
ยทS4 E231
The Cancer Code: Dr. Jason Fung on Insulin, Fasting, and Cancer Prevention
Episode Transcript
Now, we like to go back and try and pretend that these diseases of civilization are actually not diseases [of civilization], so they're not lifestyle diseases, they're just some genetic bad luck, but it's not the case.
That's not the reality.
The genetic part is important, obviously, but you can't do anything about it.
So why worry about it?
You've got to focus on what *you* can control, which is the diet and the fasting.
[music] Welcome, everyone.
My name is Lisa Chance.
I'm a fasting coach here at TFM.
And we are here today with our very own Dr.
Jason Fung, for our monthly Q&A.
And this month, we are pleased to welcome Patrice Michael, one of TFM's Community mentors, who is joining us to talk to Dr.
Fung about his book that he wrote about five years ago, The Cancer Code.
We did this way back before we did recordings for the podcast.
So since October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and this is marking the five-year anniversary of this important publication, we thought it was a perfect time to revisit this crucial topic.
So welcome, Dr.
Fung and Patrice.
Good to be here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So, Patrice, do you want to get us started on the first question?
Sure, I can do that.
So, Dr.
Fung, "What does current research say about fasting's potential role in cancer prevention, particularly for individuals with family histories of cancer?" Yeah, that's a good question.
It comes down to insulin in the end.
So remember a lot of stuff is driven by excessive amounts of insulin.
So it's not that insulin is a bad hormone.
It's a natural hormone, but, like any hormone, if it's too high, it's bad, if it's too low, it's bad, right?
It has to be in the right spot.
So it's the same for the thyroid.
You don't want it too high or too low.
It's the same for any hormone.
The problem is that a lot of the refined foods tend to drive up the insulin levels, and insulin is a growth hormone.
The underlying cause of a lot of overweight is also hyperinsulinemia because, you know, if you tell your body to store more energy, it will store more energy.
Insulin's role is to store more energy.
So if you have too much insulin, you're going to store more body fat, which is obesity.
You're also going to store more glucose, which is type two diabetes.
But it turns out that insulin is also a very important growth factor.
So if you are just letting everything grow like crazy, then it's going to grow very fast.
So it turns out-- and this is relatively newer data, like from about 2000.
So it's about 20 years old.
But the link between obesity, type two diabetes, and cancer has been increasingly recognized.
So if you went to medical school in the '90s like I did, you didn't hear anything about the link between nutrition and cancer, but it's actually hugely important.
There's now about 14 cancers that are considered obesity associated cancers.
Obesity is a condition of hyperinsulinemia, like too much insulin.
So, therefore, these cancers also are likely to be [unintelligible] so breast cancer, colorectal cancer, the major exception being lung cancer which of course is largely related to smoking.
So there's a lot of new data about the role of nutrition in fasting, because that's a part of it, because fasting of course lowers insulin.
It's one of these interventions where if you say, "Okay, well, my insulin levels are too high.
Therefore, how do I lower it?" Well, cutting down carbohydrates is one way (because carbohydrates stimulate a lot of insulin) and fasting is another way which lowers insulin.
So lowering your insulin, getting your body weight in check, getting your diabetes in check is also going to likely result in less cancer.
Because, again, it's really very simple...
cancer cells, they love glucose and they love insulin.
They don't love fat.
So when your body is burning fat as a source of fuel (when you're eating a ketogenic diet, for example, or you're fasting), most of the cells in your body can switch and use fat as a source of fuel instead of the glucose.
But cancer cells have a much more difficult time doing that, and, therefore, they're not going to grow as well.
You see these rates of cancer that have been rising lately, and people are like, "Well, why is that?" You know, breast cancers, colorectal cancers.
It's like, you know, they're all associated with nutrition.
So that's the sort of link between them, and that's where fasting can really play a role.
Well, I know you've dedicated significant attention to the insulin, the IGF-1, and mTOR growth factors that influence cancer, but what information exists comparing ketogenic approaches versus plant-based diets in the context of cancer prevention and overall health?
There's not a lot, and that's the problem.
So anytime you're doing studies of cancer, it's very difficult because the cancers develop over such a long period of time.
