Ultimate Prescription

Breast Cancer

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Nick Evenson (Host), Dr. James Marcum

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Series Code: UP

Program Code: UP000073A


00:16 Do you or someone you know have breast cancer?
00:19 On today's program, we're going to be answering
00:21 questions and talking about the cancer that affects
00:23 1 in 8 women in the United States... stay tuned.
00:26 I'm Dr. James Marcum...
00:28 Are you interested in discovering the reason why?
00:32 Do you want solutions to your healthcare problem?
00:35 Are you tired of taking medications?
00:37 Well, you're about to be given "The Ultimate Prescription"
00:43 Hi, I'm your host, Nick Evenson,
00:45 and on today's program, we're going to be talking about
00:47 breast cancer - a topic that can be very serious and scary.
00:50 In 2014, 232,000 were diagnosed with breast cancer.
00:55 What do we need to know and is there hope
00:57 for the 1 in 8 women who will be diagnosed this year?
01:00 Dr. Marcum, welcome to the program.
01:02 Well thank you, Nick, and this is a very serious
01:05 topic that we're talking about.
01:07 And, you know, we were talking before we went on...
01:10 we want to give hope too. That's right
01:12 You know, even though it's serious and we choose
01:14 programs based on what affects a lot of people,
01:16 and 1 in 8, that's a pretty significant number,
01:21 1 in 8 will develop breast cancer.
01:24 And, if you think about cancers, cancer is a very scary thing.
01:31 I'm going to quiz you for a second here. Okay
01:33 You might not know all the answers,
01:35 but let me throw some out.
01:36 Do you know what the most common type of cancer is
01:38 overall - the most common type of cancer?
01:40 Skin cancer? Yes! ... for one
01:43 Do you know which cancer kills the most people every year?
01:48 Ummm - I'd go with lung cancer.
01:50 That's right - lung cancer. It's like we practiced.
01:52 Yes, we practiced that one, okay.
01:54 Now the cancer that seems to affect the most women,
01:57 of course, is skin, but breast cancer 1 in 8,
02:00 that's a pretty incredible statistic. Yeah
02:04 Now, in thinking about cancers, everyone out there
02:07 the first thing is we want to avoid getting cancer,
02:11 including breast cancer, including skin cancer,
02:14 and then if we have cancer, we want to do things to
02:16 help our own immune system knock down the cancer cells.
02:20 And the way I think about it is...
02:22 One of the things that triggers cancers is prolonged exposures
02:26 to stressors, okay... For instance, prolonged
02:28 exposure to the sun - skin cancer. Right
02:30 Prolonged exposure to cigarettes - lung cancer. Right
02:35 Now, in breast cancer it's more like prolonged exposure
02:40 to estrogen.
02:42 There are a couple of doctors out there that think that it's
02:45 possible and the name of one of them is Dr. Walter Willett,
02:48 that you can make a woman breast cancer-free,
02:51 totally breast cancer-free,
02:52 no breast cancer at all, it's possible.
02:54 BUT, okay, listen at what we have to do to do this.
02:57 But to do that, they would have to not start to reach
03:01 their menstrual period until they were 17 or 18 years of age,
03:05 and they would have to stay pregnant almost all the time.
03:08 What this does is - it keeps the estrogen cycle down
03:12 so in breast cancer, estrogen tends to be a trigger. Okay
03:17 The longer a woman is exposed to estrogen,
03:20 the greater the risk they get cancer.
03:23 So, if you have early periods, if your menarche
03:28 happens at an earlier age, then they have more periods
03:30 in a lifetime, they're exposed longer to estrogen...
03:33 estrogen turns on the breast tissue which,
03:36 if there are cancer genes,
03:37 more likely to happen. Does that make sense? Yeah
03:39 Now, I imagine there may be places in the world that
03:41 have lower rates of breast cancer than we do. Exactly!
03:44 And, are these some factors that play into their culture?
03:46 Yes in rural China for instance, the girls do not have their
03:49 periods until they are 17 or 18,
03:52 so they have a much lower risk of breast cancer.
03:54 Now, through the years, the age of menarche...
03:58 when women started having their menstrual became
04:01 younger and younger and younger because they
04:03 got exposed to, what I think is, an animal-based diet.
04:08 They get exposed to a lot more estrogens earlier in life,
04:11 and then starting to have their menstrual periods early,
04:15 so they have a prolonged exposure to estrogen
04:17 over a lifetime which is going to raise their risk.
04:20 So that's one thing the early menarche.
04:22 Another thing that happens is we have gained extra weight
04:26 as a society... Yeah, we have
04:28 Fat takes even a little bit of extra weight,
04:31 and you make more estrogen.
04:33 In fact, if you're a little bit overweight,
04:35 you make 3 times the estrogen as you normally would. Really?
04:38 So just carrying extra weight
