 So, welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast and we're about to start a new year and I thought it was really great that we could get a very distinguished physician, Dr. Laura Nassi, from Buenos Aires, Argentina to join us. And she's got a recent book that came out in October which is called Cancer as a Wake Up Call. So, thank you for joining us and welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. Thank you very much for inviting me and reaching out all the way to Argentina. Well, you're welcome. So, your book, Cancer as a Wake Up Call, you know, really presents a new way of looking at how we view and treat cancer. Now, cancer is a sensitive subject, so what's your approach in two ways. Number one, what's your approach in terms of thinking about cancer that perhaps is different than those of us in the United States view it? You've done all of your training, most of your training in the United States at Temple University, also at Sloan Kettering, and I know you were in Switzerland at Bern. And now you've been back in Argentina for 10 years. So tell me the various approaches. How should we think about cancer? How do you think about cancer? Okay. So, what I practice is integrative oncology, what we call now integrative oncology, which is based on the scientific evidence that has accumulated in the last decades from psychoneuroimmunology. I mean, the way we are seeing cancer from integrative oncology, it's a broadened way. It's recognizing that what we've been calling cancer is we've been only looking at that group of cells that divides uncontrollably and gets the phenotype, the capacity of invading locally or at a distance. But what we haven't looked at from conventional medicine is why do people, some people get cancer and why others don't. For me, it's fascinating if we look at people who smoke. Why do some people smoke and get cancer? Why do some people smoke, then stop quit smoking and then get cancer years later? And why some people that smoke don't ever get cancer? And what we know now from all the research, mainly from psychoneuroimmunology, is precisely that we are in contact with a lot of carcinogens during the day, you know, the sunlight and the pesticides and the tobacco or the pollution and all those other chemicals who are in contact in our household or in the environment, but if our immune system is working well and our DNA repair systems are working well, so those cells that are altered by the carcinogen get repaired or eliminated by the immune system and the DNA repair systems. So when someone gets diagnosed of a cancer, we have to assume that that immune system and DNA repair system is not working well. And nowadays, we know that that immune system doesn't work by itself alone, but it's part of this network, of this intelligent network, psychoneuroimmune endocrine network, which what explains it is that everything is connected within our body. So our emotional part, our thoughts and mainly how we perceive the world and how we translate that internally and how that affects our autonomic nervous system, that part of the nervous system that acts automatically and it's right now, you know, controlling our heartbeat and our breathing rate, a rate of breathing and the glucose in our blood and the temperature in our body, that incredible system that it's working day and night without us having to give not even one order, you know, it's, well, this autonomic nervous system that works like with a gas pedal and a brake, a gas pedal and a brake influences then the immune system and the endocrine system, the hormone system. So I mean, women, we know it intuitively because we know that when we have some trauma or some stressful period, we know that something gets out of balance within our bodies and then our menstruations, our menses get delayed or come before. So we know that something gets out of balance within our body and that affects all our hormones. When the same thing is happening with the immune system, it gets affected by how we are internally. The only thing is that with the immune system, we don't see it. We don't see when it's working badly, except when we start getting, you know, people that have a herpes in, you know, a mouth, what you call it, a lip herpes or, you know, activation of the whole, the cold sore and they say, oh, maybe I'm stressed out because this happens when I'm stressed out. So we start seeing, maybe we start having like indications that the immune system is not working well, but nowadays in our Western lifestyle, like we were referring to before this interview, is that in our Western lifestyle, we just keep going, you know, we take some medicine and we keep going. Instead of listening, what our immune system is saying. So what, from the psychoneuromunology point of view, when someone gets diagnosed with cancer, we also assume that there's a disbalance in this P&I network, in this psychoneuromunology network, something is not working well. So we need to look not only at the tumor, but to look at the whole person and see how that person is living and what's leading that person into a path of an unhealthy path that makes her or him more vulnerable to get sick. So the treatment, it's not only to go against the cancer sense, but how we can help that person to regain the help of that immune system and the whole P&I network. