119: Overcoming Terminal Cancer and Redefining Healing with Dr. Pete Sulack

Do you know anything about overcoming the impossible? Because my guest today knows all about it. Dr. Pete Sulak was diagnosed with terminal grade four astrocytoma about 11 months ago. This is a brain tumor. And he was told to get his affairs in order, and he did, but not in the way that you're thinking. He got his affairs in order in a way that brought him to a healthier place than he ever was before. And he's here to share his experience and to share what he is now doing for his patients and for the world. So if overcoming the impossible is something that is interesting to you, then sit down, get comfortable, because here comes Dr. Pete Sulak.

In case you are under the impression that a diagnosis has a predestined course or even that your life, your practice, what you do is on a predestined course, I urge you to open up your mind to what is possible. Because I have a shining example of what is possible with me today. Dr. Pete Sulak, who was a doctor before, he had a life changing event, had a life changing event that essentially shaped how he was going to live his life and how he was going to practice medicine going forward. So he was diagnosed with a grade four astrocytoma and given the same grim prognosis that others who have that diagnosis are given, and is here to tell his story of resilience, of healing, of what is possible on the other side. So, Dr. Sulak, I welcome you to the show. I am so delighted to have you here to share your triumph with my community and to give them some really meaningful and valuable information.

Yeah, absolutely. It's an honor to join you today. It really is.

I have been following your journey, but I would love it if you would kind of take us back to your training, to what you were doing before your diagnosis and how you.

Kind of rose to your occasion.

Yeah, you know, so I've been in a chiropractor doing functional medicine for probably 23 years. And by the grace of God, people come to me from all over the world. In fact, we've seen over a million patient visits in the 20 plus years from all over with cancer, MS, Parkinson's, heart disease, you name it. And November 25th of this last year was the Monday of Thanksgiving. And I had known that something wasn't right. Probably looking back now, hindsight's 2020 for about 18 months, I started noticing some symptoms. For instance, I couldn't throw a baseball. I have two boys that play baseball and I couldn't throw it to them. It would go sideways. I couldn't serve a pickleball into the court for the life of me. And we kind of laughed and said I was just getting old.

But two weeks before that Monday of Thanksgiving, the symptoms got progressively worse. My wife was having to finish sentences for me. I was running into things, dropping things. And that Monday morning, I went in and told my staff and they were dumbfounded because we did such a good job of hiding it. And my wife had been finishing my sentences for years regardless. And so.

Well, that's what we do.

Exactly. So you, you all do a very good job at that.

Well, you can't be trusted to finish your own.

Trust me, my wife would say the same thing. And so. But that morning I went and told my staff and just honestly, I thought I had probably had a mini stroke. I didn't really know what it was. And my brother convinced me to go to the emergency room because it was the week of Thanksgiving. And after eight hours, the doctor came in and said, you have what they thought at the time was a glioblastoma. It's a tennis ball sized tumor in your brain and you have about eight months to live. In fact, you only have a 1% chance to still be alive here in eight months. And that was assuming I was going to do chemo and radiation. But that was 11 months ago. And I feel healthier than I've ever been in my whole life. And now I just want to inspire people that cancer doesn't have to be a death sentence.

For in those moments when you got your diagnosis, it is so common and completely understandable for fear to take over and to succumb to the standard of care. What gave you the courage to not follow the rules?

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. So a few things. One.

So the neurosurgeon that told me that basically what the diagnosis was, I was sitting right across from him and he said, Dr. Beat, how do I know you? I said, honestly, sir, I don't know. He goes, you know, because I looked at the hospital records and you've never been a patient here before. And I said, no, I haven't. And he said, I know. He goes, I'm actually reading your book. He said, this morning, I was reading your book because someone said, because they knew I was trying to get into functional medicine. This is a neurosurgeon at the hospital and said, you need.

Wait. The neurosurgeon was trying to get into functional medicine?

The neurosurgeon.

Wow.

Dr. Pete, this morning I was reading your book. He goes, like, what a Coincidence. Like, is this. How is this even possible? And he said, someone said, you need to read this book. And so it allowed me.

Now, is this overcoming the impossible?

No, this was a book called Be Resilient. And so basically the keys to a happy and healthy life. And because of it, it opened up the door for me to ask, okay then, Doc, if the situation was reversed or this was your family, where would you go have surgery? Knowing that he was going to be the surgery that basically said he wanted to do surgery in the morning, which I'm so grateful that we didn't do it. And he said, I go to MD Anderson. And so within a week, we were at MD Anderson. December 11th. I was in an eight to ten hour surgery, brain surgery. They didn't know if I'd walk or talk when I got out. But it's interesting because when I came out of the room, this. This supernatural. I can't describe a supernatural peace came over me and my wife. And then not only did we have that peace, but we called our family. And then I called two individuals, a gentleman named Dr. Josh Axe, who's a health expert in the country, whose wife and my wife are actually first cousins. And then Jordan.

Oh, wow.

Best friends. And we've written books together. And so that was convenient. I was able to talk to them right away. And we created a strategy around five key pillars of diet, supplementation, detoxification, oxygenation, and faith. And they actually encouraged me to become my own patient and really begin to implement a program that we'd created called Be Resilient, which did functional labs and really looked underneath the hood. And that's really how I approached it. And I can honestly tell you that the greatest gift in my life, other than my salvation and my family, has been this diagnosis. I really feel like God's punk, the devil with my life.

