Exclusive Dr. Hyman+ Functional Medicine Deep Dive: Cancer—How Can I Decrease My Risk?

Hey, podcast community, Dr. Mark here. I'm so excited to offer you a seven day free trial of my revolutionary new platform called Dr. Hyman Plus. For seven days, you get special access to all the private content included in Dr. Hyman Plus entirely free. It's so easy to sign up. Just go to Apple podcast on your phone and click try free button on the Dr. Hyman's Pharmacy podcast. You'll get exclusive access to ad-free Doctors Pharmacy podcast episodes and functional medicine deep dives where a practitioner dives into topics like heart health, muscle health, insulin resistance and more to help you understand the root cause of specific ailments and walks you through the steps to improve your health today. You'll also get access to all my Ask Mark Anything Q&As where I answer the community's biggest health and wellness questions. Because I'm so sure you're going to love this platform, I'm offering you free access to all of this content for seven days and a teaser of my brand new functional medicine deep dive episode diving deep into one of the most important topics in health. Head on over to the Doctor's Pharmacy podcast on Apple Podcasts and sign up for your free trial right now. Okay, here we go.

Hi everyone. My name is Dr. Elizabeth Boham and I'm really pleased to be with you today on Dr. Hyman Plus. We're going to talk about cancer and what we can all do to decrease our risk. What can we do to prevent cancer from occurring, to prevent cancer from coming back? Or when we have cancer, what can we do in addition to other treatment to help our resilience in our body and help us fight cancer because there's a lot we can do. We're going to really be taking this deep dive into a functional medicine approach regarding cancer. Welcome, here we go. As I said, my name is Elizabeth Boham. I'm a physician. I'm the medical director of the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. My undergraduate and graduate degrees were in the field of nutrition. I love talking about nutrition and nutrition and how to use nutrition and food as medicine. About 22 years ago, I was 30 at the time, and I was diagnosed with a triple negative breast cancer. So I had an aggressive breast cancer at a very young age. And at that point, I hadn't really learned about functional medicine. And so functional medicine really, after I went through all of my treatment, I started to delve into functional medicine. That's when I met Mark Hyman and Kathy Swift and Todd Lapeen and started working at Canyon Ranch. And it was like a big aha for me because I was like, oh, I really needed to look at this a different way because I thought I was doing everything right. I was interested in nutrition and exercise. I was taking good care of myself. I didn't have a family history of breast cancer. And I was young. And so all of a sudden to get this really aggressive, concerning diagnosis at a young age, when you're thinking you're doing everything right is really concerning and sort of throws you off your game. But functional medicine really showed me a map of how to think of things differently and how to think of the body differently and how to think of all aspects of our health and how it's all interrelated, how to treat each of us as individuals because we all have a different reason for why cancer may occur in our body or any disease for that matter. And what's really important is we treat each of us as an individual and look for that individual person's underlying root causes. As I started to learn more about functional medicine and started to do a lot of tests on myself, I realized that I had some areas in my body's ability to detoxify that needed a lot of support. We'll talk a little bit about how do you know if you need more support in detoxification. We'll talk a little bit about that today. For myself, I also knew or realized or found out during that whole process of of having cancer and going through treatment, going through the chemotherapy, the radiation, the surgery. I started to learn more about stress and how stress was impacting my health and what I needed to do every day to lower the impact of stress on my health. Those were the areas that I needed to focus on. For somebody else going through cancer or looking to prevent cancer, I may really work with them to focus more on lowering insulin resistance or maintaining a healthy weight or changing their diet. And for somebody else, it may be more hormonal metabolism or not getting enough sleep or the microbiome. Maybe that was an area I had to focus on too. So we'll talk a lot about all the different things that we can each do when we're looking to get to our optimal health and wellbeing. so here we go. So, you know, we do know that there are a lot of things we can do to modify our risk for getting cancer. Here, this is, you know, stating that 42% of cancer cases and 45% of cancer deaths are linked to modifiable risk factors. And so this is, you know, conventional wisdom and knowing that, that if we don't smoke, if we maintain a healthy weight, if we are moderate or, you know, with our alcohol if we're exercising every day, if we're maintaining a diet that's not too high in red meats or processed meats especially, and rich in fiber and vegetables, then all of these things can lower our risk of cancer. And they also put in here being careful with too much sun exposure and certain viruses that have been linked to cancer risk, HPV, HIV, hepatitis B and C, H. pylori, and HHV-6. so, you know, these are what conventional wisdom speaks to when we're talking about how can we lower our risk of cancer. But as I mentioned, we're going to really talk with functional medicine, what else we can do to lower our risk because there's more we know about then, I mean, lifestyle is really important and it's an area I focus on every single day with all of my patients. But there are other things that we also focus on when we're looking at that individual patient for their underlying risk. How is that functional medicine approach different? Looking deeper, as I said, for that individual patient, and also all of these things are beyond screening. Often when we're talking about decreasing a risk of cancer, as physicians, we're focusing on early detection and not just prevention. What do I mean by that? When you're saying, okay, make sure you get screened for cancer, get your colonoscopy, have your mammogram, have your breast exam, have your pap smear, all of those tests are really for early detection. Early detection is very important because when we find cancer early, it's so much easier to treat. Early detection and screening is very important for finding cancer early and preventing death for everyone. But it's also important to talk about real prevention. And we can't prevent all cancers, that is for sure. We know that and I'm not trying to say we can. But I think it's