natural treatment for epilepsy disease naturally

meredith:welcome to cellular healing tv, episode94.â  we have a very special guest joining dr. pompa and i on the call today.â  we havedr. thomas seyfried.â  i’d like to start off by sharing a little bit about dr. seyfried,and then i will introduce him and then we’ll get started with the interview.i’m so excited to have professor and dr. seyfried on the call.â  he’s an expert andpioneer in the field of cancer research. he’s a professor of biology at boston collegeand one of the leading academic researchers in promoting how to treat cancer nutritionally.â he’s been teaching neurogenetics and neurochemistry as it relates to cancer treatment at yaleuniversity and boston college for the past 25 years.he’s written many, many peer-reviewed scientific

articles and book chapters, and has also publisheda book called, cancer as a metabolic disease: on the origin, management, and preventionof cancer, which we’ll be discussing today. the book provides extensive information showingthat cancer can be best defined as a mitochondrial, metabolic disease rather than a genetic disease,which is an exciting concept and has implications for developing new, nontoxic cancer therapies,including a ketogenic diet, which we talk about a lot on this show.experts in the research field have praised this comprehensive study as one of science’smost cutting-edge topics.â  i know your work has really impacted dr.â  pompa and his approachin supporting his clientele, so we’re so excited to have you on the show.â  welcomedr. seyfried.

dr. seyfried:thank you very much.dr. pompa:i would love to say this up front. here’s the book if everyone can see it.â i tore this book apart, professor, and loved every page of it.â  i really did.â  some peoplemight not appreciate the biochemistry, but i can say that i absolutely loved it.canceris a disease today that i believe many are taking a wrong approach to.â  i want to saythis at the top of the show; we’re not claiming to treat cancer.â  we’re not claiming totreat any disease, but i believe the research in this book really shows that where the billionsof dollars are being spent is absolutely being misdirected.â  i believe science shows thatif we put these dollars in a different direction that you talk about in this book we wouldsee the statistics changing.

doc, i don’t know where it was in your book,but you talked about the number of cancer cases per year and the number of deaths peryear either not changing or, in fact, going up on a yearly basis.â  let’s start there,because your theory here runs contrary to what’s being done.â  in cancer, we’renot winning the war.â  we’re losing the war.â  what about that?dr. seyfried:the death rate in the last 25 years is about a 37% increase in new casesand about a 3â½ to 4% increase in deaths per year.â  if you look at the trajectory of thetwo paths, you’d say we’re winning the war on cancer, because the number of deathsper year is not increasing at the same rate as the number of new cases.â  however, thenumber of deaths per year continues in its

relentless increase year after year afteryear.â  if you have something that’s going to be effective, you should see a very sharpdrop in the number of deaths per year, not a lower rate of increase because the lowerrate of increase could be due to a lot of different kinds of things, but if you havesomething that really works, you’re going to see a significant drop in the number ofdeaths per year. dr. pompa:you and i would therefore agreethen with the argument that the money, because billions are being given to cancer research,is being spent on an approach that is simply not working.â  you and i agree that thosestatistics are showing that, so where the money is being spent is genomic research,right?â  most people out there, i think, in

the public anyway would say they’re doctorsand they’ve heard, “hey, you get cancer it’s because you’re unlucky, right?â you’ve got the gene,” yet i know and i’ve read in other studies and yours that thereare at least 700 gene-targeted therapies out there and yet none of them have been shownto reduce tumors.â  what’s going on with that?dr. seyfried:i think the conception is that’s it’s a disease of unbridled cell proliferation.â most of the therapies that are being used to treat the disease are focusing on the proliferationof the cells.â  these toxic chemicals, various chemos, are designed to block the cell cyclein various respects, damage the dna so that the cells can’t divide. irradiate this.â this is all based on breaking dna to try to

stop the uncontrolled growth of the cells,so we subject ourselves to a whole range of different toxic drugs and different kindsof therapies. the genomic approach is now into checkpointinhibitors based on the mutations that exist in the various cells.â  not as many peopleare getting drugs based on the genomic research as are getting the standards of care whichhave been in the field for quite some time, mainly because a lot of those drugs, the newdrugs based on so-called “immunotherapy” are extremely costly.â  what’s more importantis they don’t work for the majority of people, and they can also have very significant sideeffects and toxic effects.â  they can be equally as troubling as these standard toxic drugsthat work that we’re currently using.

we persist with radiation and chemo becausethe checkpoint inhibitor drugs have not led to the kinds of drop in disease that we wouldlike to see.â  if those checkpoint inhibitor drugs for the new fad that is currently inplace, which are immunotherapies that many drug companies and institutions are activelyinvestigating or implementing these kinds of things, if these really worked as wellas they should then we should see an precipitous drop in the number of deaths per year andwe’re not seeing that.â  we have to rely on the tried and true toxic therapies thathave been in existence for the last 50-75 years.â  these are very horrifically toxickinds of therapies, so we’re working on areas of research that will reduce some ofthe toxicities, things that are not quite

relevant to the nature of the disease, buttrying to take the edge off the toxicity from some of the drugs that are being currentlyused. if people realize that cancer is a mitochondrialmetabolic disease and therefore all of the cells are fermenting to one degree or another,they have to use those fuels that are available in sufficient quantities that allow the cellto grow by using fermentation, which is a primitive form of energy metabolism.â  it’svery clear to those of us who work in the field that the two primary fuels that aredriving these cells to grow are glucose and glutamine.â  these are the fuels that arepresent in our body in sufficient quantities logistically to allow cells to proliferateand have the fuels available that can allow

them to proliferate.â â  the simplistic wayto manage the disease is to simply restrict the availability of those fuels that are drivingthe fermentation metabolism, because you have to realize that every cell genetically isa different entity, so no two cells in the tumor will have the same genetic mutations,but all of the cells in the tumor are fermenting to one degree or another.why are we focusing on the unique aspects of every different cell in the tumor whenwe can focus on the malady that’s common to every cell in the tumor?â  this is theconundrum.â  this is the puzzle. dr. pompa:absolutely, and let me back up forour watchers and listeners.â  you threw out some good biochemistry there, but i’m goingto back up and make it as simple as possible,