A lot of people struggle with that, looking at their diagnosis as a blessing. I think it's because they just don't know what we know.

And I think that's so true. A hundred percent.

Yeah. Yeah. That so many of the women who come through my programming, who come through my practice, who have done the. The breast health blueprint with me, they have the benefit of seeing that they can actually be healthier after their diagnosis than they ever were before.

Absolutely.

But if you follow the conventional treatment path, you can see how they would have no understanding or inkling as to how that can be true. Because most of the conventional cancer treatments are really, really toxic, and people are much sicker after their treatment than they even were before.

And I think it's understanding too, the context of when you walk into a medical facility, I don't care which one it is. I don't care if it's an oncology center, cancer center, or autoimmune or just your normal medical doctor. You're kind of at the mercy of standard of care. And most doctors that come to me as patients will tell me, Dr. Pete, my hands are tied. Like, we don't. Like we have to play ignorant when it comes to diet and lifestyle modification. Because if we suggest some modification to their lifestyle and they go away from standard of care, they said we can be sued from malpractice. And so I get calls every single week from doctors and oncologists and immunologists saying, hey, like, whatever you tell us to do, we will do, but our hands are tied. Like, we have to play ignorant. And because every doctor, unfortunately, will tell you that diet means nothing, but diet means everything. Food is medicine, and you'll either fuel cancer or it will starve it. In my job and my goal wasn't to treat the cancer, to treat the tumor, not to replace medicine. My whole focus was how do I establish the trend of my body in such a way that cancer is no longer hospitable in my body. Because if a tumor was able to grow to the size that it was in my head, in my brain, then how do I reverse engineer it to make sure that that can never happen again? And that's really how we've approached it.

So, and I understand what you're saying about the, the.

Physicians or the providers or the system feigning ignorance because it does make them vulnerable. I just wish that there was some recognition of the end.

Yeah.

Because I tell people, you know, I am not saying don't do any of the conventional medical treatments. I think that everyone should do exactly what resonates with them 100%. And no judgment. Like, what you think you need should be what you get.

I agree.

And if you believe that a certain treatment is going to help you, I believe it is going to help you.

I agree completely. And that's my. Has always been my approach with the people that I work with. Even before I was diagnosed. It's, where do you and your family have peace? Like, let's count the cost. Let's look at, assess everything and determine the course of action. But when you and your family have peace with the course of action, then my job is to come there where you find peace and fight for you from that position. It's not to tell you what to do. It's not to encourage you to come to where I'm at is to go to where you're at. And I think every true doctor which is considered, supposed to be considered a teacher, is there to empower and educate so that you can make an informed decision for you and your family. And then the doctor, in my opinion, should go there and fight for you and be an advocate for you. And from that position.

Where I object is the things that you talk about should be the end. It shouldn't be, you can do this or you can do this. It should be, you can do this, you can have chemo, you can have radiation, you can have surgery. And you also need to be doing all of these other things. And they should be built into the conventional medical model. And they're just not even something so simple. Simple as I still have women every single week contacting me because they're in a panic, they're about to start chemotherapy and they have not been told anything about fasting. Now, how in this day and age, when Valter Longo's data has been available for years and years, how in this day and age it is not routine practice to have people fasting while they're getting chemotherapy is beyond me. But not only are they not fasting, but they're being told to eat, eat whatever they want. And they're being given horrible toxic things like Ensure and Boost while they're getting chemotherapy, which is suppressing their immune system even more and in some cases counteracting the efficacy of the very treatment that they're getting.

Yeah, absolutely. My wife has two aunts. Both of them were diagnosed with stage four cancer. One given, I think six months to live, one given less than that. Both did conventional treatment, but they went all in on their diet and lifestyle. And now one's cancer free five years and one's cancer free seven years. I honestly don't believe the missing variable is whether you do standard of care or not. The missing variable is how do you establish the train of the body to open up detoxification pathways, add the sufficiency to the cell, you know, restore the body metabolically so that the body has a fighting chance to work with, like you said, fasting. And whether it's a 24 hour water fast or 72 hour fast or intermittent fasting, anything that can just help spur along autophagy and apoptosis. But I think too, I have a friend of mine, a close friend of mine who was diagnosed a month before I was with leukemia. They said it's Stage one, no big deal. Like, you'll easily kick this. And while he was set up to chemo, he was eating milkshakes, Diet cokes, cookies, pizza and pudding cups, literally feeding the very thing that they're trying to counteract and not allowing even the chemo to be as effective as we would like it to be, because we've literally just ransacked the train of the body and detoxification pathways in the body metabolically, so it can't even fight if you tried to. And unfortunately, one of my, One of my best friends, and he's dead, he didn't make it. And so it's. That's why I'm so passionate about letting people know that cancer doesn't have to be a death sentence. I don't care how you approach care whether it's standard of care or not. Let's just support the body in a position so that you give yourself a fighting chance to survive.

We talked a lot about diet. You've spoken about it in multiple contexts. Can you break it down for people? Why is it important? What should it look like? How do you, how do you know what the right diet is? Because this is a point of confusion for almost everyone who tries to come into this space.

Yeah, you know, and you hear so many people online and everything saying, this is the best diet and this is the best diet and don't do this. And the very people that say this diet is best, someone else is saying, no, that diet causes cancer.

