Part 2: The Official Q&A On How To Cure Yourself Of Cancer - An Epic Interview With A Man Who Defied Conventional Medicine & Cured Himself Of Prostate Cancer.
29 Jan 2026 · 5 min
Eric Remensberger answers questions about how he cured his prostate cancer without conventional medicine. He discusses IV vitamin C, hydrogen peroxide therapy, coffee enemas, the Budwig protocol, sulforaphane, and ketogenic diets as part of his recovery strategy.
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Hey, it's Ben Greenfield and I am going to try something new in today's podcast episode. Meaning I am going to put on pants and comb my hair and dress up like a big boy. No, I'm just kidding. What I am doing on today's show is I am bringing you a repeat guest, but I am not interviewing that guest. See, I had a guy who I had on the show who gave one of the most mind blowing interviews and discussions on cancer that I've ever had. He defied conventional medicine, he cured himself of prostate cancer and we talked about everything when I had him on the show, from QI stagnation and emotional issues that can build up inside the body to fringe pharmaceutical antifungal drugs that he's discovered to why he chemically castrated himself and uses things like apricot pits and wormwood toxins, different biohacks that he uses involving quantum physics and vibrational energy bions that can precede cancer. Crazy interview that you have to listen to for sure. I will put a link to that interview in the show notes for this episode and I'll tell you where you can get the show notes in a moment. But it was such an interesting show that I wanted to get him on for a part two and the reason for that is because we received a boatload of comments after that show, really asking him more. Not just about the protocols, the cancer curing and mitochondrial enhancing protocols that he talked about in that show, but also a whole bunch more everything from we got questions on food grade hydrogen peroxide and WIM HOF breathing techniques and coffee enemas and node removal, high dose vitamin C, even what he would do if it was a child who had cancer. All sorts of very interesting things. And so this guy, his name is Eric, Eric Remansberger, he was kind enough to actually sit down in front of the microphone and record detailed replies and address many of the comments that we received in this extremely informative interview about cancer. I think that if you know somebody has cancer, you're trying to prevent cancer or you really want to fill yourself in on alternative methods to manage cancer, this would definitely be one for you. Like I've done genetic testing. I myself have about a 30% higher than normal risk for prostate cancer. I sure as heck am geeking out on this stuff because it's super useful. So anyways, you can access the show notes for the previous episode that I recorded with Eric as well as for this episode if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com CancerFAQ that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com cancerfaq and when you go there, you'll get access to a full transcript for the audio that you're about to listen to, along with plenty of additional resources. You can leave your comments there and also view the amazing discussion that we've already had. And again, like I mentioned, the initial interview with Eric, so I hope you enjoy this. If you kind of dig this concept of me occasionally having a guest come back and just do a Q and A even in my absence, a non interview style, but just them sitting in front of the mic recording their answers to your questions, let me know and I may do this in the future with a few other guests who just received so many comments and so many questions that we just have to have them back. So enjoy today's show in this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.
First of all, cancer cells proliferate quite well when the environment is full of nourishing fuel. Which could be one reason why it's much harder for even kind of traditional doctors who are doing cancer treatments to have success with young kids. And they have better success with old people because young kids have so much qi or life energy. So the cancer is much easier. It has a much easier time proliferating. Pharmaceutical grade is not to be ingested. It has toxic stabilizers. You can only use food grade whether you're ingesting it or using it in your bath.
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Thank you, Ben. The questions posed will include the following a discussion on coffee enemas, the use of Nystatin as an antifungal agent, Wim Hof breathing techniques and oxygenation at a cellular and tissue level, the Budwig protocol, Sulforaphane, laatril or vitamin B17, high dose vitamin C and balancing oxidative therapies with antioxidants. But before I begin, I have to make a my usual disclaimer. I am not a doctor and I don't give medical advice. I make no recommendations. All I've done is looked at the data and as an attorney kind of applied my own kind of skill set to looking at evidence and come to my own conclusions. And I'm sharing information with you so that you can have the same perspectives that I came to when you're trying to sort through and make your own decisions. Let me also mention that in the process of coming to my own theories and conclusions, I formed what I consider to be some foundational elements for moving back from a cancering state to a healing state. Over and above kind of nutrition and supplementation, which obviously a lot of us spend a lot of time focusing on nutrition and supplementation. But these other elements include there's really four of them that I kind of list out here. One is oxygenation of the cells and tissues. Number two is proper cellular communication because in my view all we are are bags of cells and cancer are cells that are not functioning the way they should within that community of cells. And so we really need to kind of focus on proper communication amongst between the cells. Detoxification, which includes physical, environmental and emotional and energetic wellness. Those are the kind of the four underlying foundational elements for all of the protocols and the pillars that you'll see if you go on my site. So let's go ahead and get started. The first question I'm going to address comes from Kathy. Kathy's concerned about whether or not coffee enemas might be contraindicated for her because she had several lymph nodes removed as part of treatment for cervical cancer. And she asks whether she should be concerned about doing enemas without lymph nodes. And I think before answering that question it might be useful to talk a little bit about coffee enemas generally. Let me mentioned for those of you who haven't already seen it, that Ben has a great blog post on coffee enemas entitled the bulletproof coffee enema. Everything you've always wanted to know about coffee enemas, but we're afraid to ask. And on that blog post he goes not only into kind of how to do an enema, but why to do an enema and that sort of thing. So if you haven't or not or are not familiar with doing cough enemas, I highly recommend that as a good source to go to. But just kind of briefly. Enemas are traditionally done to clean out the bowels and the colon. Coffee enema, although is an enema, it's quite different. It's done to help the liver do its job of detoxification. And as we all know, the liver is not just a detoxifier, it's the ultimate multitasker. It does everything from converting protein into glucose, storing vitamins and nutrients, regulating hormones, making bile, etc, etc. When a coffee enema is done, the caffeine from the coffee is absorbed into the system where it goes into the liver and acts as a