So to change somebody's diet is very difficult, and then have them maintain a diet is very difficult.
So, you know, there's not a lot of studies and that's been the problem.
And there probably won't be a lot of studies because it's just a very difficult thing.
So maintaining insulin in a good range is likely to have benefits, but it's very hard to say for sure.
The thing about plant-based diets is that people always think that eating plants equals healthy, but it doesn't.
And that's the thing.
That's why I really don't like the term "plant-based diet," because your body doesn't really care if you're eating plants or animals.
Because we're omnivores, we can be both.
However, what it does care about is the hormones that are released.
So if you eat vegetables versus a steak, or you eat potatoes versus steak, you know, it makes a big difference because your insulin levels, your GLP-1, your GIP, those hormones all vary depending on what you eat.
So if you eat a steak, you're going to get a certain hormonal release.
You eat plants...
If you eat broccoli, it's going to do one thing.
If you eat potatoes, like French fries, it's going to do another thing.
But both a nice salad with olive oil is plant based and so is French fries.
Those French fries, I think we can all agree are not super healthy for you, but they're both 100% plant based, vegan.
So this whole idea that you should eat plant-based foods is really not in keeping with any kind of science.
Just because it's a plant doesn't mean it's healthy for you to eat.
If you're eating whole vegetables and that kind of thing, right, yeah, that's very healthy for you.
If you're eating chocolate chip cookies and French fries all day, that's very plant based, but very unhealthy for you.
So what's the use in calling it plant based versus not plant based?
Right?
To me, it's this distinction that makes no difference health wise.
I get that there are ethical concerns, and people don't want to eat meat because of animal cruelty and all these other issues.
That's fine.
Like, I can completely agree.
If you're talking about ethics, then sure, you can be plant based for ethical reasons, but because I mostly talk about health and nutrition, plant based is a meaningless distinction for me, right?
It just doesn't make any difference.
You need to talk to me about the level of processing, how refined is it?
Is it like seed oils versus non-seed oils?
Is it ground up very fine or is it not ground up very fine?
There's a lot that goes into it, but being plant based does not make it a healthy diet.
And therefore, if you're eating French fries and chocolate chip cookies, your insulin is going to spike very high and you're going to be at risk of these cancers, right?
So for all these insulin-associated cancers, just because you're plant based, it's just not relevant.
Yes, I was vegan for seven years.
And let me tell you Oreos are vegan [laughter], but they are not healthy for you.
Exactly.
We can all agree on that.
It's not healthy.
So I'm like, okay, well, I don't know why I keep seeing these terms like plant based, plant based, plant based.
I'm like-- you know, it's like-- it doesn't matter, right?
Real food, whole food.
Real food, whole foods.
Yes, that matters.
That does matter.
Fasting.
That does matter.
Yeah.
I have another one for you, Dr.
Fung, that was sent in.
"For someone with significant family cancer history, including aggressive cases in young adults.
What non-radiation screening or imaging technologies are available?
I've heard about QT imaging and I'm curious about other emerging options." You know, I'm not a radiologist, so I don't know.
Breast ultrasound is also kind of getting popular, so that's not radiating.
MRI is not radiating.
So there are certain scans that are not X-ray based if you don't want to do CTs and x-rays.
So mammogram is an x-ray based treatment, right?
But ultrasound is very well diagnosed, and also that.
The interesting thing, I think, which is upcoming, is this idea of blood screening.
And it's not very well validated yet, but the science is very, very interesting because, again, I go into it in The Cancer Code about how cancers develop and how you get these micro metastases that actually happen all the time.
So the idea is that-- the old idea is that cancer cells sit there in the breast and they don't spread, you can't find cells elsewhere, but that's actually not the way it happens.
So, as soon as you get the cancer, that's actually shedding cancer cells all the time into your blood, but your immune system finds it and kills it.
And they don't last very long in the blood before your immune cell gets in their and attacks it.
So if you have a tiny, tiny breast cancer, for example, it releases it, and, you know, within like 15 minutes, your white blood cells will come in and destroy it.
So you get these circulating micro metastases at super low, low levels.
