Anti-Cancer Living: Dr Lorenzo Cohen and Alison Jeffries

welcome back to another episode of christian natural health today i am very excited to have dr lorenzo cohen and

allison jeffries with us dr cohen is the richard e haynes distinguished professor

and clinical cancer prevention and director of the integrative medicine program at the university of texas md

anderson cancer center dr cohen conducts research examining integrative medicine practices such as meditation yoga

acupuncture and other strategies aimed at reducing the negative aspects of cancer treatment and improving quality

of life he's also conducting research to demonstrate that lifestyle changes can influence cancer outcomes in addition to

publishing more than 125 scientific articles and top medical journals and numerous book chapters dr cohen and his

wife allison have published their own book entitled anti-cancer living which

outlines six pillars of lifestyle change to support health and well-being and reduce the risk of cancer dr cohen is in

fact living proof that this approach works as the day he finished his book he received notice that he himself had

cancer he then lived his book and is today cancer-free thank you we're glad to be here our pleasure

so dr dr cohen that's so ironic that the day you finished your book you were diagnosed

with cancer yourself what was that journey like well you know in the introduction you said

i'm living proof that you know what i recommend works i guess the flip side is maybe i'm not living proof that it works

because i ended up getting cancer but my cancer diagnosis was actually of a

melanoma one of the cancers that is on a precipitous rise in our society

and in fact you know my my behavior today and lifestyle factors today last

year five years ago isn't necessarily relevant to the

original let's call it cause of the cancer meaning the scorching sunburns that i

had during my adolescent years which we now know that that five or more scorching sunburns under the age of 20

increases risk of melanoma by up to 80 percent uh a staggering

risk factor

but it's my behavior since then that can create a body that is either

inhospitable or more hospitable for that original mutated cell because cancer

starts with one cell to grow and thrive in my body

and that's the case of course for all cancers it starts with an initial mutation and then

uh our body either controls that and brushes it aside and it doesn't

cause harm or threat or it is it sort of evades all the

processes that are supposed to be in place to keep things in check

at the time actually of you know be on the biopsy table and and getting the results that the cells were malignant um

in a weird way it was almost a relief not a relief that oh finally i get to

experience cancer after studying it for 25 years but almost the relief that you

know now i get to focus on myself now i get to to put in place even more

uh the lifestyle factors that i know are good for me regardless of preventing and controlling

cancer just to feel good and to live my fullest life let's say being

able to say no to more things and only yes to the things that

really matter and and are aligned with my meaning and purpose um that was really sort of in in a weird

way that sort of raw emotional first response

was relief in a weird way i know that may sound weird

to some of the listeners you know being so embedded in cancer i've been md anderson now almost 25

years um i wasn't concerned of what comes next because i'm you know depending on the

type of cancer we didn't know that first day um i was at the best place in the world

to to be diagnosed with cancer and all my colleagues i knew were gonna come up

with you know the best treatment plan um so so that aspect wasn't uh a concern

and um the biggest you know negative side let's say uh wasn't

my own mortality uh it was the concern for my family and

you know in breaking the news to our young children uh that kind of fear and

and concern that they had uh and this this sort of switched the

dynamic because we had i'm an educator uh by training and

we had been speaking to groups and giving workshops and talking about anti-cancer living for quite some time

and so we were scientists and educators we're husband and wife we had these roles and suddenly we were cancer

patient and cancer care cancer caregiver and so that switch

um has really just deepened our understanding and commitment to

anti-cancer living and what we know needs to happen and so for me when he got that diagnosis after

my own sort of you know taking a few freaky deep breaths um

i you know took on that role of cancer caregiver and trying to support him in

taking that time for himself to do the things that we know really can help you with a cancer diagnosis or to avoid one

in the first place right yeah and i love what you guys are talking about of this idea that cancer is

it has to thrive in the right environment so uh when i first started naturopathic school there was this

theory this uh this phrase that one of my professors mentioned that if you're trying to get rid of the mosquitoes in a

stagnant pool of water there's two ways you can do it you can kill them one by one or you can drain and aerate the