detoxifier. It works there because there are these intrahepatic circulatory veins that carry toxins from the sigmoid colon to the liver for the detoxification process to run. Coffee enemas also cause the liver to produce more bile, which, as you probably know, is stored in the gallbladder. And as a footnote, I've discovered this recently. Removal of the gallbladder is the number one surgery that's done involving your organs. But by producing more bile, the bile is necessary to move and provide for the process of elimination. So the theory is that the coffee has this affinity for the liver, and when it's absorbed into the liver, it frees the liver up to do its job, which is processing toxic materials. In addition, the coffee itself contains alkaloids that stimulate the production of glutathione S transferase, which we're going to talk about a little bit later on. There's a question that comes up on sulforaphane and glutathione as transferase is an enzyme that's crucial for these detox pathways to work properly. So, in short, a coffee enema will speed up and benefit the liver's role in this entire detoxification process. So to get back to Kathy's question, I think, obviously speak to your doctor, Kathy, but I would say rather than being contraindicated, it might be even more important if you're short some of your lymph nodes, to make sure that your liver is functioning at its highest level. Because the two major detoxification processes the body has are the lymphatic system and the liver. And so I would also suggest that you, because you still have plenty of lymph nodes, I think you mentioned 30 in your question. There are hundreds and hundreds of lymph nodes in the body, but obviously not having those lymph nodes means that that part of your body has less clearing capacity. And I would suggest that you do the dry skin brushing and the rebounding and all the other things, you know, exercise movement, to make sure your lymphatic system is functioning well. Kathy also raised the next question, and there are a few others, actually, I think flag this as a question as well. She raised the impact whether or not nystatin would be indicated for somebody like her. And the impact in particular that nystatin might have on her liver. And she asked if she'd be concerned about this. And in response, I should say that I am not a big fan of pharmaceuticals. And thus the decision to take nystatin was a real challenge for me. For those of you not familiar with it, Nystatin is an off patent prescription drug that's commonly used to address candida overgrowth. And it's been around quite a while. I was told by my integrative doctor that she's very cautious about prescribing integrated drugs. She's an anthroposophical doctor, but she said as far as prescription drugs goes, is about as safe as you get. I'm not sure I'm necessarily convinced that that's 100% true, but I do know that I did some research and the drug is designed not to leave the gut. It's not designed to enter and have any effect in the bloodstream. It does what it does within the entire intestinal tract. So therefore, it shouldn't put the liver at any risk of damage by virtue of the nystatin itself going to the liver. But you need to be very aware of the fact that the way nystatin works is it literally blows up the organism. So the fungus or the candida is literally blown up. And this results in cellular die off or residue of what was left of those organisms, which are then toxins that are distributed throughout the body. And so this die off, which is caused by nystatin, can be quite severe. And I don't know how that might impact the liver. I know some people have difficulty tolerating nystatin because of the die off if they have extremely high levels of fungus. I didn't have any issues. So I think, again, it's very important to make sure that both the lymphatic system and your liver are functioning at their optimal level. So again, please talk to your doctor if you're considering fungal control therapies. Generally, for those of you who might be interested in alternatives to pharmaceuticals, I think there are some natural agents that can be used that have antifungal properties. And they include garlic, caprylic acid, grapefruit seed extract, and olive leaf. Those are all effective antifungal natural agents. The next question comes from Ben, and it concerns Wim Hof's breathing techniques. Ben asks if the controlled hyperventilation and breath holding, which is intended to raise blood oxygen levels and also raise ph, might, along with meditation, slow down cancering and help convert to the healing state what do I think, Ben? The first thing I would say is I think Wim is an amazing guy who's done amazing feats using his breathwork techniques. And as I mentioned earlier on, oxygenation at a cellular and tissue level was at the core of my protocols to address cancer. And therefore, I was very interested once I heard about Wim's techniques. And so I did actually take his course and practice some of his techniques myself, including the meditation and the breath work. I didn't actually do the ice baths. I didn't get quite that far. But I thought it might be a good way to kind of help facilitate oxygenation of tissues, particularly in the prostate. And I took the time, but what I found was that I didn't really kind of understand the science behind it. And so I really needed to get into the weeds a little bit to better understand exactly what it was doing within the functioning of moving oxygen into your lungs, then from your lungs into your blood, and then from your blood into your tissues. And I think that question was answered when I came upon a book which Ben referenced on one of his podcasts by Patrick McEwen called the Oxygen Advantage. And I should mention, just as an aside, since my podcast, original podcast with Ben, in this particular taping, Patrick McEwen has appeared on Ben's podcast. And so if you Google Ben and maximize oxygen utilization efficiency, you'll find the blog post on that and the posting for that particular podcast. And if you haven't already heard it, I would suggest you give it a listen, because I think it's. It's well worth the listen. But in his book and on the podcast, Patrick makes it very clear that deep breathing does nothing to increase oxygenation in the tissues themselves. He promotes, in order to best oxygenate your blood, the use of the diaphragm as part of your breathing process, which is used far more if you breathe through the nose than it is if you're panting through the mouth. And so doing that kind of diaphragmatic breathing, slow breathing brings in through your nose, brings in nitric oxide, and this allows for what he calls ventilation profusion. Okay, because when you breathe in through the nose, you bring in the air from the upper part of the lungs to the lower. And since most of the concentration of blood is in the lower lobes of the lungs and breathing occurs in the upper lobes, you need nitrous oxide to bring blood from the lower lobes to the upper lobes. And ventilation perfusion apparently does this. But getting oxygenation into the blood is one thing, and it really does. You no good unless you can get that oxygen out of the blood and into your tissues. And that requires carbon dioxide. And this is the rub here. For me, to get Those levels of CO2 up, you need to have controlled breathing. What I am familiar with, because I'm a big fan of yoga and done a lot of yoga, we call it Ujjaya breath. Very controlled through the nose, diaphragmatic breathing. Now, classic Ujjaya breathing includes moving the glottis, making that kind of ocean sound in the back of your throat. That's done really to heat the. Bring heat into your body. So if you're doing yoga on a really