Conquering Cancer 101: How I’m Helping My Brother Fight Cancer + What I’d Share With You (Intro)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living 101 Masterclass Series. Today we have an unexpected class, conquering cancer 101, how I'm helping my brother fight cancer and what I'd share with you if you or someone in your family is fighting or does fight cancer in the future. So quick context here. My brother Rick I've mentioned in a number of our classes here, he's been one of my biggest supporters throughout my life. Older brother Rick coached me as a little kid playing baseball and is our biggest investor in our business. So you can imagine how I felt when I heard that. He was admitted to the hospital a couple of weeks ago with stomach issues, which led to a major surgery, which led to half of his stomach being removed, which led to a cancer diagnosis. We're still met with the oncologist yesterday and understanding exactly what's going on, what the protocol is going to be. But before we went into he went into surgery, I was in the surgical room with him and some of our family. Rick playfully introduced me to his surgeon. He said, this is my brother. He's my coach. And as you can imagine, over the last two weeks, I've spent basically all of my energy wrapping my brain around how to best support my brother. And I literally created this class for him. And I walked through this class with him early Saturday morning last week. And as I did so, I realized we're not alone. Unfortunately. So many families around the world are going through the exact same thing. And this class is basically me sharing the best that I know. I went back and looked at all of our notes. We have dozens of references to cancer. In our philosopher's notes. I called one of my smartest and wisest friends, Pilar Gerasimo, who started Experience Life magazine I know has gone through similar challenges with a dear friend of hers and said, what do we need to be thinking about? She recommended a great book called Anti Cancer, which I highly recommend. We're going to be pulling a lot of ideas out of there for this class, but basically, I'm obviously not an oncologist. I'm not a cancer specialist per se, but I am committed to supporting my brother. And I consider you an extended part of our family. And I'd like you to consider me your brother, helping you out here, your friend, your coach, however you want to frame it. But that's where this class originated from. As always, we've got 10 big ideas. And as always, I'm excited To share them. We'll start at the top and then we'll drill in. Right. Our first big idea is genes versus habits. Genes versus habits. A lot of us think that we're just cursed with bad genes, but the research is unequivocal. It's not genes that are driving the show, it's habits. We're going to talk about one research study in particular done in Denmark with adopted kids, over 1,000 adopted kids. And we look at what happens if their biological parents got cancer before age 50 vis a vis their adopted parents. And what you're going to find is it's the habits that matter more than the genes. Some researchers say less than 15% is genetic, others say 2 to 3%. So we're going to talk about the importance of habits. And it's really important that we wrap our brains around this. So. So we feel a sense of empowerment, which will be a theme throughout this. And I want to state, of course, each case is unique. Every situation is going to be unique. But I think these general principles will be helpful and apply throughout the second big idea statistics. One of my favorite classes when I studied at UCLA is statistics. We want to understand that statistics provide information versus a condemnation is how David Sirvan Schreiber describes it in Anti Cancer. We're gonna talk about Stephen Jay Gould, one of the greatest 20th century scientists who was diagnosed and decided that he was going to play in the long tail of that statistical curve. Statistics are interesting on a high level abstraction, but they are not anywhere near as interesting on an individual basis. We're gonna talk about the power of that. The third big idea is empowered mindset. We need to know that helplessness feeds cancer. We're going to talk about some research out of Martin Seligman's lab. The guy who started positive psychology, learned optimism, etc. Some pretty amazing stuff that shows the power of maintaining a sense of empowerment. Our fourth big idea is the terrain. We need to cut off cancer supply lines. The terrain is a phrase that's used to describe the inner environment that is either hospitable to cancer or inhospitable. We need to cut off cancer supply lines. Cancer feeds on certain things. We need to cut off those supply lines. We're going to use a battle from World War II as a metaphor of how to go about attacking cancer. Our fifth big idea is nutrition. This is our first line of defense as we're cutting off cancer supply lines. We got to get that terrain optimized. We're going to look at three facets here. Number one sugar plus flour, number two omega 6s and the ratio of omega 6s to omega 3s. Those two things are creating inflammation. If we don't have them dialed in, then. The third facet is protein. We need to get this optimized and that's related to something called mtor. Short story here. We want to get the promoters of cancer out of our diet. We want to install some fighters. Cancer loves sugar. Cancer does not love cruciferous vegetables. We'll talk about all that a lot more. The sixth big idea. Move plus exercise plus sleep. We talk about our fundamentals in all of our classes. It's