swamp and they'll leave so that's that's exactly right i love it that's a nice that's a nice metaphor

yeah so uh you advocated a holistic approach even before this what's got you started

on that path before you kind of had that awareness on your own um well my trainings as a as a medical

psychologist health psychologist so my my focus has always been um in the area more generally of

behavior um [Music] being you know uh now a leader in the in

the broader field of integrative medicine which of course goes beyond just individual behaviors but also looking at

other integrative medicine treatment modalities like you mentioned acupuncture and

massage and all the different herbs and supplements that can be incorporated as bioactive

drugs alongside conventional care kind of expanded the scope of what we

look at but fundamentally um and and it didn't take very long after delving deep

in into the field of oncology it's clear that the majority of cancers

are caused by or the risk factors related to the majority of cancers are

within our own control our own behavior obviously first and foremost we know

smoking um is the number one preventable uh behavioral factor linked with cancer

but the past you know 10 years even more so the link between diet and exercise and and the link

between sleep and the sleep quality and immune function and changing vulnerabilities to

cancer individuals who sleep six and a half hours or less have increased all

cause mortality as well as specific cancers

and these same factors being extremely relevant after a diagnosis of cancer

patients who are struggling with mental health issues depression or anxiety even if it's

reactive meaning because of their their diagnosis they don't live as long

individuals who do not have a good social support network do not live as

long after a diagnosis of cancer so um you know

early on i wasn't necessarily practicing what we preached so an example of this is our monthly lecture series where we'd

bring in an integrative medicine uh speaker from the outside and we would

serve lunch and we would serve whatever the hospital uh is on their menu so you know a sandwich

with different cold cuts and a bag of chips and and you know a cookie and

that's what we're feeding people when they're hearing about how important nutrition is to prevent cancer

and we're sitting in a cancer hospital and that's a whole other conversation of what we feed our poor patients

uh but it became clear you know early on that we really need to practice what we

preach all the way down to what we feed our guests when they come uh to our

lectures so um you know that that was at an academic

level but you know this also was a process from from the family level as

well we you know when we moved to houston uh lorenzo started working at md anderson

cancer center and i was teaching and we then started a family and we realized

you know lorenzo would come home talking about really the interesting research going on between cancer and lifestyle

that he was doing that colleagues were doing and i thought well you know we have all of this information and we should be you

know filling the toolbox for our children and giving them skills and approaches to

living that they can take with them for the rest of their life so that they can be

have some ammunition you know as things life goes up and down and um

and so we started making changes in their life and like lorenzo said we realized we weren't doing it in our own

life and so then we started making changes with our friends in groups so that when we got together we would have

vegan options and tons of vegetables and it became kind of a competition who could make the best vegetable dish and

so it was fun right and that didn't mean that you didn't have a glass of wine it's not about taking things out it's

really important it's about bringing new things in and they eventually push out more of the

sort of the foods that aren't as healthy and so that your mainstay are the healthy foods and then you have an

occasional treat you you treat yourself it to things that you enjoy so um you

know that was how we evolved and started speaking um in houston and around the country and decided to write our book

and then and then what kind of led to writing the book was actually initially i mean i saw

in the halls of md anderson how so few uh

physicians as well as other scientists really understood the the breadth and in fact depth of

the link between lifestyle factors and cancer yes you know some stuff about

obesity and fiber is good uh stress is bad but they didn't really

understand you know how much data existed and when you move out of even the oncology environment to

the general population most people do not know that cancer is preventable

and that the lifestyle choices make every day influence that they they do about diabetes they do about heart

disease to some degree but most people think well cancer runs in families cancer is not something i can avoid it's

either random or it's in your genes um and in fact

neither one of those account for the majority of cancers the majority of cancers are lifestyle um and and we know

that now and that's very well accepted and so what doesn't really what didn't really exist in

uh the lay literature was a very evidence-based

and prescriptive uh recommendation to to the general

population on how to decrease your risk there's no promises in any of this but

this is all about risk reduction and and but to sort of counter a little bit of

what lorenzo's saying one of the things we also talk about is that you know if you've smoked or if you've

