Nourished & Free: The Podcast
Can Diet Really Cause Cancer? (with Dr. Joe Zundell)
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RESOURCES MENTIONED:
TOPICS COVERED 👇
LEARN MORE
🔥 My Signature 4-Month Program, Nourished & Free
📲 Follow me on Instagram (you'll get to know me pretty quickly!)
📖 Check out my Blog for tons of helpful articles
SHOW SOME LOVE
⭐️ Loved this episode? Leave a 5 star rating on Apple podcasts or Spotify (thank you!)
💌 Share this episode with a friend who you think will love it
📌 Subscribe/follow the show so you never miss an episode!
Michelle (00:00:00) - Welcome back, my friend, to nourish and free the podcast. This is the show for understanding your relationship with food, the nuances of health and wellness that can get so complicated and so confusing, and hopefully we can help you with gaining more confidence in the body that you live in today as well. My name is Michelle Yates. I'm a registered dietitian with my master's in health psychology, and I love discussing how the world of psychology and biology and nutrition and all of that intersect, and how we can better leverage that mysterious mind body connection into increasing both our quality of health and also quality of life. Today, we're actually going to be digging deeper into the side of biology, specifically cancer biology. I'm insanely excited about today's episode because I'm having my friend on who is the cancer daddy of the internet doctor Josephine Dell. He is a cancer biologist with over ten years of experience in cell and molecular biology techniques, with a research focus in discovering translational therapies in oncology. We're going to talk through some common myths, such as the notion that sugar feeds cancer cells or their sugar causes cancer, or their red meat increases our risk for cancer.
Michelle (00:01:13) - And we'll dig in some to some others as well. Before we dig in, let's quickly talk about overeating. If you're someone who struggles with overeating and you're certain there's a reason why, but you can't really for the life of you, pinpoint what it is. Be sure you check out my free quiz that will help you discover what's going on in two minutes or less. Then you can figure out what the next steps are that you need to take in order to ultimately overcome that struggle. Go to Yates nutrition.com/quiz or the link in the show notes to take the quiz. Once you're done with that, come back and listen to this episode about all things cancer Nutrition with our guest today, Doctor Zendo. Welcome to the show, Joe. I'm so happy to have you.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:01:54) - Thanks for having me. It's an absolute pleasure. Honor to be here.
Michelle (00:01:57) - You are my favorite resource for all things cancer. Now, I just found you, like, a couple of months ago, I think. And I was initially, I should say, attracted to your page because of all the cats on it.
Michelle (00:02:09) - I'll be honest.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:02:10) - Yeah, that makes sense.
Michelle (00:02:12) - Haha. Your graphics are hilarious. I love that you take such a complicated topic and you make it actually fun to like swipe through because of all the different little graphics of cats that you have on there.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:02:24) - Yeah, I really appreciate that. you know, a lot of people have invented the slogan on my page that is, you know, come for the cats, stay for the facts. Yeah. that's.
Michelle (00:02:35) - Good.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:02:35) - But yeah, I initially, like you said, I started integrating cats into my into my work just because not only do I love them, but it also it's kind of like, you know, the reason that attracted you. It keeps people in tune, you know, as you're teaching people complex things, it's kind of nice to have a a break with some cute picture or something like that. And I find that obviously cats are really damn adorable. So having like a cute cat graphic in the middle of a, ten slide carousel is going to help, you know, keep someone engaged in a way that they're, you know, going to learn something more efficient.
Michelle (00:03:08) - It's brilliant. It's brilliant. Do you ever do classes? Do you ever lecture for courses? I have, I have.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:03:15) - I have taught before. I've taught mostly labs, basic biology labs, but I haven't taught, like, I guess, direct lectures. But I've given a variety of different presentations at conferences and things like that.
Michelle (00:03:28) - We work in the cats into those slides.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:03:30) - I have worked in mEMS and various things. like a good example of this is actually my thesis lab. I started doing that and my Pi actually got really mad at me for doing that. And he's like, can you just knock it off? he said that in the middle of the lab meeting. He was like, can you just knock it off? Don't do this. I was like, come on, man. Like, why don't why can't we have fun and have like, yeah, you know, cute stuff or funny things and the science, they don't have to be mutually exclusive.
Michelle (00:04:00) - I absolutely agree.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:04:02) - But, you know, that's why I started my Instagram too.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:04:05) - Because I think that that it's I think it's a really important thing to also have fun with what we do. because you don't want to just have I mean cancer's already challenging to talk about on its own but it's. Yeah, it's hard to do if we can't make fun out of it. Yeah. it's a really drab topic and can often be very depressing, even from my own perspective. But, yeah, you know, we got to make it fun where we can. Yeah. well, and I know you agree.
Michelle (00:04:32) - Oh, yeah, I absolutely agree. Well, I'm so glad that you were able to take the time today, and I'm so appreciative of that. I know you have a full time job. You have family, all the things, all the cats that you care for as well. Yeah.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:04:44) - And my two fat fucking cats. And I can swear, right?
Michelle (00:04:50) - Yeah. Oh, yeah. You're fine. Okay, I'll just put the little thingy on it. A little explicit warning.
Michelle (00:04:54) - Easy. Sure. but I wanted to have this conversation because my mission with this podcast is I want to help individuals become more nourished and free. It's the name of the podcast. And however you interpret that little catchphrases is truly up to the individual and what they personally feel like they need to be freed from, what kind of struggles they need to be freed from. And I think for many people, a lot of times that struggle is food anxiety or feeling like they're almost like imprisoned to having to scour the ingredients label or worry and worry and worry over what they're eating because of potential cancer risk. So for someone in that state, my hope is that this episode today, maybe depending on how the conversation goes, I don't know. You're the expert, so we'll hear what you have to say. my hope is that perhaps this can help them with having a better understanding of how their food and their relationship with food, and what they eat on a daily basis may or may not be impacting their cancer risk in the way that they may be thinking, you know, so I'm hoping somebody can walk away from this a little bit more nourished.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:06:06) - Yeah, I mean, a really big part of my page is, is to try and do what you're saying here is, you know, try and simplify things such that people can walk away with, with actionable things and realistic things that they can implement to their lives such that, you know, they can be nourished and free. Yeah, I love it a lot from the idiocy of society as well too. So yeah, well.