and tell me where i go wrong if i do.according to the warburg theory – i read his stuff some years ago from the early 1900s– he said, based on his theory, cancer cells have one thing in common.â  something getsdamaged in the mitochondria.â  there’s damage there.â  for folks listening, that’s wherewe produce cellular energy.â  if you remember back in biochemistry, i’m stretching someof you, there’s a process called oxidative phosphorylation where we make most of theatp, which is the cell energy.â  something gets damaged, and now the cell can’t makethat same amount of energy.â  am i good so far?dr. seyfried:yes. dr. pompa:in that process, the cell then canturn on a gene, some adaptation occurs, and

it up regulates a less effective form of cellenergy production called glycolysis, which means without oxygen.â  it’s a different,less efficient way of making cell energy, the use of glucose for energy.â  that’swhat professor was saying.â  therefore, it up regulates that to make up that energy difference.â now we have these cells that have adapted to damage, probably turning on a gene, soaccording to your research, the gene doesn’t come first, because that’s what researchis saying; we have bad genes, and then that causes a cellular problem.â  you’re sayingno.â  the damage happens first, and the adaptation then perhaps can trigger the gene, which isthe secondary thing.â  then, we have this adaptation where the cancer cells are utilizingglucose as an energy source.

dr. seyfried:yes, but there’s a confusionthat exists over the term aerobic glycolysis and aerobic fermentation.â  you’re right.â all of our cells use the glycolytic pathway, glycolysis, converting glucose to pyruvate.under normal, aerobic conditions, our bodies are well oxygenated, so all of our cells takein glucose.â  we break food down.â  glucose is a prime fuel for the brain, and many otherorgan systems take in glucose.â  the glucose is metabolized to pyruvate, and then in normalcells, the pyruvate enters into the mitochondria for full oxidation, with the waste productsbeing co2 and water.â  this is the standard respiration in our body.â  it’s called aerobicglycolysis. many people use the same term, aerobic glycolysis,to reflect the abnormal energy metabolism

in a tumor.â  the tumor cell is using aerobicfermentation because it produces lactic acid. the pyruvate, rather than going into the mitochondria,which can be defective in many ways – there’s not just one way.â  there’s many differentways in which tumor cell mitochondria can be abnormal.â  if pyruvate can’t be fullyoxidized, it’s rapidly reduced to lactic acid or lactate which is then dumped outsidethe cell, leading to an extracellular acidification of the micro environment leading to a woundedmicroenvironment leading to the inflammation and progression in a lot of the other things.now, the mutations – if the respiration is not affected yet some oxygen can stillget into the cell, they form reactive oxygen species because the respiratory system ofthe cell is not completely efficient.â  ros,

reactive oxygen species, are known to be carcinogenicand mutagenic.â  these reactive species coming out of defective mitochondria then damagethe nuclear genome and cause mutations as a downstream effect of the damage to the respiration.dr. pompait’s turned on secondary to the–. the damage happens first, the gene gets turnedon, secondary to the metabolic shift. dr. seyfried:you have to be careful aboutthe gene that gets turned on, because what’s happening is the ros damaged the nuclear dna.â if the mitochondria do not produce sufficient energy through respiration, the cell naturallydetects this and begins to ferment.â  the genes that control fermentation are oftenthe oncogenes.â  they are transcription factors that up regulate fermentation when respirationbecomes insufficient.

oncogene turn-on is a response to the damageto the respiration.â  the oncogenes are needed to up regulate the primitive form of energymetabolism to a greater extent, because all of our cells are producing pyruvate throughglycolysis because our energy through respiration is so efficient, so streamlined.â  now, ifthat doesn’t work, in order for the cell to remain alive and not have a massive energyfailure, the cell has to gradually increase the capacity to produce atp through an alternativesystem, which is this primitive form of energy called fermentation that existed on the planetbefore oxygen came into the atmosphere. for the cells, this is a relic of the past.â that pathway of glycolysis is one of the most ancient pathways that we know of in metabolism,and that pathway is the first step in normal

energy metabolism, but becomes the dominantform of energy when the respiration becomes defective.dr. pompa:we have something very odd going on.â  we have the production of energy viaoxidative phosphorylation and that’s that very efficient aerobic pathway, the use ofoxygen, and this fermented glycolysis process going on, or utilization of glucose.â  i’mtrying to make it simple for our people to understand, which is less efficient.â  bothof them are going on at the same time, which i think warburg refers to as respiratory fermentation,which is almost contrary in itself where you have these two things going on at the sametime that typically aren’t because these certain genes get triggered through this.dr. seyfried:i think the idea of the fermentation

– fermentation happens in muscle.â  youget lactic acid fermentation when oxygen becomes insufficient to generate the energy so themuscles begin to ferment.â  they produce lactic acid.â  if we go into a room with very lowoxygen levels, we get lactic acid increase in our body because our cells begin to transitionnaturally to the primitive pathway.â  we end up with lactic acidosis as the result of goinginto hypoxic environments.â  during epileptic seizures, the body will stop breathing andyou get a tremendous increase in lactic acid as the result of this.fermentation is the production of lactic acid. pyruvate is at the fork of this.â  under aerobicconditions, pyruvate is normally fully oxidized in the mitochondria, but under hypoxic conditions,pyruvate then generates lactic acid very highly.

