a group of us, there's about 80 of us now, researchers and clinicians that we, we, we know what we know about the mitochondria and that there's not a cancer, any type of cancer at any stage, that we don't think that we can help support therapies and help support, you know, pushing against that cancer with these metabolic therapies. Because only 5 to 10% of cancers are genetic. But all of the conventional care, the medications, the chemos, everything is directed at genetics. That DNA, now they can be, you know, we can look at the DNA of the tumor cell and go, all right, this medication might work better or it might have less side effects. But when we're talking about really going after what is causing the cancer and what's an overall treatment, it's looking at that mitochondrial and the mitochondria and the damage that's happened there. It causes a respiration problem. That means the cell mitochondria inside that cell has been damaged. Therefore, the cell can't respire properly and cancer happens. Now, there's DNA damage after that, but that DNA comes for most cancers after the fact that. So it's a long explanation, but we've got the science.

No, I mean, I think that's really, really important. You know, most people don't realize that cancer cells are no longer fat burning. They are no longer mitochondrial burning of glucose. And all of that. I like to call it the campfire, the, the cyto, the cytoplasma. And where, where we're burning, where we're fermenting in cancer cells is kind of like a little campfire outside. And. And so. But.

But what?

You know why I'm curious? Why do you think conventional medicine has ignored the mitochondrial aspects of the underlying cause of cancer?

Yeah, I'm going to say not now. You know, we've, we are published in the British Journal of Medicine, those of us that are working on the research side of this, and clinicians. And so they know about it, they're not ignoring it. It's just the entire system is built on a model of genetics. And so to, to, to say, all right, maybe we've studied and are going down the wrong path, big path of how to look at cancer. It changes the entire paradigm, the entire industry. So we've got a very big stone that we have to roll up the hill. And we're doing it with research and with case histories with our patients. We're doing it so real science shows we know about the mitochondria. We know there's two pathways that feed cancer. One's glucose, one's glutamate. So we know if we're blocking those, we're doing some good things. And I work with oncologists all over the world, from the major institutions, Maryland, Anderson, Mayo Clinic, you name it, patients all over. And I'm not working against oncologists, I'm working with them. If a patient is chosen to do conventional care, chemo, radiation, surgery, then I'm looking at mitochondrial wise, how do I support. With the mitochondrial therapies that we have, not only do we help chemosensitivity, that means they can use less work, better and less side effects. It also works with the surgery so we can help them do better with conventional care. The problem is conventional care is not getting to the cancer stem cells. That's why there's a high rate of reoccurrence. It comes back, they say, oh, the tumor's gone. Everybody says I'm cancer free. It's just a really scary statement because stem cells are still sitting there. We have a reason to believe. Now we can't make the statement, but it's looking like we may be getting to the stem cells. And that is going to make a big change as well.

Yeah, I think that's important. Most people do not die from the primary tumor, and that's what we cut, burn, whatever it is we're going to do to get rid of. But it's the circulating tumor cells that go set up shops somewhere else that have been standing down and kind of quietly building new colonies. And you know, and, you know, one of the things that I think is important because you are very much evidence based in and bridging kind of the gap between very conventional care that might ignore a lot of these sort of underlying systems biology mechanisms, or they don't have a clear treatment protocol. So they sort of set it to the side, or we can have on the other side of that a very sort of integrative approach that may not be very well studied and identified or applied very well. So, for instance, we know like a ketogenic diet in many cancers reduces the. The fuel source for. For cancer treatment or even fasting, like, appropriately well timed fasting can help the impact of chemotherapies. But some cancers don't respond as well as others. You know, there's like breast cancer and methionine. Like, there's it. But, you know, I see a lot of people hanging a shingle, and this has got to make you crazy. They hang a shingle and they're like, I'm a functional medicine, you know, cancer expert. And I'm like, oh, my God, I'm going to. I'm going to give you glutamine. I'm going to give you. And I'm like, who I start having. I start having like, like scientific Tourette's.

Well, that's one of those pathways we're trying hard to block. So, yeah, so I mean, yes, there's a lot of let's pick this, let's pick that. And they're not going by the science. If we look at the real science that we have going in the metabolic therapies, it's from Dr. Tom Sifre, Dr. Dominic D'. Agostino. These are well seasoned, you know, researchers. We know what we're doing. So we are put together the protocols. That group. I'm talking about society, Society for international metabolic oncology. We're just forming it. I'm in the middle of forming that nonprofit. We are getting together and really putting together the hard science, the case studies so that we really understand what we can and should be doing and not doing. But right now a lot of people just want to say, come see me. I'm going to do all these things. And everybody's got their take on it. But if they're following the real researchers, if. Which is part which is our group. They're following that the minute something new comes out, you know, we've got access to it to say this makes sense. And in the meantime, we know the basics of what we should be doing for pretty much all cancers, all types. But there are nuances that you just mentioned. But for the most part, we know that, you know, we know the basics. And then there's personalized medicine. You know, we. I've got liquid biopsies that we can do to say, is resveratrol going to help kill a number of cancer cells and would be helpful for this patient's net normal cells. So I look at all the things, you know, we. We don't just do the metabolic therapies. I don't. I'm looking at all the detail of what really is pushing against that cancer and supporting the patient. Because you mentioned what kills a patient with cancer. There's two ways. It's sarcopenia, muscle wasting. So we have to do the ketogenic diet. Right. People say they're doing keto, and I'm going, no, you're not. You're not doing it right. And the other is if it metastasizes into an organ and an organ can't function and that's what kills them. Liver, those kinds of things. So we, We. We really look at, let's stop the metastasis and let's make sure you don't have muscle wasting. Those are two big things.