And that's described in The Cancer Code about how cancers develop.
So therefore, what's interesting is that several companies are now working on blood screening tests where you can go in and screen for these ultra low levels, because in the past they couldn't detect them because they were at such low levels before the white cells would get in and destroy them.
So now a couple of companies-- and I don't believe that they're-- not all of them are FDA approved and so on, but I know there's ongoing trials of these screening tests where they'll go in and screen for sort of, you know, 100 different types of cancers, for example.
So that's sort of an exciting, and, to me, this application of this new sort of evolutionary paradigm of cancer.
So, you know, as I described in the book, cancer has gone through several sort of understandings.
The first was understanding of it as a growth disease, then as a genetic disease.
And most people still think it's a genetic disease, but it's not.
It's an evolutionary disease.
And that's where this newer understanding can say, hey, this is where blood screening might be actually really, really exciting because you can detect these micro metastases well before you can image them on any sort of normal imaging.
So keep your eye on that.
It's not something that I know has been-- they've done one for colorectal cancer, for example.
Most places don't cover them, but I know they do sell these screening kits for it.
I know there's another major trial that's coming up.
One of the companies, one of the major companies that's doing this in October, which is why I'm actually kind of quite interested in this, because they had sort of hinted that they found very good results, but they haven't released the actual trial yet.
That's in October.
So sometime this month we'll find out.
What is interesting is that they were able to find all these cancers in people that they simply didn't expect based on a blood test, and that's really, really exciting because and then you're not exposing yourself to ionizing radiation and that kind of thing.
And you're screening all of the sites, right?
So you're not just screening the breast.
Like if you're doing a mammogram, you're just screening the breast, but you're not screening the gallbladder for cancer.
So again, exciting, but I don't have definitive results yet.
But keep your eye out for that because I think that makes sense from that newer paradigm of cancer, that evolutionary paradigm.
You addressed one of the questions that I had next.
So what I'm going to do is grab one from the Q&A here.
"Do you consider hormone replacement therapy with bioidentical hormones an increase in risk of cancer?
And can fasting decrease that possible risk?" Certainly, fasting and breast cancer probably are affected.
So there's a little bit of data, because breast cancer-- if you look at a breast cell, it doesn't have very many insulin receptors.
If you look at a breast cancer cell it has a lot of insulin receptors.
So, again, it mutated from an original breast cell, but it loves insulin because it has all these receptors saying, "Give me insulin, give me insulin." So it loves insulin.
It sucks in the insulin because the insulin lets it suck in the glucose, which allows it to grow and spread.
So fasting could potentially play a very important role in that.
Breast cancer is interesting because there are certain genetic conditions like BRCA1, right, BRCA1, BRCA2, which are very highly associated with breast cancer, so we know that.
But it's interesting because, if you look at how many people-- if you take people with the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations and say, "How many will develop breast cancer?" and compare them to a cohort from the 1940s or something like that, what you find is that, in the '40s, they had much, much lower rates of breast cancer compared to 2020, for example.
So again, what's the difference?
And of course, it's difficult to compare, going back in time like that, because the data is not always so good.
But the difference is that probably there was a lot less hyperinsulinemia.
Because there was a lot less obesity, you know that that's probably true.
So the idea is that it's not simply one thing, right?
It's the seed and the soil.
So you have the seed, which is the BRCA1, which puts you at risk, but if you don't give it the proper soil, and, in this case, breast cancer loves insulin and loves glucose.
So if you put it in an environment where everybody's eating natural foods, insulin levels are low, fasting periods are regular and relatively prolonged, keeping insulin low, that seed has no chance to germinate because you're not giving it the growth factors it needs.
Now you take that same patient and you stick them in the 2020s, and they're eating all the time, they're eating processed foods, which spikes your insulin, glucose is everywhere, well, now you've got the seed, which has always been there, but you've given it the proper soil.
It's going to grow into a full-fledged cancer.
And this is why people are so, oh-- and then they say, "Oh, it's because I have the mutation." It's like, "Yes, but if you had the mutation and you lived 100 years ago where there wasn't all this processed foods, you would not have developed cancer.".