hot day, you don't have to make the ocean sound during your Ujjaya breath. But the whole idea is to really get your breathing down to an extremely low, controlled state. And what that does is it raises your level of carbon dioxide, and that effectively allows for the movement of oxygen out of your blood and into your tissues. I think the kind of the deciding point for me, and ceasing any more of the Wim Hof methods were when I stumbled upon McCowan's view that breathing hard increases the bond between oxygen and the blood cells. And in fact, he mentions on the podcast Ben, that the amount of oxygen in the brain is actually reduced, not increased, which is why you get that lightheaded feeling. So over breathing, to me, is probably not the best, at least for therapeutic purposes. There might be other reasons to do it, but certainly not for getting oxygen into the cells. The next question comes from Pete, who asks about emotional blockages. He says, and I quote, does sexual activity always play a role and what processes work to address blockages? Well, at first blush, this might seem like a bit of an odd question, but he might be kind of tying back into some discussions that I've had on podcasts about the theories of Wilhelm Reich, who was a brilliant German scientist, who came up this whole orgone theory of life and created this orgon machine. And the word orgone ties into orgasm. Because he was a very firm believer that kind of sexual health really played a major role in physical health. And so if there were any kind of serious dysfunctions at a sexual level, it would manifest itself at a physical level. I'm not sure necessarily. You need to buy into that perspective to still understand the importance of kind of just maintaining energetic flow. And I think sexual energy is just one of many energies that in Chinese medicine, we call qi. This particular element of the various protocols has been a real challenge for me because I think when it comes to this emotional, sexual, energetic flow, I've fallen down a bit, but to answer Pete's question, I don't think so. No. I think sources of cancer are really all over the map. In my view as a non scientist, but someone who has looked at all the evidence. I think cancer is caused by defects in respiration, which could be the result of many factors. It could be environmental toxins, it could be sexual or emotional blockage, it could be excessive radiation or EMF or all sorts of different things that can interrupt the ability of the mitochondria to respirate the way they should. And anything that kind of interrupts that respiratory capacity could result in cancer. I think qi is the obvious one because that's kind of the source of what we consider, at least in the annals of Chinese medicine, is considered to be the kind of the source of all life. So bottom line, not to get too woo woo here, it's really important to just pay attention to your attention, where you're putting your attention, pay attention to your thoughts, see how much of your energy is being wasted chasing ghosts with your monkey mind. And you know, just keep in mind that it's about that awareness. And where you put your focus or attention is where your chi, your life energy actually flows. So just be very cognizant of that. And if your sleep is good and your energy good, you feel some real passion, you get out of bed every morning and conquer the world, I think you're pretty much there. And just do the best you can at all times to keep things kind of fresh, light on changing up every now and then. Don't let things get too stale, don't let things stagnate. If you feel like you need to say something, say it. And the best way to address blockage is just to remain, just to remain present, focused, non centered, etc. And don't find yourself being distracted, frustrated, discouraged, depressed or disappointed. But yeah, it's not just sexual. The next question comes from Rob, who asks about the Bud Week protocol. He says, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna actually quote his question here because he does raise several things that I've had others bring to my attention as concerns when it comes to the Budweg protocol. And I think these are all valid concerns. And I can kind of go through why I don't think that these challenges are warrant me not taking the chance at doing this protocol based on what I view as kind of how it ties into my theories. But he says, I did the cottage cheese flax thing for a while. Then got concerned because I read somewhere that flax was high in estrogen and omega 6 and the omega 3 wasn't as bioavailable as animal based omega 3. This is correct. I also have heard, I think from Rhonda Patrick that casein in higher protein dairy foods like cottage cheese exacerbates cancer. On the plus side, there is supposed to be a reaction that takes place to create a sulfur fury fated protein. Is that right? Can you comment? Okay, well, I think let's start by just talking about Joanna Budwig, who came up with these protocols and kind of who she was. I think it's an interesting story if we know the purpose to raise it. She was a student of nursing at a large hospital, a thousand beds, and it was also a pharmacy and boarding school where she studied pharmacology. And she later went on to study chemistry and physics. And in that process she became an expert in lipids. So much so that after World War II, she was appointed the chief expert for drugs and fats at the Germany's Federal Institute for Fats Research, which was at the time in Germany, the largest office issuing approvals for new drugs, very much like our fda. And she discovered that fat played a very crucial role in cellular respiration and I would say communication too. Cellular communication. But she focused on the respiratory issues. Her opponents, interestingly, as an aside, really came down on her that she wasn't qualified because she wasn't a doctor. So at the age of 47, she went back to medical school and became a doctor. Clearly this woman had a love of science and really never had kids or had a family. She just loved her science. That was her life. But she was convinced, and I think we all know this now, it doesn't make a big stretch to come to this conclusion that highly processed foods, hydrogenated oils in particular block this oxidative process or for those of, you know, the work of Jack Cruz, what he calls quantum tunneling. And that's what leads to the development of cancer. Which ties in perfectly to the Warburg theory and Wilhelm Reich's theories and the others. While doing her job as the chief expert for drugs and fat, she observed that cottage cheese or quark contains the same sulfadril groups as those found in the cancer treatment drugs that she was being asked to look at. In her Fisher capacity, the sulfadril groups are cysteine and methionine, amino. Methionine amino acids. And she established that essential polyunsaturated fatty acids, or PUFAs, are crucial for properly functioning Cellular membrane. And of course, without a proper cellular membrane, the respiration itself is impaired. She flagged, which we now know is Omega 6 and Omega 3s2, which she considered essential polyunsaturated fatty acids that are absolutely crucial for cell membrane support. That's linoleic acid and linolenic acid, linoleic being 6 and linolenic being the 3s. And the chemical reaction takes place when sulfadril in the cottage cheese binds with the unsaturated fatty acids in the flaxseed oil. And this allows the flaxseed to become water soluble and enter a cell to supply energy. So if I were going to draw a metaphor, I'd say imagine the cells in your body are like a battery in a car and they require electrical energy in order to run and provide energy for other