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. You know, most women with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene do not get cancer. The vast majority don't. And one of the things that I counsel my patients is just because you carry a gene that is potentially pro-cancer promoting, has nothing to do with whether you personally are going to get those cancers. And you're absolutely right. It's this entire milieu of the body. And I would throw in the gut immune brain access. As you know, my interest is the microbiome. I think the microbiome contributes so much to how our immune system functions. And I'm sure you'd agree with that as well. Completely. I do refer to that in my book. And I think it's one of the things I'm stressing most in the patients and the recommendations. I mean, we're only starting to understand how the microbiome works. But for example, within the microbiome, there's this whole strobo-lobe, which is the bacteria and microorganisms that deal with our estrogen. So one person, you know, a woman who has an estrogen-sensitive cancer, not only, you know, we can help to lower the estrogen levels by medications, by removing the ovaries, et cetera. But also we can help a lot by the nutrition, you know, and helping to have a healthy strobo-lobe, which is a healthy group of bacteria that will help us eliminate the estrogens through the gut, you know, through the fecal matter, and not reabsorb them. Because sometimes when there is a dysbiosis and alteration in the microbiome, maybe we're not consuming so many estrogens or producing so many estrogens, but whatever little we have, we are circulating and reabsorbing again. So a lot is presented in the blood all the time. So absolutely, the microbiome is something we don't understand so much yet, and it has a major impact. Yeah. So when you say, so let's have a patient that comes to you with cancer. And you say that this is a wake-up call, and you've already alluded to the fact that this is not just a tumor that's been picked up, or, you know, a growth someplace. So what's your approach to counseling that patient who comes to see you? Yeah. I mean, the title cancer is a wake-up call comes as a result of so many patients I've seen where the diagnosis of cancer for them was really a life-changing situation and allowed them to stop and really become aware of how they were living and learn how to live in a more healthy and more happy way. And for them it was really a wake-up call into a more happy and healthy life. So really the title comes from observing that this happens, you know, that unfortunately nowadays, you know, even though we know that living stressfully is not good for us or eating unhealthy or not exercising is good, sometimes we don't make changes until we have, you know, some wake-up call. And nowadays cancer, unfortunately, I mean, on one side, unfortunately, it's what, you know, a lot of people, it's what makes them wake up and stop living the unhealthy way they were living. But fortunately, in the sense that if we take cancer as this manifestation of unbalance, disbalance within the body, then we can really look not only at getting rid of the cancer, but, you know, having it as a really wake-up call to learn on how to live more healthy and more connected and more true to who we are, you know. And it's very interesting how things work, because today I'm in my office and the two patients I saw just before this interview, one of them I have seen only once a year ago. And she's a young lady with metastatic, she had had an early breast cancer, very good prognosis, but two years later she had metastatic disease in her back. In her back in one of her vertebrae. And she came to see me at that point when she was completely, you know, unwashed and unwashed and despair, because this had taken her completely out of, she didn't expect something like this happening to her. Yeah, sure. Sure. And I had that one consultation with her when I explained, you know, that cancer is really a group of cells manifesting and saying, we don't want to continue this way, you know, this way of living. There's something that, you know, and so I talked to her, you know, what we know nowadays that to restore the health of that immune system of that PNI network, we need to address how we're living, how we're, you know, taking care of our body, not only how we're eating, but also how we're exercising, how we're sleeping, you know, it's very important for immune system. But also nowadays we need to include some relaxation technique. We live in a very, at least in the Western world, we live with a lot of demand, a lot of stress, and we're just used to it. You know, people just say, oh, everybody's stressed out or everybody, you know, but that's not an excuse because this everybody stressed out is making us sick. I mean, the statistics say in the States, one every two men will have cancer in their, in their lifetime and one every three women. I mean, there's something the way we're living that it's really making us vulnerable to get sick. So, and then I explained to her also how important is to have, you know, to build, I talk about the team, you know, to build a good team to help one make all these changes. And those are like the basic recommendations like for everybody, but then we have to look at that one person and why she got sick and what