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Now displaying: June, 2019
Jun 4, 2019

In this podcast interview, we speak with neuroscientist and physician Leanna J. Standish, ND, PhD, LAc, FABNO, about her naturopathic oncology research. Standish has been involved in original research at Bastyr University since 1987, where she continues to teach and serve patients. We discuss the research she's currently working on—the Canadian US Integrative Oncology Study (CUSIOS)—and its focus on understanding how integrative oncology care affects outcomes for people with certain advanced cancers. In addition, we discuss the use of psychedelic drugs like psilocybin in cancer care—especially for people who have a history of trauma.

About the Expert

Leanna Standish

Leanna J. Standish, ND, PhD, LAc, FABNO, is a neuroscientist and physician living in Seattle. She has faculty appointments in the University of Washington School of Medicine Radiology Department, the University of Washington School of Public Health, and Bastyr University. She is working toward obtaining approvals to conduct ayahuasca clinical studies in the United States. She uses functional magnetic brain imaging to study brain-to-brain communication and the ‘entangled minds’ hypothesis. As a physician she specializes in naturopathic oncology, with special interest in the treatment of stage 4 cancer.

Standish earned her PhD in neuroscience/biopsychology from the University of Massachusetts in 1978, her ND from Bastyr University in 1991, an MS in acupuncture and Oriental medicine from Bastyr University in 1994, and became board-certified in naturopathic oncology in 2006.

Transcript

Tina Kaczor: Hello, I'm Tina Kaczor, Editor-in-Chief here at the Natural Medicine Journal. I'm talking today with Dr Leanna Standish about ongoing original research in naturopathic oncology. Dr Standish is a neuroscientist and naturopathic physician with a master's in acupuncture and Oriental medicine and board certification in naturopathic oncology. She's been involved in original research at Bastyr University since 1987, where she continues to teach and serve patients. Dr. Standish, thank you so much for joining me. I want to go-

Leanna Standish: Hi, can I just say hi to everybody and especially you, Dr Kazcor, and just express how delighted I am to talk to all of you.

Kaczor: Yes, and so yeah, it's very exciting to have you one on one to get to know a little bit of what's going on in the front lines of research specifically. What prompted this was your update at the recent oncology conference. The Oncology Association of Naturopathic Physicians had their annual conference in February where you spoke. I'd like you to kind of start at the beginning. What was really compelling is some of the research on both non-small and small cell lung cancer as well as breast cancer studies. So, if you could kind of update us about a little bit of what ... update us on what's going on with your research in those areas.

Standish: Yes. Well, since 2009 working at Bastyr University with Paul Anderson, we started collecting data on survival outcomes in our advanced cancer patients and have a big enough database that we can start summarizing survival outcomes, which is I think of great interest to both patients and their physicians. What we found, our first study was in breast cancer, stage 4 breast cancer, that our median overall survival in our patients, they were 54 consecutive women with breast cancer. The median overall survival is 47 months. When I first got those data, I was very upset because it means that half of my patients were dead at 47 months. But then I thought, well, how does that compare to other studies that were being published at the same time that we were doing our work? What we found is that the best study that we could find in terms of median overall survival in stage four breast cancer was an Abraxane trial that happened in the early part of the 2000s. Just getting some tea here, hold on.

That study showed a median overall survival of 36 months. So the conclusion to me was yeah, this is an uncontrolled study. The kinds of patients that we see are the kind of people that are very proactive. They may be survivors just in their very being, but in any sense that you can think about this, that those are pretty good results in advanced cancer. Then we did a similar study in advanced non-small cell lung cancer, and that was with 18 consecutive patients, stage 3 and 4, and the median overall survival there was 43 months. Then we surveyed the literature and did a systematic, I should say systematized review to find that the median overall survival for all the chemotherapy drug trials and even the new immunotherapies that were coming out in just the last say 5 years, the median overall survival of all those studies when averaged together was only 13.3 months. It's kind of astounding to me how poor results in advanced cancer continue to be.

That's the summary. Just one more thing I want to say is that this is why we started the Canadian and US study of integrative oncology outcomes. This is 12 clinics all over Canada and the United States that are doing what we call advanced naturopathic oncology, and we're tracking survival and treatment data from 400 people. That probably will be published, it will probably be at 2 years before that study is published.

Kaczor: Are there any intermediate points where you've looked at that data? Do we have any idea of what's gong on with that study?

Standish: Which study do you mean? CUSIOS?