biological functions. If your car battery is not functioning as it should, is dead, it needs jumper cables. And apparently this combination of quirk flaxseed oil work together to kind of bring back that energy. It kind of helps facilitate the flow of these electrons. Note that part of the protocol is particularly effective when coupled with sun exposure. That's a quote from her book. And she said, of all living creatures, the human being has the highest concentration of photons from the sun's energies. So I think in my view it's kind of, you know, this all kind of fits squarely within my theories that underlie, you know, not only the respiratory issues, but the cellular communication issues. And getting that stuff to function properly is really important. And so I did bring Budwick's protocol into my daily routine. I was doing it early on in my addressing my cancer. I did it every day. I now do it probably three or four days a week on days typically when I'm getting a lot of sun, because, because I like that kind of marriage of the photons from the sun. At the same time I'm consuming this electron rich mixture which I, I'll get into it on my website. I don't necessarily need to do it here, but I actually make it so it tastes good. Because if you just, just have it plain, it's not the tastiest thing in the world, but you can, you can doctor it up and make it quite, quite delicious. The only way I make it, it tastes almost like cheesecake. So that's, that's hope that answers that question. But I do think that raises some good concerns. Moving on to the next question, Wayne asks about the use of food grade hydrogen peroxide, specifically about grade and dosage. And again, I have to make a disclaimer because hydrogen peroxide is an extremely caustic substance. You got to be very careful that you, that you're not doing this without the proper advice and guidance of your healthcare professionals. But that being said, let's talk a little bit maybe about the theory first. Hydrogen peroxide, as the theory is, or the folks that promote it, have the understanding that it really is a way of killing all pathogens, viruses, cancer, fungus, they're all anaerobic and cannot survive in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. It's the absence of oxygen that really kind of helps these pathogens survive. And so again, getting to highly oxygenated environment is really important, ties back into a lot of the protocols. And so more oxygen slows the progression of cancer and less oxygen will allow for faster cancer growth. That's kind of one of the underlying themes. And so hydrogen peroxide does fit into that. There's two ways that I do it. I do it using hydrogen peroxide and I'll tell you a minute kind of how I do it, but I also do it through the high dose vitamin C done intravenously because that, you know, I'll get to in a second because we're gonna have a question on that in a little bit. Talking about asking about high dose vitamin C, but actually converts to hydrogen peroxide. Don't Even consider the 3% that's sold at your local drugstore. That's a pharmaceutical grade. It's not to be ingested. It has toxic stabilizers. You can only use food grade whether you're ingesting it or using it in your bath. And I use 35% food grade. It's available on Amazon. And the two ways you can take it, you can take a cup of it in a bath of hot water and soak in it for 20 or 30 minutes. Or you can put. What I do is I put 8 drops into a glass of 8 ounces of aloe vera juice. You can also use distilled water. There's some people say you can put in regular water, but others say that if it has too many minerals in it, it kind of causes some issues with the hydrogen perox, something I'm not familiar enough to speak on. But I just use aloe vera juice myself. The next question comes from Horatio, who asks, you mentioned how early on you had problems with waking up a few times at night to urinate, throat phlegm, coffee and runny nose. Was it acupuncture that remedied those? This is an easy answer, Wayne. Yes. Next question. I'LL just quickly mention that I also did some dietary changes and took some Chinese herbs as part of my treatment protocols. But acupuncture was done. In my view, it is extremely effective for these types of chronic ailments. The only I think, footnote or caveat to that is you need to find a good acupuncturist, and that's not an easy task. So my suggestion would be to ask for referrals and try more than one acupuncturist until you stumble upon one that you think really can do the job that really works. The next question comes from Rob Listener, who's been using many of my same protocols and he's been using them just to keep his PSA level down. And Rob asks, what is your take on sulforaphane from broccoli seed sprouts? Okay. He mentions Rhonda. Patrick is a big fan and cited a French study where prostate cancer patients reduce their PSA doubling time. Yeah, I would suggest if anyone is interested in sulforaphane as a kind of medicinal or therapeutic element, you should take. You should take a good listen to Rhonda's podcast because she does a really deep dive on sulforaphane and its effect on cancer. But in the trial that Rob references, which Rhonda talks about on her podcast, they discovered that prostate cancer patients who were taking sulforaphane had a significant drop in the doubling of the PSA marker of prostate cancer growth. It was something like 86% just taking 60 milligrams a day sulforaphane. So yeah, it's an isothionate and it has a considerable impact on the progression of certainly heart tumor cancers. I don't know any tests that may have been done outside of this one. I think if you want to learn more about it, you should just go ahead and get on this podcast. Listen. But there in the podcast, she also gets into the phase 2 detoxification enzymes and the NRF2 pathway and its role as an antioxidant response element. And guess what is the phase two detox enzyme glutathione transferase, which we talked about when we were talking about coffee enemas. What it does the glutathione s transfer. It inactivates the pro carcinogenic agents by transforming them into water soluble compounds which are then able to be excreted in the urine and bile. Personally, I take three forms of sulforaphane. I do get broccoli sprouts from my local farmers market whenever they have them. They don't always do, but typically they do. And I get about 6 ounces for the week. And I also take daily supplement called Coursera SGS manufactured by Thorne, which has 50 milligrams of sulforaphane in it. And finally I put moringa powder into my new smoothie, which I don't do every day. I do it two or three days a week. And that is also extremely high in sulfur. I think moringa powder actually has more sulforaphane than broccoli sprouts do. You can also get sulfur frame from regular broccoli and cauliflower, but I don't think the levels are high enough to have any real therapeutic benefit. The same listener, Rob, asks for my thoughts on dichloroacetate, which I'll refer to as dca. And I should mention before I get too far into this, that there's a great article that was published in the British Journal of cancer back in 2008 that you should take a look at if you want to know all you need to know about dca. I found it fascinating not only because of how it kind of walked through the efficacy of DCA and its impact on the progression of cancer, but how all of that kind of laid into the same foundational elements that fit into the protocols that support my own theories of cancer. So I guess we can sidetrack for a moment on my own theories of cancer, which is that you know. And again, I apologize for repeating myself, but for those who maybe haven't yet heard the first podcast