Lower Your Risk for Cancer & Chronic Diseases, with Dr. Greg Eckel

I've had the privilege of sitting with 91 year olds and they're like, hey, Doctor, if I would have known I was gonna live this long, I think I would have taken better care of myself.

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I'm Dr. Ed Levitan. Welcome to the Five Journeys podcast where.

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Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Five Journeys podcast, Live like youe Matter. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubo. This is Dr. Ed Levitan, and our guest today is Dr. Greg Eckel. In practice since 2001, Dr. Eckel co founded Nature Cures Clinic in Portland, Oregon, where he shares what he calls Soraya's gifts with the world. As a loving husband and clinician, he took a deep dive into medical research looking for cures to his wife's Creutzfeld Jakob disease, a rare chronic neurodegenerative condition with no known cure. While he unfortunately didn't find a solution for Psoria, the information he discovered and now uses in his clinic is showing promise for thousands of people and their brain health. Welcome, Greg.

Very excited.

Thanks for being here.

My pleasure.

So how does going from neurodegenerative disease to longevity, because that's, that's a pretty. For one, you're talking about major disease that's majorly affecting people versus something that's gonna prolong, hopefully health span, not just lifespan.

Right?

Yeah.

You know, I want to just, I want to live long and then just die. Right. I don't want to be into disease, process or chronic illness. So. So it got me thinking, like, heck, if these programs that I'm putting together are helping people that are significantly progressed into a pathology, what if we put it in for us now and, and really, you know, change the game and get into thriving? Like, what does thriving look like? Like, how do we, are we able to age backwards? You know, I most of the time feel like an 18 year old kid. Like I'm giddy with excitement when I wake up in the morning to see, well, how does this mystery unfold today? And so I wanted to share that with people on the other end of the continuum of like, you know, I'm seeing this work over here. What if we just move the conversation on the continuum over into a wellness or health span discussion and you know, lo and behold, it's one, it's a lot of fun. Two, it is, it's a whole different conversation to have with people. So I, I think I did it mainly for my heart of like, okay, I can help a lot of significantly progressed people in their disease process. And I also want to work on what, what does thriving look like? Like how good can it get? Like how, how, you know, along those lines. So that, and that's a fun conversation to have.

So are there any. Have you been able to boil down in your work on this, the top five things that set the stage for longevity.

Talk about the top three, right? The top three killers, cardiovascular disease, cancer and neurodegeneration. I think to make it more practical to people because those are the top killers. One, the first tenet is don't die.

That's a good thing.

I guess that's a really low bar.

Well, I mean, it's the truth though. Don't die is the first tenet of longevity. Because the longer that we're around, you know, the advances in medicine that are coming down the pike in the next 10 years are phenomenal. I mean, I, you know, I get to talk with Dr. Anthony Attila. He's growing organs in his lab from stem cells from skin at Wake Forest. And I mean that's miraculous in and of itself. That should be, you know, he's predicting within three to five years having FDA approval for process. So I mean, and those are solid organs. So that is like the truth is like the longer you're around, the more advances that we're going to see in medicine. But if we're going to talk about thriving. So from your in the direction that you want to go on that, which I can do that, you know, we're looking at, you want to maintain the vessel for as long as possible in a fully functional, pain free manner. You know, I've had the privilege of sitting with 91 year olds. You know, right when I started my practice, I'm sitting with 91 year olds and they're like, hey doctor, if I would have known I was going to live this long, I think I would have taken better care of myself.

The accidental octogenarian.

Yeah, right. And so having that is like, okay, well, you want to really maintain your joints, you want to maintain your muscles, you want to maintain your heart and you want to maintain your brain. And not just maintain it, but you want to really is. Are there ways that you can reverse the aging? So we can measure biologic age, which is not just your times around the sun, but it's your how old do your cells think they are? Right. So you've seen people your same age. They either look 10 years younger or 10 years older. And you know, for a variety of reasons, they're genetics component, there's lifestyle component, stress level component. You look at any US President and in the four years that they're in office, they age extremely fast. And so. Well, what is that? Stress levels? Right. And so stress, we know, is a metabolizer. It will fasten, quicken your metabolism and accelerate the aging process. So you, you look at what can you do to slow that aging process and then how do you reverse it?

So let's talk about, you said cardiovascular cancer and neurodegenerative how do you prevent cancer?

So that's the trillion dollar question right there.

You brought it up. You said don't. No, no, I did.

For one. There's some early detection methods now. So there are, I believe the testing is getting more and more sensitive to picking up cancer in the body at earlier and earlier stages. So early early detection is crucial. I don't have the answer on prevention. We do know there are certain characteristics. One, if you're a smoker, please stop. We know that that is very detrimental and also accelerates the aging, also has increased cancer rates. Sugar balances are another big one. So on the diabetes front, to even uncontrolled sugar. So you can get measurements in blood with hemoglobin A1C fasting glucose.