To me, a personalized diet is always the best. If you can begin to look underneath the hood, do some functional labs like food sensitivity, micronutrient deficiencies, look at DNA if you have any DNA variations, and approach it that way. Because, you know, cancer feeds on three things. It needs a fuel source. So, and obviously the primary fuel source is glucose. It needs inflammation, needs a lack of oxygen. And you can have the cleanest diet on the planet. Basically do what everyone suggests. But if you are eating what's deemed healthy foods, but if you have a sensitivity to those healthy foods, they create an inflammatory response and storm in your body. For instance, I found that I had a sensitivity to chicken and beef, but I was great with bison and salmon. Yet alulosridge is in a lot of keto friendly snacks. I had a sensitivity to allulose, but I was great with monk fruit and stevia. I just never would have known those things unless I would have tested them because I didn't feel, you know, feel worse on them. I didn't have symptoms with it, but it's the inflammatory response at a cellular level that begins to affect the body metabolically, affects the mitochondria, affects, causes rigidity of the cell membrane. And we want to make sure that we're supporting the body at a cellular level as much as we can. So the body has a fighting chance.

Yeah, I agree with you. And I think that is a common source of confusion for people, even people with celiac disease. Right. So this is a known autoimmune condition of the gut, where you have an autoimmune response to gliadin, the protein found commonly in wheat, but other. Other grains.

Only 60% of them have gut symptoms.

Yeah.

And 40% of people with celiac have zero gut symptoms. And I have. I have diagnosed a number of people, a surprising number of people with celiac disease and the first presentation of their celiac disease was their breast cancer.

Yeah.

It had nothing to do with gut findings.

Well, I. I think it's so interesting because gliadin and gluten and dairy and sugar basically break down that gut line in the microflora in such a capacity that creates a hyperpermeability, which means those, those tight gap junctions, which is basically, you know, affecting the integrity of your gut lining, are gonna become more open. So hyperpermeable means basically they become more and more open. Well, then that allows even healthy foods to get up into your. Your bloodstream, which eventually will cross the blood brain barrier and cause brain toxicity. And so if you look at chronic illness, it's what are the offenders? So what's breaking down that gut lining? How do we begin to reverse engineer and support that gut lining and so that the body can truly heal? And you're absolutely right is there's so many chronic illnesses that can be affected through food and through our diet. When I believe food is medicine. Yet some, you know, a doctor will recommend a PET scan which will fill you up with radiographic glucose that will light you the cancer up like a Christmas tree. And then the same sentence, they'll say, oh, diet doesn't mean matter. Well, then how do you even. How do you correlate the two? Like, diet unequivocally matters, and if anyone's telling you it doesn't, honestly, I think you should look for a different doctor.

Yeah, but it's hard in the. In the oncology space because all of the conventionally trained oncologists, they were never taught that diet matters. And they're still out there with very old messaging. And I think a lot of their messaging is built around the concept that end Stage cancer is generally associated with a condition called cachexia, where you are just in metabolic overdrive and people tend to lose a lot of weight and they're very, very depleted. And so they extrapolate that to say if you have cancer, you should do whatever you need to do to not.

Lose weight to get calories. Yeah.

Yes. Eat pizza, eat ice cream, doesn't matter. The worst thing you can do is lose weight. And for a lot of cancer patients, that is actually not true. And if you are diagnosed with cancer and you are overweight or obese, probably one of the best things you can do is lose weight, but at the same time nourish, because lots of people who are overweight are undernourished.

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And it's, it's very, very sad. And when you look at just the body at a cellular level in nutrient deficiencies, like you talked about, when the body is nutrient deficient at a cellular level, which is completely different than what I can find in the blood. So I can run a blood panel and find out what's nutrient deficient in the blood, but I'm more interested, as you are, in what's going on at a cellular level. And when the body is deficient at. At a cellular level, what most people don't realize, which I didn't before either, is that your detoxifying organs of your gut, kidneys, liver, lungs, and your skin are going to work less effectively. And then when it comes to detoxifying things like parasites, heavy metals, mold, Lyme's disease, the body's going to spin its wheels because without the sufficiency the body needs, it's not going to detoxify itself. And then it's a double whammy. You don't have the nutrient sufficiency that you need, and your body's not able to detoxify itself, and you become. Create a breeding ground for cancer to thrive and grow and unfortunately kill people.

Yeah. I want to back up to what you said about hyperpermeability and the. And when you are in that state where the tight junctions of the gut lining open up and allow for even foods that are good for you to pass in, pass through the system and come into contact with the immune system and cause an immune response, how do you kind of get around that and know when you do food sensitivity testing, what is meaningful and what isn't? Or do you spend a period of time helping people to heal the gut lining and then do the food sensitivity?

Yeah, and that's so important, too. So we kind of do do it both based on where we find an individual. Like, obviously, if we have time, then it's like, okay, let's begin to heal the gut. Then we'll look at true sensitivities. But I think for those people that typically come and there are crisis situations and the body's basically in chaos, it's okay, we're going to have to remove those sensitivities. Food. So the things that are getting through that you have an autoimmune response to. So let's eliminate them. Let's begin to support the gut. Let's begin to build back the microflora. Let's begin to restore the mucosal lining of the stomach as well. Let's get the body out of a stress response and restore homeostasis. And let's begin to just put one foot in front of the others to begin to stabilize this body. Yes, we want to eliminate the wrong kind of dairy. Yes, we want to eliminate gluten. But just because something's gluten free doesn't mean it's healthy. And I think that's what a lot of people don't realize. I didn't have that understanding, when my wife first went gluten free, even though she didn't have celiac disease, it was, well, we're gluten free, so obviously we're healthier, a lot healthier than I was before. But not realizing that it's still a carb that breaks down to sugar. And so it's. Okay, let's begin to.