So, you know, this idea that it's all genetic (which I see all the time) is so completely at odds with the reality, but people don't like to blame themselves in terms of their diets and so on.
We want to live with this idea that cancer's just a genetic lottery, but it's not true.
The rates of colorectal cancer are skyrocketing, right?
You see the number of young people with cancer, colorectal cancer, for example.
They've had to lower the screening age of colonoscopy from 50 to 45 because there are so many 40-year-olds who are developing colorectal cancer.
Well, what's the difference?
You didn't see it in the '80s because the foods we were eating were completely different.
They were not these highly ultra processed foods and so on.
So now you've had-- the seed has been there all along, but the soil, the fertile soil to grow a cancer (which is eating all the time and so on), it's not anybody's fault.
It's just a product of the environment that we live in.
You see these tremendous changes, and we've always known about it.
In Africa in the 1800s, 1900s, they did lots of studies of this because all the white Europeans who went down there, they all had regular rates of colorectal cancer.
The Africans, who were eating a much different diet and different lifestyle, did not have colorectal cancer.
As soon as those Africans changed their lifestyle to the white, European lifestyle with processed foods in it, they all got colorectal cancers at the same rate.
So it's a lifestyle disease.
They called it a disease of civilization, meaning that it's not purely a genetic problem.
Now we like to go back and try and pretend that these diseases of civilization are actually not diseases [of civilization], so they're not lifestyle diseases, they're just some genetic bad luck, but it's not the case.
That's not the reality.
So the genetic part is important, obviously, but you can't do anything about it, so why worry about it?
You've got to focus on what you can control, which is the diet and the fasting.
Yeah.
I really liked your section of the book where you emphasize Stephen Paget's 'seed and soil' hypothesis.
That really was a good section in the book.
It was all good.
[laughs] So let me kind of follow up, since, yeah, you kind of already went through the seed and soil a little bit.
I know, yeah.
I know, right?
He's blowing our questions.
We had our questions all organized.
[laughter] Dr.
Fung's already addressing them before we can get to him.
Yes, he can read our minds.
So, "What's your view on combining the traditional treatments for cancer with metabolic interventions?" I don't see why you would not.
[laughs] So the whole 'metabolic treatments' idea is not that you do this and don't do your chemotherapy, or don't do your radiation, or don't do your hormonal treatments, or immunotherapies.
There's a lot of these, right?
So there's traditional chemotherapies, there's radiation, there's hormones, for certain cancers, and there's immunotherapy, which is the big new thing, right?
So again, the immunotherapy is super exciting, a lot of new stuff, so really making an impact.
And again much different than the old genetic paradigm.
However, if you then combine that with metabolic treatments (and there's lots of different things you can do), I don't see why you wouldn't do it.
It just makes no sense to me.
It works along a completely different pathway.
It's targeting the fact that cancers really prefer glucose and have high insulin receptors, so the fasting, the low-carbohydrate diets, that sort of thing.
Cancer is not something you should fool around with.
If you can hit it with typical therapies plus metabolic, why wouldn't you?
What's the downside?
There's not really a huge amount of downside, so it just doesn't make sense to not even think about it, right?
But again, if you talk to most oncology programs, they'll be like, "You should reward yourself with those candies." I'm like, "That doesn't make sense to me," right?
It's like, why would you want to do that?
Like, why wouldn't you want to maximize the pressure on those cancer cells?
You want them to die.
So you should try to starve them.
You should try to kill them with chemotherapy.
You should try to hit them with radiation.
You should try to use the immunotherapy.
That's the whole point.
Hit them from all angles and you're going to do better, so why ignore this whole thing?
It's such a silly idea to ignore this whole avenue thing, but, you know...
It makes no sense to me, but I'm not shocked at the response, right?
A lot of programs and academics generally poo-poo these ideas that, you know, "Oh, that doesn't make any sense," or something.
It's sort of like fasting was ten years ago, right?
"Oh, you should never do that." And then people do it and did great.
And then it's like, "Oh yeah, it makes sense." Okay!
It always makes me so sad when-- somebody sent me a picture of somebody who just beat cancer, and she was still in the hospital bed getting ready to be discharged.