the strange thing about the tumor cell isthat it continues to produce lactic acid even when oxygen levels are sufficient for respiration.â that’s happening because the mitochondria are deficient.â  those cells behave as ifthey’re in a hypoxic environment, despite the fact that they look like they have respiration,but they don’t. dr. pompa:warburg’s theory years ago andyours today is okay, great, so we have this cell that has adapted to this damage and nowfunctioning with this very uncommon, odd energy pathway combination here.â  we know that thisis common in all cancer cells, unlike the gene theory that’s trying to find specificgenes common to each cancer, which they have not been successful, but yet we know thatthis is common to the majority of tumor formation

cancer cell formation.your theory then is, if we can stop this fuel, the glucose – we’ll get to the use ofamino acid in this process of energy as well, but let’s focus on the glucose for now.â if we can get the cell to not use glucose, then we can either kill these cells throughapoptosis, where the cell kills itself, and fix and even diminish tumors.dr. seyfried:this is has been tried many times and it’s been unsuccessful throughout anumber of different drugs they’ve used to stop glycolysis.â  the problem, of course,is when you do that you stop that glycolytic pathway in every cell of the body.â  thisnow becomes a real problem because every normal cell is using the same pathway; it’s justthat the tumor cell happens to be using it

to a much greater extent than the normal cells.by using an indiscriminate inhibitor of glycolysis, yes, you will kill some of the tumor cells,but you’ll also damage the functionality of the normal cells.â  this is why when wedo therapeutic fasting or ketogenic diets you lower the glucose in the body for thetumor and you transition all of the cells of the body over to ketones, which we evolveto use when we didn’t have access to food. the tumor cells, because they have defectiverespiration in mitochondria, cannot use the ketone bodies.â  this is an elegant, nontoxicway to metabolically marginalize the tumor cells while enhancing the health and vitalityof the normal cells.â  it’s not just targeting the glucose availability to the tumor cell,you have to offer the rest of the cells in

the body an alternative fuel that can be metabolizedto the glucose that you’re taking away from them.â  the tumor cells, because they havedefective respiration and mitochondria in a number of different ways, are less ableto use the alternative fuel than the normal cells so they become marginalized.â  theybecome more vulnerable to die as the result of these energetic transitions.â  it’s avery simple and nontoxic way. people say, “will it cure cancer?” butwe never use the term cure, but say “can it be used to manage cancer?â€â  yes, itcan be used to manage cancer and slow the degree of growth down then offering the opportunityto mix and match a number of diets and drugs in a nontoxic series of approaches to finishoff the surviving tumor cells.

many of the surviving tumor cells, whateverthey happen to be, will likely have some characteristic in common if they can still survive the metabolictransitions.â  these cells now become potentially targets for immunotherapies and these otherkinds of therapies because now you’re dealing with a population of cells that have somethingall in common.â  rather than at the beginning when they are all genetically different fromeach other, the survivors from metabolic therapies could be very vulnerable to the kinds of approachesthat the industry is now using to target the tumor at the very beginning of its existence.â we’re doing a lot of things right, but we’re just doing them in the wrong way.dr. pompa:i remember listening to something or perhaps i read about it.â  you said ifyou take the nucleus of a cancer cell and

put it into the cytoplasm of a normal metabolismcell, what happens is all of the phenotypes, all of the genetic problems go away, but thisisn’t a genetic issue.â  this is a cell metabolism issue, and if we can change thecell metabolism then we can surely change it in the body.dr. seyfried:those experiments were done primarily to test the hypothesis as to whether cancerwas a nuclear genetic disease or a mitochondrial metabolic disease.â  this is very important,because as long as the cancer industry and the academic cancer industry consider thatcancer is a nuclear genetic disease, we will not shift the paradigm and approach the diseasein an altogether different way. those experiments were designed and done bya variety of exceptionally talented developmental

biologists over many, many years.â  what idid simply was to bundle those experiments into one group and present them for the firsttime as a bundled group.â  when you look at all these different experiments done by anumber of different people using a number of different types of tumors in differentsystems, the conclusion was very much the same.â  the nucleus of the tumor cell is notcapable of driving the disease period.â  it’s the mitochondria that are driving the disease.â once this becomes more widely recognized, it becomes very difficult to support the ideathat cancer is a genetic disease therefore warranting the billions of dollars we’respending on approaches that are based on that theory.once the theory is undermined, shown by hard,

scientific facts that it cannot be the trueexplanation for the disease, only then will the field begin to recognize that we shouldlook in a different direction.â  as long as people are considering that, we’re stillgoing to persist with the situation that we have today.dr. pompa:that was my argument at the top of the show.â  we’re spending billions inthe wrong direction.â  if we get people to understand that it’s not a genetic disorder,that’s secondary, then we can actually make some headway.i believe in my work that this mitochondrial damage, this mitochondrial issue is leadingto not just cancer but a multitude of other things that we’re seeing from chronic fatigueto fibromyalgia, and many unexplainable illnesses,

even hormone conditions such as diabetes andthyroid.â  i believe it’s there.â  i have something doc that i call my five r’s ofcellular healing, and r number three is restoring normal cellular energy.â  it’s absolutelyvital. in this, look, you mentioned, to go back herea second, something that’s near and dear to my heart, utilizing a state of restriction,if you will, via either fasting or ketosis in using them together.â  meredith, how manyshows have we done on the benefits of fasting? we even move people in and out of these states,which i call diet variation. let’s talk about that, because that is asolution to – we’re discussing cancer here, but we’re talking about people whobenefit with multiple conditions.â  i’m

putting them in these restricted states ofketosis where, by the way folks listening for the first time, i have many articles andpast shows on ketosis.â  that just means that your cells can use sugar or fat for energy.â we’re forcing the cell to use fat and make ketones.â  he brought that up.â  we even usethese ketones in healthy people to make healthier, because they turn off bad genes.amazing things happen when ketones are produced, obviously, and cancer cells can’t use them.â that was doc’s point here.â  we utilize this state of making the cell make these ketonesto actually make people healthier.â  you’re saying, “hey, this can also cause thesecancer cells to become weaker and now our immune system actually has a chance to getrid of them.