04:40 increases the risk of breast cancer.
04:43 Another factor that going to increase the risk of
04:45 a woman having breast cancer is
04:47 increased insulin levels, now think of it this way...
04:51 Insulin is a growth hormone, it makes cells grow,
04:55 and if you think about it, if a person eats a food
04:59 that's highly processed, especially high fructose
05:02 corn syrup and those high processed sugars,
05:05 that spikes insulin levels. Okay
05:06 So your insulin level spikes, so you have this
05:09 pro-growth thing, so any cancer in the body
05:12 is going to be more likely to be stimulated.
05:15 So processed foods, being an insulin mechanism,
05:19 could stimulate breast cancer growth.
05:21 So remember, a lot of us have cancer genes...
05:23 They're in our bodies and we want them to stay dormant.
05:26 We don't want to activate them. Right
05:28 So processed foods, through insulin, is another way
05:31 we could activate cancer genes in addition to
05:34 prolonged exposures to estrogen,
05:36 and then we also talked about the weight factor.
05:41 So these are some interesting things and that's
05:43 why we see these levels of breast cancer go up every year.
05:46 So let me make sure I have this right...
05:47 You're saying that our diet and some other factors as well,
05:51 but our diet kind of increases insulin which increases
05:54 growth in a more rapid rate than we were made to have?
05:56 That's right. And that can trigger
05:58 some of the cancer. Right
05:59 And you know, high insulin levels not only
06:02 stimulates cancer growth, but it messes up
06:05 the endothelium which is the lining of our blood vessels.
06:08 That's why diabetes, you know type 2 diabetes which is
06:11 extra weight, all that insulin that's made, damages the body.
06:15 It damages the blood vessels,
06:16 raises the chance of having cancer.
06:18 So all the people that carry extra weight,
06:20 they increase risk of different types of cancer. Sure
06:24 So that's another thing that we want to get out there,
06:26 is let people know that the diet makes a difference,
06:29 the food makes a difference, and movement and exercise
06:33 tends to be very valuable in lowering the risk
06:35 of having cancer through lots of mechanisms.
06:38 Through the weight loss mechanisms and probably
06:41 through mechanisms on the genetics itself.
06:44 Now genes are what make proteins that decide what our bodies do.
06:51 And they have cancer genes, but throughout the body
06:53 you also have genes that inhibit cancer.
06:56 And one of the cancer genes that got a lot of press
06:59 was this "BCRA" gene.
07:01 Have you heard of that? No, I haven't.
07:03 Well that was a gene that they isolated and there was this
07:05 actress, "Angelina Jolie," she had this gene which
07:11 raises her risk of having breast cancer and because
07:14 she had this gene, she had both breasts removed.
07:18 She wasn't going to take any chances.
07:20 No breast tissue - no breast cancer. Right
07:22 Get rid of it if you can.
07:23 She wasn't going to take that chance.
07:24 So a lot of people said, "Well, should everyone get
07:27 tested for this gene?"
07:28 No really, they shouldn't.
07:31 So if you do have a high risk of breast cancer
07:34 in your family, that's a whole different story,
07:36 and she had young people having cancer in her family
07:39 including ovarian cancer.
07:41 But if you had a high risk, one of the things we want
07:44 people to do are the things we've talked about...
07:45 Exercise, lower your exposures
07:49 to estrogen in whatever way you can.
07:52 You know, do those type of things and get your
07:54 mammograms and your breast self-checks regularly
07:57 so if you do have it, you'd pick it up very early.
07:59 And eat a diet that doesn't cause inflammation.
08:01 Yes, now that's what I wanted to bring up,
08:03 and if you think about the diet, the food we eat...
08:05 The food we eat directly affects our genes.
08:09 And we have cells in our body that...
08:11 For instance, the BCRA gene, that was a defective gene.
08:14 That gene specifically encodes for proteins that help destroy
08:18 cancers - gets rid of cancers!
08:21 So if you don't have that gene,
08:23 you can't get rid of the cancers. Right
08:24 So we want to make our genetics very valuable and we want to
08:28 stimulate things that help fight cancer.
08:31 Well we know that things that cause this process
08:33 is "oxidation," I call it "rust" in the body.
08:36 Oxidation damages our genes, hurts the ability of our genes
08:40 to sort of clean up things.
08:42 The foods that help our bodies fight cancer are the
08:45 "antioxidants" because it helps our genes develop
08:50 the things that we need to help fight,
08:52 and we talked, in other programs, about telomeres
08:55 and different genetics and aging and different genetics,
08:58 but we want to stimulate our genes to do their own job
09:01 to clean up the matter, basically enhance
09:04 our own defense system, our immune system.