done whatever you know there's no guarantees that that is the cause of your cancer and so it's very important

to understand that it's also very important to not be beating yourself up you know with guilt blame or shame and

you have to just start from where you are this very day and move forward by making small changes

and each small thing you do and and uh you know

gentleness with which you treat yourself is so critical because we can't change

the past it doesn't you know it's not where you want to focus your your efforts whether you have a cancer

diagnosis or any of the other non-communicable diseases oh yeah so kind of along those lines if you're

you're speaking to how toxic these negative emotions can actually be and sort of counterproductive and you guys

clinical experience how important would you say mental emotional health is to healing cancer or anything else

well you know if if we use a broader term which is stress and i know stress

is kind of this catch-all term and under under the bigger umbrella of stress of

course earth more clinical terms like anxiety depression etc um

chronic stress impacts every single biological system in our body and in our book anti-cancer

living we talk about what are what are called the cancer hallmarks the biological processes where one or more

of them need to be activated to allow that mutated cell to grow and thrive in

the body and uh what we talk about in our book the mix of six the six areas and and the second

one being stress management chronic stress activates every single cancer hallmark it decreases our immune

system it increases inflammation it it actually there's evidence to show that

chronic stress will increase the uh the proteins and the biological

processes that allow a cancer cell to break off from the primary site and float around the body

land somewhere else find the new home and start to grow again that's the definition of

metastasis uh and so chronic stress activates all of these uh

processes let alone of course being related to heart disease and alzheimer's and uh essentially uh a risk factor for

exacerbating all non-communicable diseases

that's kind of the direct effect but we also know that that chronic stress can sabotage all our healthy intentions

and so you know within the mix of six we we talk about social support and connection

and chronic stress as the first two and if those are not lined up uh then

all your other uh behaviors that you're engaging in to try and lose weight or to to get healthy uh

are are going to be minimized and in fact there's actually evidence in clinical trials showing

that the benefits of a healthy meal are diminished for individuals who are

experiencing unmanaged chronic stress and and starting uh you know

we put love and support as the first pillar to focus on and in order to combat

stress uh and to figure your way forward you really need to have a team around

you whether you're the person with a cancer diagnosis or you're the caregiver you need each need your own team

and that team of people helps you to then step forward because so often like

lorenzo's saying you're you get sabotaged because you go to work and it's somebody's birthday and then there's drinks after work and you know

in the lunchroom i mean and you feel badly because you thought i was going to

make a clean start today and so what you really want to do is back up and have that social support in place where i've

discussed with you this is what i'm going to do or i've got a good friend or i've got somebody online and i say okay

these are the changes i'm going to make i'm going to start tomorrow and that you're partnered with somebody who is

going to support you be that cheerleader or who is going to take it on with you to make that change so it's really

critical that you set yourself up for success because i mean that's what you feel great it's

positive contagion you sleep well you get up you have a healthy meal you you

know walk around the block with your friend you take a yoga class or you learn how to meditate so it's all

reinforcing and that's really where we function best and that's essentially you know looking at these

lifestyle factors with their their positive synergy together and a lot of the research that

exists in the area of lifestyle unfortunately is is coming up often

short and healthcare professionals will look to the data of some dietary intervention

and say well you know the effect was modest but it was a dietary intervention separate from exercise separate from

trying to to tackle the barriers for engaging in the modified diet which

include social support meaning if it's not a a a

household-based intervention it's unlikely that the target person trying to make the change

is going to be able to sustain it if they don't have the whole household involved in this if they're not managing

their stress it's likely that it's not going to be a sustainable dietary change

and something we haven't spoken about um is that you know when he was unwell i

wanted to do absolutely everything that i could to help so if that meant you

know introducing something new to our house and all of us in our house trying

to learn something new to support lorenzo in the process we're also getting healthier and so people who are

around you who offer to help uh it's the perfect opportunity whether you can say

it or your partner needs to say it or a good friend says it you know these are the kinds of foods that were that she's

really or he's really trying to to eat more of uh here are four recipes you

know could you bring one a week so you want to you want to mobilize people to

be able to support you in healthy ways and in turn they get to give to you and learn something new potentially