Yeah.

So.

So if you were to look at kind of the evidence standards, where do you. How do you decide what's kind of promising and what's kind of proven? Because that's. The other thing is we hear a lot of people that will. Like, if I. If I hear anybody say something in research and they're like, you know, it's been proven, or I'm like, red flag as a PhD, I'm like, that word's never coming out of my mouth.

So you hear my language. Is that by the research. We have mouse studies, we have indicious studies. Right. And we have human studies. There are a lot of human studies. Hyperbaric. We know a lot about. We know quite a bit about fasting and ketogenic right now, the exact protein protocols. We're still working out what would be the exact best way to do it in a particular patient. We're still working that out. But there are basics that we have enough science that we can say this makes sense for most people. Now, of course, if someone has. There's always an exception. Somebody may not be A candidate for hyperbaric. So that's the big key. It's got to be personalized. And to your question, what do we know as science and what is not? I would say I can challenge any. Everything. You give me a chemotherapy, you give me a drug, you give me an injection, you give me anything. I can look at the science and we can poke holes in it. The thing about research and science, we try to do enough of it so we can get a consensus to say, all right, there's enough. And it looks like this research arm or this research signal, we call it a signal that this might make sense. And if we get enough data on thousands of patients, we at least know, okay, it's causing this, this and this in these types of patients. So we have to collect the data. But nothing, none of it is perfect. Science and spirituality are hand in hand, and we can't say anything is 100%.

No. And I think a lot of times, especially my experience has been clinically for over 20, 21 years, is a lot of times, especially new adopters to this kind of paradigm. You know, maybe they tried a bunch of conventional things and they come in with this really strongly held belief or really like a Hail Mary pass to right, and they want this absolute. It's like, well, if we had that, that would be awesome.

But we don't. That's right. That's right. In either system of medicine, you know, I mean, even in conventional care, you know, a lot of times, in fact, the oncologists are really reticent now to say how. What the prognosis is. Do you have three years? Do you have three months? Do you have, you know, the patient almost at this point has to pry it out of them and then. But you don't want to give. I think we need to give more hope, not less. You know, in, in medical school, right, we're taught don't give false hope. I think we need to give more hope because the minute you tell a patient this is what's going to happen, they die almost to that day. Now, no doctor, no medicine, no therapy. We are not that accurate. That's the power of the human spirit of saying, I was told I had three months. They looked at their calendar and they're. It's right around that time. So the power of us, the power of our pharmacy, the power of who we are is very, very important. We have to be realistic. Don't give false hope and say, I'm going to cure you. Come to my program. I'm going to charge 20 or $40,000, some of a hundred thousand dollars go through my program. It's personalized. It's not. They're putting them all through the same thing most of the time. Personalizes one person, one patient, really digging deep and doing completely different things for that patient. The best that you can see as a physician. So we've got. When I sit with patients then, and I work with these clients from all over the world, I say, right now, let's talk about the truth. What do we know and what we not know to help them make their decisions? Because these are life decisions. These are life decisions. It's not something to make me feel better. They're literally fighting for their lives. And by the time they get to me, I love it when I get a stage one or two. I'm like, oh, easy. Okay, we got this. We got this. For the most part, I. I get a lot of stage four. They have exhausted their entire system. They're in their chemo, radiation, surgery. There's not a lot left to ask the body to help with because their immune system is destroying all these things. We still help, still give quality of life. And I've seen turnarounds. However, it's much harder when I get them out of stage four. But that's mostly who I work with, because that is. They've heard about mitochondria, and they've heard about this metabolic theory of cancer. They're watching Tom seyfried on his YouTube that. And then, you know, they're excited. They think, oh, there's something new. There's something there. But, you know, it'd be much easier if we could get them earlier.

No, I agree. You know, I would love to hear if there's a time that you had changed your mind. Maybe there was a therapy that you used to recommend and you scaled back or stopped kind of. What. What shifted for you? Because I think there's also, like, we saw this during COVID There's kind of the sunk cost, and. And at some point, no one will dial it back because they don't want to admit they changed their mind. I. I'm kind of proud that I do it all the time. Like, changed my mind.