at least, solid tumor cancers like breast cancer and prospect cancer, these are all characterized by aerobic glycolysis. They use glucose for energy even when oxygen is available. And this is a far less efficient means of energy production than the the mitochondria based glucose oxidation, which is the normal ATP process. I think they produce 2 rather than 36 ATP per glucose molecule. And thus cancer cells can only thrive when there's significantly increased levels of glucose or significantly increased glucose uptakes, which obviously they need glucose to do. I've also concluded that at least for solid tumors, a hypoxic environment can result in the transformation of a healthy cell into a cancer cell. And cancer cells kind of revert back to their prehistoric pre oxygen based life form way of respirating whenever they are exposed to a hypoxic environment. It's almost like a method of the cells to kind of preserve themselves. They don't get enough oxygen and then they revert to this other form of providing energy. And in the study that I referenced the study I referenced on dca, they specifically noted that in this hypoxic state, the cells express pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase or pdk, which promotes or facilitates the conversion to aerobic glycolysis in the cytoplasm of the cell by metabolizing pyruvate into lactate. This lactate acidosis facilitates tumor growth and activates angiogenesis in the breakdown in the surrounding tissues. So what DCA does as a drug is it increases the delivery of pyruvate into the mitochondria, which allows the cells to once again function the way they should, including returning to glucose oxidation and the functioning of apoptosis. The way it functions not by inhibiting aerobic glycolysis, but by enhancing glucose oxidation. If it were the former, it would actually be fatal to non cancer tissues that use aerobic glycolysis for energy production. And it does this again by bringing pyruvate into the mitochondria. It's been around for about, I don't know, I'm going to guess maybe a decade or so, maybe more. This trial was a while back and there have been other trials done that indicate this one's referenced in this particular trial that indicate their concerns about peripheral neuropathy with dca. I don't know that any of them concluded that that is something that won't resolve itself if you stop taking dca. But I think there has not been enough clinical trial work to really know what the right dose strategy should be or how to manage any potential toxicity. And unfortunately, as this is now a generic drug, the likelihood of pharmaceutical industries coming in to help fund tests is very, very unlikely. So if I ever decided that I had to kind of pull all the stops and use even some experimental pharmaceutical drugs, I think the answer to the question would be DCA would be on my short list. No question about it. But for now I'm just kind of adopting a wait and see and I seem to be doing fine without it. The next question comes from Steve, who asks about B17, also referred to as Leotril, and whether I take it. And the quick answer is yes, it is. I do. It's part of my stack, but I do take it in its natural state, I.e. apricot pits, rather than taking a supplement form. You can get it both ways. I think there isn't even a version you can do via iv. I'm not familiar with how to access that or how that works, but someone mentioned that to me in the course of discussions I've had On Laetril. One thing again I have to caution you on is that it's not approved for use within the United States. And the National Cancer Institute has come up very strongly against Laetril. So this discussion again is just for informational purposes. How does it work? Well, normal cells have an enzyme called rhodinase which neutralizes benzaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide. The benzaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide are what's found in B17. So normal cells have this enzyme rhodinase which render these two potentially toxic agents neutral. Apparently this enzyme converts them into a harmless compound such as benzoic acid. Cancer cells don't have rhodinase. They instead have an enzyme called bidi beta glucosidase. Beta glucosidase is an enzyme that's only found in cancer cells. And this enzyme releases the Benz, Benzel, Hyde benzaldehyde and the cyanide from the glucose which then kill the cancer cell. There was another listener who I have to give a shout out to. I don't have his name in front of me, but he was, he referenced a documentary called Second, Second Opinion. Hold on a second, let's see if I have notes on this. I don't. It's. I think it's worth a listen to. It's called Second Opinion, the Sloan Kettering study or something. Anyway, in that documentary they apparently did animal Studies back in 1974 at Sloan Kettering and they took some specifically engineered tumor bearing rats, rats designed to create cancer in their bodies. In the control group they were testing for lung metastases and they found in the control Group Only 25% of the rats that were given B17 or Laetril actually had lung metastasized cancer. In the placebo group, 75% actually had metastasis. So you can see there's almost an inverse fairly high significant difference. So that's kind of the story on Liotril. There have been some other kind of studies that have concluded that it has no benefit. But those studies, I think the most recent one, as far back as 1982, I found extremely suspect. There were no control groups, there was no peer review, there were no experts. The people who did it had no experience with lay at trail. It looked to me like it was kind of a functional equivalent of what we call fake news, just pure pseudoscience. So I didn't give those any credence at all. But you should draw your own conclusions. Next, I want to conflate two questions because there's a bit of an overlap here. The first comes in from Dave, a multiple myeloma patient who has been using some of the protocols to keep his cancer at bay for about four years. And he asks about hydrogen peroxide and mentions having taken as much as 125 grams IV of vitamin C. That's very high. I've done 75. And two other Ben listeners, Megan, Steve, also raise concerns about the use of antioxidants concurrently with using oxidative stress therapies. And that's a excellent question, because that's something I think people kind of gloss over. They don't really think about the fact that if you're, if you're doing highly oxidative stress therapies, you don't want to be taking a lot of antioxidants. It just doesn't make any sense. One's going to cancel out the other. You're not going to get the benefit of either one. So let's kind of maybe drill down a little bit on this. Let's start off just talking about antioxidants generally, kind of when you think about antioxidants, I think probably the first two that come to mind are glutathione and vitamin C. And I think it's interesting to note that if we kind of circle back for a moment on ladril, tumors amass high concentrations of glutathione in order to protect themselves against chemotherapeutic attacks, such as the hyperoxidative stresses that are in my protocols. And those tumors need cysteine in order to produce that glutathione. And what depletes the supply of cysteine? Cyanide. So leotrel actually releases cyanide in the tumor cells. And one of the ways, I think it destroys the cells is it reduces the cysteine levels and thereby reduces their intracellular concentrations of glutathione. So we kind of think of glutathione as being nothing but a protective shield. But it can have, you know, can have other impacts. It does what it needs to do, which is to offset oxidation or oxidative stresses. So