absolutely yeah so you're describing this whole general picture of i remove obstacles to cure give the body the

building blocks it needs to heal and you can't separate them i love it great so tell us a little bit about the six

pillars that you keep alluding to that are from your book what are they and you know why did you choose those and why

are they in that order uh well just to list them off so love and support as we said stress

uh sleep exercise diet and exposure to environmental toxins so those are the

six that we focus on and uh as lorenzo talked about we want that synergy so the

you know even though you can't attack all six of them at once you know um your

levels are going to be different it's really important that you think about it as a whole and that also takes off the

pressure that if you've got one area that is really always being super tough

that you can still be doing important work in other areas until you figure out how to address right your your you know

your most challenging area and and the key from from the evidence base and again you know

being being the scientists and needing to to bring forth the evidence to uh the

community in particular my colleagues within the field of oncology

each of these six factors are related to again the biological processes that

will increase or decrease risk of cancer and they are of course interrelated so we

know uh that most people who are trying to lose weight and get healthy

uh tend to restrict calories and exercise more

period right they they don't know that if you are sleep deprived it

changes the way you metabolize food and you can feed and there's evidence for

this uh two people the exact same meal exact same calories the person who's

sleep deprived is going to metabolize that meal in a very different way and have a higher probability of converting

any of that energy to fat than somebody who's not sleep deprived so there's a

direct association we understand the biology between sleep deprivation and obesity uh but you know when was the

last time we heard about a weight loss program that included sleep hygiene

and stress management again you know changing the biology of how we how we process food so it's all

interrelated and unfortunately to the disservice of the larger community

it's researched in a very fragmented way and so i think that that's one of the

key messages we try and get across in our book is is the inner relationship

between all these factors directly for what you're trying to modify and then indirectly through how they're all

interrelated ah yeah absolutely very cool so and i'm curious to know a little bit more about your pillar on

environmental toxins what do you go into for that one well you know with around 85 000

chemicals currently out there and i don't know last i heard eight to nine

percent that have actually been tested we're really in a situation where it's

very difficult uh and we have no idea what the ramifications are of all of these

chemicals coming at us and often they're tested in isolation like other areas are tested in isolation so

when you you know start layering on if you have a teenage daughter for instance you know it's been said that they're

getting around 100 over 160 chemicals a day exposed to them through the products

that they're using so we advocate for the precautionary principle which is that you

try and use things that you know have been found to be safe or you don't use the anything you know that you don't

need to and so you think from the top of your head to the tip of your toes you know what am i putting in so often now

you feel like you need to have a phd to understand all of the products or all of the chemicals that are in something so there

are a number of different apps that are available where you could scan codes and you can see at least you know have some

knowledge about the decisions that you're making and looking for clean you know cosmetics and household products so

we talk about from the top of the head to the tip of the toes and then going through your house room by room what are

the things that we use you know what what can i trade out as as time goes by or i use it up also if

you have a diagnosis you know your friends want to help this is a perfect thing they can come into the house and

you know replace your household products with things that do not challenge the

system because ultimately we want our systems to work in the most efficient and effective way when

combating disease and you know if they're laden with chemicals it becomes more and more challenging

you can you can place some of these environmental uh toxins into two different categories certainly when it

comes to cancer one is is a carcinogen meaning an agent that we know

causes uh cancer and an example would be asbestos we know it's a direct cause of

uh lung cancer more challenging well and and within those carcinogens those carcinogens are

in our food and they're in some of our beauty care products more concerning of course is is when they are

in the food that we eat they're controlled and supposedly they

need to be below a certain level for it to be deemed as safe but as alison was

mentioning they uh are typically studied in isolation so one carcinogen

at a certain level and there was a chemical in uh many sodas which was classified as in

the carcinogen the um you know industry essentially pushed

back and said well but it's below a certain threshold that doesn't sound okay to the general

population that it's it's so low that it's not a big deal and so the pressure

was so strong that they actually removed it uh as as a product the concern is

that we're exposed to multiple carcinogens from multiple products and nobody studied that

