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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
*Intro music*
InVite Health Podcast Intro: Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed healthcare professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that InViteⓇ Health has to offer at www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code PODCAST at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started!
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Jerry Hickey, Ph.: [00:00:41] Recently, there’s been some very interesting findings in the field of cancer and nutrition, and I’d like to review that quickly for you today. So welcome to my episode, New Findings on Nutrition and Cancer. My name is Jerry Hickey. I’m a nutritional pharmacist. I’m also the Senior Scientific Officer over here at InViteⓇ Health. By the way, you could find all of our episodes on any place you’re listening to your podcasts, but also at invitehealth.com/podcast. Please subscribe and leave us a review. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @invitehealth. All of the information on today’s episode will be linked up to episode description, so let me review this. It’s very, very interesting stuff.† [00:01:26]
[00:01:29] The first report is on the mineral magnesium and magnesium specifically in its relationship with the immune system and with cancer. That’s from scientists at the University of Cambridge in the UK and the University of Basel in Switzerland. And magnesium… there would be different ways that magnesium would influence the immune system in a positive fashion. First of all, there’s a lot of data that cancer patients who have sufficient Vitamin D levels, they survive cancer much better. And you need magnesium to activate Vitamin D, so that’s very interesting and very important. In fact, there’s receptor sites on many immune cells for Vitamin D and these immune cells can activate Vitamin D. And then Vitamin D affects a whole bunch of genes that help govern the immune system. So Vitamin D is important for fighting infections, but it’s also important for fighting cancer. Plus, Vitamin D reduces inflammation, and cancer uses inflammation as a springboard to energy so it can grow and spread. So once again, there’s an important interaction between magnesium, which is needed to activate Vitamin D. Secondly, you need magnesium, the mineral magnesium, to release melatonin at night. If you don’t release melatonin at night, or if you release insufficient levels of melatonin, your immune system just doesn’t work well. That’s just not working at the appropriate time. And last of all, in my opinion, magnesium is also needed to stabilize energy. When you eat food and you breathe in oxygen, a lot of that goes towards the Krebs citric acid cycle, where you’re turning sugar into energy. And once you have that energy, it’s a molecule called ATP. It’s a nucleotide called ATP, that’s responsible for almost all your energy. You need to stabilize it by attaching magnesium to it. Otherwise, it’s going to just flare up and be used up before you can even get any benefit out of it. So 90% of your energy is attached to the mineral magnesium. So there’s different ways that magnesium can influence the immune system because if you don’t have enough energy, the immune system is a high energy group of cells, if they don’t have enough energy, they’re not going to do a great job of fighting for you. So the scientists at Cambridge University and University of Basel, they discovered that your killer T cells can only kill cancer cells or fight infections if they’re in the presence of sufficient magnesium. So if there’s not enough magnesium near these T cells, not enough of them are going to be activated. [00:04:24]
[00:04:26] Now, looking at other clinical trials using cancer immunotherapies, they found that lower levels of magnesium in the blood serum led to more rapid growth and spread of the cancer and shortened survival of the patient. Magnesium’s involved in over 600 chemical reactions in the human body. It’s very important for your metabolism, and many of these reactions involve your immune system and immune system functions and immunity.† [00:04:58]
[00:04:59] So what’s a natural killer cell? You have basically two parts of the immune system the innate immune system, which is not educated. It’s just kind of like a blunt force, blunt force trauma against germs and cancer, but it has to be guided. And then there is the acquired immune system, which is educated. It’s like an intelligent part of the immune system and that consists of B cells, which have antibodies, plus antibodies and other places. Antibodies fit an infection specifically. So when you have antibodies against COVID-19, they fight COVID-19, they don’t fight the flu. And when you have antibodies against the flu, they fight the flu. They don’t fight COVID-19. So antibodies are part of the acquired immune system, which is like the intelligent part of the immune system and then natural killer cells, which are really cool cells, they kind of have a little bit of a memory, a short-term memory, and, see, they kind of fill a gap, natural killer cells. The first part of the immune system to attack an infection, and this part doesn’t work very well in adults, is the innate immune system with neutrophils. They’re also called polymorphonuclear leukocytes. We kind of don’t have great functioning neutrophils when you’re older, but they kind of handle the infection for, let’s make believe three days. You know, it’s hard to say exactly, but three days, then they start to peter out. They get fatigued. The natural killer cells bridge the gap between when they’re starting to not function as well and when you have enough time to make antibodies, antibodies specific for the infection, which can take a week, 10 days.† [00:06:31]
IMMUNE SYSTEM, PART 1: THE BASICS – INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 491. Listen Now>>
[00:06:33] So the the acquired immune system’s really important and then there’s the T cells. The T cells shred infections, the T cells shred cancer tumors, cancerous tumors and cancerous cells if they know where it is. So many of the new or very advanced therapies for cancer take a sample of your cancer. See, every cancer has different mutations that are a signature for that specific cancer. So if you had 100 men in a room with prostate cancer, every one of those cancers would have different mutations. So they train… They take out your T cells and they train them to look at the mutations in your particular cancer. And then they load you up with those T cells and those T cells can recognize the cancer, hunt it down and kill it. But it turns out these killer T cells require, they require the presence of magnesium for them to really work. So if you’re lacking magnesium, even though you have these killer T cells, they don’t have the energy to do their job. So this is really important data.† [00:07:44]