And just to pause you there for a second, there is association with higher blood sugar with increased cancer risk.

Yes.

So that is there. And then I just want to make sure to go back the. One of the newest tests that are out there is called Gallery by a company called grail. Grail.com I think that we've been using for six months now or something over a year now that just came out a couple years ago that really looks at the blood test called the liquid biopsy and looks at early cancer and can pick up pancreatic cancer and things that we have had no good evidence ability to pick up. So it's a cool test, right?

Yeah, about 65 cancer varietals. There's also a test coming out of India from SAR labs that they are claiming they can pick up cancer six months before it occurred in certain biomarkers in their blood. And they, they actually have a pretty decent sample size. Um, so we're. That's not FDA approved in the states as of yet, but it shows really great promise. So like I said, don't die is the first Tenet because there are these, these things are like right on the horizon as far as like figuring it out. And we do know if you can reverse the biologic age of an individual by seven years, we can prevent about 50% of chronic illness from developing. So that is, there's some compelling evidence there in this discussion. So on the cancer front, we do know there are lifestyle things as far as circulation, quality of blood hormone balances of like optimizing your innate intelligence, as far as what, what it needs to heal itself. So, you know, I operate from the, the understanding is the body can heal itself given the right information and removing obstacles to cure. And so that aspect of it in the cancer realm, you know, there are things like senescent cells, you know, there's some senolytics that are now on the market to clear the zombie cells out of circulation. We know, you know, caloric restriction or time restricted eating. There's great evidence on life extension with a quality health span with those behaviors.

Yeah. And the other thing I'll plug is toxins have a strong cancer.

Well, they're innately inflammatory. So cancer to me is a state of inflammation gone terribly wrong, way out of control and growth. So manage toxins, reduce inflammation, reduce risk.

Yeah. And I mean we're, we're all exposed to crazy amount of toxins. And although we have a lot of, some of the toxins have some, some kind of profile in terms of their toxic profile, but nobody has a toxic profile with the hundreds of toxins that are currently in our body. How do they work? How do they interplay together and mess up our body even more?

So, yeah, I mean that, I mean that, yes, I, I mean I full on agreement. You know, Professor Serolani who did a lot of the research in the European Union on glyphosate and Roundup in particular, he's one of my heroes.

Oh, don't get Wendy started on glyphosate.

Presenting in two weeks or three weeks on it.

Awesome. You know, his research, I mean it showed in the Lab roundup was 99 times more, more toxic than just glyphosate alone. And you know, it was like mouse study after mouse study is like, wait a minute, there's something else in this slew. And that stuff is still sold in like Fred Meyers here in the Northwest. It's like, wow, we're exposing ourselves to cancer causing agents and we wonder where cancer is coming from.

Oh, our neighbor's still spraying it. And we were like, we're getting heart attacks just looking at our Neighbors and trying to talk them out of using Roundup.

Well, like, this is where I drove up. He has the most beautiful lawn and he and his father in law lie on the grass and pick out weeds. So I actually thought that his beautiful lawn was because of manual labor. So I drive home one day and I see he's walking around with a portable can of glyphosate spritzing his yard. And I was like, round. Yeah. And I was like, I walked in the house, I said, ed, our neighbor sprays glyphosate. I mean, I never really thought about it, right?

But like we have like, we have organic vegetables and fruit trees and they have like this back beautiful backyard.

And our neighbor to the right doesn't spray because he has a dog. Our neighbor to the left doesn't spray. I don't know why, but he doesn't.

It's like, even if we try the hardest next door, you never know drift. Or you do know, unfortunately.

Right? Yeah. And you get that your neighbor drift. And so then you look at, okay, well we're all getting exposed, so what can you do? So saunas, we know the evidence on saunas, four to seven times a week will also reduce all cause mortality by 50%. So you can see the premise actually, Wendy, is don't die. And there are. And it is on. And it is on these components of like, look, we know we have levels of toxicity. I truly believe as humans we have not been taught how powerful we are. So, you know, we've got these kind of practical things that we can put in saunas. Exercise, movement, cardiovascular disease. So one of the things on that front would be to do VO2 max testing, which is this is, you know, putting somebody on a bike or a runner. You do a full EKG lead and you're measuring forced volume of oxygen out of the system. And then once you pass an anaerobic threshold of like, you can't get any more oxygen in because you're utilizing it so quickly. You see what does the heart and the lungs do? So that is the best predictor of longevity that I have found because it can pick up Cardiovascular microvascular changes 10 to 15 years before it ever becomes macrovasculature. Right. We know the first symptom of cardiovascular disease a lot of times kills the person, which is a heart attack. And they had no, you know, no symptoms before. Well, we know in the medical world that's maybe not true, but they weren't listening to some of the earlier, more subtle symptoms of what that looks like.

Okay, so Rule number one is don't die. Rule number two is optimize the function. Rule number three. See rule number one.

