Dr. Mark Hyman answers viewer questions about statin medications, diabetes, and cancer prevention. He discusses research on statins' harms and explains which dietary approaches actually reduce cancer risk.
Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to my weekly house call, your chance to ask me your questions. Now in today's show we're going to discuss statins and the true cause of cancer. So stay with us. Now take a look at our first question which is a video submission. And this is from Dorothy. Okay Dorothy, let's watch your video.
Hi Dr. Hyman, Dorothy Bennett here. I have a question for you. Is an RN and I know how important it is to follow our doctor's instructions, but I was able to be very successful on your program. As a diabetic, I was able to come off of all of my medications. All of my labs are normal, and I have a new physician here in California who wants me to go right back on metformin and a statin, and I don't want to do that. I want to be holistic about my health. What do I say to that physician to keep her from dismissing me as a patient? Thank you.
Wow, I love this question, Dorothy. Thank you so much. Now, you said in your programs like Eat Fat, Get Thin, I'm a diabetic and I was able to get off all my medications and make my blood work all normal. And my doctor wants me to go back on statins even though my blood's normal and on metformin, which is a diabetes drug. Doesn't make sense. So how can I talk to my doctor about taking a holistic approach and not having them dismiss me. Well, first of all, if your doctor is forcing you to do something even though your blood tests are normal and everything is good and you feel good without the medications, then I would consider dismissing them, to be honest with you. Now let's talk about statins for a minute. First of all, this is frightening. Statins cause diabetes. There's been study after study after study that shows that people who take statins actually caused diabetes. And one of the most impressive was a randomized controlled trial of like 48,000 women where half of them took statins, half of them didn't, and they didn't actually have diabetes. And the ones who took the statins had a 48% increase in the risk of getting diabetes. So you take statins to try to prevent heart disease, which is the main cause of death in diabetics, and it actually causes diabetes. and the ones who were Hispanic or African Americans, those were worse affected, the numbers were even higher. So the question is, who should take statins? Do they really work and what's the deal? Well, I want to say you should have heard it here first, but I believe that within five or maybe sooner years, you're going to see a backlash against statins because they cause so many side effects and like diabetes, like muscle damage, like neurologic problems, sexual dysfunction, all sorts of stuff, and they don't really work that well. So if you don't have a chronic disease or really bad lipids or cholesterol, then and you haven't had a heart attack, then they don't really work that well. I mean, you have to treat 100 people to prevent one heart attack in people who don't have it. And you don't prevent any deaths. If you've had a heart attack, I think you prevent maybe a couple of deaths and maybe reduce your risk of having a second heart attack a little bit, but it's gonna take treating 80 people for five years to prevent one heart attack. So they're not the greatest drugs. They say, oh, it gives you a 30% reduction in heart disease. You know what that means? From 3% to 2%, not really great. So I encourage you to not go back on those medications. I encourage you to look at your biochemistry and your biology, how you feel, your numbers, and you will know whether or not you need to be on them. And I encourage you also to check out a functional medicine doctor so you can get the right tests and get on the right program. Now, at the UltraWellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, we have a big practice with lots of docs, great nutritionists, and really can help you. The Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine is also awesome, but we've got about 2,000 or 3,000 people on the waiting list. So, I encourage you to not just take your doctor's word, be your own advocate. They work for you, you don't work for them, and start to do your own homework. So, thank you so much, Dorothy, for that question. All right, the next question is from Kathy. It was a tweet. Now, Kathy says, A lower fat diet has always been recommended to reduce the risk for breast cancer. Is this wrong? And what's the right recommendation? Well, that's a great question. We now know what one of the major causes of cancer is, and that's sugar. I mean, most people don't know this, but when someone gets cancer, they do a test to see where the cancer is, like if there's metastases or if it's spread anywhere. It's called a PET scan. You know how they do it? They basically starve people of carbs and sugar for like a week, and then they give them a ton of sugar with this radioactive material attached to it. And then they see where it goes. And you know what? Cancer sucks up the sugar far more than other cells and it makes the cancer grow. We know that obesity is linked to cancer. We know that prediabetes or insulin resistance, which I've written a lot about, also causes cancer, especially breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, pancreatic cancer, I mean so many cancers, not lung cancer so much, but so many other cancers are linked to too much sugar. In fact, it's the thing that causes most of the cancers. Now, the Cleveland Clinic program we have is amazing. We've got a doctor there, Dr. David Levy, we're working with him to do research on reversing prostate cancer using this kind of a higher fat, lower sugar diet. Now, the right fats actually help protect you against cancer like omega-3 fats, but just shutting down insulin is key. In fact, I heard Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, who has written the Emperor of All Maladies, a great book about cancer. He is a Harvard-trained doctor. He's now, I think, at Columbia or Cornell in New York. And his research he presented, I heard, at a meeting was fascinating. He said, in tough to cure cancers, impossible to cure cancers, like metastatic melanoma and pancreatic cancer, which is a death sentence, they were using animal models, even human models, using ketogenic diets. That means very low carb, like less than 20, maybe 30 grams of carbs and 70% of your diet or 80% of your diet as fat. And this is astounding research that I think is going to help pave the future. Also in brain cancer, they're studying ketogenic diets. So high fat diets actually are cancer fighting when it's the right fats and sugar is the real problem. So I encourage you to not eat sugar if you have cancer. Doctors say, oh, eat carbs and have ice cream and keep your weight up and keep the calories up so eat whatever you want. That's the worst advice ever because food is information. It's not just calories and it really drives the whole problem. So thank you so much for that question. It help enlighten a lot of people about cancer. Check out Siddhartha Mukherjee's research as well. All right, that's all the time we have today. for questions. Now, if you like this video, be sure to share it with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter. You can also call them on the phone and you can also talk to them in person still. That's still possible, you know. And if you have any questions, you can tweet them to me or send your video submissions to drhyman.com and maybe next week I'll make a house call to you. Thanks for watching.