let her, you know, become sick. And this in this case, this woman was a woman, you know, is a woman who's very responsible. She has one part of herself that it's very responsible that very much, you know, take everything on her own back sack, you know, and really put everything, you know, for her had a hard time to ask for help. And and her life was, you know, just being responsible and taking care of her kids, her husband, her profession, etc. So for her, I thought it was very important to do some psychotherapy to and some other, you know, techniques and practices, including relaxation practices, to really understand who she is, because that was one part of her, the very responsible one. But then she has a very much sensitive part that, you know, that has a lot to do with communication, which is, which is not developed in her. And it's, it's, it was really a pleasure because today she came, I saw her at the beginning of the, no, one year ago in December last year. And now I saw her for the second time. In the meantime, I was in contact with her psychotherapist and her nutritionist, etc. And she comes today and she's disease free, you know, she was able, she got chemotherapy and radiation therapy to her back. I mean, she got the conventional treatment, but she also did a lot of changes in her in her house, in her family. And, and so today she came to kind of summarize all her, her work during the last year. And, and it was so, so it was such a pleasure to be a testimony, you know, how one person can make such a difference for herself, for her, for her family. And on her case, being celebrating being disease free, you know, after one year of, of, of work, you know, with conventional medicine, and all other things that she adopted, you know, to make her life more healthy. And she's happier. She feels more like herself. She feels, you know, like she, she's not just that, you know, kind of a soldier, just keeping, you know, the orders, but just living a more, more plentiful life, more, you know, and, and this for me, it's, it's, it's really amazing. And, and, you know, this woman started her journey when she came to see me one year ago. And this is how I wrote the book. I had these people who really are able to listen and to become aware and to make changes, just if they understand if they're giving the, the important information, you know, on the way we're living and how it affects us. And so I had some of these cases, just that with one consultation, they were able to make a big change. And that's when I decided, okay, I'll write everything in a book. And then so that it's available for everyone, you know, who can come to consultation or not, but they can really get information they need to understand that cancer, treating cancer is not just just going to the chemo radiation of the surgery, but there's a lot of things we can do about how we are living and changes we can do to live a more healthy lifestyle. So that brings up two, two points and two questions for me. You're, you're trained originally as, you know, a medical oncologist, a conventional medicine like, like I was in a training conventional surgical oncology for the chest. And that, so if somebody comes to you with cancer and says, I know you're an alternative, alternative medicine doctor, I want to know, I don't want conventional therapy. You know, I want alternative therapy. What say you to that person? Yeah, I have a patient I, I wrote in my book, you know, she came with a, with a single lung nodule and she said, I come to you because I know you're not, she used a word in Spanish, like you don't like to use knives, like you're not pro surgery, you know. And I said, no, no, no, no, don't misunderstand. I said, first of all, I always explain I'm integrative oncology. I think there is a role for conventional medicine. And I don't think that everybody needs to get chemotherapy until the end of their days. And not everybody needs all the, the whole treatment. But yes, there is a role for surgery, for radiation therapy, for chemotherapy, for homotherapy, immune therapy. I mean, but what I, what I propose is broadening the view. I'm not thinking only about the tumor itself, but really focusing in what let that person become vulnerable to disease and what, you know, he or she can change. So this particular patient I mentioned in the book is precisely, I said, look, you, I mean, you need to understand that you're in an incredible position that they have diagnosed and they have found, you know, then one solitary nodule without, by chance, without having any symptoms. And that's like, you know, it's something, it's surgically removable. And you're in a, in a very special location because a lot of people, when they find their lung cancer, it's not operable anymore. And well, and then I explained the whole thing. I just explained to you on how really what we need to work is in what made her vulnerable to, to get sick and how she needed to treat in herself. And there was a, there was a big emotional issue. And, you know, she had had very loss of very dear people, too many in a row. And, and she really needed to work on how to deal, you know, differently with losses and not just, you know, put it all in her body. And so she, she worked with psychotherapy and relaxation techniques and other techniques, you know, for self getting to know herself