talk a little bit about restriction, becauseone thing that we’ve found with ketosis, doc, is some people don’t lose weight inketosis.â  some people even have even getting into ketosis, and typically these are thepeople who need it the most, but you say ketosis without some form of restriction in your studiesdoesn’t work.â  explain that. dr. seyfried:keto-adaptation that my colleague,dominic d’agostino from the university of south florida –dr. pompa:we’re interviewing him in some coming up shows.dr. seyfried:he’s big into keto-adaptation, which is a form of therapeutic ketosis asopposed to ketoacidosis, which is the pathological state that is experienced by some type iidiabeticsâ  when one stops eating, blood sugar

goes down and eventually glycogen reservesin the liver and muscles are used up, and then the body has to turn to fat.â  the fatis mobilized out of fat stores. â the liver is the organ that primarily makes ketonesfrom fat, so the fat is then metabolized in the liver and the liver makes water solublebyproducts, little energy ketone bodies, which then can be used by the brain, heart, andother organs, to become energy efficient. they contribute to mitochondrial biogenesis.dr. pompa:they help you make more mitochondria. dr. seyfried:yes, they can help you make moremitochondria and healthier mitochondria, producing very few reactive oxygen species or wastefulenergy.â  you want to consider reactive oxygen species as kind of a spark that can be damaging,like a wire that has poor insulation and it

starts to spark and it damages the area.â that goes down substantially when you’re burning ketones.â  the energy is primarilyused for the energy resources within the cell without making any wasteful or harmful products.dr. pompa:i always say it’s like burning natural gas with wood in the fireplace.dr. seyfried:right, you produce very little products that would be considered wastefulor potentially harmful to the body. dr. pompa:you’ve got to regulate cellularinflammation just by burning leaner fuels. dr. seyfried:we clearly showed that calorierestriction down regulates the inflammatory cyto cascades contributing to tumor cell inflammationand a variety of other things.â  the tumor cells can’t use the ketones, but the normalcells can.â  the normal cells get very healthy

under these keto-adapted states, but you raisea very important question that has been perplexing the field for a long period of time.â  howdo people know if they do fasting, they do ketogenic diets, or they do this or they dothat, how do they know whether or not they’re really in the zone of keto-adaptation?â  wepublished a paper earlier this year on the glucose ketone index calculator that was designedprimarily for cancer patients but could be used for any person who would like to knowwhether or not they’re in a therapeutically ketotic state.dr. pompa:we use it for all of our patients. dr. seyfried:you have a little meter thatcan measure both blood glucose and blood ketones. that’s the key.â  you have to measure bothof them.â  you get the ratio in millimolar

for glucose to ketone and you get a number,which is a singular number which is the index. if you can get numbers close to 1.0 or below,then you’re using ketones maximally efficiently. healthy people who don’t have cancer areable to get into these metabolic zones much easier than cancer patients are.one of the things we’re realizing with respect to cancer is that cancer produces a lot ofanxiety among the sufferers.â  anxiety can lead to elevated blood sugar levels, becausethe patient understands that they may have a life-threatening disease, which brings alot of stress and anxiety.â  we find that those cancer patients that are able to handlestress can get into these therapeutic zones easier than the cancer patients who can’thandle the stress.â  it’s a global, physiological

treatment of the body to allow the cancerpatient to get into these very healthy states. they can get in, but it’s more difficultfor the cancer patient than it is for the healthy patient.dr. pompa:absolutely, and by the way, it’s more difficult for my very unhealthy patientsthan it is for somebody healthy to get into this target zone.â  the ratio you talked aboutis glucose divided by ketones.â  we use a precision extra meter.â  if you have a targetzone of glucose between 55 and 65 and ketones between 3 and 7, then that’s going to putyou in that 1 range somewhere. dr. seyfried:it’ll put you below.dr. pompa:yeah, and that’s where i like to get people in that range as well, becausemagic happens there, right?â  you have autophagy

going on and autolytic where the body is eatingstuff, and you’re producing enough ketones to make more healthy mitochondria and turnoff the bad genes; all that happens in that zone.dr. seyfried:the issue is you can hit those zones by just water only fasting for fourto seven days.â  that’s very hard to do for a lot of people, so water only therapeuticfasting, believe me, it’s not easy.â  you’re tried it; i’ve tried it, and it’s noteasy.â  for a lot of people who keto-adapt, but ketogenic diets restrict it, allow theblood sugar to go down and the ketones to go higher than if you did pure therapeuticfasting.â  however, many people think that if i eat all this fat this now becomes anatkins’ diet.

the atkins’ diet is very different froma ketogenic diet.â  atkins’ diet has no restriction on proteins and fat, and alsothe types of fat are very different.â  if you eat a lot of protein, that’s going tobe converted to glucose.â  it’s going to be harder to get into the metabolic zone onan atkins’ diet than it will on a ketogenic diet.â  all of these things have to be understoodby people who want to engage in these kinds of activities.for cancer management, a ketogenic diet is part of what we call metabolic therapy.â this is an alternative to chemotherapy and radiation therapy, but we think that the outcomescan be the same.â  in other words, we think that we can get every bit as good of effectivetherapy without the toxicity.â  this is the

key thing.â  we’re trying to manage cancerwithout toxicity. people have this mindset that you can’tdo this unless the patient is subjected to these horrifically toxic approaches.â  we’reunder the impression that if we understand the metabolism of the body and you’re ableto tweak the pathways in different directions, we can achieve management of these very difficultdiseases without using toxic drugs or drugs that can be used in such low quantities thatthey’re no longer toxic but now very therapeutic effective.all of this becomes a reality once people realize that cancer is not a genetic disease,but you raise another very important point. many other diseases that predispose peopleto cancer are also metabolic problems.