you really need to be careful when you trying to balance antioxidants while doing these oxidative stress therapies. And I think probably the most clear and understandable way of looking at this question is to kind of take a look at and understand the redox effect, because the redox effect is what you're striving for. And that's what we're going to kind of mention now when we get into Taking high doses of vitamin C intravenously as a therapeutic intervention. Linus Pauling, I'm sure many of her listeners know the name. He's kind of the grandfather on the use of vitamin C as an orthomolecular medicine. And he kind of set the stage for a lot of the science in this space. And all the, all the materials that I, that I've looked at that talk about high dose vitamin C as a therapeutic intervention intravenously have all come out of the Rear Dune Clinic here in the US and so that's a good place to go if you're looking for more information. In Japan, they do an extensive amount of, they use high dose vitamin C as a therapeutic intervention extensively. So there's also been an extensive amount of research as well, I would imagine out of Japan. And getting back to the redox effect, this is kind of where it gets interesting because vitamin C, we think of vitamin C as an antioxidant. And when it's taken in normal doses, in fact, it is an antioxidant. But when it's taken extremely high doses intravenously, it actually turns into a pro oxidant. It has kind of an oxidative stress effect. And Dr. Riordan did a lot of testing and his laboratories, or his lab came to the conclusion that you really want to get to between 350 and 400 milligrams per deciliter after getting an IV in order to really induce apoptosis in the cancer tumor cells through this highly oxidative stress. I started with 25 grams, then went to 50 grams and then to 75 grams. And that's kind of where I am now. And I do my IVs now every other week. I was doing once a week. And when you take doses that get you into the 350-400mg per deciliter level, the vitamin C actually has a significant impact on the impact between the iron and oxygen in your tissues. And in doing so, it kind of generates hydrogen peroxide. And that's what's so lethal to the cancer cells. So it's kind of a way of doing hydrogen peroxide without putting hydrogen peroxide in your system. Your body's creating it. And so the real what we're doing here is we're, I would say we could call this redox therapy. And getting back to Wilhelm Reich and his theories, you know, all of life has these pulses, these ebbs and these flows. This, it's like the ocean, it's like our breath. Things are constantly Moving and what we're talking about here really just an ebb and flow of electrons, oxygen, oxygenation, I'm sorry, oxidation is a loss of electrons and reduction is to gain electrons. And so it's the cycling effect between the two is what kind of we know as life energy you need this ebb and flow. And so hydrogen peroxide generates free radicals and the cancer cells just can't handle the oxidative stress. So that I hope answers the question. Another interesting point about vitamin C, it's worth mentioning and that is it's made from glucose, which we all know is through the Warburg studies and everything's happened since Warburg. The cancer feeds on glucose. And it's also important, I think to note that these molecules, the glucose molecules that are used are derived from corn products. So you want to make sure that whoever is, you're getting your vitamin C from using clean, non GMO healthy sources of corn. And if you ask your doctor, I'm sure you will get make sure that before you take it, ask your doctor and you'll get some comfort on that. If not find another Dr. Mindset. They're very careful about where they source it. Another corollary to this might come that might be in others thought processes on vitamin C is this whole issue about liposomal vitamin C, which is kind of the newest thing and there's a ton of products out there. Dr. Mercola has one. I take his as part of my normal daily stack. That's not high dose. I take 2 or 3,000 milligrams a day. And it's, it's being studied as a potential alternative to IV vitamin C. But I don't know there's anything out there that you could point to to to answer questions about whether it's an effective alternative. The next question comes from Randy who raised an interesting conundrum. He says, eric, I agree with everything you said. But if cancer is largely caused by stress, lack of creativity, drive, general malaise, how do we explain the hundreds of thousands of two, three and four year old children to get cancer every year? Oh boy. Yeah, when I saw that, I said, wow, this is a tough one. I totally get it. I totally get it. Randy, you touched on a very important point. In my view, there are several things at play. And again, this is just my opinion. There's no clinical evidence to back up what I'm about to say. But first of all, cancer cells proliferate quite well when the environment is full of nourishing fuel, which could be one reason why it's much Harder for even kind of traditional doctors who are doing cancer treatments to have success with young kids, and they have better success with old people because young kids have so much chi, or life energy. So the cancer is much easier. It has a much easier time proliferating and growing and spreading. And I also, as a footnote, think that this could have played a role in my own cancer. Because if you may recall from the prior podcast, when Ben and I met, I was constantly flooding my body with excess nutrients and not giving my body a chance to kind of clean itself out. I was never going into the autophagy state or allowing apoptosis to fully run its course. And I think that probably contributed certainly to the aggressiveness of the disease. It probably didn't cause the disease, but it caused me to have a far more aggressive and prolific version of it. I think another point worth raising is that young kids today are really exposed to environmental toxins that we simply were not exposed to in the past. EMFs are an obvious example. I mean, every school classroom now has WI Fi and our bodies are clearly designed to heal themselves and deal with stressors. But there comes a breaking point when it can no longer remain in its healing state. It just has too many stressors and it reverts to this cancer state. So I think these environmental toxins are a big point. And finally, I think kids are just not immune to the energetics of their parents. They have the same genes, they grow up in the same environment, and they're little sponges that pick up on everything they're exposed to in the first few years. So, you know, if there are any energetic deficiencies within the household, the kids are going to. Are going to suffer from that. And I think that coupled with the whole concept of Pottinger's cats, which show the impact of epigenetics on health and genes might also be at play too. So that you have. You have epigenetic impacts affecting future genes that end up having expression in subsequent generation. So while it's impossible to say what one element is, I think if you take a look at all these perspectives, you can kind of see why there might be this problem that we see with cancer in young children, which is unfortunate. Yeah, that's a real downer. It stresses me out to even talk about it. The next question comes from Jackie, and she raises probably one of the biggest challenges that anyone faces who's trying to do alternatives in sustainative care and how you manage. That's how you manage the time involved in getting all these protocols in. And I'm going to quote her, she says, do you find yourself stressing out about everything you must do to