Kaczor: Yeah, that last one you just mentioned, which I think you called-

Standish: Yeah, we called CUSIOS, so Canadian US Integrative Oncology Study. What we know is that we've been able to recruit. We're about 85% done recruiting the 400 patients. We have a good diversity of the patients that we recruited for, which was stage 4 breast cancer, stage 4 colorectal cancer, and stage 3 and 4 pancreatic cancer, and stage 3 and 4 ovarian cancer. We wanted to narrow our study to those 4 conditions. We're recruiting. We're able to collect death data, and the most exciting and problematic thing is what do you compare our naturopathic oncology survival data to? Here I've just talked about a breast cancer study, 53 women, their median overall survival is 47, but what does that mean? Compared to what?

Right now there is a tremendous amount of intellectual work going on at Bastyr University and also at Canadian College to figure out what the best statistical method is, and fortunately we've been able to collaborate with some very sophisticated big data scientist with statistical ability that have access to this marvelous database in Canada. We will be able to use the SEER database too, and what we're doing is trying to figure out how to match naturopathic oncology cancer patients to patients that are just like them in these registries and then watch them over time with the hard endpoint of date of death.

We're also of course very interested in quality of life. We're also interested of course in what therapies each patient got, not only what they were recommended, but also what therapies they received. For example we're tracking Dr Gurdev Parmar's clinic where they're doing locoregional hypothermia. Another clinic is using mistletoe therapy intensively. Another clinic, such as ours at the Ames Institute in Seattle, we're focusing now on the utilization of what's being called metabolic therapy, which is the idea of the cliché is starving cancer using FDA off label drugs that is all the rage these days, very interesting approach. We're using intravenous vitamin C along with chemotherapy. We've sort of abandoned the idea that as a monotherapy it does much. We're starting to explore the safe use of quercetin as a botanical medicine that really needs to be given intravenously to be bioavailable.

But I think the most important thing we're doing is taking seriously the idea that trauma, childhood trauma in particular, is a risk factor for development of cancer. And I'm referring of course to the famous ACEs study, Adverse Childhood Events study, that linked in a dose-dependent way the number of adverse childhood events like neglect, foster child, abandonment by parents, alcoholism, violence, etc., war, that the number of these events is correlated with the risk of cancer later in life. And so we at Ames Institute are saying well okay, if that is an important causal feature of why we get cancer, then let's get to that. We're using now psychedelic assisted psychotherapy to be able to do the deep work that is required to help people heal from posttraumatic stress disorder, which not only can come from childhood, but just the very experience of having cancer, being diagnosed with cancer, going through cancer treatment produces posttraumatic stress disorder.

What we're hoping is all these therapies combined are going to improve the median overall survival of our patients. That's what we're doing here in my clinic.

Kaczor: Tell me a little bit more about this. Is this low-dose psychedelics? I think we're talking about it here in Oregon from a state level. I think there's going to be actually some kind of referendum vote to see if we can legalize such things here, so I'm curious about this.

Standish: Yes. The initiative that will be happening in Oregon in 2020 is about permitting psychotherapists, certified licensed and fully trained psychotherapists, to utilize psilocybin in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder and also in end-of-life care. That's very exciting. But in the meantime, right now there are no legal psychedelic drugs available for physicians with 1 exception, and that is ketamine. Ketamine is a drug that comes from anesthesia. It's been very well studied as both an anesthetic, but in low doses, it produces a state of consciousness that some people would describe as psychedelic with a dissolution of the sense of self, a connection with higher realities, a connection with one's ancestry, an ability to do deep work in the presence of a physician and a nurse who are overseeing the treatment. What we've found is a 3-hour ketamine session that's led and facilitated in an excellent way can help enormously relieving the depression and the anxiety that is part of all of our lives, but especially if you've been diagnosed with cancer, and especially if you have the kind of trauma in your childhood that is a risk factor for cancer.

Kaczor: Is there already clinical data on the use of this?

Standish: On what? I'm sorry, clinical data on what?

Kaczor: On ketamine or psychedelics being used in this fashion.

Standish: No. What there is, this is translational science, and the reason I love naturopathic oncology is that we are people who take science and translate it into other domains of medicine. We know without a doubt now that the state of consciousness, emotional states and brain states associated with those emotional states, have direct effect on the autonomic nervous system, which has direct effects through a cascade of physiology and biochemistry that affects the behavior of cells in the tumor bed. And there's tons of work on that. Is there work on the use of psychedelics for healing cancer? No, but it will be coming, and I hope that we can show some leadership in that area here in Seattle because I think it's an extremely important area.

The reason psychedelics might be important too is that most of them have very strong serotonergic effects. What we've found in immunology is that the kinds of cells that are involved in the immunological response to cancer, T-cells in particular, are loaded with serotonin receptors. It is not a far stretch to imagine that one of our future immunotherapies will be psychedelics, and there's now kind of a rage around doing low dose psychedelics, all of which are considered by the drug enforcement agency to be controlled substances, but there's huge interest in this field. Most of us have probably seen Michael Pollan's new book How to Change Your Mind.