diabetes, for example, puts you at risk forcancer, because you have dis-regulated blood glucose control.â  if you can manage typeii diabetes, you can effectively reduce the risk significantly for a number of differentcancers. type ii diabetes leads to systemic inflammationbecause of elevated blood glucose.â  ketogenic diets are effective at lowering all of this,reducing the body, and as a matter of fact, ketogenic diets can cure type ii diabetesin many patients, so in that respect, you can do this.the food industry is now becoming very interested in these kinds of approaches, because there’sa void here.â  we have the pharmaceutical companies on the one hand that are pushingthese various different kinds of expensive

drugs to manage these diseases and we havethis void in the middle, and some of the food companies are now moving into this void realizingthat they can produce foods that could potentially put people in keto-adaptation, ketotic states,that would reduce their risk for type ii diabetes and cancer.â  i see a major shift coming inhow we deal with a lot of these diseases. it’s not necessary to use expensive drugsthat could be potentially toxic to manage things that we can do by knowing how to managethe metabolic systems of the body and the cells.dr. pompa:listen, all the crazy things that we see with unexplainable illnesses, noneof them would get well if we didn’t utilize these diet variations, shifting people inand out of ketosis, or utilizing fasts of

some sort.â  you know, doc, a lot of timesjust with beef stock alone we can hit certain people in these target ranges, but i wantto go back to this point.â  the word restriction – we’re talking about some type of restrictionin food, whether it’s via a fast that we do for a period of time, whether it’s fourdays to a week, or something that i do, i combine ketosis with daily intermittent fastingwhere i fast from 18-24 hours before eating the next meal and doing it daily.look, i remember reading in your work and others, and even in my own experiences, somepeople go into ketosis and they’re just simply consuming, even if it’s not a lotof protein, a lot of fat and a lot of food. they’re still consuming a lot of food, andif they don’t fall into that target range,

we don’t see the results.â  we don’t evensee weight loss, and some of them struggle to get into ketosis, because they’re stillconsuming a lot, so we utilize restriction with fasting with ketosis, or daily, intermittentfasting where at the end of the day, they simply take in less calories.â  talk a littlebit about that, because you found that mice and people didn’t lose weight unless therewas some form of restriction. dr. seyfried:that’s a very important point.â a lot of people use ketone sticks, the urine sticks, to measure ketosis, and that’s inaccuratebecause if you do take a lot of fat in your body, yes, you will produce more ketones andyou’ll see it on the urine stick; however, the blood will not have the elevated levelsbecause you’re peeing out the ketones as

fast as you’re making them.â  friction allowsthe ketones to replace the lost glucose, so the ketones then, if you restrict a littlebit, then you’re getting the full benefit of the ketones.â  the body will retain themand use them for energy metabolism, so you’re absolutely right.we showed, and others have shown, that if we allow the animals to eat all the fat theywant, in other words, an unrestricted ketogenic diet, this can lead to insulin insensitivityand dyslipidemia, which is very pathological. this is not healthy.â  people say, “oh,i’m going to go on a ketogenic diet and eat all the fat i want.â€â  you could putyourself into harm doing that, because your blood sugar doesn’t go down.â  your insulingoes up, and the next thing you know you have

very high triglycerides.a ketogenic diet is a medical therapy.â  it must be administered usually under the supervisionof a trained person, or people who do this have to be aware of all of the potential risksusing this.â  it’s a medical therapy like any medical therapy.â  it’s like a drug.â drugs can be good in one concentration and toxic in another concentration.â  metabolictherapy using ketogenic diets is a powerful tool to enhance physiological health, butit can also be very hazardous if it’s not done right.â  you can’t overemphasize thispoint. dr. pompa:some people that we know say, “i’mnot getting into ketosis.â€â  i have them looking at their glucose and invariably theirglucose is still too high.â  that means they

have to be restricted more somehow some way,or their carbohydrate intake is too much. dr. seyfried:you have to also be careful ofsome people who have these rare, inherited diseases like carnitine deficiency and certaininborn errors in metabolism where they can’t make fat, they can’t make ketones, or theycan’t use the fat, this and that.â  there’s a variety of things where a rare person maycome out and say, “oh my god!â€â  this person could potentially be harmed by thistype of therapy. dr. pompa:that’s why measuring glucose andketones is important.â  in review, someone may be taking in too much protein, an atkins’type of diet.â  someone could just be taking in too much caloric intake totally via fateven, and someone also could just simply be

having too many carbohydrates.genetically, some people have to reduce carbohydrates more than others.â  that could be stoppingyou from getting into ketosis.â  that could also be stopping you from hitting this targetrange that we’re talking about.â  it can even stop you from losing weight.â  some peoplesay, “i’m in ketosis, but i’m not losing weight.â€â  you could still be consumingand not restricting enough. one way i make sure that people – i’mnot a believer in just pushing food away and saying i’m not going to eat any more.â i’m a believer in restricting because you are less hungry.â  you’re just simply nothungry so you don’t eat.â  daily intermittent fasting people where we skip breakfast inketosis is a way to get them to restrict,

and eventually, they’re like, “yeah, i’mnot even hungry anymore.â€â  sometimes it takes a little while to get there until theirketones rise up, of course. dr. seyfried:it does.â  you’re absolutelyright, and also the kinds of fats are different. atkins’ diet fats is where you take in muchfat, but ketogenic diets are heavier in to the medium-chain triglyceride oils like coconutoils, avocados, and things like this.â  you don’t want to use too many long-chain fattyacids.â  some of this is good.â  a little bit of fish oil is fine, this kind of polyunsaturatedfatty acids, but the bulk of the ketogenic diet is shorter-chain, saturated fatty acids.â this plays a very important role in how high you can get your ketones as well.â  thereare certain foods that are more prone to producing

a better state of ketosis than other foods,and it could differ from one person to the next, so everybody is their own experimentalsystem. dr. pompa:i find that to be true.â  you broughtup an interesting point with the fats that people are eating.â  i find that today peopleare taking in too much fish oil, too much rancid fish oil, but even when it’s notrancid, because it’s a very fragile oil, there is simply a lot of healthy people whoare taking in too much and are ending up in an omega-3 dominance.â  i remember years agoshowing that omega-3, when taken too much, can displace cardiolipin out of the mitochondrialmembrane, and it creates actually a metabolic problem.â  i think everybody right now overloadingon fish oil can actually be a dangerous thing.