addition more challenging are the endocrine disruptors bpa phthalates

that are in particular in personal care products of course in in water bottles

again low levels studied in isolation nobody's done the experiment to look at

120 endocrine disruptors that you're exposed to from

uh in utero through 20 years of of development what

what does that do and so that research of course will never be done so you know the

precautionary principle is is really uh the best way forward um and you know

relying on on our the general population to put pressure on industry uh to clean

up their act and we have seen that that pressure from uh the public actually can

create change i'm sure but with your dollars yeah and also to mention because we didn't we

didn't get into it you know thinking about your water thinking about your air

you know whether you wear your shoes into your house uh because they've picked up all kinds of chemicals and

then you carry it all around your house so there's lots of things that you can do to at least try and reduce your

exposure all right yeah we all live in this world but we can do the little bits little bits and continue not fill the

bucket anymore and try to continually get rid of as much as we can absolutely so and you kind of um alluded dr cohen a

little bit to the fact that your cancer diagnosis was a wake-up call to allow you to actually start implementing these

changes so what stopped you from doing that before since you knew all of this well i mean i'll say time i didn't have

time and one of my uh actually grandmother's uh

who who was a yoga teacher one of her uh students said uh you don't have time not to have

time yeah um and of course you know when we're just you know blasting forward in our busy lives we think oh you know i'll

i'll eventually get to that um

yeah i mean it's not time it's just how i i chose to uh spend my time um

and i'm not making any excuses uh you know

but my weak link you know is is is i believe uh for most people the hardest

one we have to eat every day so we can make a choice of this versus that

um we don't have to exercise but we can multitask exercise so i have a recumbent

bike that uh was under my desk due to going for walking meetings taking the

stairs i could incorporate physical activity and movement

into my day while i'm doing other things but stress management uh

stopping meditating doing yoga uh not only can you not multitask that by

by definition uh it's also not rewarded in our society um you know if i come in

on a monday morning and i tell my boss well my boss is very supportive but if i

tell the typical boss um you know i spent you know two hours each day on on the weekend in meditation

you know you don't get as positive a look as if you say you know i worked four hours each day and you know the

project is further along now you know that historically has been more rewarded in

our society um stopping and and

pausing and seeking calm in your life is is not uh

the western way well we also know that if if you're feeling that you need to be

working that by's taking that time and actually stopping and spending some time for example meditating you're actually

more productive in the time that you do have and i think that you know um for many of us who've

grown up uh in different cultures it depends on what your lifestyle was like you know

certainly faith and prayer is a wonderful mind-body uh tool to use and

part of everyday practice uh but there are also things like uh you know meditation um

that is moves away from um you know your prayer practice but one of the things

that happens is that lorenzo for instance he you know he buckled down and he really established a

yoga practice during his treatment but once he had finished his official treatment i really realized that i was

struggling at that point and needed to put into place a really solid mind-body practice

for myself and so together we signed up i asked him to join me for an eight-week

course for mindfulness based stress reduction uh

you know mbsr and um that was really helpful and it you know

we had the time uh i had the time and uh needed to have the time to to put that

into place to be able to and that and that comes back to the social support aspect you know one of the biggest

challenges is is accountability um and it's often easier to

have external accountability particularly when you're bringing on something new or

challenging in your life from for me the only i already had a yoga practice and

taken a lot of of yoga lessons with my grandmother to increase

accountability was to do something that maybe most listeners wouldn't do which was uh i signed up for a 200-hour yoga

certification teacher program because i knew that would create you

know the accountability i needed that every week in in class we'd have to put

up our hand to say how many times we practiced in the prior week and and you know i wasn't doing it to become

a yoga teacher but really to just have that extra accountability um and you

know i've never you know felt better in my life than that year that i was undergoing

cancer treatment because i was really you know doubling down on on everything that i

know i need to do now the hard part is you know now the cancer treatment's over and expectations are different from the

world and most importantly from myself to myself uh how do i maintain that

accountability yeah absolutely

uh you know to be honest i i probably haven't you know i've certainly slipped on on the on the mind body practice uh