Kaczor: Yes, yeah. It's a fascinating read. It definitely had more data behind the use of it for emotional states than I had ever realized before reading that book. So let me ask you this because our listeners are often clinicians themselves. Sometimes they are the lay public. In any case, if people want to look further to see if they are appropriate to enter a study or they have patients that might be appropriate, because what I hear you saying is some of these tough-to-treat cancers, whether it's stage 4 disease or lung cancer in stages 3 and 4, they're tough to treat, and we all want to help our patients as best we can. So where would someone go to find you or one of the other 14 clinics involved in CUSIOS study? We'll put a link here with the podcast, but otherwise, where do we find you?

Standish: Oh, okay. Yes, please to go the Bastyr University website, and look at the research, and then look for CUSIOS [https://bastyr.edu/research/studies/canadianus-integrative-oncology-study-cusios-advanced-integrative-oncology]. Everything is updated there. It's also listed on the national NIH clinical trials .gov site, and all the clinics are listed there [https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02494037].

Kaczor: That's great, and I think what we have is more of a full whole-systems research, outcomes-based research is what I hear you saying. All of these are taking into account large plants, not single agents, which is why we often have weak data when we use single agents in our medicine. Kudos for mastering the complexity of figuring out how to get this data going and inform us.

Standish: Yeah, I think that one of our fundamental hypotheses is that natural medicines, those that are known and those that are not known yet, have a potential when they're used in the correct sequence and at the right time and in the right patient who has the right genetics and the right epigenetics at the time that you see them, that our therapies have a chance of really extending high quality life and making cancer into what we hoped for AIDS in the old days as a chronic manageable condition. I think that that day is coming, and we're certainly not there yet. That's for sure.

Kaczor: Yeah, yeah. I'm excited because I think that we can track the data much better than we have been able to, so that's certainly helps our cause as well. I thank you for carving out some time in your day and speaking with us today and updating us on what's going on. It's all very exciting, and thank you for all of your ongoing work.

Standish: Okay, thank you, Tina. Thanks, everybody. See you soon.

Jun 4, 2019

This podcast interview features integrative health expert Russell Jaffe, MD, PhD, CCN, who shares his philosophy about addressing men's health issues in clinical practice. Jaffe discusses hormonal balance, prostate health, gastrointestinal health, cardiovascular health, and inflammation.

About the Expert

Russell M. Jaffe, MD, PhD, is CEO and Chairman of PERQUE Integrative Health (PIH). He is considered one of the pioneers of integrative and regenerative medicine. Since inventing the world’s first single step amplified (ELISA) procedure in 1984, a process for measuring and monitoring all delayed allergies, Jaffe has continually sought new ways to help speed the transition from our current healthcare system’s symptom reactive model to a more functionally integrated, effective, and compassionate system. PIH is the outcome of years of Dr Jaffe’s scientific research. It brings to market 3 decades of rethinking safer, more effective, novel, and proprietary dietary supplements, supplement delivery systems, diagnostic testing, and validation studies.

About the Sponsor

Perque Integrative Health

PERQUE Integrative Health (PIH) is dedicated to speeding the transition from sickness care to healthful caring. Delivering novel, personalized health solutions, PIH gives physicians and their patients the tools needed to achieve sustained optimal wellness. Combining the best in functional, evidence-based testing with premium professional supplements and healthful lifestyle guides, PIH solutions deliver successful outcomes in even the toughest cases. If you are interested in delving more deeply into this and other integrative health topics, we invite you to join the PIH Academy.

Transcript

Karolyn Gazella: Hello, I'm Karolyn Gazella, the publisher of the Natural Medicine Journal. Thank you for joining me today. Our topic is men's health, and my guest is integrative health expert, Dr Russell Jaffe. Before we begin, I'd like to thank the sponsor of this topic, who is Perque Integrative Health. Dr Jaffe, thank you so much for joining me.

Russell Jaffe, MD, PhD, CCN: Thanks for the invitation.

Gazella: Well, before we dig into the specific health issues that men face, you believe in a philosophy first approach. I'm sorry, physiology first approach. What do you mean by-

Jaffe: The philosophy is physiology.

Gazella: Exactly.

Jaffe: So, that was appropriate. Yeah-

Gazella: So, what do you mean by that?

Jaffe: Right. It's a high level, brief, 2 words, physiology first. What we mean is, physiology before pharmacology. We mean physiology first because it seeks an upstream assessment of the causes of risk or symptoms, in contrast to most conventional care today, even holistic or not, that remains rooted in downstream symptom management. Physiology first uses global evidence to reduce risks and prevent people from falling into the river of disease. Physiology first uses nature's nutrients in supplements, with enhanced uptake and chaperone delivery, for safer, more effective, essential replenishments, items we must take in since our body doesn't make them.