And there's a lot of gluten free junk food.

Yeah, a ton of it.

So just being gluten free doesn't mean it's healthy.

Yeah. And that's a huge eye opener for me. And a lot of people think that, well, they've gone gluten free and so they're healthy. And I'm glad that they went gluten free. But just because you're gluten free, like you said, doesn't mean you're healthy.

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot, a lot of junk food. So I hear you that you are personalizing people's diets based on where their. What their body needs right now. And then down the line, are you retesting them and allowing them to reintroduce foods that, you know? Because I have people reacting to strawberries, reacting to lemons, reacting to eggs, reacting to things that I generally consider healthy.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And so the whole goal is to allow you to go live out your life and live it to the fullest and incorporate some of the foods that you love for many, many years. But I think when your life is on the line, it's okay. Let's remove. For us, we remove anything that you're severely sensitive to for six months. Let's just get out of the system. Those things you're moderately sensitive to. You know, we eliminate those for three months. Those that you have a mild sensitivity to, we actually allow you to cycle those once every four days. And then those that you don't have a sensitivity to. Okay, let's create a meal plan based on that, based on your, your labs. And then let's begin. As we begin to heal the microbiome, as we begin to heal the gut, as we begin to balance your hormones, let's begin to incorporate some of those foods again so that you can go. Because, you know, like, you're not always going to be sensitive to strawberries or broccoli or, you know, those are great antioxidants that we just want to incorporate again just because of the incredible benefits, but we don't want to add insult to injury either. And so it's just eliminating some of those foods until we can reintroduce them at a later date.

Are there some foods that you don't reintroduce?

Yeah, yeah, I, I wish I introduced my ice cream and I wish I introduced different things like that. So, but yeah, absolutely. You know, I think for, for me especially it's, I try to lean more towards ketosis and back when I was really fighting for my life, I leaned into therapeutic ketosis. Now it's not quite as much, but you know, I still don't eat breads. I don't care if they're gluten free. What it's just because it's sugar. I don't, you know, there's a lot of carbs I don't usually continuous consume. You know, I begun to introduce more and more fruit, but fruits just break down the sugar so easily, even though they don't have an added sugar. I try to eliminate added sugar for sure, but then it's okay. You know, even with my vegetables, I think it's, you know, I steam my vegetables. Whether you steam them, bake em, broil em or saute them, I use a lot of extra virgin olive oil and good healthy fats. That's, you know, there's so many misconceptions when it comes to lifestyle is fat makes you fat and, but it's just, there's so many misconceptions. Good.

Well, I think that whole fat makes you fat was a very intentional ad campaign to increase our sugar consumption and to actually create disease. But I'm a little bit, no, I, I'm a little bit on the suspicious side of things. I, I, I, I tend to run a little that way. So I, I, I actually think that our dietary guidelines are very intentional and orchestrated so that we develop disease.

And I honestly think you need to flip the food pyramid upside down and then you'd have truly what would be an advantageous way to begin to eat and approach health. And I think if you look at so many things, I, I mean there's even a book called the Great Cholesterol Myth written by cardiologists who had done I think like 5,000 open heart surgeries and, and their research proved that high cholesterol, it does not actually cause heart disease. And they, they actually broke it down from 1970 where the American Heart association said that, you know, cholesterol is bad so forth and broke that down in the physiology of how what tr, how that works and HDL and LDL and cholesterol and just how that, how the liver creates cholesterol is actually a good thing. And so we've just approached it so wrong. And I think, unfortunately, because there's so much money behind this misinformation and it's at the expense of us, that we live in a country right now that, you know, we're on more medications than anyone else in the world combined. And instead of being proactive with, it comes to our health, we're reactive, and we just throw things at ourselves. And we feel like, you know, there's no accountability for stewarding one of the greatest gifts that we've been given from God, which is our health. I know how to steward my finances and know how to steward my relationships. And if I wait for my, you know, bills to go into foreclosure and basically all the creditors are coming after me, I'm too late. I know better than that. I know that if I come home today and my bags are packed on my front steps because I haven't stewarded my relationship with my. My wife, it's too late. But when it comes to our health, we just think that, hey, I'm going to do whatever I want. No accountability. Just take a pill, just take a shot, whatever. And then all of a sudden, crisis hits and, like, what's going on? And we don't realize that we have to be proactive when it comes to our health. And there's simple things that we can all do to truly become proactive. And if we are and if we do take care of one of these greatest gifts, which is our health, we partake in the fruit of it. In the fruit of those decisions.

Yeah, well, but the cholesterol myth, and we can. We can extrapolate that over a number of different.

Conditions. Right. So it's no different than us continuing to lower the bar to treat hypertension. It's no different than instead of doing. I think the. The number of samples that the urologist used to take in order to determine if you have prostate cancer was like four, and then it was six, and now it's closer to 12, and it's. We're just looking harder for the purposes of giving someone a diagnosis. So you're talking about stewarding your health because you steward all these other areas of your life. But we have been conditioned to not steward our health. We have been conditioned to.

To contract out our health, but to people who are not deserving of that responsibility because their goals and our goals are not the same. And even when.