manage your health? Seems like you're doing a ton of stuff. I find myself getting overwhelmed. Try to fit everything into my schedule like meditate, coffee, enemas, energy work, going to appointments, sauna, etc. All that on top of having a job and a social life. How do you fit everything in? That's a great question. That's a really good question. It's interesting. When I originally was kind of asked about the challenges people face in addressing alternative treatments, my initial response had always been, well, it's unfortunate and I'm really, really upset over the fact that our insurance companies don't pay for most of these treatments, hardly any of them. And so people that don't have the means are not have to rely on insurance to cover them or Medicaid to cover them, don't have the option. But a lot of the treatment protocols don't cost much, if anything. I mean, sunlight's free, grounding's free, you know, hydration is next to free oxygenation. These are all things that really, you just have to kind of how you feel about yourself and how you feel about your life. And all those things I think are just, those are not a problem as far as finances are concerned. It's the bigger issue and the one that we're touching on here from Jackie is how do you fit it all into your schedule? And that's, that is a real challenge. And I think the only way that I can maybe suggest that you kind of approach this question is first of all, you have to decide if you're all in. And you have to be all in. In other words, you have to say, look, no matter what I'm going to do, what it's going to take to heal myself, because that's the most important thing. And that will mean that you may have to take some time sacrifices and take a period of time. Maybe they're not traveling, you're not seeing your friends, you're not doing anything else, but you're just kind of drilling down, focusing on some of these things. Eventually you will get to the point where a lot of these protocols get to be part of your daily routine. And when that happens, it's going to be a lot less of a time challenge because anything you add that's new to your routine, the first time you do it, it's going to take a ton of time. It's going to take a ton of time because you procrastinate, it's going to take a ton of time because you have to learn how to do it. It's going to take a ton of time because you have to buy the equipment and whatever it is you're using in order to do it. It's going to take a ton of time to figure out how it best fits into your daily schedule. All that stuff obviously eats up more, more of the time than it takes to actually do the protocol. So the idea is to get as many of these into your daily regimen, your daily routine. I personally like to get them all done early in the day if I can. So I get up very early and I get them all done. And there's probably a period of say, four hours between the time I wake up and the time I actually kind of, okay, say okay, I'm going to take my coffee now and go to the office or go upstairs in my office and get some work done. And so, you know, it's that period of time when I can really deal with most of these protocols and others. You kind of just figure out how to work it into your timeline. But that's a really good question. Moving on to the next question, Steve asks whether removal of a lymph node, which is an unnecessary surgery I had about 20 years ago in reference on the podcast, may have contributed to getting cancer. And I think the answer, Steve, is no, I don't think so. There's no way to know for sure. But because we have so many lymph nodes, I don't think that that would have been the cause. But as mentioned I mentioned earlier on this particular recording, I think to get back to a healing state from a cancering state, you really have to focus on getting your lymphatic system optimized and functioning. And having a good, healthy lymphatic system is absolutely crucial to remaining in a healing state and clearing out the die offs and everything else that occur when you're, when you're un cancering yourself, you're getting back into the healing state. And so I would caution those of you who are being advised to remove lymph nodes, obviously, if you need to do it, do it. And I'm not suggesting you shouldn't, but do it judiciously and make sure it's necessary. Even if they're saying, well, they have cancer. Well, yeah, that's what lymph nodes are designed to do. They're designed to absorb toxic things. I'm sure my lymph nodes had cancer because my prostate had cancer and they were trying to keep, keep that cancer out of my system. And so, you know, I didn't have them removed. They're now normal and they seem to be functioning normally. I'm not saying that everyone's going to have that same result, but I'm saying that, you know, be judicious about it, understand what the lymph is doing and really talk to your doctor and say, okay, doc, I get it. I don't want to do anything that's going to make it worse. I know once it's in the lymph system, it can spread throughout the lymph system. These are all things that I'm well aware of. Please advise me as to whether or not I can adopt more of a wait and see attitude or whether I have to do this right away, etc. So that's just my advice. Again, I'm not a doctor. Talk to your doctor. Finally, Lisa asked me to drill down a bit on the diet and I think this is probably a good place to wrap this up. There's two parts of her questions. The first one, and I'm gonna, I'm kind of read a part of it because I think she raises it something that I struggled with quite a bit in trying to decide what dietary therapies I would adopt. And that is, you know, that she raises a question to kind of how can you reconcile the difference between the doctor made Charles Majors juicing vegan diet versus the ketogenic diet? How could they both be equally efficacious? You know, I heard that you said you're in therapeutic ketosis, but you have a highly plant based, plant based diet. What are you doing? Are you doing juicing, etc. Which I'm going to get into. Thank you, Lisa for that question. And her second question was she asked about my super smoothie, which Ben referenced and actually put out a blog post on. And she said, do you think you contributed to your disease? Are you still doing it? And if you're not, why not? So let's let me first kind of jump to the second part of that question and that's about my smoothie. Yeah, I was, I mentioned this just a few moments ago. I was of the view that if a little is good, a lot is great. So I might. One of the reasons why I think I, I ended up where I ended up in this not healing state is because I wasn't giving my body a chance to clear itself out and I was flooding myself with far too many nutrients without really doing any blood work determining whether or not I really needed to be nutrients. And so the Answer your question, Lisa? I'm not doing that shake anymore. I also had a lot of ingredients in the shake that were, that were intended to raise my testosterone levels. And obviously with the types of therapies that you're dealing with with prostate cancer, you don't want to do that. So I had to take all those things out of my shake. And I just also changed my diet generally across the board. And so I kind of incorporated a lot of my new protocols or new dietary theories into a different version of that, which I now do on an intermittent basis. And so that's the answer to your second question. Now let's kind of go ahead and focus on the first part. And that is kind of about the diet generally. I'm a firm believer in, because I'm a firm believer in this whole Warburg theory on cancer and the works of Dom d' Agostino and Tom Seyfried and Travis Christofferson and others who have