Physiology first urges organic or biodynamic or locally grown sources of nutrient-dense whole foods, as minimally contaminated as possible. Physiology first focuses on underlying causes. For example, too little of essential needs being met, which are eating, drinking, thinking, doing—those are the 4 headline categories—rather than working back from symptom-reactive case management.

And finally, physiology first uses predictive biomarkers interpreted to their best outcome goal values. Now, this is a paradigm shift for many colleagues but we now can impersonalize predicted, proactive, primary prevention practices, save individuals probably a million a year just by applying physiology first.

Gazella: Yeah. Well, that's exciting so I'm glad that we went over that. Now in general, what should be on the radar of clinicians when it comes to addressing the special health needs of their male patients?

Jaffe: Yes, and here again, now that we've kind of gotten the hundred thousand–foot level, we start and recommend colleagues start with self assessment. This includes transit time, urine pH after rest, hydration, and a sea-cleans as overall global self assessments, very inexpensive. The individual does much of it themselves, brings it to the expert who interprets it so that we get a snapshot of the metabolic or metabolon/microbiome, the digestion and metabolism. You interpret that to best outcome goal values. You use that to inform and inspire and motivate people to put it in effort for the 6 to 7 weeks that it takes to change a habit of daily living and you can add years to life, years of quality life and life to years.

In people with chronic symptoms, well. Take a careful family history although family history is highly relevant if you have the same behavior and environmental factors. If you change your behavior, your habits, your environment, then your family history to a very large extent disappears into the midst of history. If there have been prior treatments and treatment failures, it's important to assess that. We use the predictive biomarkers to help people celebrate when they are at their best outcome goal value and take action when their risks increase.

Now, men and women at all ages need activity, at least 45 minutes a day of walking or equivalent. Sitting is the new smoking. Weight-bearing exercise or cardio exercise 2 or 3 days a week and knowing about it or preaching about it is one thing. It's when you actually do it. I'm glad to tell you that I had just enough glimpse of the consequences of not doing that I do what I'm recommending. Now we want to teach men to prepare for sleep, achieve restorative sleep, using physiology before pharmacology, using salt and soda baths, Epsom salts and baking soda, plus or minus aroma oil, essential oil. The baking soda alkalinizes and relaxes muscles in the pores of the skin, and the Epsom salts, which is magnesium sulfate, allows the magnesium to come in and that's often very helpful. We recommend that teaching people, particularly men who have sleep issues, about abdominal breathing and active meditation and green dichromatic light, along with nature's sources of serotonin and melatonin, which is tryptophan.

We ask about changes in urine stream flow and quality after urination. Is there any dribbling? How many times do they get up at night to urinate? And we make lifestyle suggestions tailored to the individual at their phase of life. We want to be proactive with prostate support nutrients, such as micellized soft gel that contains all of active saw palmetto, [inaudible 00:06:03], lycopene. Free lycopene, not just some ketchup. Hygeium, with 14 or 15% beta sitosterols. Urtica dioica, also known as stinging nettles. Zinc, in the picolinate form. And selenomethionine, selenium in the selenomethionine, healthier, safer form. And all of this micellized in pure pumpkin seed oil to enhance uptake in retention, to improve function. And we think people can be pleasantly surprised at how effective and synergistic the above prostate health support is, available in a single, easy-to-swallow soft gel.

Ask about adult beverages. If they consume more than 5 a week, provide comprehensive liver support and recommend a glass of water above the four quarts or four liters a day that humans need to avoid marginal dehydration—1 or 2 or 3 percent dehydrated is a big stress on every organ in your body. So this is, again, at a headline level, how our comprehensive approach actually works.

Gazella: Perfect. Now I'd like to kind of narrow our conversation and I want to stay on the prostate because you mentioned the prostate. So, what are the roles that testosterone plays when it comes to prostate health and men's health in general?

Jaffe: Right. Both men and women need testosterone. They need a balance of free and bound testosterone. They need good and not bad testosterone. Now, what does that mean? Well, you can measure in saliva or in plasma. The free and the bound, free and total testosterone. You can measure the dihydrotestosterone. You don't want much of that, maybe zero. You can measure oxidized testosterone. You want zero of that. And you want to enhance the good T, the good testosterone and reduce the bad T based on testing results because testosterone is needed for brain and muscle and organ and joint and bowel renewal and many other functions beyond just being a male hormone. You want to enhance healthy testosterone production through healthy microbiome and metabolon functions, especially the family of the central antioxidants. Vitamins, minerals, and cofactors that along with good hydration optimize your healthy testosterone, which is one of the vitality factors in the body and minimize the bad testosterone that causes everything from hair loss to loss of erections.