better and learning how to deal better with her emotions and her relationships. Yeah. And that actually brings up my second question. So somebody who comes in with cancer, I think some of our listeners are going to say, well, what you're saying is you got cancer and enjoy yourself. And they're probably going, what do you mean enjoy myself? You know, I've just been told I have cancer and you're telling me to have a great day. Okay. How do we, how do we make that leap of faith? Well, I mean, one of the issues is that there's more and more scientific data to validate that positive emotions affect positively. You know, when I was, our system, you know, when I was explaining about this P and I network and then part that works with a, with a gas pedal and a break, a gas pedal, that's a sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Yeah. And the way we perceive the world, if we perceive the world with uncertainty and we don't feel, you know, good with ourselves and we are afraid of what's coming will be inside of us. It's like pressing on that gas pedal. And activating all the stress response that, you know, whenever there's a situation of uncertainty of that makes us afraid, our body prepares itself to, you know, to act. Yeah. But, and then when we can relax, we, it's like pressing on that break. And then we produce the relaxation response, which has a completely different cascade of chemical substances. So how we perceive the world, how we translate it translates physically in different cascade of substances, either stressful substances or repair and relaxation substances. And usually we can't have both at the same time. You know, we can't have stress cascade being activated as well as the parasympathetic and all the relaxation. So the more we press on that break, the more we do relaxation techniques, the more we enjoy ourselves, the more we, yeah, we really enjoy with our bodies, you know, go for a good dance or chanting or, you know, music and celebrating our body, the more we are producing substances that will help for our repair, you know, for recovering our health. So really what we do translates chemically inside our bodies and we need to understand that. Because we need to understand that if we, if we put ourselves, you know, eight hours a day, I'm sorry, I don't know if you're here, but there's a great thunderstorm at this point here in Buenos Aires. It's really, yeah. We can hear a bit of it, but it's okay. Okay. So nowadays we know that, you know, if we put ourselves eight hours a day in an environment where we feel threatened, we feel afraid, I mean, that's the chemistry that will be bathing all our body and our organs throughout the day, you know, and to compensate for that, you know, we would really need to work on pressing on the, you know, coming back home and having a massage and doing some meditation and having a nice talk with our partner or going for with friends out and having a good laugh, you know, to compensate for all the other chemistry we've been building up during the day. So it's not just blah, blah, that we need to enjoy. Enjoy means we need to work on our internal pharmacy, you know, on an internal chemistry. Yeah, Norman Vincent Peale was famous for curing himself of cancer by watching a funny movie every day and making himself laugh. And certainly I agree that laughter is one of the keys of changing our environment. In fact, I even know a yoga instructor who's called the Laughing Yogi. Because yeah, because all he does is laugh during yoga. And that's actually very hard to do, I think, but he's trained me to do it. So help us understand. So, you know, I've got the diagnosis of cancer and I've decided that I'm going to listen to conventional medicine. I'm going to do chemotherapy and radiation therapy. So who else do I have to get on my team? I'm not in a center that has complementary medicine. How do I take charge of getting my team assembled? Yeah, I think we're coming to understand that medicine should be more and more personalized. Personalized meaning really focused on the person. So in order for me to be able to recommend, why recommend reflexology or acupuncture or yoga or meditation to you, I need to understand who you are. I need to get to know you. So I will take at least an hour to ask you about everything. You know, first of all, if you know your medical history and just to get a feeling whether there have been like flashes, you know, alert systems in your body already telling you you are getting sick. And also that gives me an idea on how long you've been, your immune system has been declining, you know, a lot of times, you know, with the history, but with the medical history. But of course, I will ask also about the psychosocial, how that person, you know, with whom he or she lives, how are her relationships? Does she really, how is the climate at home? Does she really find or him, you know, finds a good place where to rest and relax and be him or herself? I will ask about the, you know, the group of friends, how is the climate at work, if he or she has a work, if she's recognized at work, if she's, you know, compensated. And also I will ask about, you know, their wishes and their, you know, what's, you know, there's things that this person has been wishing for and, you know, has never accomplished the pending, you know, and also I will