And next to her was a treat table, bookshelf type of thing with stacks.
And it was just all packaged food, all sugary food.
It was like, this is what you get when you have to go through your chemo, or radiation, or whatever.
You get all these snacks to keep you entertained during the process.
I'm like, "Oh my goodness." No, no, no, no.
Yeah, I mean that makes no sense.
It's sort of like if you're-- and this applies to, of course, breast cancer, colorectal cancer-- but it's sort of like, "Oh, you just beat lung cancer.
Here, choose your cigarette." It's like, "What the hell are you doing?" So it's like, okay, that makes no sense.
Oh, I forgot to talk about the hormone replacement, the bioidentical.
That one's a little controversial, so I'm not sure about the whole thing.
The thing about hormone replacement is that that was, of course-- you know, if you remember, the sort of '90s, everybody got hormone replacement therapy.
So, you know, every woman who went menopausal wound up on hormone replacement therapy because they thought it would reduce heart disease.
In fact it didn't reduce heart disease, it may have increased heart disease and it seemed to increase breast cancer.
So when they took it away-- so when they finally did the study, they found out that hormone replacement for everybody was not really a very good idea.
So then they brought it down, and then the new thing is sort of bioidentical hormones and just treating symptomatic instead of treating everybody.
So it certainly may be more beneficial these days, but it's hard because they're so-- like, that whole thing gave everybody such a bad taste, that nobody wound up going-- like, it never really regained any traction, this whole idea of hormone replacement therapy, even though the way they do it may be completely different than the way they did it in the '90s.
So I went to medical school in the '90s.
In the '90s, basically, every medical student and every doctor was convinced that if a woman was menopausal, you should give her hormone replacement therapy.
So 100% of women.
My mom was on it, all her friends were on it.
Seriously, every single woman who was menopausal went to their family doctor.
Their family doctor put them on hormone replacement therapy, whether you were healthy or not healthy.
That was just the way it was, based on really no evidence at all.
There was no good evidence that this would actually reduce heart disease.
And it turns out it caused more heart disease and more breast cancer.
So, you know, it was a very strange time where people just got sort of brainwashed into believing this idea.
It was sort of like the whole low-fat thing, right?
But, you know, it sort of put the entire profession off of it.
So that's why almost nobody talks about it anymore.
It's just not a thing, because it was such a sort of shameful part of medical history where we all believed one thing.
You know, it got all kinds of propaganda.
It's just medical propaganda, right?
The hormone replacement thing, the low-fat thing was just all medical propaganda.
There's actually no science.
And that's why it's very important, when people start to question the science of it, that we actually answer it with science rather than just say, "This is what we think, and therefore this is true," right?
And you see all sorts of mistakes being made when people do that, right?
And you see the same thing with, say, Covid and stuff, where people are just like-- you're just brainwashed into saying, "We should do this," or, "Vaccines for everybody because they're super safe." It turns out that they have side effects, right?
It's like, of course they have side effects.
It's a drug.
Every drug has side effects, right?
But, you know, you just get brainwashed into saying, "Oh, it's safe, 100% safe, 100% effective." And it's like, okay, well, that doesn't make sense.
Nothing is 100% effective.
So there's a lot of this medical propaganda, and that's where the whole hormone replacement therapy was.
And that's why you just don't hear anything about it.
There's no large trial studies, there's no enthusiasm for it, so it's difficult to find good data.
We were talking before, and I have my copy of The Cancer Code, and I know, Dr.
Fung, you have a new book coming out.
I don't know if you want to share that now?
Yeah.
Yeah, so the new book is called The Hunger Code, and it's really a follow-up to The Obesity Code.
I'm quite excited about this, actually.
And it's going to be really taking the sort of neuro/hormonal effect of obesity much further, and really talking about not just insulin and cortisol, but like the GLP-1s, the GIP, sympathetic tone, leptin, that kind of thing.
So really trying to get a much more full sense.
But the idea is also that the reason that we eat is not simply the physical hunger that we feel.
There's actually a couple of different reasons.
So if you say that overeating, as a general term, is the cause of obesity.
You're eating too much, right?