09:07 But we know that things like exercise helps our genes.
09:10 We also know that the food we eat helps our genes,
09:12 but if you think about this word "oxidation," Nick,
09:15 anything that puts prolonged stress on our body
09:18 could promote oxidation. Right
09:21 So it's not only the food... can you imagine,
09:23 a person that's under a lot of brain stress,
09:25 a lot of worries and concerns or people have stress
09:29 because they don't sleep well at night...
09:31 So any type of prolonged stress, I think, can hurt
09:34 our immune system and damage our genetics so we can't
09:39 fight off the cells that we normally would. Right
09:41 Now this not only will help lower the risk of
09:43 cancer cells getting out of control,
09:45 but it will help infections and many other things in the body.
09:48 It's sort of neat how these chemical changes
09:51 affect the entire body. Right
09:54 And these are things that we should think about
09:56 because this is what, especially if a woman
09:58 that is at high risk for breast cancer,
10:00 this is something I would want to do.
10:01 I'd want to say, "Listen, I want to make my own
10:04 immune system - my own cancer cells a lot stronger.
10:07 Now there are some natural herbs that have been
10:09 shown to help like "turmeric," and things like that
10:11 to have anticancer properties.
10:13 And the way they studied these, Nick, is they have these
10:16 dishes of cancer cells and they actually put these
10:18 substances in to see if they inhibit the growth.
10:21 So they'll react directly with each other outside of the body.
10:24 Right, they can see which cancers are growing faster,
10:26 the ones that get oxidation or the ones that get antioxidants.
10:30 And they can actually show that certain foods,
10:32 of course - the fresh foods are the antioxidants,
10:34 the tumor cells don't grow as quickly.
10:38 It's much more complicated in the body,
10:40 but these are some things that
10:42 we want women to think about as they think about
10:44 breast cancer - all the things that they can do to lower
10:47 their risk and if they've had breast cancer before,
10:50 all these things will also enhance those.
10:53 So we want to answer some questions
10:55 about breast cancer today.
10:57 We certainly do - it's a very important discussion to have,
10:59 but first, before we go into the questions,
11:01 we've been building a first aid kit this year,
11:03 and we've got an item here.
11:05 Tell us about it and why should
11:06 it be in everyone's first aid kit.
11:08 Yes, this is a very important item and I realized
11:10 the importance of it yesterday.
11:12 We were in the studio yesterday, and someone had a
11:15 situation where their husband fell into the water,
11:18 and they got very, very cold, on a very cold day.
11:22 Very cold weather!
11:24 And one of the things that's important is,
11:26 when you're out in the world, is hypothermia.
11:29 If hypothermia is not addressed quickly,
11:32 the cells - bad things happen quickly.
11:34 So first aid for hypothermia would include
11:38 rubbing the body parts.
11:40 Some people would take water, warm water in.
11:45 You know, we talked about skin, how the skin wants to
11:48 retain heat, but this is something that's fairly simple
11:50 that a first aid kit should have - a blanket!
11:54 Now this doesn't look much like a blanket
11:56 because it's in a small package,
11:58 but it's great because you can carry it with you;
12:00 you can put it in your first aid kit and if you happen
12:02 to run into hypothermia or a cold situation,
12:06 you can wear this... this helps reflect heat,
12:09 and it says this - I've never used it myself,
12:11 but it can reflect up to 70 to 80% of heat.
12:14 It can keep you warm until someone can come and
12:16 warm you up, Nick.
12:18 And it seems like that's more efficient than a lot of
12:19 blankets in my house that are much bigger.
12:21 No, let me hand this to you, look how little that is. Yes
12:23 It's not very big at all and I would unwrap it,
12:26 but I'm afraid if we unwrap it on the set,
12:28 we might not get it put back together. Probably not
12:31 But this is another good thing that our viewers can add
12:35 to their first aid kit that will help them in an emergency,
12:38 and it might help someone else, you never know.
12:40 You know, they might come along the side of the road,
12:42 and there might be a family that's really cold,
12:44 and has need of a blanket, this will keep them warm
12:47 until they can get a warm blanket.
12:49 So that's very important, we're trying to give people
12:52 some practical ideas of things that they can do,
12:55 not only to help themselves, but also to serve other people.
12:58 So, we have a lot of questions
13:00 on breast cancer we're going to get to. That's right
13:02 We're going to get to those questions in just a moment.
13:04 But first, we're going to break and we'll be right back.


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Revised 2016-08-15