ask a little bit, I mean, also to get an idea of how this person has been really from the intrauterine life, you know, from when we were in the belly of our mothers, because there's data nowadays to show that whatever we live in, when we are in the belly of our mothers in the intrauterine life and also in the first seven years of infancy, that affects our, you know, our genome. I mean, not the genome itself, but the epigenetics, like which genes we activate and which ones we turn on and which ones we turn off. And nowadays we know that the childhood, the stressful childhood experiences leave some epigenetic changes that may be silent for a while and then they are uncovered when we are adults and we have, you know, some more stress and unhealthy habits and then all this comes up, you know, just turning the whole P&I system, you know, into disbalance. So I would need to get like, you know, if I know that this is a person that had some abuse or some, you know, adverse childhood experiences, I can already see how this person will react or overreact to situations more with a stressful, you know, and we'll need to focus even more on relaxation and anti-stress techniques. So it will be very personalized. I don't believe in the one formula for everybody. Yes, we need to look into how we eat, if we exercise, how we sleep, our social support, our relaxation, but then it's very personalized for it, you know. So speaking of eating, my treatment of cancer certainly goes with eating. So several points. Number one, I see a number of women with breast cancer, for instance, who are postmenopausal. And one of the, I think, fallacies that I've seen is that they are assured that they have no estrogen production, and yet they're overweight or frequently obese, and I can show them in their lab results that in fact they make lots of estrogen. And they're, you know, they're incredulous. And they said, no, I don't, because I'm in menopause, and then I, you know, show them. And I said, well, that's funny. You have lots of estrogen in your body. And there's certainly good evidence in breast cancer that women who are overweight or obese at the time of their initial treatment, who remain overweight or obese, have a much higher recurrence rate than women who lose weight and their estrogen levels fall, as well as their insulin falls. Right. So the other thing that I do, I do think that cancer has a metabolic derangement feature. I do think that there's a mitochondrial dysfunction. And so my job is I use a ketogenic diet and an extremely high fat and extremely low protein diet on these people. And I, if I had cancer, I would not eat animal protein because of the amino acids that are more present in animal protein than plant protein that are known that cancer cells can utilize. So that's kind of my approach to cancer patients. And I have a very large cancer practice and knock on wood. We've had, you know, really good results with this. So can I ask a question? Yeah. Are you able to recommend the ketogenic diet plant-based and, you know, avoiding because usually that's, it's a good. Yeah, I think that's the major mistake that people associate with a ketogenic diet or a paleo diet. These are all variations of basically the Adkins diet. And people think that a high protein diet, avoiding carbohydrates, and keeping the fat that's associated with animal protein is a ketogenic diet. And I measure ketones in all of my patients and the vast majority of patients that I see who say they're on a ketogenic diet in fact aren't because they're eating primarily a heavy protein diet. And this was actually one of the mistakes that Dr. Adkins made. And I know because my original book, Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution, was done by Random House who had done all the Adkins diets and all the South Beach diet books. And Dr. Adkins didn't know that we have no real storage system for protein. We need it for wear and repair, but that's about it. So we don't waste energy. So we convert protein into sugar, gluconeogenesis. And he actually died a fat man. I know because I actually take care of his head nurse. And he didn't know this. And so many people in the ketogenic community don't know that protein will turn into sugar. So to get back to your question, I basically tell my patients that I want them to become a gorilla who lives in Italy. Now, if you have to think about that for a second, gorillas only eat leaves and twigs. And why I want them to live in Italy because I want them to consume a liter of olive oil per week. And that's a huge amount of olive oil. It's about 12 to 14 tablespoons a day. But there's a very interesting Spanish study of 65-year-old people who were followed for four years. And I'll briefly summarize it. One group had to have a liter of olive oil per week for four years and have a Mediterranean diet. A second group ate a low-fat Mediterranean diet. And the original study was to look at memory. And I'll forget about that. But the women in the olive oil group had a 67% less incidence of breast cancer over that time period than the women in the low-fat Mediterranean diet. So I think... So if you eat a liter of olive oil per week and avoid animal proteins, you're basically on about an 80% fat diet. And the carbohydrates that you're eating are basically leaves as a mechanism to get olive oil into your