[00:07:45] Now here’s a second study. It’s in the journal Cancer. It’s the University of Buffalo, the University of Buffalo School of Public Health and the University of Buffalo School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. And they found that 68% of cancer survivors report that they use nutritional supplements. Now, that’s really important data because they found that the cancer survivors that use nutritional supplements, they survive better, they survive the cancer better, they live longer and they live cancer-free longer, apparently. But they also had lower rates for hospitalizations, and they also had a better quality of life. So what’s a better quality of life? You know, having the energy to go outside and be active, having the energy to be social, having good brain function, that sort of thing. Quality of life, what makes your life worth living. That was a 10-year period that they watched these cancer survivors. And they found that the supplements basically cost about a dollar a day, but here’s what they found. Because the supplements kept people out of the hospital, it was a lot less expensive to use the supplements than not use the supplements because one trip to the hospital cost more than the supplements. So the people on the supplements had a lower rate of hospitalization and they survived better and they had a better life, better quality of life.† [00:09:09]
[00:09:10] So there are nutrients that we know work very well in cancer patients to begin with, but also in cancer survivors. One of them is Vitamin D. The Vitamin D helps reduce inflammation. Cancer feeds off inflammation to get the energy to grow and spread and the wherewithal to grow and spread. But Vitamin D is also needed for activating and guiding specific immune cells, so people who have sufficient Vitamin D over the course of their cancer treatment tend to do better, but they also survive better. They’ve seen this with a number of different cancers, including breast cancer, certain leukemias, prostate cancer. I believe colon cancer, but I’d have to double check that one. And you want your Vitamin D level, ideally between like 45 and 65. Like 55 is a beautiful, beautiful level of Vitamin D in your blood.† [00:10:01]
[00:10:02] Another supplement that there’s a good amount of research that is helping cancer patients is a good probiotic. Look for strains such as Lactobacillus plantarum, Lactobacillus ramnosis, bifidobacterium animalis subspecies lactis. These are really important for immune system function. So there’s a number of studies now that are showing that cancer treatment works better in the presence of these healthy bacteria and survival seems to be better also.† [00:10:29]
[00:10:31] Other supplements that may be helpful: magnesium that needs more work, but it certainly seems to be something. If your, if your killer cells, you, your killer T cells, require magnesium to function, that makes it very important for treating cancer. And then some people melatonin, because melatonin is needed for a properly-functioning immune system. So if you’re not sleeping at night, you can have a doctor check the level of melatonin metabolites in your urine the next morning. And if it’s low, you probably need melatonin, that should help the body fight cancer. There’s a lot of evidence building, there’s a good archive of it actually, that people who lack melatonin have a higher risk of a whole bunch of cancers.† [00:11:13]
[00:11:15] Beyond that, certain foods like green tea. But here’s a caveat. Don’t put milk in green tea. There’s some evidence it doesn’t work as well with milk. Put some lemon in there. Put some kind of citrus in there. The citrus ingredients shield the delicate polyphenols in green tea from your digestive enzymes in your stomach acids and you absorb more of them and they’re intact, so you’ll get a better return for your health if you do that with your green tea. But green tea in many ways helps fight cancer, so people who survive cancer come see me, I say, “Well, listen, you have to do green tea.” I also tell them to eat a lot of berries, dark berries and apples, and maybe even some high quality cocoa, even some red grapes. Or take some resveratrol because the anthocyanins and the flavan-3-ols are very healthy for their brain and their heart and their immune system, survival in general. I told them, have cabbage vegetables about five times a week. Cabbage vegetables could be bok choy, broccoli rabe, kale, collard greens. I don’t normally tell them Brussels sprouts because that can have a lot of heavy metals in it. So I don’t normally tell them Brussels sprouts, but broccoli itself, cabbage because there’s a whole bunch of things in cabbage vegetables that the good bacteria in your intestines convert into cancer-fighting nutrients like there’s isothiocyanates that convert to sulforaphane. There’s glucuronic acid. There’s indole-3-carbinol, which converts to diindolylmethane. All these are cancer fighters. However, there’s a caveat with cabbage vegetables, too. If you eat them raw, they can block your thyroid function. They can decrease your thyroid function, which is not good for the immune system. But if you cook them, you get rid of the things that affect the thyroid, they’re called goitrogens. But even cooked, I wouldn’t have them more than five days a week. So cabbage vegetables five days a week help in the fight against cancer and viruses, not a bad thing. A multivitamin is always helpful.† [00:13:22]
[00:13:23] So thanks for listening to my episode today. You can find all of our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also find us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @invitehealth. Please subscribe and leave us a review. I want to thank you for listening, and this is Jerry Hickey signing off. By the way, if you’re going to use supplements during your treatment for cancer, you really have to pass that by your oncologist, the doctor managing your cancer for approval because there’s different forms of cancer treatment, and we would never want to interfere with them, even though that would be not very likely. It’s still important to check this with the doctor.† [00:13:23]
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Today on the InVite Health Podcast, we have a teaser trailer by our newest radio show host, Dr. Patricia Selassie! Dr. Selassie is a naturopathic doctor who will be LIVE on InVite Health Web Radio every Monday at 10AM EST. Tune into this episode now for a sneak peek at what you can expect from Dr. Selassie.