All of the science, you know, we change. I mean, we used to do X rays on people's feet to get their shoe size before we knew that radiation caused cancer. So we have to constantly shift, always. So I would say it's an interesting question, a great one, I would say, before learning and becoming a researcher, part of the research group and clinician with this metabolic theory we used to, especially in naturopathic medicine, doing vitamin C, ivs, high dose for cancer patients. And oncologists still refer to that because they've heard of that and they think that might be okay. But what I do now is whenever I do these kind of liquid biopsies, I'll see, is vitamin C a good killer? Does it kill 80% of the cancer cells? Then I'm going to say, can I do it orally and not have them spend the money and the risk of infection going to get IVs. Is that one of the best therapies or is it something else? So I don't just put every. Say, everybody, let's just do vitamin C, IVs. And there's times in places you can't do it with certain chemos anyway. But that one I have dialed back on quite a bit unless it shows up as a really good fighter. But I will tell you this. It shows up on most people, but it's not usually in the top three.

Yeah. Yeah, because that kind of goes back to the, you know, the earlier question kind of where, where people have sort of hung their hat and said, oh, I'm now an expert in cancer, when they may really not be, because it's much more nuanced and it really comes down to the individual. And if you're not going that deep, you might actually apply things that are adding to the problem and not creating health.

And. And I won't work with someone if they're not. If they don't have an oncologist, I want to work with the oncologist. First of all, we need to be monitoring and make sure what we are choosing and doing is working or not. And so I work with them. Sometimes the oncologists go, yes, I trust you. I know that you're not going to interfere with what we're doing on this side. You've all your, you know, we do better. You know, they, they've learned that my page, people I'm working with do better. They've learned to trust me. And, and, you know, and the ones that don't, I say here, let me tell you who I've worked with and that I'm a published researcher. And then they learn to say, okay, I don't understand all what you're doing. And they don't have time. They don't have time to learn it. They are so overworked and overwhelmed and they're doing cookbook medicine and that's all they can do. And they're their hands are tied within their systems. Even if they wanted to say, why don't you do some hyperbaric oxygen or ketogenic diet might be good for you. Their hands are tied within the system in the standard of care. They can't, but they can say, okay, if you want to work with doctor or doctor. Well, Dr. Donnie or Dr. Word. Go by both nowadays. If you want to work with Dr. Worden, go ahead, because I trust that she's going to do the, you know, the right things for you. So, so I, I, we, we cannot throw out conventional care. We should be questioning it, and we are, because we have not moved the needle since 1970s on how we're doing with cancer care and life expectancy from it and all that. It's a miserable failure. It's not working the way we're doing it. So that's why we're saying, all right, first look at the root. Are we even looking at what, what causes it and what's the best way to address this? Everything's. We believe most of it is based in information, that someday we're going to look back and go, I think that we may look back and it's like that, you know, X raying your shoe for a shoe size. It was like, oops. Oops. We were looking at the wrong thing. We studied the wrong thing.

Yeah. And again, sunk cost. It's like we can't, we can't admit that we were studying the wrong thing. So we just keep doubling down and doubling. It's all, oh, the love of God, can we stop doubling down?

That's right. So, Dennis, don't put mercury feelings in anymore either. But they never, ever admitted that there was a connection. Right. But they, they changed. So that's what we hope for. That's what we hope for.

Yeah. And I think that's, Yeah, I think, yeah, like you said, kind of bridging the gap because you do need those additional, you know, you're screening and watching and paying attention. Otherwise, you have no way to know if you're, if your, you know, outcomes.

Are going to be good.

You know, that kind of brings me to, you know, when we look at your diagnostic algorithm, because when with somebody with your skill set and your years and thousands and thousands of patients, you know, your sequence of the history, the labs, the imaging and the lifestyle, you know, if you were to think of kind of your order of operations, how do you sort of think through that, you know, because you have more time with a patient than a traditional oncologist, you know, and you're Absorbing so much because it's. It's really. I think this is the hard part that we haven't figured out in functional medicine is how to take the brilliance in someone's brain from just time on. You know, if they say an expert's 10,000 hours, you got 30,000. Like, how do we build that algorithm?

How do.

How do you kind of look at somebody and look at their experiences, you.