mouth. So that's what I do with my patients. Now, I'm not successful entirely. A lot of people will not give up animal protein. But the more I can diminish animal protein, the more successful I am with this program. And among other things, what I want to do is get the gut bacteria participating in educating the immune system. So talk to me about where you think nutrition is in the scheme of cancer fighting. Well, I think nutrition is one of the pillars of recovering your immune system and your whole VNI network. Personally, from the research I've done, I mean, there is no real evidence that one diet or a very restrictive diet is better than a healthy diet. This is my taking. Then a healthy diet like I proposed in the book with less animal fat and less animal protein and more plant-based and decreased sugars and changing the flour for complete flour. I also opt for the rice to be complete, although I know that you have a different view on some parts. But to tell you the truth, I think that we still don't know a lot about diet. I think you're completely right that we need to think about diet, not so much what we need, but what our bacteria need, like what our microbiome needs. Also, I think that that will depend a lot on each person because I believe we will be going into a more personalized type of diet also. It's not ketogenic for everybody or low protein for everybody or whatever. I mean, there are certain things we know. We know that all the processed foods that have come up the last decade, the last century, plus all the sugary drinks and sugary things, I mean, we know that that's not good for us and all the additives. We know that that's not good. We need to go for more. But then I believe that we will be looking at more personalized. It's not that all cancer patients need the same diet. There is even data about some studies with ketogenic diet and pancreas cancer and glioblastoma and brain tumor. So, I mean, but I don't think it's ketogenic for everybody. I don't believe from the data I've seen. And personally also, a lot of the things I recommend, I try them myself first and not the chemotherapy or the radiation. No, but as far as nutrition and relaxation techniques and all these types of treatments and practices, I do practice them myself to see what it does to my body and then I can recommend them with more emphasis or not. And I think that the diet, it has to be personalized. As I was saying before, it's not the same a woman, a postman, a postman woman who has high estrogen. And we maybe we need to be focusing more on that stroke alone and see how not to feed the bacteria that will come that look or an isatron in the gut and permit, allow the enteropathic circulation of estrogen. And maybe that won't be the focus for a patient with a lung cancer and other characteristics. So you encounter in your practice, and I certainly do in mine, a person who has end stage cancer. What advice, how do you change your technique counseling for that person? From the integrative point, the integrative paradigm. It's interesting because integrative oncology not only incorporates the information that comes from psychoneurgymenology, but also from other theories that were formulated last century. What I'm talking about systems theory and chaos theory that bring a quantum physics and relative theory that makes us change the perception of how we perceive the word. So if we adopt what chaos theory tells us and system theory tells us is that we are an open system and we're in continuous interaction with our media and with our environment and we others around. If this system, if we think the system is closing up and dying and we declare this is how it is, it's most probable that we will be doing things to close it down. I wrote another book which is called Cancer and Psychoneuromonology and I wrote it for, it's in Spanish only still. But I wrote it with a psychologist who's been working in Uruguay with this integrative view for the last 20 years. And what we explained there is that according to the chaos theory, if we are an open system we cannot predict how the outcome will be. In medicine we believe we know the outcomes but then we treat 10 patients with the same disease with the same treatment and then we know that some respond and some don't respond and we don't understand it. But we think we know what the outcome is. And we also know from chaos theory is that little changes in the system make, you know, bigger changes. And so I always, when I see a patient, you know, who's with a more advanced disease and what we call, you know, end stage or I always leave one window of hope, you know, because we really don't know, there are some testimonies of people who were about to die and did not die. So who are we to say that person will die? If we say that person will die, that person probably will say, okay, I'll eat whatever is because I'm dying. I won't exercise because I'm dying. It doesn't matter how I treat the other ones because I'm dying. So it will go closing by itself, you know. So I propose the same integrative view. I tell them it's like a plant that is dwindling, you know. And we know that we need to do a lot of strategies, you know, that plants not just pouring water, it's seeing what the plant needs to see if we can revitalize it again. And so the focus is there. Always keeping a foot on the