Gazella: Okay, perfect. So before we leave the prostate, remind us what the significance is of the PSA test.

Jaffe: That's a very important question and I think we're finally, after half a century in laboratory medicine and I've been following the issue all of that time. The PSA test is a measure of prostate repair. So, the PSA goes up if you have prostatitis. For example, if you just sit in your car too long and hold your urine in too long. And the PSA goes up in some but not all prostate cancers, and you can fractionate the PSA, free and bound, and that usually but not always helps distinguish the prostatitis from the cancer risk. If you had concern about the prostate and about PSA levels and have a biopsy, after a single biopsy—often there are multiple biopsies—the future PSA has no interpretable value that I know of except for population, but we're talking about 1 man at a time. And so many review articles that I have seen in the last few years say do other tests of prostate health and don't even do the PSA because if you don't need the test, you wouldn't do the test. If it's a question, it's a gray zone, that's exactly what the test is not very sensitive or specific.

Gazella: What about enlarged prostate?

Jaffe: The first thing I would do and have recommended for many years for enlarged prostate is to take that combination of prostate vitality factors and we have had men whose prostate was double or triple than usual size come back to that of a 40-year-old by following for about 6 months a program that includes the supplements that I recommended just a few minutes ago, along with eating foods that the man can digest, assimilate, and eliminate without immune burden, and that means the lymphocyte response assay test that measures T and B cell function and that then says eat this and don't eat that, take the supplement and don't take that, follow this mental and physical plan because in the 80,000 cases that we put in our database, we've evolved a very personalized approach to, say, prostate size.

Gazella: Okay, perfect. So, let's move on. What does it mean when a man wakes up with an erection or doesn't have an erection? Is that significant?

Jaffe: Oh, absolutely. The headline is that every healthy man should wake up in the morning with an erection. In essence, it's the quality control check of the distinctive male. Too often and very commonly, when a man does not wake up with an erection, that's a sign that they have pregnenolone steal, that they have high stress cortisol levels and low DHEA, which is the antistress hormone, usually with low free healthy testosterone, often with a sluggish thyroid and an exhausted adrenal gland, due to lack of adequate intake of the essential antioxidants, minerals, cofactors that are necessary. In addition to prostate health nutrients, I would recommend checking the thyroid, TSH, 3T3, 3T4. That can be done on a blood spot or in many different ways. But you must, by my recommendation, get the 3T3, 3T4, TSH all at the same time, and the healthy range for TSH is .5 to 2.5, not above. The usual range has too many unwell people. (Usual lab range.)

You want to check adrenal stress hormones, cortisol and DHEA at four times during one day. And at the same time, in the same saliva or plasma specimen, you can measure male and female hormones and their sources, their precursors to see if the body has learned a distress response that steals the healthy progesterone and pregnenolone and produces too much distress hormone cortisol and too little healthy male and female hormones. They come from the same source. You want to get both and in balance.

Now in regard to male sexual performance, there are natural solutions to erectile dysfunction. The following vitamins, minerals, and amino acids work as a team to improve the quality and duration of erections

  • B complex. One phrase is 'B complex is for boners'. Keep the urine sunshine yellow and feel the difference comprehensive B complex means.
  • C, it is ascorbate vitamin C, always fully buffered, fully reduced and we recommend based on the C cleanse, taking that amount is associated with healthier and the more robust erections.
  • Vitamin D is really a neuro hormone and it does a lot of things, including improving cell function and providing cell energy to sustain the generally sixfold increase in blood retention during an erection.
  • Then magnesium choline citrate. Magnesium is essential for a lot of different things, including a healthy sexual function, and choline citrate at the same time, say 220 mg of magnesium solves and a teaspoon of choline citrate. That enhances the uptake dramatically. It enhances the retention because it is an alkalinizing, rather than an acidifying source. Most magnesium solves and magnesium products have very low bioavailability and are in the acid form, which makes the magnesium run out almost as soon as it comes in.
  • And then last is L-citrulline and L-arginine, and these are 2 amino acids. They both enhance nitric oxide production inside cells, and when you take about a gram of L-citrulline and 500 mg of L-arginine 30 minutes before adult activities, most men notice the difference, especially men over 40. Foods that are rich in these amino acids include nuts, seeds, chickpeas, and other legumes, also known as garbanzos, and meats. Making an avocado and chickpea hummus with some mustard seeds or black and white sesame seeds added plus or minus some toasted pine nuts with fresh ground black peppers and your favored high-quality salt, that can blend into a nutritious, delicious, amorous and traditional food.