i’m obviously in agreement with that.â â this is great. meredith, i don’t know if we’ve got anyother questions.â  i know some of our doctors had questions.â  i think we answered mostof those, but you always have some great questions, so let me fire at you.meredith:thank you.â  this is just such empowering information too, i think, for anyone watchingwho has been touched by cancer, which we all have or been diagnosed with cancer.â  thisgives you the power back, not just relying on a lot of the conventional treatments, buttaking charge and experimenting with the ketogenic diet, and these other nontoxic, nutritionaltherapies.â  i’m wondering, dr. seyfried, what do you think of the use of exogenousketones?

dr. seyfried:i think that’s important.â the body makes d-beta-hydroxybutyrate.â  there are different forms.â  there’s a d and anl form, and the l form is metabolized as if it were a fatty acid whereas the d form goesthrough the full ketotic mechanism within the liver.â  however, my colleague, dom d’agostino,gets some pretty good results with exogenous ketones.â  i think we need to recognize that.â we haven’t fully explored all of this. this is an avenue of great interest and futureresearch.â  is it possible that we can even further exploit keto-adaptation using exogenousketones?â  right now, they’re not easy to make.â  the natural ones are not easy to make.dr. richard veech at the nih has been working on this area for many, many years.â  he isprobably one of the world’s authorities

on the knowledge of making natural kinds ofketones and how they influence the mitochondrial function, enhancing the redox potential ofthe mitochondria and the coenzyme q couple. he is the ultimate knowledge base for reallyunderstanding this, but i think the world of exogenous ketones is an emerging fieldthat’s going to receive tremendous attention from the food industry and the academic communityas we move forward in understanding how we can manage cancer using metabolic approaches.dr. pompa:i have to ask this question, and i’m going to ask dominic as well.â  if weknow that ketones are a byproduct of breaking fat down, fat metabolism, so by taking exogenousketones, by taking ketones, are we going to slow down the fat metabolism somehow?â  arewe not going to get the benefits of actually

getting our body to burn fat to actually makeketones? dr. seyfried:i don’t know.â  i think that’sa good question.â  we need to do a lot more basic research on that fact.â  these are thingsthat we will need to vet in the future. i can’t really say, because most of thestuff that we work with has been with naturally produced ketones through ketogenic diets ortherapeutic fasting where the body is making the ketones naturally in tune.â  how can wesupplement this?â  is it possible to supplement this? will we get the same level of therapeuticbenefit without any toxic issues?â  this all has to be explained.i do want to mention one more point about how we can better implement these kinds ofapproaches, and i think it has to do – it

can have a lot to do with how we pay or howwe finance these kinds of things.â  one thing i put in a recent paper is the issue of globalbudgeting.â  there are certain hospitals in the country that receive a certain amountof money to handle the various health issues that they have in their population.â  if theycan use therapies that keep people healthy and out of the hospital and manage diseaseas outpatient, the finances can be better distributed within the hospital.this is an opposite view to fee-for-service. fee-for-service is where each aspect of thetreatment is paid for as a fee-for-service. if global budgeting becomes a way to reducethe incidents of cancer, the hospital staff and physicians could better justify why they’remore interested in keeping people healthy

using these kinds of things, then it becomesfinancially feasible to do something like this as opposed to fee-for-service, whichis going to be – the hospitals need to balance their budgets.it’s very hard to balance a budget on a therapy that doesn’t generate revenue.â medical therapy does not generate the revenue as toxic drugs and these other things do.â the pharmaceutical companies and the hospitals make a lot of money on these kinds of therapies.â radiation therapy generates tremendous revenue. these cancer drugs generate tremendous revenue.â if you come in with an alternative therapy that contributes to health and wellbeing,where is the revenue generation going to come from if you’re going to transition away?â it has to come from a different form of payment.

global budgeting becomes a potential way toachieve both goals – the health of the patient and the health of the hospital.dr. pompa:i’ll tell you what, without that right there, we’re dead in the water, becauseyou’re right.â  it always comes down to finances.â  if we’re going to change thisparadigm, that absolutely has to be at the forefront; otherwise, you’re never evergoing to change what people are doing.â  that’s great.â  i love that approach.we talk about fasting, and we talk about ketosis. i believe the magic happens with that combinationof utilizing fasting, whether it’s daily or whether it’s what i call block fastingfor four days, ten days, or whatever it is of restriction – water, beef stock, whatevergets you into that target glucose and ketone

range.â  magic happens there.â  we’re aboutdoing shorter, because we see major benefits. when we do shorter, four-day fasts, multiple,every other month or things like that.â  we think there’s hope in that.dr. seyfried:absolutely; some people who may not be able to do a seven-day fast, whichis the majority of people, could certainly benefit from a three- to a four-day fast donea few times a year.â  the benefits to your body are enormous just from these shorterperiods of inanition, which is the cessation of eating, and just drinking water or greentea.â  you can have these kinds of things. also, a lot of people should feel that ifyou’re going to do a ketogenic diet say for a couple or three weeks or a month, orwhatever, we’re learning from a lot of the

cancer patients and people who are doing thisabout the kinds of foods or drink that you can take without spiking glucose or alteringthe glucose ketone index.â  we found that some dark red wine can be taken.â  peoplewho have done three-day fasts – a cup of wine – you can look at your gki and notsee it spike, but if you take white wine or beer it spikes, so everybody can then developdiets and therapies that can meet at least keep them as part of the society that we’rein so you don’t have to feel so alone when you go and embark on these kinds of things.â this is a new area of health. dr. pompa:i find that exactly.â  that’swhy we measure the glucose and the ketones to see where people are, because it’s alittle different for everybody.â  some people

can have their morning coffee with fat andnot go out of that target glucose range and still be in that fasting mode.â  for somepeople, the beef stock fasting keeps them in the range, and other people do better withother things.â  it is varied, but that’s why you have to measure that glucose and theketones to see if you’re in that target range.â  i guess there’s three factors there– too much protein, too many carbs perhaps, or simply not enough restriction, where you’reliterally eating too much food.â  the fasting is a remarkable thing.years ago i was inspired by warburg’s work, and my wife was diagnosed with some cervicalpre-cancer and cancer, and we put her on a fast, she says 12 days or whatever it was,but i thought it was 13, but she water fasted