I think when providers go into their profession, when you went to school to train, what you did, when you started off in your career, When I went to medical school and started my career, obviously we did it with the best of intentions because we wanted to truly help people. But that is not what we are trained to do. Yeah, we're trained to diagnose and. And treat. We're trained to recognize disease and dysfunction. And really, especially in. In my area, we're only really trained to recognize failure.

Yeah.

We're not trained to recognize it earlier when it could be corrected. We are very much trained and conditioned.

Yeah.

To. To wait for you to fail before we get involved and to facilitate that failure. I mean, that's what that cholesterol myth is about. It's that how can we put a band aid on it that won't affect our.

Intervention? So it's not going to change who does and who does not need bypass surgery, but we'll make a lot of money in between.

Yeah, and that's unfortunate, too, because I tell people, you know, what's my focus? My focus is the study of health and how a person lives. Where most in the medical field, their study is disease and how a person dies. But that doesn't get me anywhere like that study, you know, trying to study, you know, a relationship that doesn't work and that ends in divorce. It's like, I want to go study a relationship that works, so I know how to do. I want to study those that have been successful with their money, not the people that have filed bankruptcy. Yes, we can learn from our mistakes. Yes, God's grace is sufficient. But at the same time, I wanted to study health and how a person lives. And for me, it wasn't about treating cancer. That wasn't my approach from day one. My approach was how do I establish the train of my body in such a way that cancer is just no longer hospitable in my body anymore? Because obviously, if cancer had the opportunity to grow in my brain, then how do I re. You know, just re engineer it so that I can establish the train, open up detoxification pathways, add the sufficiencies to literally starve cancer rather than fuel it.

So I'm curious, and I'm sure other people want to know because you. You were very much in the know before you had your diagnosis. How do you live your life after your diagnosis? That's different than you lived your life before?

That's a great question. So every single day, I try to incorporate five key pillars. My diet is very, very personalized and specific. My supplements are very, very personalized as well. So we factor in DNA variations, we factor in nutrient deficiencies. I factor in the antioxidants that are most protective. For me. We, we factor in DNA variations. For instance, if a person has a compt variation, then typically when you're taking green tea or quercetin, it's gonna inhibit the body's ability to break down estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. So that's a huge factor. And so when I want to basically block cancerous fuel pathways of glucose, glutamine and fatty acids, I wanna make sure that. And I have a sensitivity, sensitivity, say to green tea or ecgc and I have a comp mutation. Well, what are the things I can use to then block those pathways if I can't use ECGC or green tea or quercetin? And so it's factoring all those things. But every single day I focus on diet, supplementation, incorporating detoxification techniques for liver detoxification, kidney detoxification.

Cellular detoxification. And so for me, things like coffee enemas, castor oil, castor oil packs, hydration, movement, lymphatic drainage. I also incorporate oxygen therapy. So, you know, cancer hates it, loves a low oxygen environment. So I want to reinv, you know, re engineer that. And so hyperbaric oxygen therapy, ozone, saunas, hydrogen water, things like grounding and.

Rebounding and high dose vitamin C. And also faith. Keeping perspective in the midst of this life because the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy. But I really believe God comes to bring life and bring it more abundantly. But it's living from that vanish point and waking up every day enjoying my life and enjoying the fact that I have breath in my lungs where I'm living on borrowed time. I'm asking the lord for another 50 years of borrowed time. But you know, it's just keeping perspective in the midst of it.

It's amazing.

So I know that your regimen is specific to you, but there are some key core things and I'm assuming that you, you those key core things that, that you're doing, the diet, the supplements, the detox, the joy, the, this spirituality, that is what you think everyone should be doing.

Those five pillars are what I believe. That's why, you know, we offer people our free 87 page protocol called the resilience protocol. And I have so many people reaching out to me saying, Dr. Pete, I've done your free protocol and my PSA numbers have shrunk, my tumors have shrunk. Just so many cool things taking place. Now obviously if you can personalize things, I think it gives you kind of a greater emphasis on opening up those Detox pathways and adding the sufficiency the body needs. But I think everyone can improve their diet. Everyone can take supplements that block those pathways. Everyone can do detoxification techniques that are free. They don't cost anything. We can all oxygenate the cells and we can all live by faith. And so, yeah, those are things that everyone can do. People ask me all the time, well, Dr. P, do you do everything that you talk about on social media every single day? I do those five things. Now, regardless of what detoxification therapies I'm using that day are different from day to day. But I try to make sure that I'm encompassing those five pillars. And they said, well, how long are you going to do that? For the rest of my life. As long as I want to be on this earth and fulfill what I believe God's called me to, I will do that. And you know, it's interesting, Jordan Rubin once, you know, early on I said, so, you know, because Jordan has always had just a super clean diet, like anal retentive. And it's like, dude, come on, offer yourself some grace. But most people don't realize that 17 years ago he had testicular cancer. And the doctors actually at John Hopkins University said, you will die because he chose not to do the conventional treatment. They said, you will be dead in four months, guaranteed. Well, that was 17 years ago. And so I now can relate to him. And I said, okay, well, how long am I going to have to do this? And he goes, I don't know. How long do you want to be alive? How long do you want to fulfill what God's called you to? It's up to you. And I think that's what people, you know, when rubber meets the road and push comes to shove, like when you have that come to Jesus meeting, it's like, okay, like, do I want to be alive? What's life worth to me then? Those people that go all in seem. When you look at the broad stroke, the people that go all in seem to do very, very well. And the people that just kind of go after it casually seem to struggle.