Gazella: That's great and it sounds yummy as well.

Jaffe: It is. It should be nutritious and delicious.

Gazella: Exactly, exactly. Well, let's now move onto the gastrointestinal tract. What should practitioners focus here when it comes to their male patients?

Jaffe: Well, in the 21st century it is a pretty fair assumption that the person sitting across a professional has mild digestion dysbiosis, some degree of atrophy known as enteropathy, a long transit time. Transit time should be 12 to 18 hours. We recommend doing that with charcoal. We have an online instruction if folks are interested because you want to assess what's called the microbiome, which is the digestive tract in its fullness, or the GNS, known as the gut nervous system, which is in constant conversation and communion with the reigning central nervous system.

And so we recommend focusing on a full complement of personalized native antioxidant, minerals, and cofactors in their safer higher uptake forms based on the assessments and the predictive biomarker tests that we recommend. We want to pay attention to hydration because even a little bit 1, 2, 3% dehydrated puts a stress on every part of the body. We want to have prebiotics. That is unprocessed fiber from diet or supplements, 40 to 100 grams a day. That's what Dennis Burkitt taught me and the most knowledgeable nutritionists that I know recommend that much fiber a day. Probiotics, 40 to 100 billion healthy by a mixed bacteria, bugs. Then synbiotics, which is really recycled glutamine to energize and repair the lining of the digestive tract. Then you want to eat what you can digest, assimilate, and eliminate without immune burden.

So, you've done some functional immunology testing like LRA, lymphocyte response assay. Take in no empty calories. You are sweet enough as you are. If you feed parasites and pathogens, fungi and yeast, they will grow. Improve the digestion, the microbiome and metabolon, the innate biological detoxification competencies and enhance your digestion by eating what you can digest, assimilate, and eliminate without activating your immune responses. We teach people to stop feeding the pathogens and they disappear as digestion improves, repairs improve, resilience is restored, and habits of daily living are improved.

Then you want to look at the secretory IgA if you're concerned about the interface between digestion and the body. It's called SIgA, secretory IgA. You can measure that in saliva. There should be protected mucins so that if partially digestive materials get near the wall of the body, they don't become foreign invaders if you have healthy mucins and healthy secretory IgA. And there are other elected protected digestive functions that healthy people have that are lost when people lack the essential nutrients or the essential minerals when their cellular metabolism becomes acidic, when their body is reaching out, calling out, actually crying out for repair enhancement essentials, things you have to take in that you can't make in the body.

So, we wanna taper or possibly discontinue medications that impair digestion. We want to use prebiotics, probiotics, and synbiotics, especially in people who have had antibiotics and other digestive-interfering medicines. We want to check transit time, should be 12 to 18 hours. When I have roast beets as a main part of my dinner, I expect to see red in the commode in the morning. But I can tell you after all these years when I see that red, my first thought is never, "Oh, I had beets last night" so that's why we use charcoal. Now, avoid fat-binding medications and supplements that reduce essential fat-soluble vitamin uptake. That's vitamins A, D, E and K. And you need bile from the liver to do that and for that you need phosphatidylcholine-rich foods and/or supplements, and we happen to micellize all of our soft gels with this PC, with this—not politically correct—phosphatidylcholine.

Now, many men have atrophy of their intestinal lining because of stress and toxin exposure and it's the 21st century, and maybe less than perfect eating, breathing, and drinking. So, getting the essential needed nutrients restored may mean intensive supplementation for a few months, followed by maintenance supplementation for a long, healthy life, and I personally plan to be dancing at 120 and I would like you to join me.

Gazella: That sounds perfect. So, you mentioned tests to assess the microbiome and you also mentioned secretory IgA. Are there other tests that you recommend in terms of assessing the microbiome?

Jaffe: Right. So, the transit time we talked about, it's one of the self-assessments, 1 of the 4. Then this SIgA, the secretory IgA, in saliva or serum, with the comprehensive lymphocyte response assay, if there's any indication that the person has shifted from elected protected mode into survival mode, which means all the protective and repair functions are down regulated, that's called chronic illness to happen, or hormone tests that include cortisol and DHEA at 4 different time points, male and female hormones can be measured in their precursors on the same saliva specimen. You can use plasma if you wish.

Adrenal and thyroid adaptogenic supplementation is recommended either based on clinical history or these test results. By all means include some way of determining how much ascorbate that person needs because ascorbate is the maternal antioxidant that sacrifices yourself that all others may be presode.