Know, and, you know, we always say, you know, don't like protocol medicine, don't even like algorithms. It's really got to come back to. I think the physician also needs to know their skill set, where their weaknesses are and where they need to refer and where your strengths are and build your own system. So what I do. If we want to call an algorithm, when a person sits in front of me, the first thing I do is ask them what their goal is for this meeting today, right here, right now, what is your goal? Because they come in wanting something, an idea. They see me on a podcast, they want something, and I want to start on that same page, because their belief system and my belief system need to be on the. On the same page there. And then I go in and I ask about them. I don't start asking about the cancer. First thing, I want to know about everything else. I call it my questionnaire. I'm asking about their bowel movements. I'm asking about their sleep. I'm asking about all the things that we all want to know and ask for. I tell them I want to know you and I want to know your cancer. Two separate things. I need to know about both. So then I will go through this questionnaire, ask them questions. By the end of that, I know their spiritual belief system, if they have one or not, their support system, all the things, because I have that time that you're talking about. Most new cancer patients, I'm spending two hours with them on the first visit. After that, it's fast, it's easy. I got it. I at least know the pieces of where we need to go. Last thing I do is look at the labs, the imaging, and all that. That's to confirm what I think. That's to confirm what's, you know, what we've already looked at. So I go with learning the person before I look at the disease. Now I'm aware why they're coming in. I know what disease, and I know what questions will be geared toward that. But my focus is on them. What's their willpower? I could almost tell when you probably can, too, after all these years. We've been doing it. When someone walks in, you can almost tell this person's got a really good chance. They, they got a spirit about them that they're like, you know, I feel that I have fight left in the end that I can do this. The ones that are being drug in by somebody else are not sure that it's going to be a harder row. Now sometimes I get them, get them turned around, but in most of the time I can. But you can almost feel from the, I'm going to call it the spirit of the energy of the person walking in that room how hard we're going to have to work as a clinician and a physician, how hard we're gonna have to work as opposed to, I'm gonna tell this person what I think that they should consider and they're gonna do it to a T. They're gonna do it, they're gonna be compliant. We call, you know, and those are a joy to work with.

Ladies, if you're noticing more fine lines and wrinkles, it's not just about aging. It's about the loss of estrogen. And that affects our skin structure, making it drier, thinner, more, less firm. But here's the great news. I've created Biased Mastery Cream to help. This luxurious bioidentical estrogen cream supports your natural hydration and elasticity. It's packed with nourishing oils like olive jojoba, aloe and coconut. So it feels amazing and helps soften those lines and bring back that healthy glow. I've been using it and let me tell you, my skin has never looked.

Or felt bad better.

It's smoother, more radiant, and those little cracks and creases are way less noticeable. If you're ready to give your skin some extra love, check out Buy Est Mastery on the Metabolic Blueprint website. And that's metabolicblueprint.com biestmastery. That's B I E S T mastery. M A S T E R Y and your face will. Thank you.

What's some of the most common, like root cause things that people chase, right. That you see distracting from the real issue? Like I, I know from, for me, it's almost always everything gets looped into the hormones. I mean, obviously there's an extraordinary amount of change in perimenopause and menopause. But then, but then everybody thinks everything is that, right?

Exactly. Especially with hormones, especially with women. And I will say that. And you know that, you know, it's like every symptom that comes along was probably my hormones not Necessarily, but they are powerful and they need to be balanced correctly. Right. But I think that that is it. They come in with a mindset of thinking that, you know, they'll. They'll start saying, well, I have this because of this. And I said, you know what? Let me think about that. I just want you to tell me how you feel. Let's talk about your symptoms. I don't need to know at this point that you think it's caused by this, this, or this. Now we'll get there. I want to hear your opinion right now. I want to know exactly how you're feeling. Where are the pain points? Let's talk about those and not get caught in trying to. They think they've already diagnosed themselves and they're just looking for somebody with a magic pill or bullet that's going to help them fix what they think they've already figured out. If they had it figured out, it probably would have been better by now.

Yeah, I think that's true. I like it between. It's like usually the hormones or the gut. Yes, health does start in the gut, but it's not always that.

And it's always involved.

It's always involved, but I think it sometimes obscures and it distracts from the issues. And then, you know, then you're kind of, kind of fighting that. So you have, you have a broader framework that's, that's called the seven pillars that you go through, which, which could apply to anybody even if they're not working through cancer or neurological disease. So let's talk about that structure for resilience, because that's ultimately it. If you, if your body was really resilient and everything was working, chances are the immune system would be able to tackle that cell that's going rogue. Right?

That's right. Immune system and your mindset, I mean, because that's a big, huge piece. You know, people with all these gut issues, they've had, every functional medicine, tests known to man still think. And it's the stress, it's the worry that's causing this, you know, the brain gut connection. So, yeah, the seven pillars is kind of a fun little thing that I take people through. And I'll do the short version with you right now, if we want.

Is.