I want to get into a little bit of the faith conversation because it's something that is clearly very, very important to you. It's very, very important to me. I am a deeply religious and spiritual person. Although we are of different faiths. Yeah, mine came a little before yours. But.

Did your awakening in faith happen alongside your diagnosis? Or was this something that you already had in you?

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You know, it's something that I had in me from an early age, but I'll tell you what, it created a conviction like I never had before. And so it brought my conviction and my perspective.

From a superficial that I could wipe off the mirror to a deep rooted weightiness. And that was huge. And so it's one thing to know things intellectually, but it's another thing to know things deep rooted in the conviction of your heart, where you know that you know that you know. I'm reminded of a story, you know, in the Bible, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. It says, you know, that you need to bow to this king, Nebuchadnezzar. And they said, we're not going to bow. God's going to take care of us. But they said, even if he doesn't take care of us, we're still not going to bow. And so they had an intellectual you know, understanding that God is going to take care of them. But then all of a sudden they were thrown into the fiery furnace. And God shows up in the fiery furnace. And I promise you what, when they come out of the fiery furnace and know that they didn't have any even residue of fire, like, wow, like I believed, I would say, but nothing compared to what I have now. And so going through the fire is a great way of establishing the conviction of your heart. It truly reveals what you believe. And for me.

I, I found that, wow, you know, I'm so grateful for my experience to, to great that it was a little bit more than just superficial. But at the same time it was, it became deep rooted. Like, I know that, I know that, I know that God is a healer. I've seen it firsthand and I've seen it around the world for many, many years. But it's another thing to live it out because a lot of people have faith for somebody else, but not for themselves. And so going through the fire allowed me to have a deep rooted conviction for my own self.

A lot of people really struggle with God around the time of their diagnosis. And it is a time for people to somewhat lose faith because they, they don't understand, they can't reconcile it. Why do you think it was different for you? And also how do you help other people see this perspective?

You know, I, I think too for me it was a realization that I serve a good, good God that is for me and not against me, that sees me according to my worth, value and significance. And so keeping that perspective because the enemy loves to come and say, you're not worth it, you, you failed and all these different things. And so just to kind of take from the perspective that, wow, you know what? And my God's an ever present help in a time of need. He never leaves me nor forsakes me. If he before me, who cares who comes against me? And just, you know, for me, I held onto the promises in the word of God that I believe are yes and amen, that means I can go to the bank with them. That he's my healer, that he's my provider, that he's my banner protector, my strong tower. And those are promises that I anchored my soul to. And when life began to raise its ugly head and circumstances began to drown out this reality, you know, is holding those thoughts captive and just making sure that, okay, you know, let's anchor myself, let's make sure that I have perspective in here and make sure that my God is for me. And in coming back to that perspective.

Do you work with people that don't like? How important do you think this piece of spirituality is? I know that you feel it has been instrumental in your healing. What do you think about the broader base of things? Do you think it's instrumental in healing for everyone?

I 100% do. And I think though, that it's making sure people understand that their life is worth it, that they matter, that God, his desire is for them to prosper and be in health as their soul prospers. And so that is critical. And I think I have a lot of people that don't have the same belief that I do. But they know this, that they're loved, that Dr. Pete loves them, that he sees them according their worth and value, that he doesn't, you know, that he sees them according to their potential, that he sees them healed. And you know, because so many people give people a death sentence and they, they literally with their words, they prophesy death over an individual. And my desire is to prophesy life over you, that all things are possible, that nothing is too hard for God, that let's just get moving in the right direction and give people hope. And hope is a confident expectation of the good goodness of God in their lives. And so to give people hope, and the Bible says hope deferred makes the heart sick. A desire fulfills the tree of life. And we see that played out so often they literally lose their hope, they lose their confidence. They basically see their lives as a failure and in a death sentence and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. And so it's to reverse that perspective and make sure people know that hey, you know, as simple as if you cut your finger, the cut heals itself. There's an inborn intelligence within the body that that's a self regulating, self healing individual. I don't have to think about, I don't have to pray for my, the cut to heal. It just does because there's an inborn intelligence within the body to heal. And so you know, even that simple perspective change because many people assume that when you get sick, like the, the body was created to break down and die and become disease. Well that's the medical model. But that's not true, that's not reality. Look at physiology and you can, you can prove that the body was created to heal.

I want to talk a little bit about your book. So you, you talk about the key steps and there is, there is attention put to certainly what you're eating. Yes. But there's a lot put on detoxification, detoxing your kitchen and your, and your habits. Can you, can you talk about that a little bit in creating an environment that fosters health and fosters healing.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think too, not only do I want to establish the train of my body and build my body up in such a way that it's resilient to the demands and stressors placed on it. You know, many people assume germs make you sick, but if that was Ultimately the case, you'd all be dead. The reality is germs make a weak host sick, a body that's no longer resilient to those germs. So if the flu comes into your household, not everyone in your household gets the flu. Who gets the flu? Those are no longer resilient to it. So we can do things to establish the internal terrain of the body, to be more and more resilient, but at the same time, we don't want to keep adding insult to injury by being an environment that's toxic and mold filled and using pans that are leaching heavy metals and so forth. Like, hey, so the first thing is let's establish the train of the body. Secondly, let's begin to remove some of those offenders. Let's begin to clean out our, our external environment. So we're not adding insult. You know, it's, you know, put yourself not just your external environment when it comes to your home, but also the things you're putting in your body that are assaulting your body, things like relationships, you know, surround yourself with people that love you, that see you're according to your potential rather than literally draining you non stop. It's creating margins and healthy habits and in learning new rhythms of life. Like, I used to think that, to be honest with you, a few years into practice, every lunch hour, I went to what's called Kiva juice at the time and had a huge large smoothie, but the smoothie was Red Bull and sherbet. Like, I had one of the largest chiropractic clinics in the world at the time, but had no clue when it comes to health. And I remember one day, this is probably 15 years ago, I literally had to come to Jesus moment where I felt like God said, son, if you don't humble yourself and become teachable, you won't fulfill what I've called you to fulfill. And he goes, you need to start stewarding your health because you are doing a very poor job.

