Episode Details

Dr. Thomas Seyfried is a Professor of Biology at Boston College, and received his Ph.D. in Genetics and Biochemistry from the University of Illinois. He then worked as an assistant professor in the neurology department at the Yale school of medicine. He has over 180 peer-reviewed publications and is author of the book, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease. He recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Complimentary and Integrative Medicine.

I got a chance to meet and interview him at the Metabolic Health Summit earlier this year. You'll notice we did this podcast shortly after the Super Bowl. In case people aren't familiar with American football the New England Patriots had just beaten the LA Rams.

I hope people look up the paper he recently published that we mention and watch his presentation I linked to in the show notes and go deeper on this topic. It's very surprising to learn of this completely new view on cancer if you haven't heard of it before. This really shouldn't be very surprising to anyone, however, because of course our modern diet and lifestyle would have the biggest effect on the rising cancer rates. And of course fixing these things would also be a major part of the treatment. He's really doing legendary work. So without further ado, here's professor Seyfried.

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Show Notes

• Dr. Thomas Seyfried believes cancer is a metabolic disease, not a genetic disease and explains in simple terms why that is
• The mitochondria in your cells make energy (ATP)
• There's 2 types of energy: ancient energy which is a fermentation metabolism which means you can make energy without oxygen, or respiration where you make energy from breathing air
• Cancer cells ferment - therefore they don't use oxygen
• Not all cancer cells have genetic mutations, but all cancer cells ferment
• The mitochondrial metabolic theory says that the organelle that makes energy from respiration is defective, forcing the cell to ferment. When the cell ferments, mutations collect in the nucleus
• This means the genetic mutations seen in cancer cells come from a downstream effect of disruption of energy metabolism
• The cancer cell has to consume a large amount of glucose and the amino acid glutamine in order to survive on a fermentation metabolism
• On the other hand, normal cells use oxygen and very little amounts of glucose
• This should make sense to a lot of people because they've probably heard cancer cells need a lot of glucose and if you starve them of that they die
• Have to re-emphasize the fact that the DNA damage comes as a downstream effect
• Damaged mitochondria, instead of making ATP, make Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) or oxidative stress (which causes a lot of problems in our body)
• The oxidative stress also causes damage to the nucleus and the genome
• The field of cancer research studies effects instead of causes
• We're not treating cancer by looking at the root cause - it's absurd - how would we ever cure it?
• This is supported