Is it's kind of a self checkup. And I tell people, listen, if you were doing this at least once a month and being really honest with yourself, you may be able to find things before there's a real problem or stop chasing down one system that you think, like, you know, mold Exposure, whatever it is, you're chasing down that so hard that you're not looking at these other pillars. So let's, let's talk about this. So I'll describe each of these sections so I tell everybody you're listening. If you can write it down or put it in your phone, you're going to be rating yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. So what 10 is, I'm doing really great with this one. Not so well. So let's start with sleep. Very important for everything. So you know how much quality sleep are you getting? REM sleep, deep sleep. Do you know, are you wearing a wearable? If you're a woman and wearing an OURA ring or wearable, it's not that accurate even for sleep. For men, it's 75%. So back to I like wearables. I like data. However, they're not 100% accurate. In fact, in some instances they're not accurate in a big way. Listen to how you feel. Do you wake up? So a one would be you can't get to sleep and you can't stay asleep. Hard to go to sleep, waking up all throughout the night. A ten is you wake up ready to go, get out of that bed after about eight hours of feels like restorative sleep and you have energy throughout your day. That's a 10. So write down 1 to 10, where are you on your sleep, and that's by how you feel. And you can weigh in on what your wearables are saying, but remember, they're not so accurate. Not yet. I think they'll get there. Now, let's talk about your body. Your body is beyond your weight and physique. You know, if you want to look in the mirror and say you're going to look like a supermodel at 6:2, and you're not built that way. So let's go beyond that. It's not a stat. It's about, are you happy with it? Is it healthy? Do you feel good? So a one would be you're weak, you don't feel strong, you feel flabby, and you really don't like looking at the mirror. And you're not being too hard on yourself, but you just say, I can do better. A 10 is you love your body. It's working well. No aches and pains, it's working well and you're taking really good care of it. You're going, you're exercising, you're doing movement, you're doing your strength training, you're taking care of it. That's a 10. Again, you might not look like a supermodel, but your body's in great shape. Next one is bowel movement. Yes. I want to talk about poop for a minute. So. Yeah, yeah. So a normal bowel movement, you know, it's just kind of an average. Everybody's a little bit different. But when I describe it, most people, especially women, go, what? It's from your wrist to your elbow, about that long. It should be a medium brown color. It should be easily passed in a log. Not stringy, gooey, any of that. It should be about as big around as your wrist. It's pretty, pretty in the middle. It should be pretty form. Pretty larger than you think. You look and say, wow, how'd that happen to come out of me? So they're a little bit larger than you think, and they don't smell bad because you're breaking down the food swell. So if they're, if you have number one would be a stinky poo. It's really gooey. It's stinky. It's really short. Or they're little rabbit pellets or you're constipated. You're not even going every day. You should be mostly going every day for the most part. A 10 is, you know, you're kind of so proud. You look back and you go, whoa. I almost would like to show somebody because it's like, wow, that. That's incredible. Nobody's going to do that. But you look back, you feel better, you look at it and you're going, I'm doing something right. My stress level must be down, so I'm not turning off my, my digestion stress level. I must be handling that, and I'm eating pretty well and moving. Next one is energy. Are you ready to go in the morning without coffee? In fact, you should be waiting at least an hour to have that first caffeine anyway. And are you not crashing in the afternoon? So one is, you're waking up tired. You're tired all day, and then you can't get to sleep. And you know what we call that, right? Is wired and tired. You're exhausted, but you can't go to sleep because you're wired. Brain is busy. It's going to. That's, that's a, a, a dangerous place to be in sleep. That's a one, a ten. You know, you, you, you, you get caught doing things like my. My dad's birthday is tomorrow. He's 92 years old. He golfs 18 holes even in the summer in Arizona, probably three times or four times a week. He goes dancing most nights and he goes to the gym at least three or four times a week. A week. So that energy, that kind of energy at no matter what age, because too, too many people say, well I'm getting older, I'm supposed to get, no, no. Now there's some things he can't do like he used to, but he's pulling himself out of a soft shell, hyperbaric oxygen tank just fine, which a lot of younger people couldn't. So we should age like that and we should have energy like that. And age is not an excuse. Next, his mental state. Now go back to dad. He's like, well, I'm doing good. That 92 doesn't bother him. He's like, he's grateful for where he is, that he's help, help and happy. And his mental state, he doesn't think he's 92. Right. They, he literally, he knows he is, but he doesn't. So mental state, clarity, cognition, your focus and memory. Are you having trouble pulling words? Word retrieval, short term, long term, all that stuff. So if you really have in trouble saying I'm really forgetting things more than I used to, forgetting where you put your keys, that happens to everybody. Forgetting where you parked in the parking lot, that's always because you weren't paying attention. The thing is, you know, you really know. Are you having trouble pulling a word or a person's name? Are you, are your, is your focus not there? You can't read like you used to or really have clarity to understand what's going on. And, and, and a 10 is going to be, you're on it, you're wiring and firing. Your brain is good. There's. Sometimes it'll be less because you didn't sleep as well, but for the most part, brain should be working for you. Next couple or last ones are relationships. We know studies show it a strong support system. You live longer, you're healthier, less diseases, having people around you. So if you don't have family or friends or colleagues at work, that's, that's a, that's going to lower your number. Also intimacy, intimacy with your partner. And if you don't have a partner, even intimacy with yourself. We are sexual beings, we are touchy feely and we should be being intimate in some way and having a good tribe around us. So the 10 is a great tribe and great sex. Now you wrote yourself a 10, right? Yeah. Spiritual health, probably the most important. If you feel connected and you've got a deep sense of gratitude and you can find serenity even when chaos is happening around you and there's, there's, there's grief or trauma, all those things around it that you have a, a practice, a breath work, a meditation, a prayer, something that you can connect to something outside of yourself, God, spirit, whatever your belief system is. If you have that ability to connect there in the middle of chaos, you've got a good spiritual health piece going. But if you feel alone, you wonder if it's all worth it. You have no connection. That's, that's a, that's a low, low number on that scene, spiritual health. But, you know, spiritual is not saying you have to go, you have to be religious and go to church and do all the rules in church. This is the ability to find and feel that peacefulness and connecting this when you need to. So I always say, pick, look at your numbers, back at your numbers. What's the lowest one? Pick that. And there's so many things that you can do in all of these areas. Whether you know, whether it's just knowing the things you should be doing and you're not. And just give yourself a little time period to say, I'm going to work on this. If you can't figure it out, go to a good doctor, go to someone who's going to look at these areas with you and help you figure out what you need to do. But doing more tests, we got to be really careful with that.