for 12 days.â  she went back some months laterand there was no more cancer, to their surprise, but they said that that basically would neverhappen.â  that started me years ago into fasting, and just looking at the benefits of it, we’vebeen utilizing it ever since. i talk about diet variation.â  i learned thisby accident.â  people that were having trouble getting into ketosis and having some difficulty,after three or four months i would move them back into what i call my cellular healingdiet.â  it’s still a low-carb diet, but it’s not ketosis.â  something would happen.â they would all of a sudden lose some weight when they shifted back into that diet.â  theni would say, “okay, let’s keep them there for three months.â€â  i would move them backinto ketosis, and i would see this remarkable

thing happen where this time it was easierto get in it.â  shifting people in and out of these restricted phases – ketosis, diversion– you can see there’s benefit somehow to that adaptation.dr. seyfried:yes, absolutely, and this is what we think to manage cancer, because wethink the shifting back and forth from these different diets is going to be exactly whatyou need to eliminate the tumor cells. â you have to realize that the tumor cells havea lot of mutations.â  nobody denies that they are loaded with mutations for the reasonsas secondary consequences of respiration – a defect to respiration, but the issue is thosecells have all these kinds of mutations that make them less adaptable to the shifts inthese dietary therapies.

the normal cells of our body evolved overmillions of years to make these adaptations under these dramatic shifts that you justmentioned.â  if you have a cell that has all kinds of broken chromosomes and deletionsand duplications, those cells cannot make those kinds of shift.â  they end up gettingeliminated.â  they are eventually gone because they can’t make those shifts, so we canthen exploit the genetic defects in the tumor cells by forcing the body to make these dramaticshifts in one direction or the other.â  this is part of the metabolic therapy.â  what youjust mentioned is the strategy that we think can work.dr. pompa:i learned it by accident just this metabolic stress is caused by these dietaryshifts.â  when you look at the hunza people

who live disease free and these cultures thatare really successful in their health and live very long but live long healthy, they’reforced into diet shifts, which today with refrigeration and being able to eat whateverwe want any time we’re not, but the hunza people, we thought they were vegetarians becausethe british would go there in the summer and they were eating mostly vegetables, fruits,and things, very light foods.â  in the wintertime, what they didn’t see was they were survivingon fatty foods.â  they were in complete ketosis. then spring came, and they call it in theirculture starvation spring when they literally went weeks or months without food.dr. seyfried:a lot of animals are the same way.â  they eat different kinds of foods atdifferent periods of the year that was available

at that time.â  again, these are the kindsof shifts you’re speaking about.â  these are all very important points that are nowjust being realized for the first time. dr. pompa:it’s that adaptation from thatstress in the shift that we can recreate in our laboratories and clinics these metabolicshifts utilizing the body’s innate intelligent through adaptation to shift the hormones andto create this metabolic thing.â  i have to read this quote from you.â  this was out ofyour book and i love it. if all cancers arise from metabolic dysfunctionthen replacement of damaged mitochondria with normal mitochondria should prevent cancer.â in other words, mitochondria producing sufficient respiration, meaning energy, should suppresstumor growth regardless of the numbers and

types of mutations.that was from your book.â  what you talk about, i love it.â  you utilize the term mitochondrial– i forget the term – dr. seyfried:mitochondrial enhancement therapy.dr. pompa:yes, mitochondrial – met, mitochondrial enhancement therapy.â  these shifts that we’retalking about – utilizing diet, utilizing fasts, varying the diet, and putting peoplein and out of these restricted times, is what you’re talking about with met, correct?dr. seyfried:yes, and that’s the way to prevent cancer.â  if cancer is a mitochondrialmetabolic disease and you protect your mitochondria from damage, you don’t get cancer.â  a lotof these preventive – what you talked about – you’re not going to get cancer as longas mitochondrial cells are healthy.

even if you inherit a gene like a brca1 mutationor a p53 for many, those genes damage the mitochondria.â  there are ways to enhancemitochondrial function to reduce the risk of having cancer, even if you inherit a gene,so this idea of going out and getting prophylactic mastectomies or oophorectomies or this kindof stuff is a naã¯ve way to deal with this issue.â  if you know that if you protect yourmitochondria from damage with these metabolic therapies, the risk of developing these diseasesis significantly reduced. dr. pompa:what do you think if you just didmaybe two fasts a year?â  just two fasts a year, right?â  what do you think it wouldreduce your risk of cancer? dr. seyfried:i mean, this would only be speculative,because we don’t have any data to support

that, but i think you have to look at thoseguys in the calorie restriction society of america.â  i’ve spoken to those folks.â they’re in ketosis all the time essentially. they’re always on a restricted diet.â  paulmcglothin and his wife are in this group, so i asked them, “how many people in yourorganization have cancer?” and they said, “almost nobody.â€â  they remembered oneguy from 1980 that got cancer, but cancer is extremely rare in those guys who practicecalorie restriction. it’s supportive evidence to say that ifyou were to do fasts once, twice, or three times a year, the risk of cancer would beprobably reduced.â  we see that.â  that’s why when they want to manage type ii diabeteswith ketogenic diets to reduce glucose and

weight, the risk of cancer in all likelihoodwill go down.â  it’s just that we don’t have enough data yet to support that.dr. pompa:you brought up diabetes and diabetes rolls into thyroid and all the weight lossresistance and i have really found those conditions impossible to completely resolve without thesetypes of therapies that we’re talking about. people think, “i’m diabetic; i can’tfast.â€â  oh no, quite the contrary. dr. seyfried:it’s hard.â  you have to realizeit is not easy. dr. pompa:yeah, and that’s why, again, tothose folks listening, we have doctors we’re training and practitioners we’re trainingaround the country in coaching people in these types of therapies, so i want to emphasizethat as well.â  i think you made that point

