It is, I understand the desire to find the Achilles' of cancer. I understand the desire,
coming from a family riddled by cancer. Very young ages. I understand that you want to
find that one switch, the one lever. So what leaked out there long ago was "sugar feeds
cancer." That sounds great. Makes sense. Sugar feeds cancer; cut out sugar; maybe you kill
cancer. Alright, now let's look at this objectively. First of all, if you've been around cancer
enough, you have to be deferential on some level to cancer. Cancer is a badass disease
and it does a lot of damage and it's a highly complicated disease that if it was so simple
to cut out sugar that you kill cancer, Mark Scholz would be holding a sign saying, "will
work for food" out there. It would be that simple. I would love to make it that simple,
but now let me now make it even more complicated.
We have PET/CT scans, right? Everybody heard about PET/CT scans and they use molecules
for the cancer to suck up and gobble up because it likes to use those things. One of the most
common scans that are used out there is called an FDG-PET CT. So they use a compound that's
basically a glucose molecule, like a sugar molecule, and that's gonna go into your cancer
and then your cancer lights up and we'll know where it is.
Dr. Scholz, can you please tell the audience, when you use a glucose molecule to light up
at PET CT scan, how worthwhile is it in prostate cancer?
Well, yeah, you qualified it, because if you use it in lymphoma and lung cancer, it's fantastic.
It's practically in prostate cancer.
It's useless in prostate cancer. It'll serve no function. What has become more useful?
To inject, for example, a fatty acid or an amino acid that builds a protein and then
the cancer gobbles it up and says, "I'm here! I love this thing. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.
So, now should I say, "Wait a second, protein feeds cancer." Or should I say, "fat feeds
cancer?" No, well it's again still complicated. The point being is that even throughout imaging
we've learned that it's not as simple as sugar feeds cancer. "So well then what the hell
am I supposed to do Dr. Moyad?" Let me make it as simple as possible. Sugar, in my opinion,
is not the issue with cancer. You can have a doughnut once in a while. You can live your
life for God's sakes. A high blood sugar? That's a different thing altogether. A high
blood sugar, go back to your cardiovascular risk numbers. Someone that's carrying a high
blood sugar, for example. (Say a 120, a 115, who knows for them?) . There's something about
cancer that loves a high blood sugar and I'll tell you why. Because you pump out more insulin,
and boy, these cancers just love, some of these cancers, love to have insulin around
because it's a mitogen, it's a growth factor. So the end result of being heart unhealthy
is that when you're heart unhealthy, the body produces all this potential food for your
cancer. It's not the sugar that's feeding the cancer, it's the high blood sugar that
potentially feeds cancer.
Thank you.
You know, the BPH drugs that Gange talked about. Does anyone know where the BPH drugs
were discovered from? They were discovered from anti-hypertensive drugs. People took
high blood pressure medication; their blood pressure came down; and they went, "Oh, I'm
peeing better, this is great!" And they said, "Wait, that's one of the side effects?" Yes,
one of the side effects of lowering your blood pressure is you pee better. So what we keep
learning, over and over again, is all this stuff is intimately tied into something heart-healthy.
So, I wish it was as simple as "sugar feeds cancer." The second thing I'm concerned about
in prostate that I think really disrupts the game is a lot of adipose tissue is not a good
thing for prostate cancer. I mean, prostate cancer loves it. So, weight gain is enormously
detrimental for some men in prostate cancer, and in ways we're just learning about. So,
one thing that we've learned from surgeons doing radical prostatectomies (even though
I know this is making you cringe), but we've learned some things, basically is that when
you look at the surgeons who have done some of the most surgeries for radical prostatectomy
and they look at the area around the prostate after they remove it, they see more and more
adipose tissue around it. What does that mean? That means not only when you put on adipose
tissue in the belly, the rest of the body also picks up adipose tissue. The liver, the
pancreas, all around including around the prostate. So what pathologists are beginning
to think right now, Epstein and some of these other guys out there and women, they're beginning
to think that having all of this fat tissue around the prostate serves as a magnet. It's
basically saying to the cancer, "Come on, come on out. Leave the prostate. We're going
to secrete all these different hormones and things and cytokines and factors and it's
part of the reason we might be seeing more aggressive prostate cancer in men that gain
weight and I believe that.
Oh yeah, survival is much better in lean people compared to overweight people.
That's why it devastates me to see men on hormone therapy who gain a lot of weight.
Which I understand, you put them in male menopause. But there has to be a conversation, a locker
room speech before you get your first injection of Lupron or anything else. Before you take
an anti-androgen pill and you go, "Listen man, you know how when you're married, your
wife might have gone through menopause and then she went through perimenopause and that
takes a couple of years and then there's menopause. Well, we're going to put you through that
process in about 30 days." So you tell your wife that so that she's sensitive to what
you're going through too because sometimes men weren't very sensitive when women were
going through hot flashes and menopause. They go, "Ohh!" And now men, we put them in this
state in 30 days, including the weight gain. And so if you don't know what is about to
happen to you and you gain a whole lot of weight up front, it's that much harder to
get rid of it because not only do we get rid of your testosterone, we get rid of your metabolism.
So, you're not metabolizing as well, so it takes a lot more to lose a pound. So, if we
can tell people not to gain weight, or to just to gain very little upfront, man that's
a winner.
Yeah, it's easier to not put it on in the first place.