Yes.

That's like boil it down but pay attention.

We want to keep it simple.

Well we spend a lot of time talking to our patients of like listen, listen, listen, your body's tired. Listen Delta, you don't need to caffeinate. It's not a caffeine deficiency. If your body's in pain, listen to the ouchies. If you, if we gave you a few supplements, huh?

Ouchies, ouches.

If you, if I gave you too many supplements and they don't feel good. Stop. Listen to your body. It's not. Don't give away your power, don't give away your authority of your own body. So it's, it's one of those like I think when you talk about people haven't been educated. People are educated to say at least the old time older generations, doctors know everything. You listen to what they say, take your pills, don't, don't, you'll be fine. And the new conversation is at least on our side I think I'm sure it's on same on yours is your body has your daily intelligence. It needs listen to what your body says. Get some inspiration from people. Could be doctors or whatever's the right place for you. But you gotta listen, you gotta actually pay attention and slow down enough.

Yeah, it's like that Cat Stevens song the answer lies within. Right? So it is the intelligence is speaking in the apparatus of our bodies and I think as great clinicians and providers, the ones that listen like you're saying you're coaching and educating your patient base on. You've got to listen to your body like and that's what all I do. I say I do a lot of nothing all day. You know, it's the body, it's the person and it's the, you know, the levers that we push on. I can hold the space, I can create the certainty or at least knowingness that one, we have a safe space. Two, we're turning over the stones that we need to turn over. But ultimately it is the individual doing the work. They're the ones that are telling us what is the, what's the path here to Wellville? How do we get back there? So yeah, I love that like, and that is that component of really empowering the person to trust their, their wisdom and really getting them back in touch with that. Because what has happened now when people get into a fear based component, they're not able to Access their prefrontal cortex, which is where all of the possibilities exist. So when we're in our limbic and amygdala, which is fear, when you're under fear or feel like, okay, when's the other, when's the other shoe gonna fall? Or you know, some like we're being vigilant. Like we just went through, you know, three years of major propaganda around fearing other. And some people are still in living in that fear. Well, that fear doesn't allow them to access their greatness or all of the resources and possibilities that exist for them. So I want to make sure in this discussion around longevity, we're talking mindset as well. And it seems like that's a good lead in to bring that into our conversation where, you know, we, we've got some great research coming out from the Joe Dispenza camp around, you know, meditation, turning on Serpine A5 gene, which is potently anti inflammatory and you know, really helps the body get into a relaxed regenerative state, parasympathetic activity. So there are those aspects of care that really there's no time in conventional medicine to address any of that. And there is no rep coming to the office saying, are you getting your patients to meditate?

Headspace isn't coming over your office. The reps came over my office.

Oh, there you go.

So I think this is a good time to recap because we're sort of drawing near to the end where it's. I gave you a hard time about don't die because it sounds so like kind of snarky. But really if you can stay long enough and healthy enough, even at a sort of basic level, technology will advance to keep you moving, to keep you alive. What did you call that?

Escape velocity.

Escape velocity. That's what it is. Okay, so if you stay alive long enough, escape velocity will help. Timed fasting, stress reduction, sleep, saunas, sauna, detox. I think detox is a category. Movement and food.

Yeah.

And love. Love wasn't mentioned there. So like having a community.

I am so glad you brought up love. And it actually sounds like a very big hippie agenda right there. But it is, it is all about the heart. You know, in Chinese medicine we talk about the heart as the emperor Empress and it's all guided by the heart. So it's, you know, how do we help people gain their full faculties back, get into heart and brain coherence and create from their heart space. So love is the answer. It is the vibration that is healing. We all desire it as humans. And, and so like that is, that's the secret special sauce there. Now we don't have that in a bottle, but the way that you get there is by opening your heart and allowing it in. So that. I'm really glad that you brought that up, Wendy.

So where can people find you? Because I know I'm sure listeners will have a lot of questions.

Yeah, we're scratching the surface here.

Yeah, yeah, I know that was we, we rambled right on through there. So it's Dr. Greg Eckell, Nature Cures with an sclinic.com also B vital the letter B vitalpc.com so we've got, that's we just opened up our second clinic in Park City, Utah. So we're out of Portland, Oregon. Park City, Utah. Thank you. And, and we're also worldwide so we do a lot of telemedicine. We do consults. I've got some great heart centered providers here and you know, we're out to make a difference. So you know, my encouragement is you don't have to go it alone and just get into a conversation with these two lovely providers here or contact us and we, you know, we're here for you.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Am I closing the episode?

You're always close. What do you mean?

Greg, thanks for being here. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Five Journeys podcast live like youe Matter. Our guest today was Dr. Greg Eckel and all of the ways to find him are in the show notes. If you like the show, give us a like and share it with a friend so we can spread the word. Have a good day. Inspire and empower someone else by leaving a five star review so they can.

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