Now.

I love data. I like testing. I like knowing what I, at least what I need to see. However, as we've already said, they're not always 100% accurate and there are few like food sensitivities or microbiome test. Right now, I, I'm not sure how re. Reproducible most companies are. Now. There are some good ones, but reproducible means if you, if we took your blood or your bowel movement, we did that same person, same day, and I send it off to a lab, it better come back. Both of those samples better come back with the same information. And a lot of these expensive functional medicine tests are not reproducible. They're just not. They give us information, but you still got to go back. Does that fit what they're telling me, how they feel, what they're doing? Back to these seven pillars. That's how you know if you've got a 10 in all these areas, I think you should quit worrying about things and quit doing all these expensive tests and you know, and go on with what you're doing. Because your body and your Brain and your mind and your spirit is giving you the answers. It's the best checkup you'll ever get. And so that, that's the message is we don't know have all the answers. In science and medicine, we've got good things, we have really good doctors that can really help. But it comes down to how, you know, you've got to really learn to check in with yourself.

Yeah, I'm glad you said that about like food sensitivities because I was, you know, years ago, we didn't have, we didn't have a lot of great ways to assess gut health and immune function. And we had those tests. But you know, very early on it was very clear that we have a lot of friendly fire that shows up on there. That's not a true long term problem. And then, you know, microbiome got better. But again people think, oh, it's about these individual bacteria and this is just, this is it. I'm like, no, it's more about the overall pattern that is seen and the immune system, the digestive function, other things. And I think it's just because people are taking a very cookbook, westernized approach to a in imperfect but directional test. You know, which brings me to. We were talking about this. So we're. You had, you had something that you described. Now what did you call it? Bio biology.

Yeah. Some of the most stressed people I know are biohackers. The buyer say they wear everything, they track everything, they're constantly, every thought is, I got to do this, I got to go, I got to go do a cold plunge every day. I have to do this, have to do that. They are some of the most stressed people that I know. So I say don't just be a biohacker and a bio tracker. Being a bio slacker means you're not doing your homework before you jump into the latest fad and it could be harmful to you. And it's just the new thing and I want to go do it because everybody else is doing it. That's dangerous.

Yeah, like we were talking about, like I think we should bring this one up. Cold plunge. Right. That comes from bro Science. Right. And largely, you know, largely unstudied in women. But, but the, the little bit that is indicates that in many cases it may not be good, especially for women, but, but in particular conditions too. But people want to do it.

I'm like, okay, so brief cold exposure, the things we do know, it can lower inflammation, it can increase your brown fat, which that's the good stuff. That we want and boost dopamine, you feel better, that's real. But for men, for women with hormones that aren't balanced, it can really work backwards and it has killed people. There are deaths, heart attacks and strokes documented, associated with it. So I asked, you know, I was in front of this group of entrepreneurs and I said, how many of you? And I knew maybe the majority. I said, how many of you have done a cold plunge? All 80 hands went up and I said how many of you check to see if you might have an aneurysm? Did you think about your family history? Do you have an arrhythmia? Is your heart rhythm, your thyroid, your thyroid hormones? Did you check anything or think about it before you jumped into that cold plunge? Because in those first few seconds the blood vessels clamp down, your blood pressure can spike to 50 points and your heart races it, you know what can happen? You know, you literally can burst an aneurysm and die on the spot. A 40 year old male just died from it. He was trying to outlast his friends in a 38 degree tub. And he was healthy. He's one of these very healthy biohacker. Let me do everything right. So you know, there you, we've gotta. Cold plunging can be amazing. Peptides, stem cells, they all have promise. But you have to know, you, you have to know your risk factors and don't just jump in and say what should I check before I start doing any of these things? And I say ask three questions. Is it proven? Do we know? Is there any science, study, anything? Is it proven? Is it safe and is it the right thing for me, right here, right now, for my body, it might be safe for 98% of the people, but what if I'm in the 2%? So you have to really analyze things. I think we've got to remind our patients and people that, that listen to us that you know, you really need to, to know before you jump into these things.