component but as allison said you know it's today that you start from today and

you can reset every day um and change your expectations and and

you know to set realistic goals so i know now you know with uh

filling my calendar more with with other responsibilities that you know maybe

that two hour every morning uh dedicated to the mind body practice isn't feasible

so don't set myself up for that you know carve out 10 minutes 10 minutes in the morning 10 minutes in the afternoon

evening everyone has 10 minutes and if they say they don't have 10 minutes they're not being honest with themselves

are many good um either online um audio

meditations that you can follow when we were teaching our children meditation when they were young we would pick one

uh every day and they would say if they liked it or not and we kept it in our rotation and we would meditate as a

family but after lorenzo's diagnosis one of the things that we've done this year is that headspace you know has

great meditations but also on netflix where they talk to you a little bit about uh this meditation and then you do

a 10-minute meditation together and it's all cartoon and you know it's a and so we've done it as a family so that's one

of the ways in which we pieced it in before dinner that we just spend 20 minutes you know

finding calm and then we enjoy dinner together so there's lots of different ways of doing it that will work and and

back to the time issue you know does 100 of the

barriers that people say is i don't have the time uh and the evidence here is really clear

that individuals and and these are done in randomized trials where a

beautiful experiment was the study out of india that randomized medical students to

a yoga program an exercise group or they were in uh

a usual you you know do do nothing group and the people who were

assigned to the do nothing group were you know their initial reaction was hugh now i don't have to waste my time doing

yoga or exercising every day and i can study and study harder and longer

the data spoke for itself which is the individuals who are in the yoga group actually had better grades

at that next exam and this was a randomized study meaning that everyone was sort of had equal academic ability

in all groups so you know the the evidence is clear that engaging in a mind-body practice slowing

down decreasing chronic stress improves your memory improves your sleep improves

uh your ability to to multi-task so you know it gives you more time and

it doesn't feel like that at first because it takes a bit of time to to reap the benefits of changing your brain

which is what happens when you decrease stress and increase calm in your life but but you you we can almost guarantee

you that you will have more time if you better manage stress in your life

absolutely counter-intuitive but absolutely true for sure so is there anything i have not asked you either one

of you that you want to make sure you leave with our audience

i think just sort of repeating that you know don't don't settle on stress guilt or

blame settle on where you are today and this feeling that if you do want to make change in your life that you can

absolutely do it and that you can form a team around you to make it successful so

that the small steps will lead you where you want to go

yeah and you know self-compassion is just critical uh i remember i think it was the dalai lama

who commented when he first came to the united states he never encountered

uh a population he's encountered a lot of populations around the world who who

had such low self-worth and self-esteem at the individual level

and so self-compassion and you know taking one day at a time

uh and and this is hard you know changing these these embedded behaviors is extremely

hard and a lot of a lot of the uh portions of our

society don't want us to get healthy to avoid junk food um to

you know change this aspect of our lives so you know i believe we're on a very

new frontier now partly because of the evidence and the link between lifestyle

and the majority of non-communicable diseases so we're starting to see a shift but

still kind of going against the veins so it's it's uh it's hard work and so be

compassionate with yourself and and um you know the celebrate the

successes every day uh try and focus on the positive because

another aspect that we haven't gotten into is is the aspect of gratitude um

and and being aware of all the positive things that are happening around you our

brains i believe evolutionarily speaking are hardwired to find the negative because finding the negative the danger

the the the thing that can cause threat in your environment was evolutionarily adaptive it allowed you to get out of

danger it allowed you to predict danger so you're not in that situation uh we actually don't live although we may

think we do we don't live in a very dangerous world relative to our hunter-gatherer ancestors

so it takes work to see the positive and the more you see the positive

the more that you are going to to spontaneously be aware of all the good

that surrounds you absolutely fantastic so where can people go to learn more about you

well uh they can visit our website at anticancerdashliving.com

and if they're interested in our book anti-cancer living they can find that on amazon or wherever

you buy books okay fantastic well i will link to those in the show notes and thank you guys so much for your time and

your expertise really appreciate it our pleasure thanks for having us thank you so much

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