You’ve probably heard that green tea is good for your immune system and respiratory health, but did you know it can also benefit your memory? Learn more from Jerry Hickey, Ph.
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Amanda Williams, MPH
*Intro music*
InVite Health Podcast Intro: Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed healthcare professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that InViteⓇ Health has to offer at www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code PODCAST at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started!
*Intro music*
Amanda Williams, MPH:
[00:00:40] Inflammaging part two. So I want to today define what nutrients are incredibly beneficial when it comes to targeting chronic inflammation. So we know that inflammaging, it’s going to be accelerated aging because of chronic inflammation. Not a good thing. So I’m going to talk about the nutrients and why it matters to make sure that we’re addressing that inflammation in the body. So I’m Amanda Williams, MD, MPH, and let’s get right to it.† [00:01:13]
[00:01:13] Let’s talk once again about chronic inflammation and why it is that when we think about the long-lasting impact of inflammation and how we can tie it to cardiovascular disease, to cancer, to diabetes, to chronic kidney disease, to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, which we certainly see is on the rise here in this country in particular because of our diet of that high processed foods, looking at autoimmune conditions, neurodegenerative disorders, we see this. We know that there is evidence that the risk of developing chronic inflammation is known to obviously persist throughout our lives, but it goes up exponentially as we become adults because of underlying health conditions.† [00:02:08]
[00:02:08] Now what came first, the health condition or the inflammation? That’s always the big question. Well, we know that it’s the inflammation. It is through, say, glycation, for example, we have excess glucose. That glucose, which is now doing damage… The immune system is going to try to respond or react to that, so it drives up the inflammation. So a normal inflammatory response… Except in acute inflammation, we definitely want that. But it’s that chronic inflammation that we know is certainly the big issue. So seeing and understanding the implications of chronic inflammation is certainly majorly problematic.† [00:02:52]
[00:02:53] So let’s think about the outside factors that helped drive that. We can look at physical inactivity, we can look at obesity, we can look at gut dysbiosis, which is obviously going to affect our immune function, which then triggers that inflammatory response. The diet, the Standard American Diet, this is the primary causative reason for chronic inflammation. We can look at stress. If someone is continuously stressed, whether that be emotional or physical stress, this is going to drive inflammation. We can look at inadequate sleep, how that can drive inflammation. We can look at environmental exposures to different chemicals, how that can drive inflammation. And all of these are linked to metabolic syndrome, type two diabetes, cancer, depression, autoimmune conditions, osteoporosis, sarcopenia, which is age-related muscle mass loss. Immunosenescence, I talked about that in the Immune System podcast, so you can always check that out. I have a four-part series on immune health.† [00:04:01]
IMMUNE SYSTEM, PART 2: THE AGING IMMUNE SYSTEM – INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 492. Listen Now>>
[00:04:02] So today, let’s talk about what we can do in the setting of chronic inflammation when it comes to nutrients. Now here’s the interesting fun fact. Oftentimes people think I have inflammation, I need an anti-inflammatory. If you are going out and taking a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory for your chronic inflammation, you are not doing your body any justice. Your ibuprofen is not going to help with that chronic inflammation that’s doing that systemic damage. What we need to do is we need to basically key in on the health of the cells and what those cells need. So we can look at very basic things, magnesium, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, omega-3 fatty acids. These are all key to making sure that, at that cellular level, that the cell can function in a much more efficient way.† [00:04:56]
[00:04:56] We know that magnesium has been associated with lower levels of inflammation. They’ve been able to assess that higher serum magnesium directly correlated to lower C-reactive protein levels, lower tumor necrosis factor alpha levels. And we know that many people have magnesium insufficiency or deficiencies.† [00:05:19]