Yeah. And look at the representative sample. So if it was mostly done in young men in colleges because that's a lot of times where the research is done. Because who do we get? We get trapped students. That doesn't apply to a 55 year old female who, you know, with dysfunction. Like I, like I don't do cold plunges. I've done them right. I don't do them regularly. I, I have genetics for sheer force damage to arteries. I'm like, I don't think I need to get in somewhere where my blood pressure shoots up 50 points in a Matter of seconds. Because I was like, you know, I do Cardiovascular training, that's VO2 max training and stuff for short periods of time, but I'm not going to do that. But, you know, one of the things that I think is truly advantageous to women is sauna utilization, both men and women. Like, if there was one kind of biohack thing that across the board pretty much is favorable for most people, heat, thermal activity, it doesn't have to be at these really high heats. If you look at some of the studies coming out of Sweden and Denmark, you know, societies that have done it for a long time, but particularly for cardiovascular health. But women, because of our ability to vasodilate at a much greater level than men, sweat, you know, all those things that, you know, heat exposure is probably good for women. Of course, depending on how you're feeling. If you've got a lot of chronic disease, that may not be true. But, you know, so much of this stuff is just like, you know, this, then it's this, then this. And I would say hyperbaric, except for when there's contraindications. Like previous one is my favorite.

Yeah, it's one of my favorites. And we've got science behind it. And you're right, a few contraindications, not many, but that you want to talk about, increases stem cells by eight and a half fold. That's out of Harvard, eight and a half fold. And talk about pretty much every system in your body. You know, I'm a, I'm a. I'm a certified hyperbaric medicine specialist. And so I keep up with the Science and what Dr. Dominic D' Agostino at University of Southern Florida is doing. He's funded by the Department of Defense and NASA to study the astronauts and the Navy Seals and the super soldiers. Right. It's hyperbaric. Oxygen is one of the main things. And ketogenic diet. So the same things we're using in the cancer patients and neurological patients, Ms. parkinson's, those same therapies are the same therapies that they're doing to keep our warriors stronger, faster, better under immense emotional and physical stress. So what about people in between? Don't have cancer, don't have neurological. Not a Navy seal, but you want to hack something. I think we need to be, you know, we're learning more, learning more. Not everybody needs to do all of it all the time. And if you're going to stress overdoing all of it all the time, that stress is far more detrimental than not doing it.

Oh, yeah. I would agree. Yeah. So if you were to look at some metrics that. Because, you know, let's say, let's face it, like I'm comparing two different wearables today because we're doing data capture for the Minerva platform. So I've got an ultra. I'm not endorsing either one. I've had Aura for nine years. Right. And then an ultra human. And you know, and I think there's signals that you can see in some of those are great. You know what I hate that they've started doing is their resiliency scores. Yeah.

And that's recovery.

I'm like, that is bullshit.

That is. Well, especially sleep. Women get up in the morning and they're saying, I thought I slept well. I feel really good. And the resiliency is saying I shouldn't go to the gym today, but I feel good. It's like we know. In fact they've already, they've admitted it. They're trying to rebuild the algorithms. It's not very accurate for women, especially that resiliency piece. And it, what does it do? It tells you be, don't do anything today. Right.

No.

Listen to your body. Back to my seven pillars. How do you feel? How do you feel? That's a better indication than a lot of. And I like the metrics too, but it's, it's just a better indication. It's not there for, for women. And you know, even regular lab work, blood work, it's based on 150 kilogram white college age male. What does that have to do with women? And I spoke at the United Nations. They asked me to come and speak about women's health and AI. So I brought in and I said, first of all, AI can't help us that much right now because we don't have the, we don't have the research on women. We haven't researched women enough in all these areas for eight I to say this is what you should do for Medical. It's on 150 kilogram white college age male. That's the data. Now we're getting more studies being done in women. Eventually it'll catch up and AI will have some information. Right now it's not accurate for women.

No. Well, if anything it's heavily biased if it is there because we have like just a few studies to really look at. You know, it discounts everything else but counts. The Women's Health Initiative, which was so biased, it was insane.

That was a disaster. From the beginning. They were looking at the wrong thing and yeah. Anyway, that's a whole nother. I'm sure you've had plenty of guests on that. But. Yeah, but I, I, we haven't studied women and people go, was it biased? It was because of the bias. I said, no. 1 reason. Hormones. We, it's hard to study a cyclical person when we have hormones changing all the time. It's very difficult to get a baseline from a research standpoint. That's why they chose males, is because they had more of a steady hormonal thing. Now we've got enough data and AI and all that that can track and, and pull all that out if you're cy. But that's why we didn't study women. It was because of the hormone changes.