particularly important now, of course, to optimize the terrain. We need to continue to move our bodies. Exercise. Of course, every situation is going to be unique. My brother's got a green light to do his walking, to do all the things that he wants to do, and to get ready for a spartan race. We're going to do as a goal the end of this year. Get him in the best shape of his life is the target that we're looking at. Use this as a wake up call to optimize. The third facet here is sleep. Again, this is so important for us to get that terrain right. We've got to recover, we've got to rest. Our number one tip here, as always, turn off your smartphones. Quit blowing yourself up at the end of the day. Your circadian rhythms have been fine tuned, delicately fine tuned over millions of years of evolution. Not helping ourselves by disrupting that. The seventh big idea. We need to alchemize stress. We've got to optimize our stress response. We can't be in fight or flight constantly. We're going to look at the Serenity prayer, which could also be called the courage prayer, and cultivate both our serenity and our courage to accept the things we cannot change and have the courage to change the things that we can. We're going to talk about how to do that. Mastering our breathing. Worked on my brother's breathing before he entered the surgery as I was driving down that morning. He officially became a meditator that morning. We're also going to talk about bringing it on. I'm seeing this as a challenge vis a vis the threat. Alchemizing stress. Our eighth big idea is our environment. We need to reduce the toxic load. And in fact, this is David Sirvan Schreiber's number one tip. Our environment is packed with toxins and any one particular thing might not be that big of a deal, right? But when you Aggregate them into a cocktail, it creates something extraordinarily toxic. We're talking about cleaning supplies, cosmetics, deodorants, soaps, shampoos, cooking in plastics, etc. We're also going to talk about the environment for your new lifestyle. We need to create an environment where we ruthlessly purge your pantry and the rest of your house with things that no longer belong in your optimized lifestyle. Our ninth big idea is the team. We're going to practice Love 2.0 and Grateful Flow, appreciating the people on our team, the professionals, and of course our family members and friends, but the professionals who have dedicated their lives to to becoming experts in their domain, to serve us. But we also want to ask a couple of questions and see do we have an integrative MD that we can get on staff? This is one of Pilar Gerasimo's things. Ask two questions. One, is there an integrative MD on staff that we can bring on the team? And two, what's your nutritional philosophy? We'll talk more about that. We also want to look at the difference between acute issues and chronic issues. Western science is incredibly good and at dealing with acute medical issues, whether that's a broken arm or a blocked stomach. Whereas with the chronic issues, we want to step back and see the limitations of current modern Western science. The tenth big idea is crisis plus dose effect. Relationship plus life force. Crisis. In Chinese, there are two symbols that make up the word crisis. Danger plus opportunity. And this is what's most inspiring for me, is my brother is all in. He's seeing this as a wake up call to change his life. Danger plus opportunity. Then we have a dose effect relationship. The research on these interventions on cancer and their effects on cancer are clear. There's a dose effect relationship which means the more you engage in this lifestyle modification, the better the results. And then finally, life force. Back to David Sirvan Schreiber. He says the number one protection against cancer is a reason to live, is that life force within and connecting to that. He talks about Aristotle's idea of entelechy, that force within us that's pushing everything in nature from seed to fruit and fruition in the tree. We have that best version of ourselves latent within us. And cancer, perhaps more than anything else, is a wake up call to express that best version of us. When we talk about conquering cancer, we're talking about conquering it not primarily on a physical level, but on an emotional, energetic, spiritual level, tapping into and connecting that life force, expressing the best within us. Moment to moment to moment. So that's the quick look at the top 10 big ideas. 1 more quick note before we jump in. This class is about conquering cancer, but we want to keep in mind that the best way to conquer cancer is to prevent cancer. Having said that, let's jump in and find all the ways we can conquer it. To learn more about the 300 day Optimize coach program, visit Optimize Me Coach. Hi, this is Brian with some super exciting news. Optymyze is now absolutely free. All 600 philosopher's notes, the 50101 masterclasses, 3,000 optimized, plus ones free. So what do you want to optimize today? Your productivity? Habits? Sleep? Mental toughness? We've got 33 categories here, each of which comes with its own Optimal Living 101 masterclass and a collection of philosopher's notes to help you go to your next level with more wisdom in less time. We've had tens of thousands of people, nearly every country in the world, sign up for our premium membership offering, which we have now made. Did I mention absolutely free. Come join us. Optimize me More wisdom in less time. Let's optimize every aspect of your life so we can go out and change the world 1% at a time together. Starting with you and me today.