And then the magnesium with enhanced uptake choline citrate. The choline helps build acetylcholine, an important neurotransmitter and neurochemical. It also helps build the choline-rich biosalts that are more soluble and help get the thicker bile out of the gallbladder and into the digestive tract, where that helps emulsify fat to be taken up into the body. And then based on the urine pH, we would adjust how many doses of the magnesium choline citrate you take. Do a regular hydration assessment and when in doubt, what I recommend is that you have a carafe of water in front of you and a glass. If the glass is full you drink it and if it's empty you fill it, and you just keep doing that. And personally my goal is to go to the bathroom at least every couple of hours and then I cut down the amount of liquid I take in after 7 or 8 PM so then I'm not overhydrated when I go to bed. But underhydration is a much more common and unappreciated problem.

Monitor the breadth of our little chemicals, and this can give very interesting insights that are both diagnosis-specific of mild digestion dysbiosis enteropathies and so forth. But in addition that information often makes it very clear to the individual that this is true for them and not in general.

And the last is a zinc taste test. Developed by Harry Henken, you drop a zinc solution on the tongue. The people who need zinc can't taste it. The people who say the zinc tastes strong have enough. And it's a pretty good one-dollar type assessment of a critical mineral and specifically for men, men need lots of minerals but especially zinc. You lose about 25 mg per every ejaculation.

Gazella: Yeah, that's good. That makes a lot of sense. So, now it's time to discuss inflammation. Is inflammation really repair deficit and how does that change clinical practice? Remind us why that's such a big deal.

Jaffe: Right. Well, we started with the physiology-first concept. Now I'm a doubly board-certified pathologist. I know the 5 aspects of inflammation. I know it's taught as a fire to be fought, something that has to be suppressed with anti-inflammatories. And now I pause and say: Anything that starts with 'anti' is using pharmacology before physiology. Inflammation is repair deficit. What my pathology colleagues see as inflammation is the cumulative lack of repair when your immune defense and repair system is doing too much defensive work because of foreign invaders from the breath or the skin or the gut, and if you enhance the innate immune system's ability to repair, your infrastructure is reborn, your bones get rebuilt, your joints are renewed, your mood is better. Your ability to get restorative sleep and meaningful relationships all are improved when you recognize that repair deficit is an opportunity.

You use the hsCRP test as a predictive and validated biomarker. It's also an all-cause mortality, morbidity marker. The healthy goal value—and this is, again, where we have the reframing. I don't even look at the lab range because that includes too many unwell people. You know the goal value for this test, hsCRP, and it's less than 0.5. Ignore statistical lab ranges unless you're treating statistics, and knowing the best outcome goal value we add ascorbate based on the [inaudible 26:350, magnesium choline citrate based on the urine pH, and other similar kinds of monitoring so that the person gets more safely the forms that are more effective because of their enhanced uptake and retention and therefore the deficits get corrected more quickly.

I mentioned hydration. I keep mentioning it only because every part of your body is healthier and more resilient and more able to repair when you take in healthy water, 4 liters a day or more of either mineral-rich, I happen to have well water but some mineral-rich water that's not contaminated and/or sparkling water. I happen to like Pellegrino but there's also Gerolsteiner and Apollinaris and actually every culture has a mineral-rich water known as a therapeutic or beneficial or health-promoting mineral water. So, you want to drink hard water, so water softeners are not recommended, at least not total home water softeners. If you want to soften the water in the pipes, I don't care, but your blood vessels are not pipes and now I care about the quality of the water that you take in.

Gazella: Perfect. So, I love your perspective about looking at repair deficit as an opportunity. Are there other ways to kind of take advantage of that opportunity to reduce oxidative stress and reign in inflammation?

Jaffe: Yes. And again, in a physiology-first point-of-view in regard to, say, blood fats. Cholesterol and triglycerides and blood fats and [inaudible 00:28:14]. If you keep the oxidation of those fats, if you keep oxidized cholesterol to zero, if you keep oxidized LDL to zero, because you're taking enough antioxidants and especially ascorbate. Now, the fat-related cardiovascular risks just went away. What remains is understanding your hemoglobin A1C, your hsCRP, your homocysteine, your LRA (lymphocyte response assay immune responses), your vitamin D, your first morning urine pH, your omega-3 index, and [inaudible 00:28:51]. Those are the eight predictive biomarker tests and we have online for folks to peruse and/or download or watch on YouTube discussions of why these eight predictive biomarkers cover all of that genetics, which is 92% of your lifetime quality of life and health. And yes, you can blame mom and dad for the other 8%, and yes transgenerational influences on RNA are a big scientific field but not yet ready to measure clinically. Live in the moment, do one thing at a time, practice gratitude and random acts of kindness, breathe abdominally for at least 5 minutes a day, and make enhance repair your practice and banish inflammation.