too.â  people really need supervision withpeople who know what they’re doing with this.â  it’s important to note that.i think when we put these things together, ketosis, fasting, or intermittent daily fasting,we really have something that is needed today to fix this metabolic problem.â  it is leadingto not just cancer but leading to diabetes, thyroid, or why people can’t lose weight,this is an answer. i want to be clear about one thing.â  we’retalking about caloric restriction, and all studies show that really the only way to livelonger healthy, to extend your life – life extension if you will – is to eat less,caloric restriction, but i don’t want people to think that we’re just talking about saying,“i’m going to eat half of my meal and

put it away,” because that, in america,is what caloric restriction is.â  you and i aren’t talking about that.â  we’re talkingabout, at the end of the day, i don’t eat clearly as many calories as most people.â it’s not because i’m pushing food away, but because i’m very efficient in my cellsat utilizing fat and, i’m simply not as hungry.i’ve watched my clients and others get very proficient at fat burning at the cellularlevel, and they simply just don’t need as much food.â  they eat less.â  when we’reputting people in these forced times like a fast, eventually the mitochondria gets moreefficient, you develop better mitochondria, and guess what folks?â  you automaticallyeat less.â  would you agree with that?

dr. seyfried:yes, i agree with that.â  i alsofeel that moderate exercise is also an important contribution, together with what you justmentioned. dr. pompa:absolutely.dr. seyfried:moderate, i like to say the word moderate, because if you exercise at marathonrunning or extreme sports, that damages the immune system and creates inflammatory conditionsthat can actually provoke the onset of cancer in some people, not all people.dr. pompa:we like short, high-intensity. dr. seyfried:i don’t think you have to dothis prolonged damage to your body in any sense, so i think moderate – it also dependson your age and physiological state.â  some people put themselves – they’re beingtortured from all this exercise.â  moderate

exercise is an important component for enhancingmitochondrial function under the right kind of diet conditions, so you put all that together,and the probability of having chronic disease is significantly reduced.â  unfortunatelyin our society, we don’t.â  it’s hard. it’s hard.dr. pompa:hey, meredith, he said something really cool there.â  he said, “putting itall together,” right?â  i teach something i call a multi-therapeutic approach wherewe put all this together.â  i have my five r’s of how we fix a cell, and we do thiscellular detox and removing these things that create the damage in the first place of themitochondria, and then we utilize these ancient healing strategies, fasting and putting peoplein and out of ketosis.â  these, we put all

together and the right form of moderate exercisethat you’re talking about.â  we put it all together and we call that a multi-therapeuticapproach. you know, professor, we have more and morepractitioners around the country that i’ve been teaching this multi-therapeutic approachto and this is the future in essence and your work really – i said this off air here thatyour work really just proved text exactly what we’ve been doing for so long.we are so appreciative of the work and studies you have done.â  i can’t be more appreciativeof your work.â â  is there somewhere that people can go and donate to your work?â  wheredo you want to lead people more about your work?â  here’s the book.â  you can buy iton amazon, but where else would you like us

to lead people?dr. seyfried:we have a cancer fund here at boston college.â  there’s a facebook pagefor my book, cancer as a metabolic disease, and there is a site there for people who wantto make contributions.â  i can guarantee you that 100% of the money that we get goes rightinto the research.â  it doesn’t go anywhere else.â  as i said, a lot of the work thatwe do – dr. pompa:research in the right area; it’snot going to the genomic research folks. dr. seyfried:yeah, i think it’s used toenhance the concepts of the book and eventually to come with a reasonable therapy for managingcancer without toxicity that can give people empowerment and have them be participatoryin their own healthcare.â  our goal is to

have people finish the cancer therapy healthierthan when they started the cancer therapy, not looking like they’ve been half starvedand beat up by the system. this can happen more as people become moreunderstanding of what the nature of the disease is, and believe me; i don’t have a curefor cancer.â  what i have is a strategy for long-term, nontoxic management of the disease.â there’s a big difference here.â  i tell people that we don’t know if you’re curedfrom cancer unless you die in old age from something other than cancer, and only thenwould you know you were cured from cancer. other than that, we try to manage the disease,and we try to keep people in a very high state of health, and we know we need diet, metabolictherapy, and certain drugs that work synergistically

with the diet.â  that can really play a verypowerful role in managing the disease.â  people do donate to our research and it’s veryappreciative for anything.â  every penny – no contribution is too small or too large.dr. pompa:where do they go? dr. seyfried:it’s on my book, cancer asa metabolic disease facebook page.â  there’s a facebook page associatedwith that and it tells people how they can donate.dr. pompa:okay, great.â  get a picture of that.â  there it is, cancer as a metabolicdisease and there’s your name, thomas n. seyfried.â  i love your work doc and i’lltell you it’s really an answer to a growing epidemic, even beyond cancer i want to say.â this is why so many people don’t feel well.

it is a mitochondrial problem.â  it is a cellularenergy problem, and again, our number three is restoring cellular energy.â  we just appreciateyou, and we’d love to have you on in the future and promote, again, more of these concepts.â thank you so much for being on the call. meredith, is there anything else in finishing?meredith:i’d just like to thank you as well. this has been such an information-packed interview.â i’m definitely going to have to re-watch this episode myself and i’m sure many viewerswill as well.â  there’s so much incredible information.â  we would love to have you backin the future.â  i’m sure we’re going to generate a lot of questions from this show.dr. pompa:meredith, with that said, i do want to say this.â  there are articles writtenon diet variation.â  there are shows here

at cellular healing tv about diet variation,ketosis, and different types of fasting. we have shows and articles on all that ifyou’re new to watching it.â  we have all that information because we may have lostyou in some of those conversations, so watch the past shows.â  thanks, doc.â  thank youvery much. dr. seyfried:thank you very much.meredith:thank you to everyone, and we’ll see you next time.â  tune in next week.â in episode 95, we’re going to have dr. stephanie senna from mit and we’re going to be discussinggmos, so thanks for watching everyone.â  we’ll see you next time.