really focused on cancer as a metabolic disease. And there's a lot of stuff coming on in this now because obviously ketosis is kind of the hot thing. I'm a firm believer that glucose is to be minimized if you want to get over cancer, period. Full stop, no further discussion necessary. And so that definitely pushes me squarely into the ketogenic diet space because I don't see how you could possibly do a plant based diet and get enough fuel or energy in order to function unless you have extremely high levels of fat. And it's hard to do in strictly plant based diet. Which is why most of my friends who are vegan and vegetarian end up consuming a lot of carbohydrates. I've been to restaurants with them and vegan restaurants are great vegan restaurants here in LA and they have very tasty food. But I'm telling you, it's nothing but carbohydrates and I don't eat carbohydrates. So I walk out of those restaurants hungry every time. That kind of forces you out of the more vegan approach to cancer and forces you more into the ketogenic therapeutic ketogenic cancer theory of cancer, dietary modality for addressing cancer. So what I've done is I've kind of straddled both a little bit. And I've done this for intensive reasons too, because I read a lot of work to talk about the problems with too much animal based protein as being contributor to the insulin growth factor IGF1. I don't think that eating healthy animal protein causes cancer. I'm not one of these folks who think red meat causes cancer, I do think eating factory farmed red meat with factory farmed red meat, fat full of factory farm toxins in the fat could very well contribute to the, not the creation, certainly the progression of the disease. So obviously you want to source all your animal products from very, very clean sources. And I do that and others can. If you don't have access to something locally, you can buy stuff now frozen through the mail from, from all sorts of different vendors. So. Yeah, but again, you don't need much, right, because your body can't, your body can't assimilate more than a certain level of protein. So you want to keep your protein down to whatever you need to kind of maintain muscle mass. And in my case, that, that ends up being about 3 or 4 ounces of protein A day of animal protein a day, which is not a lot. I mean, I may, if I go to a nice restaurant, they have a really nice prime rib. I might do 5 or 6 ounces, but that's rare when I'm eating at home. I'm keeping, I keep the Porsches very small. And then I have a ton of vegetables which I think are great sources of fiber, which is great for the probiotics in your system. And they also have some micronutrients. But they're, they're a great place to put all your fat. You need something to hold all that olive oil, all that butter, all that wherever you get your fat from. So I would say that, you know, my own version of the diet could be called a high fiber ketogenic diet or perhaps a deuterium depletion diet. Because both vegetable diet and a high fat diet are diets that are very low in deuterium, which, which I talked about briefly and I can talk about more perhaps later. But it's, it's a fairly new science. It's a hydrogen molecule that's double the size of a normal hydrogen molecule that is found in trace amounts in all in the environment. It's in food, it's in water, it's in, it's in the air, it's environment, and it's in it. When it gets into the mitochondria, it mucks up the works. So by depleting the amount of deuterium, you're actually improving the function of the mitochondria, which gets back into the underlying tenor of these protocols. So it's, I get a lot of plant sources of fat. Coconut oil, palm oil, MCT oil, avocados, tons. I eat an avocado a day, olives, olive oil, nuts, etc. With a little bit of animal fat. I do have butter. I do use ghee in my cooking. I make my own bravo yogurt out of goat milk which I buy that's raw. I don't know why I buy it raw because I actually you have to boil it before you make the bravo yogurt. But that's what I do. It's organic, it's clean, comes in a glass bottle. And I do consume carbohydrates, but they're all from above ground vegetables. I don't eat any starchy carbohydrates other than when I have sushi with friends. I'll have a little bit of rice with the sushi. And all my animal proteins come from clean sources, mostly fish, shellfish. I do have some ruminants and foul, but again, very much in moderation. And so my typical day goes something like this. I have water to start with, about 30 to 34 ounces roughly to start with in the morning over about a two hour period. And that's all I have when I get up in the morning is just water, just clean water. I do have electrolytes. I do supplement with salt and some other electrolytes. Matcha green tea or coffee is what I'll have kind of as I'm getting ready to start the day as far as work is concerned. And the coffee I drink at home, I make it a version of decaf, kind of a bulletproof decaf coffee with butter and MCT brain octane. The reason I do that decaf is because it's first of all it's Swiss water organic, let's be clear, decaf. It's not the garbage you'd buy if you went to Starbucks and asked for decaf. The reason I do that is because coffee has the caffeine in the coffee has a very powerful diuretic effect and you really want to make sure your cells are being properly hydrolyzed. And you can't do that if you're drinking too much caffeine because you're just peeing it out. So if I go to a coffee shop, I would just get a regular coffee because I'm not drinking that much coffee. One cup of coffee. But if I drink coffee at home, I use decaf, but I have a large pot. And then my first meal would usually be the Budwing blend or my new smoothie or a big salad. If I'm out, I go to a restaurant, I get a big salad or some leftovers and you Know, my dinners are kind of the main meal of the day. And there I, you know, I make myself a soup that's made with bone broth and a lot of curcumin, turmeric. I make a giant salad with steamed vegetables that has some sardines or anchovies on it and all sorts of goodies. I cook a ton of veggies with a little bit of meat and a lot of fat. I put olive oil and everything. So you know the diet, you couldn't say what do you eat in a typical day? Because I don't eat the same thing on a typical day. I do have kind of fairly straightforward approach on a weekly basis is how I rotate through things. But I would say just take all the, all the stuff I eat, just plant it on the table. You'd see a big pile of vegetables, you'd see a couple of cans of coconut milk, you know, full fat stuff, not the stuff you buy in a milk carton. You would see some ghee, you'd see some butter, you'd see some goat milk, you know, you'd see a bunch of bone broth, you'd see maybe two cans of sardines, maybe a can of anchovies, you know, maybe a half a dozen eggs, you know, for the whole week. I just, I'm not heavy on the protein, but I do have some animal based products in there. It's just I don't have them every day. I don't juice to answer the question. And I think it's probably going to end up becoming my next major project on my side is to kind of lay all this stuff out so people can understand it. And I guess I want to. I hope that you found that informative. I want to thank Ben for giving me the opportunity to reach out to you. And if you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to me. And if you haven't already done so, go ahead and pay a visit to my site. It's questacurecancer.com There's a subscriber button there. Just put in your email address and you'll be plugged in. Thanks again.
You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.
Sam. Sa.
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