important for all of us to say, what are the areas in my individual life that I need to work on or strengthen or improve to help me get toward my optimal health and wellbeing? We know it's not just one cancer, it's cancers. Okay? And if even if you take breast cancers, for example, there's multiple different types of breast cancers and therefore multiple different types of causes for those cancers. And even if you take estrogen receptor positive breast cancers, even within that category, there's multiple different types of estrogen receptor positive breast cancers. And then you have to recognize that we each have an individual story. Cancer can take years and years and years to develop. There's multiple hits along our lifetime that may impact our risk. There may be things that impact our risk that happened when we were in utero or in early childhood or maybe when we were going through puberty that all impact our risk later in life. It's very complex, but what we're going to really speak to today is how to create a train in your body a terrain, a soil in your body that can help prevent the growth of cancer cells. So we're not going to just focus on that individual cancer cell. We're going to focus on the terrain, the soil around our cells in our body that influence whether that cancer cell will grow, proliferate, become invasive, or if the body can instead find it and get rid of it. We know an area that we really all need to focus on is keeping our insulin sensitive and keeping our blood sugar stable. We'll talk about the connection with insulin resistance and all cancers. We're going to talk about the immune system. What can we each do to strengthen our immune system and lower inflammation in our body? Because we know cancer likes to grow in the face of inflammation. When there's inflammation in an area in our body, there's more likely to be cancer growth. We're going to talk a lot about hormone balance because some of the cancers that we're dealing with are impacted by hormones. We're going to talk a lot about toxins in the environment and most importantly working to lower our toxic load. Talk about the microbiome, all of those trillions of cells, bacteria that line our digestive system, our skin, all aspects of our body, even our breast tissue that impact risk of cancer development. Of course, lifestyle, lifestyle is something we can all really focus on every day. We'll really touch on some basic supplements that may be helpful in labs you may want to ask your physician to do toward the end. As I was mentioning, the functional medicine approach, really it's focused on prevention, but looking for that underlying cause. It's very science-based appreciating our biochemical individuality. It's really focused on the patient, not just on the disease. Really how is that individual patient presenting in that situation and what do they need to do to reach their optimal health? And appreciating the interconnections in our body. So, you know, what we've known for years and years about how our gums Right? The inflammation in our gums impact our risk of heart disease. But or what about the microbiome and how that impacts the immune system? Right? So we're looking at how all the different systems in the body are interrelated. And we ask that question why? Again, not because we can always figure out the answer, but when we ask that question and go down the pathway of understanding that individual person, We can help them pull away the things that are making their health not as good and vibrant and add the things that they need to have better health and well-being. So that asking that question why really helps us pinpoint for that person how do we create that healthier terrain in their body that can prevent the growth of cancer. So as I said, it's not just cancer, but cancers, and not just breast cancer, but different types of breast cancers. And we're going to really focus on what we can do to individualize your treatment approach. So how do we create that healthy terrain? Really, as I said, that's really critical because when we create that healthy terrain in the body, then cancer is less likely to grow. And what that means is removing what may be causing imbalances in the body and replacing what is needed for better balance in the body. And then, as I said, for each person, that's individual. And so we've got to think about yourself when you're going through this, where do you need to focus? Okay, these are some things that create an unhealthy terrain in your body. stress. We do know high cortisol triggers higher insulin. All of those things can create an increased growth of cancer and decrease the functioning of our immune system. Toxins, toxins can be really detrimental to the functioning of the immune system. So that's really important that we pay attention to. Making the right choices and the fats that we eat, because unhealthy fats are not great for us, but good healthy fats are. Watching excessive alcohol. Excess alcohol has been linked to many different types of cancer. As I mentioned, inflammation, cancer likes to grow in the face of inflammation, and it really likes to grow when insulin levels are high. There's been so much research about how high levels of insulin and high levels of blood glucose can stimulate the growth of many different types of cancers that some oncologists are using medications that improve insulin sensitivity. such as metformin, when patients have cancer because they know that it can decrease risk in certain situations and certain types of cancer. So what's important to recognize there when we talk about that is how you can make a difference every single meal in your risk of cancer. When you choose a meal that doesn't spike your blood sugar, that doesn't spike your insulin, you are lowering your risk. and what can you do to create that healthy terrain? You know, having daily movement or exercise, getting outside, enjoying nature, moving, having lots of fiber. Fiber feeds the good microbiome. It helps balance blood sugar, and it helps bind to toxins and release them from the body. Working with others, having good support with your neighbors and friends and family, getting adequate rest and sleep for your body, increasing phytonutrients in your diet. We're going to delve into all the great benefits of phytonutrients, including green tea and just the benefit of omega-3 fats because they can lower inflammation in the body.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that teaser of exclusive content that you get every single month with Dr. Hyman Plus. If you want to listen to the full episode and get access to ad-free podcast episodes, plus Ask Mark Anything episodes, plus monthly functional deep dive episodes. I guess that's why we call it Dr. Hyman Plus. Then head on over to the Doctor's Pharmacy on Apple Podcast and sign up for your seven day free trial.

Hi everyone. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.