ground, like saying things are not easy, you know. And if this has been deteriorating for a while, we cannot expect that with one measure, you know, revitalize again. But yes, we need to leave some hope and of course emphasize, you know, whatever brings that person peace and some type of a pleasure moment and whatever can stimulate that system, you know, continue doing it because we are not cool to say when that person will die or not. And yes, focus on accompanying that person in the most humane and caring and loving way and then let life decide, you know, how things keep going. This is my, you know, the way I propose it and take it. Okay. And of course I had people who recover and, you know, there are some people who were, you know, according to conventional medicine, you know, thought that we can't do anything more and then you see them, you know, I had a patient with metastatic lung cancer and, you know, everybody, it was like 10 years ago so there were very fewer options of treatment and they thought, you know, this person was not gonna do well and, you know, he lived like five, you know, very plentiful years which for that stage it was a lot and, you know, and I had patients with metastatic breast cancer to the brain who really also lived over a year of a very, you know, kind of pleasurable life in the sense that they were able to travel and, you know, do some, you know, get some... So we cannot tell how one person will go or not and I think the approach is similar just recognizing that things are more difficult, you know, that it's a more difficult situation. Okay. Well, I think that's a very good place to wrap this up, a very good place to end. As part of every one of my podcasts, I answer a question from our listeners so if you'll bear with me before we sign off I'm gonna answer a question, okay? Sure. All right. Sure. So this is the audience question and it's from E. I heard your podcast today very informative stuff and thanks for sharing. I request your opinion on stomach ulcers and what would you recommend with healing? Actually, that's a really good question, E. There's a lot of options with stomach ulcers. Now, I'm not sure if you're referring to ulcers that are associated with the bacteria H. pylori. We do know that H. pylori certainly is a cause of stomach and duodenal ulcers, but I'm gonna throw in just a little wild card. We know that H. pylori is actually a normal bacterium of the stomach and there's some physicians, Dr. Blazer from New York City who actually thinks that H. pylori is actually a good organism that is part of the natural rain forest of our bacteria. And I agree with him that things like C. difficile, which causes horrible intestinal inflammation and diarrhea, is a normal bacterium, which is normally kept in check by all of the other 10,000 bacteria. And it's the same with H. pylori. I don't think it's the demon that it has been made out to be. So I don't necessarily think that you need an antibiotic treatment for H. pylori. If you want to do that, I have nothing against it, but what I would rather do is get the acid medium of the stomach back to normal and there's an excellent supplement called Betaine. You may see it as TMG, capital T, capital M, capital G, trimethylglycine. And this will actually increase the hydrochloric acid of your stomach. The other thing is both probiotics and more importantly prebiotics to feed the friendly bacteria will absolutely change the entire milieu in your stomach. Finally, lectins are one of the major causes of breaking down the mucosal barrier. If you have a history of canker sores or what are called athesis ulcers in your mouth, I can guarantee you, having had them most of my life until I realized that lectins were the cause, those things are happening on the inside of your stomach and in the inside of your intestines. So get lectins out of your life and you already know what lectins are, if not check out one of my other podcasts or get the plant paradox. So thanks for that question, really good question. So Dr. Nassie, thanks so much for joining me. This has been really great and I appreciate what you're doing. You're absolutely, I think, on the right track. Where can my audience find out more about you and get your book? Oh, thank you. I have a social media, I have a blog for Canker as a wake-up call and there I have information about myself and how to contact me and I have an Instagram, I just keep in the freezer also where I put some information and there's information. I was supposed to do some of the talks I gave during my book tour last October. I was at M.B. Anderson and at Sloan Catering and I was at the Gilda Club in New York. So I did a little tour in California as well at UCSF. So some of the talks are also posted there to explain a little bit what I explained today. Some of them are more scientific for professionals and some for patients as well. So I think that that's the best way to get to know about my book and what I do. Great. Thank you very much for this conversation. It has been very easy for me and thank you for reaching out. Our pleasure. And so that does it for the Dr. Gundry Podcast today. As I said, there's a new year starting in a few days and just because you've been told you have cancer, it's time to make a new you in the new year because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you.