Gazella: That's perfect. It's a very integrative approach that includes lifestyle as well. I'd like to end with heart disease because heart disease remains the leading cause of death for men in the United States. So, what do you recommend when it comes to protecting heart health for male patients?

Jaffe: Yes, and as I think you know part of my primary research when I was in government service at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center was collaborating with the Heart Institute on animal models of heart disease. Now, Paul Dudley White in the 1930s was a famous cardiologist. He helped invent the electrocardiogram. He taught when I was a young student that in the 1930s at Mass General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts if they had 1 heart attack a year, they published the case. And yet 40 years after that, cardiovascular disease was the major killer of Western civilization. That's not a genetic change. It's too quick for genetics. A lot has to do with smoking and sitting, sedentary lifestyle, processing of foods, and all that goes with that.

Jaffe: So, cardiovascular disease. If your heart attacks you, if you have a clog in a blood vessel, an artery, if you have a stroke, you didn't pay attention to the upstream warnings that you would know about if you did the self-assessment, if you did the predictive biomarker tests because these change. Your risk goes up dramatically decades before catastrophe. And if you change your consumption and attitude, if you change the environmental toxin exposures and by the way 80% of the toxins that people have in their body are of recent exposure, and you can dramatically reduce that by certain simple lifestyle changes. Include 1 to 300 mg a day of micellized CoQ10 in 100% rice-brand oil, and no glycose. No antifreeze in your CoQ10. Keep the 8 predictive biomarkers at their best outcome goal value and when they are, when those 8 tests are at their best outcome goal value, you have a 99% chance of living 10+ years, even if you're 100 at that point, and my main teacher Buntey was 110 when he passed and as I mentioned before I plan to be dancing at 120 by following this lifestyle, and I urge anyone who is willing and interested to join me.

Gazella: That's perfect. Well, Dr Jaffe, we covered a lot today. Before I let you go, I'm just wondering if there's any final thoughts or anything else that you'd like to share with our listeners today.

Jaffe: Yes. In essence, the physiology-first, the epigenetics is 92% of your life quality has to do with consumption, which you eat and drink and how you think and what you do. Now whatever season of your life is as a man, that may be different. When you're young and immortal, that's one thing. As soon as you're beyond young and immortal, be prudent. Cardiovascular disease starts in teenage years. Cancer risks goes up dramatically when your innate anti-cancer mechanism is turned down because you're eating foods that are causing too much defense burden in your immune defense and repair system. So, just follow through on this physiology-first approach looking at your individual needs for personalized health promotion and put pay to chronic ill health.

Gazella: Perfect. Well, once again I'd like to thank today's sponsor, Perque Integrative Health, and Dr Jaffe I'd like to thank you for taking the time and sharing so much information with us today.

Jaffe: Well, thanks for inviting me and for making it such an enjoyable time. I hope the listeners will take away much that will be of value, and it's my pleasure.

Gazella: Well, thank you and I hope you have a great day.

Jaffe: You the same, Karolyn. Always a pleasure.

Gazella: Yes, it is. Bye-bye.

Jun 3, 2019

This article is part of the 2018 NMJ Oncology Special Issue. Download the full issue.

During this interview, Christopher Shade, PhD, discusses targeted nutrients to support restorative sleep in patients who are struggling with sleep issues. Shade focuses on the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), key botanicals, cannabidiol (CBD), and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

About the Expert

Christopher Shade, PhD

Christopher Shade, PhD, founder and CEO of Quicksilver Scientific, continues to be the driving force of development and innovation. Shade’s vast depth and breadth of knowledge, passion for healing, and intuitive understanding of chemistry and biology are reflected in Quicksilver Scientific’s well-designed detoxification protocols, unique supplement delivery systems, and patented mercury speciation test. Shade earned his PhD from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and his undergraduate degree in Environmental Chemistry is from Lehigh University.

Shade is a recognized expert on mercury and liposomal delivery systems. He has lectured and trained doctors in the United States and internationally on the subject of mercury, heavy metals, and the human detoxification system. Shade's current focus is on the development of cutting-edge, lipid-based delivery systems for nutraceuticals, such as liposomes and micro-emulsion systems, to address the growing need of high-quality, affordable detoxification solutions.

About the Sponsor

Quicksilver

Quicksilver Scientific is a leading manufacturer of advanced nutritional systems with a focus on detoxification. We specialize in superior liposomal delivery systems and heavy metal testing to support optimal health. Our advanced liposomal supplements are highly absorbable, and support the body in the elimination of ubiquitous toxins, enabling you to achieve your genetic potential. At Quicksilver Scientific, we are passionate about health and well-being, and are committed to improving the lives of everyone we touch.

Learn more about Quicksilver Scientific LipoCalm.

 

 
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