[00:05:20] We can look at Vitamin D, our hormone vitamin, and see how this plays a role in terms of an anti-inflammatory effect in the body. It does this through the inhibition of NF-kappa beta, which is a master driver or regulator for inflammation in the, in the body. They’ve been able to see how low Vitamin D level was associated with higher levels of C-reactive protein, higher levels of NF-kappa beta.† [00:05:53]
[00:05:53] We can look at the impact of Vitamin E when it comes to inflammation. Most people think of Vitamin E just in terms of its antioxidant properties, but we actually know that Vitamin E has this anti-inflammatory action to it through the inhibition of COX-2. So when we think about the different pathways to which chronic inflammation has driven up, COX-1, COX-2, the lox pathway, the arachidonic component to this, we can see how when people have adequate Vitamin E exposure, that their levels of C-reactive protein, tumor necrosis factor alpha are lower. So through supplementation of Vitamin E, you’re actually helping to support the cellular ability to fend off inflammation.† [00:06:43]
[00:06:47] So all of these basic things, magnesium, Vitamin D, Vitamin E… Omega-3 fatty acids are kind of that go-to when it comes to targeting inflammation. We know that the omega-3 fatty acids with their special unique properties with the resolvins and the protectins can help to target inflammation and help the body when it comes to a better response.† [00:07:17]
[00:07:19] And of course, we can look at many of the other plant-based nutrients that have been shown to be incredibly beneficial when it comes to targeting chronic inflammation, things such as resveratrol, curcumin, those powerful polyphenols that come from green tea, the EGCG. We can see the downregulation of an inflammatory response and the positive impact the body has in the exposure to EGCG coming from green tea. We know that the trans-resveratrol helps to target those inflammatory pathways through cyclooxygenase, tumor necrosis factor alpha, NF-kappa beta. Hence, why resveratrol was always touted as the anti-aging supplement. Well, think about anti-aging, what’s one of the main drivers for aging is inflammation. So technically, we can call resveratrol the inflammaging-targeted nutrient. It’s targeting that inflammation to support healthier aging.† [00:08:30]
[00:08:33] So we have all of these different ways to which we can just take these nutrients in via supplementation, so making sure we’re taking our magnesium, our Vitamin D, our Vitamin E, our omega-3 fatty acids coming from fish oil or krill oil. Adding in nutrients such as resveratrol, the Resveratrol HxⓇ is an excellent choice, powerful amount of that trans-resveratrol. We can look at adding in the Bio-Curcumin 5-Loxin. The combination of those powerful curcuminoid oils along with boswellia extract to target once again those inflammatory pathways. There are many things that can help to potentiate a better immune system response and hence lower inflammation in the body.† [00:09:30]
[00:09:33] Our diet and our exercise certainly make a huge difference as well. So adhering to an anti-inflammatory diet as opposed to a pro-inflammatory diet, which is the Standard American Diet with the high processed foods and the sugar, the bad carbs and the bad fats. Adherence to that Mediterranean Diet is going to help the body with a more normalized inflammatory response. So we’re not walking around like this slow-burning forest fire. So I can go on and on and on with all of the different nutrients that we know target inflammation in the body. You know, cumin extracts or the Black Seed with Rosemary & Cordyceps. Very good choice. We have the InflamMune, which is the green-lipped muscle along with the perilla extract. We have many different formulations that are very specified to targeting inflammation to optimize our health. But even if we just look at the basics and we say, “Let me make sure I’m taking my magnesium, my Vitamin D, my Vitamin E, my omega-3 fatty acids. Let me just start there.” That in and of itself can do so much to combat that chronic inflammation that we know drives so much of the detrimental effects from all of these different health conditions that people generally succumb to when you think about cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular mortality. We want to maintain the health of all systems, and the way to achieve that is through the regulation of inflammation. So we don’t want inflammaging. We want to age gracefully and our key to success in doing this is through targeting inflammation.† [00:11:22]
[00:11:23] So that is all that I have for you for today. I want to thank you so much for tuning in to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast. Remember, you can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or by visiting invitehealth.com/podcast. Now, do make sure that you subscribe and you leave us a review. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @invitehealth and we will see you next time for another episode of the InViteⓇ Health Podcast.† [00:11:23]