Because I was always, wait, are you speaking literally Red Bull and sherbet?

Yeah, literally. But what's crazy is that, that I was quote, unquote in a wellness industry. Few years in practice, had one of the largest clinics in the world, but I had no clue about health. And I was exhausted in the afternoon serving, you know, a massive amount of people. And when I began to tweak my diet and go all in with my diet, like, I don't get tired anymore, like I had was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer 11 months ago. And I feel healthier than I've ever felt in my whole life. Like I don't get headaches, I don't get, I'm not tired, I don't need caffeine. Like I feel like a million bucks. But it's thankfully because I had a years of experience leading up to it. So I started creating different habit changes. Now why did I get cancer? Like many people ask the question, is it because of parasites? I've been around the world 25 times. Is it because of ionizing radiation? Is it because of, of stress? Is it, you know, could it be a combination of all those different things? But right now it's, hey, life happens. But now let's buck up, buckle up our bootstraps and let's go after this thing and let's create resilience and do the things that we know that we can do. And that's really what my whole passion is right now, is to empower a generation and know that cancer does not have to be a death sentence.

I think most of the people who are looking for integrative help in the cancer world, they've heard about diet, they know they need to prioritize sleep, they know they need to come up with detoxification practices, they know they need to manage their stress.

Most of them are already supplementing and willing to supplement more and more. What are they missing? What, what are the pieces that most people don't know, but need to know in this integrative cancer space?

I think especially when it comes to cancer, you know, it's one of those things that Josh and Jordan both told me. They said, you know, you can't afford to guess, the more information you have, the better. And for me, that's why I was so. They were insistent in, my wife was insistent and I became very insistent that I had all the information. Regardless of how you approach it, regardless of what type of standard of care you incorporate and integrate with the train based, you know, approach, it's the more information you have, the better. And because I, I hear it all the time, just people come to me with duffel bags full of supplements and, which is overkill and can actually clog detox pathways. And so I think just the more specific and personalized we can make it, the better. But at the same time, you know, not everyone's in a position financially to approach it that way. The only thing that they have is the medical standard of care because that's all their insurance will pay for. Unfortunately, right now, until insurance begins to pay for some of these other things, it's. They pay for disease care. And when you get caught up in that model, it's. You're kind of at the mercy of them. And so that's why, regardless of the approach that you're taking, there's things that you can do, you know, to. When it comes to lifestyle modification and detoxification and so forth. So just prepare yourself. You owe it to yourself to understand that. Don't just take what the doctor says as biblical truth. You know, assess everything, count the cost, do your educated, do your, you know, research, educate yourself, empower yourself so that you can be making educated, informed decision. Then, wherever you have peace with, go after it. And I think there's a lot of power in believing the system that you are doing is working, and it's not just a placebo. It actually is proven very true, even physiologically when it comes to a person's health.

So if you could change cancer care, right, if you could design the paradigm, what would you do? How would you change things?

That's actually what we're trying to do right now is, okay, you know, some people are coming around to say, okay, let's go change the discussion. Let's go change the paradigm. Let's go give people hope. In the midst of this, I really feel like it's those five pillars of diet, supplementation, detoxification, oxygenation, and faith. Like, those for me, are the five key pillars that everything else stands upon. And without those five pillars, I really feel like the approach that you take will. It doesn't have a firm foundation. It will crumble. And so it's really okay. How do we look at that? Looking at the body metabolically, which the average person, the layperson that's dealing with cancer shouldn't have to deal with those things. That's something for people to get into a room on all walks of life, oncology, radiology, and so forth, integrative care, immunotherapy and so forth, and get into a room and really humble them ourselves and say, okay, let's approach this together. Let's go beat this thing. Because obviously what the system right now is broken and cancer rates should not. Of all the money we're spending in our country for cancer care, how are we still the worst?

I mean, we have the worst prognosis of anyone else in the world that shouldn't be right. And I honestly believe that some of the things they're doing at the make America Healthy Again movement are just so good because they're bringing so much awareness to, hey, like, we're like, the general public is smart like, we're not dummies. So, you know, like, that can't be right. I think we learned that with COVID and everything else that's out there right now is, hey, at least give us enough respect and don't patronize us so much and think that we're idiots. Like, I think people are a lot smarter than we give them credit for.

Sometimes we act like dummies, though. I mean, I can't believe the amount of resistance that was put up when all he was trying to do was remove food coloring from our food supply. That is not allowed anywhere else in the world. And yet people fought for that.