The deeper question is not that you're overeating.
If you want to take it at a literal sense, it is overeating because you're gaining the weight, but the question is why, right?
The question that you need to know is why?
So if it's because of the physical hunger, that's actually properly termed the homeostatic hunger, which is this whole hormonal thing that we talk about.
But there's a whole other thing, which is hedonic hunger.
The reason you eat is not simply that you need the nutrients.
You eat because it tastes good, and you want to eat, and it makes you feel good.
You can't simply ignore that, right?
And that's where you have to understand that there's a whole second reason.
And that's where the ultra processed foods, and food addiction, and emotional eating come into it.
Because the ultra processed foods are engineered to make you feel a certain way, and that's what drives us this hedonic hunger, and that's what makes you eat more.
So if your problem is ultra processed foods, then you can't simply say, "Hey, just eat less," because the problem that you're eating more is that the foods are ultra processed, right?
You got to get to the heart of the matter.
And then there's a whole third thing, which is the conditioned hunger.
That is the way that we eat is not simply this need for nutrition or the emotional side, there's a whole social and conditioning side.
That is, if you look at the environment that you go into, it plays a huge role into shaping your eating behavior.
For example, if you are in a meeting, and it's the mid-afternoon, and it's really boring (because, you know, meetings are not always very interesting), and there's a plate of cookies in front of you.
Well, you didn't really need to eat it, but it's there, and so you eat it, right?
It happens to all of us.
On the other hand, if there were no cookies, are you likely to go out, excuse yourself from the meeting, go downstairs, get yourself a cookie, and then come back up?
People would be like, "Why did you leave?" So the social situation plays a huge role.
And we know this because, if you look at people who are overweight, and then you look at their friends, if your friend is overweight, your own risk of being overweight goes up by like 100+ percent.
It's a massive amount.
And we know it's true because, if your friends all eat a certain way, if all your friends are eating salad, you're more likely to eat salad.
That's just the way it is.
That's how we are as humans, right?
Same thing in Japan, for example.
They have certain ways of eating that are more conducive to maintaining a proper weight.
The eat less processed foods, they eat fewer times, they don't snack as much, all that sort of thing.
If you take that Japanese person, in Japan, their risk of obesity is extremely low because they have one of the lowest rates of obesity.
Now you take that Japanese person and stick them in San Francisco, their risk of obesity skyrockets.
Like, it's absolutely crazy.
But yet they still have many of the same friends, right?
They still keep in touch with their friends from Japan and all that stuff, but the environment means that you're more likely to eat the processed foods, you're more likely to eat more common foods, you're getting exposed to the food ads, and everything that is.
So that environment conditions you to be hungry.
So if you're looking at hunger, it's not simply the hormones, that's the homeostatic hunger, but it takes the discussion much further into hedonic hunger, conditioned hunger, and what you can do about it.
Because what you can do about it is more or less what we talk about in The Fasting Method all the time, right?
It's your social support, your accountability, the coaching, how other people around you are, mindfulness, meditation.
So all of those things play such a huge role, but yet underestimated.
So I think it's a really exciting sort of thing about how you can not just lose the weight but maintain it.
So it's coming out March of 2026, and we're putting together some stuff for it, and hopefully we'll be able to, yeah, help people with the book.
I'm very excited about it.
I'm excited about it.
And it's like, well, what other Code book is he going to do?
Oh, The Hunger Code.
[laughter] That is Cool.
Well, thank you so much, Dr.
Fung, for joining us today and talking about this important book, and this important issue of cancer.
I remember when I was in high school-- I'm old.
[laughs] I'm 70 this year.
I remember when I was in high school, one person lost a parent to cancer, and everybody was like, "Oh, wow, wow." Now I can't talk to anyone that isn't touched by cancer in their family some way, some how.
In my graduating class-- we had like 900 people just in the graduating class, so it was a big high school - one person's parent had cancer.
And now, whoosh.
Everybody I talk to, somebody is touched by cancer.
Yeah, it's quite, quite shocking actually.
It's quite shocking.
And I don't think it gets talked about enough because the whole idea of cancer is that, oh, it's just this genetic bad luck sort of thing, right?