Yeah. I mean, even rats, we use male rats. Like, they're just like, forget that. When even in lab animals that we're going to euthanize, they go, forget it. We're guys, you know, males still do. So that's right.

It's just easier to study it. But then now with AI and all the abilities that it can do, I think we're, we're starting to see more female women, female studies, rats and humans because we can take the information and say, okay, this is why this went out of range. It was because they were in the middle of the cycle or they were ovulating or whatever was happening. Right. Or perimenopause when the hormones are plummeting.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So if, if some of my listeners, I'm sure some of my listeners may know somebody who is battling a cancer or neurological disorder or some, or something like that, and really looking for an integrative approach, because I like what you said, you work with oncology and providing these metabolic approaches where it's not just, you know, one or the other, because I don't think that's. That our clinical mindset has always been. And Right, that's right.

Yeah. And, and yeah, yeah.

So how would, how would my, how would my listeners reach out to you or find out more about you?

Sure, they can go to my website, Dr. Warden D R W O R D E N dot com or they can call the office at 480-588-2233. And I will say, because just have them say they were on, that they listened to Dr. Betty's podcast. Right. And that. And I'll give them a free, a free consult, like 10 or 15 minutes to say, is it a good fit? I've gotten very selective in who I work with. Now I still get people outside of cancer and neurological, just complicated cases. Nobody can figure them out. I still enjoy that group as well because I love diagnostics, but I really am trying to focus mostly on using metabolic therapies for cancer and neurological and especially cancer. So, yeah, if I can be of help, that'd be great. And I'll do that for your listeners. They've already been. If they're listening to you, they're already well educated, so I'm sure. I would love to have them.

Yeah, I was, I would say, you know, my listeners love the science, so that's really awesome. So they really dig in, which is great. Yeah. So, you know, if you're listening today and you know somebody that may be going through cancer or maybe have been through cancer, and you feel like you're just not getting what you need. Dr. Denise, I'm seriously, no joke, one of the few leading researchers in this area that's really providing change, you know, really moving the needle, because conventional care is still very, very attached to the genetics and receptor, you know, receptor activity. Rather than looking at the underlying root cause of what's really happening, which starts with mitochondrial function, you know, the commitment's there. So.

And you know what I think is interesting because we're speaking about females. Do you know that mitochondria are only passed through the female? The male mitochondria are completely killed off during fertilization. So your mitochondria, that is, it's your energy producer. Remember, it makes ATP. It's the stress. It's actually a sensor for stress. They repair. They're the repair coordinators. They tell the body where and what to repair and decision maker of the cell survival. Are you going to kill off a cancer cell or not?

Okay.

That all comes through the matriarchal line only. And I think it's interesting. We, you know, start looking at, you know, they get signals by natural light. We were talking about near and infrared saunas. They get signal from sunlight, from grounding. All those things change our mitochondria. And stress is one of the worst things that we can do to that mitochondria. But from a female standpoint, think about it. Mitochondria are collaborative. They work together in a collaborative manner like a matriarchal society does. So there's a lot of really good, fun analogies of feminine, mitochondrial and the mitochondrial. A matriarchal science, the science between network communications, rhythmic responsiveness, the way that females think. It's the way our mitochondria think.

Yeah, you know, they've. They've tied cognition and and memory and what we would consider sort of IQ to the matriarchal, you know, X chromosome also. So most everything is coming from the mom when it comes from that standpoint.

That's right, that's right.

Or actually the grandma. I guess you should clarify that.

Grandma.

That's right.

There you go.

Grandma. It's grandma. So if your grandma was super smart right now, that's a good thing.

That's right. That's right. You know, we just gotta remember that the body heals itself in the presence of safety, not force. We can't force it. So back to the biohacking. You can force all these things as much as we want hormesis, which is a controlled stress, so supposed to kind of. Kind of wake it up once in a while, But I think we're doing too much of it. And if we remember that the body heals not in force, not in stress, you have to get out of the stress for it to start healing from that stress. But if you stay in that stress all the time, both emotional or doing all the biohacks, it's going to be hard for it to have time to heal. And I think we've got to remember more is not better. It's kind of a mantra I say in my office all the time to all my people. Stacking isn't science. More is not better. We've got to know exactly what are the few things that might move the needle for you. That's the best, in my opinion, the best way to. To help someone.

Oh, that's Mike. Jock. Moment. Dr. Denise, I want to thank you so much for being on Menopause Mastery. I think you elucidated a lot of misinformation that we've heard and then also helped people understand cancer, particularly as a metabolic malfunction of the mitochondria, you know?

Yeah. Well, I love the. The work that you're doing. And hormones are. They're master signalers and switchers. So I'm so glad you got the education going out there because we need it.

Yep. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Denise, and thank you, everybody for listening and or watching Menopause Mastery. Don't forget, if you need Dr. Denise to look in the show notes and find a way to reach her. And we will be back with you next week.