And I think is that. I mean, if you look at RFK Jr. I mean, he's been a Democrat his whole life. He's in, obviously in the Trump Organization, which is Republican. But I think we. We throw that out and we make it a political issue, which it's not a political issue. It's an issue between life and death. Like, I don't want my kids to have those dies if I can. But. But the general public is unaware of those things, and so we don't have any accountability. We just feed ourselves junk with no accountability. But when I went through this crisis, trust me, it was, do I want to be alive? I want to be alive. I want to see my kids grow up. I want to see my grandkids one day. I want to be able to cheer them on in this life. And I feel like there's a lot more for me to do in this life than to be dead. And that system basically gave me a death sentence. And they didn't have any approach beyond just do this chemo, this radiation, and good luck to you. And that's. I want to be in.

To be honest with you, I agree with you. And it has become a partisan issue. I don't know why it's become a partisan issue, because as you clearly pointed out, he is a lifetime, multi generational Democrat.

Yeah, absolutely right.

Like, his. His relatives were the pillars of Democratic society and the Democratic Party.

But unfortunately, I think if it was a reverse and he was in the Democratic. If he was in the organization, administration would say Biden or Obama. The Republicans, for the most part, would say the same thing. They would be basically ostracize him because he was a Democrat. And so I think we have to move beyond that to say what is the best. The message that he's sharing is truth. And I think it's imperative that we listen to that and humble ourselves and realize that this isn't A political issue. This is a life and death issue. And so let's look at the statistics and let's empower ourselves to go get healthy. We, we owe it to ourselves to put in, implement the things that literally will create positive change in this world.

Do you think that there is something that we should be doing from a governmental perspective that may, that may help in this arena? In that.

I mean, I think that the work that he is doing as far as our food supply is, is of absolute importance and a vital importance. It may not save me and my generation, but it's going to make a huge difference for the generations behind me.

No, absolutely. I really believe that and I think too, and I think this is starting to slowly happen. I think just providing healthcare coverage to alternative therapy piece to allow people to have those options because right now people really don't have options. Like they, their insurance pays for standard of care, but it doesn't pay for alternative treatments. And so how do we, you know, change that conversation? How do we make, you know, holistic and alternative therapies more, you know, available for people who can't afford typically those cares? And so I think I see for the first time ever, I feel like that, that the tide is changing and the needle is moving in our direction really to just say okay, give people the option if they want it.

And I think that's happening.

I liked what Hyman started to do at the Cleveland Clinic where they were literally giving out prescriptions for diets, for food. So instead of going to get your anti hypertensive medication, your beta blocker, you know what ACE inhibitor, whatever it is, you instead were taking that prescription to the supermarket and you were filling your with broccoli and whatever it is that we know drives health rather than fosters disease. Yeah, so I.

I thought that that would catch on more. But you know, it's a, it's a difficult mountain to climb because the system really doesn't want that.

Yeah. And it has to be incorporated into the medical standard of care for it to become commonplace and people to begin to really begin to prescribe that like it, it has to be okay for, for a medical doctor to be able to prescribe diet in lifestyle modification and it otherwise, you know, I keep hearing over and over again their hands are tied that if they don't play ignorant if they actually suggest those things, they can actually lose their license because it's considered malpractice.

And so yeah, because they didn't prescribe the anti hypertensive or didn't prescribe the statin or, you know, a great example is in all of the studies, exercise is known to be at least equal, if not superior to any of the antidepressant medications. And yet people are not getting prescriptions for exercise. They're not getting gym memberships or personal training sessions. Yeah, they're getting, they're getting antidepressants.

And it's, it's sad. And if you look at all the statistics now with medications and it's just like we need a change and I think we finally are in a position to get that change. And I'll be clear, like, Trump isn't who understands that he's eating McDonald's and so forth.

So you're right.

It's, it's the willingness and the courage of RFK Jr to come in and take a stand when it comes to what's right. And it's at the expense of his wife being ostracized, you know, and, but good for them because, you know, I think he's, he's impacting way more people than he might even think he is. And so I'm very, very grateful.

Yeah, me too. Well, this has been an amazing discussion. I'm, I'm so glad you're here, both literally and figuratively. Right. And though your path to getting here was, I am certain, fraught with challenges and.

At times terrifying, you clearly have come out on the other side not only a better person, but a more valuable person in terms of what you are doing for, for society. So I really commend you.

Oh, thank you so much. Been an incredible honor to be with you. I have a new good friend and I'm very, very thankful.

Can you tell everyone how to get your book?

Yeah. You know, honestly, I think it's on Amazon. Be resilient. I have a number of books that are in the works, but probably the easiest way is.

Following me on Instagram @ Dr. Pete Sulak. And.

We. You have an amazing Instagram. I love your.

Instagram. Thank you. And just if you type protocol in any one of the comments on any one of the videos, you can follow your messages and go get, download our resilience protocol, which is an 87 page document really with the books that are inspirational to me with some of the supplements I recommend with the modalities and just, you know, we've seen so many, just incredible testimonies of people following that free protocol. And that's our objective, is just going to empower a generation to let them know that cancer does not have to be a death.

Sentence. Yeah. Amazing message and obviously, is so personal, which makes it even more valuable. So thank you so much for all of you do, for all you do for being here today and for, for enriching the world in the way that you.

Have. Thank you so.

Much. And thank you all for joining us today. And know that I will be back next week, same time, same place. It's Dr. Jen. Bye for now.