It's not, it's not.
That's the important thing they have to realize is that you can do something about that risk of cancer.
Once you get it, then treatments are-- you know, you should go along with treatments, but, to influence your risk of it, of course, it's way better to prevent it than to do it.
Well, if the cancer research community fully embraced your paradigm, what would be the top three research priorities that you'd like to see done?
Well, I think it's still-- if you look at the cancer research, it's already moved in that direction.
So it's not like it's a brand new paradigm, because immunotherapy, for example, is the treatment for the evolutionary paradigm, right?
The paradigm is not that this is just genetic bad luck, it's that this has mutated into a sort of new type of organism, right?
The cancer cell is quite different from the breast cancer.
So breast cancer is very different from a breast cell, even though it's derived originally.
So it's evolved into a different sort of species almost.
And it sounds strange, but that's what it is because your body sees it as different.
So it's evolved into something different, and therefore you can attack it with the immune system.
So that's a paradigm.
Just like genetic treatments have certain treatments that are genetic, right, these ones are treatments-- immune therapy, which is the most important new treatment in cancer, that is a treatment of the evolutionary paradigm.
So it's already moved in that direction.
It's just that the understanding, how people talk about it, like 90% of people talk about it, it's still based on this sort of old thinking, even though the drug companies which spend the most money into this research have fully moved on from that.
Nobody's looking at genetic treatments anymore because they didn't work.
Everybody's looking at immunotherapy treatments because they're like the new wave.
Same thing with the cancer screening about the micro metastases.
If you didn't have micro metastases in the blood, if that cancer cell just sat in the breast until, you know, it got big enough to shed, it would make no sense.
So again, this whole idea of micro metastases and detecting these micro metastases comes out of this new paradigm.
The Cancer Code is really about understanding the new paradigm, the evolutionary paradigm, compared to the old paradigm, and understanding why it works.
It doesn't change things.
So things have actually already moved on.
It started moving on ten years ago.
Like, you know, when I was writing the book, I was just stunned that when you read about things in the newspaper and all that, people just talked about genetics.
"It's all genetics, genetics, genetics." Even doctors.
They're all, "Genetics, genetics." I'm like, "You know the whole field has like completely moved on from you, right?" There's no genetic treatments.
Nobody's looking at genetic treatments.
Nobody's looking at genetic screening because it's so useless.
Genetic screening is like looking for BRCA or something, right?
Not useful because you're not finding-- it's just not leading to anything because you'll find a lot of people with the seed, but why would you treat them?
They have not developed cancer because you don't have the proper soil.
So understanding that sort of new thing is really what that book is about.
I actually think it's the most interesting book I wrote.
The Hunger Code, I think is actually the most practical.
And, you know, the things we talk about in The Hunger Code are just things I think are so important, and nobody talks about it.
We talk about it here at TFM all the time, right - community, getting into the groups, you know, surrounding yourself with people who are doing the right thing - and nobody else does, right?
It's insane to me that everybody out there is like, "Oh, calories," and, "What do you eat?" You know, [unintelligible] It's like what the hell?
Like, what about all these accountabilities?
You know, what about the stress?
What about the sleep?
What about all this other stuff that we talk about here at TFM that actually turn out to be, I think, more important.
So that's what the book is about, trying to introduce people and to get people to really look at it in a broader sense.
So I think it's the most useful book I have, although I think actually, personally, from a scientific standpoint, I think The Cancer Code is the-- I like that the best.
I think it's fascinating.
But I think that this evolutionary paradigm, it's not that it's new, it's-- you know, I don't do the research myself.
I just sort of read what's out there and wonder why everybody hasn't sort of latched on to this better idea.
Yeah, so keep an eye out for The Hunger Code.
It comes out in March, and we're thinking of doing something very special for people who order it or preorder it, something like a webinar, or a masterclass, or something that will be available to talk about some of the themes as well.
So keep an eye out for that.
We're discussing that as well.
Great, Dr.
Fung.
Thank you so much.
And thank you, Patrice, for joining us today too.
Yes.
Thanks for having me.
Okay, thanks.
Take care.
Bye.
Bye.
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