Michelle (00:06:27) - That's the thing. There's a lot of, very loud opinions about cancer and food, and it's exhausting trying to keep up with all of it and trying to dispel all of it. And I think hopefully out of this episode, we can give people a better, like baseline understanding so that then when they see something or they see a claim, they can kind of sort through the legitimate legitimacy of that on their own, maybe, or at the very least, be able to refer back to this episode. So to start our conversation off, I imagine it would be very useful to first understand the basics so that we can kind of build from there of cancer.
Michelle (00:07:07) - So can you kind of fill us in from your cancer biologist's perspective, keeping in mind most people listening to this are not cancer biologists.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:07:16) - Most people aren't, I understand.
Michelle (00:07:18) - can you kind of walk us through. What is it? How does it begin? What does it require in order to survive and grow and spread?
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:07:27) - Yeah. it is a very complex argument because there is some debate on, I guess, the origins of cancer. But usually when I try and explain as basic as I possibly can, about what specifically cancer is, and it shouldn't really be a surprise to anybody. Cancer itself is this disease, which is characterized by cells that can continue growing past what is considered normal, because obviously that's what makes a cancer. That's what makes up a tumor or some semblance of some types of cancers. So again, it's characterized by consistent cell growth that often goes unchecked because we do have, a lot of safeguards and checkpoints within our cells that keep normal cells growing in a safe manner for, you know, obviously, the integrity of our overall bodies and cancers happen when, cells can bypass these checkpoints through a variety of different ways, not even just a genetic level from DNA checkpoints, a variety of different ways to bypass these.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:08:31) - These normal limits to cell division. and so when I try and teach people about these limits of cell division, it's important to understand that there's a limit to how many times a cell can divide. And this is actually something that was discovered where I did my thesis work, through the University of Pennsylvania and at the Wistar Institute by this man named, Leonard Hayflick. and this limit at which cells can divide is called the Hayflick limit, and cancer cells can either sustain, the amount of times that they divide over time such that they can stretch or prolong this state of division, or they can bypass, that perceived state of the amount of times that cells can divide. of course it's not without error, because obviously cancer cells, in maintaining that continuous cell division, they produce a lot of errors themselves. But it's this emphasis that they, they need to keep surviving. So that's, that's the basics of what is cancer. And it can get a little bit more complicated beyond that.
Michelle (00:09:36) - Yeah. Yeah that's interesting.
Michelle (00:09:38) - I I've never heard it explained like that. So something dividing beyond the point of what's normal. At what point is that dangerous? Why? Why is cancer dangerous? Does that make sense?
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:09:51) - Yeah. So cancer becomes dangerous because it's kind of an adaptive disease. There's both metabolic and genetic components. But when cancer cells adapt new behaviors to divide past what's considered normal. They do it imperfectly. And these imperfections can cause a lot of really bad effects that we see often in cancer patients. whether it's something like muscle wasting, severe dysregulation or poor communication between organs because you have cancer cells that are competing for nutrients and resources to sustain their own growth, that kind of there. They're almost being, like, parasitic in a way. They're not a parasite. I want to emphasize they're not a parasite, but they can be parasitic in the way that they steal resources like glucose, lipids, amino acids from, our immune cells that are within the environment around a tumor or, you know, even just normal, like types of cells that are surrounding a tumor.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:10:59) - So it's this level of competition that creates some of the bad stuff that comes with the diseases as especially as cancer progresses. And it and it depends on which organ the the tumor originates in the types of, I guess, symptoms that you'll see.
Michelle (00:11:16) - Sure. So something that you just mentioned there is kind of, I think, already answering a question that I had for you, which is this, idea that cancer feeds off of sugar, but you even just said it'll use glucose lipids like anything, right? To continue to grow and spread. Yeah. To that more.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:11:37) - Sure. Yeah. So there's also this this notion that for the life of me, I can't seem to get rid of this myth that sugar causes cancer. And even if anyone says that sugar fuels cancer, it's kind of like, for me, like a so what sort of thing. because it's something that I tell people is a means to an end. Yeah. you know, and people love to utilize early discoveries from a man named Otto Warburg back in the 1920s.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:12:06) - And he was absolutely brilliant at the time, and a lot of his his initial observations regarding glucose, absorption into cancer cells are still upheld today, which is why he was a Nobel laureate, in this space. And it's still a hallmark of cancer in that cancer cells will utilize glucose almost as a primary fuel source. But I say it's a mean.
Michelle (00:12:30) - Studies in general.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:12:32) - Yeah, exactly. So like a variety of different tissues, whether it's our heart, our brains, utilize a ton of glucose regularly as a primary source of their metabolic needs to maintain their, their energetics or their balance of energy. but cancer cells, because they're actively dividing, and seemingly out of control of that norm that I that I had said, based on the Hayflick limit that we established at the beginning. Their need or their demand for energy goes up. And so they utilize the same mechanisms that normal, healthy cells do, but they increase the rate of absorption. So they do so by increasing the amount of glucose receptors on their surface of their cells.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:13:16) - They pull in more glucose and they increase the abundance of the enzyme, the enzymes that break down glucose to increase the rate of glucose breakdown to fuel those energetic needs. Yeah, but it doesn't always go to produce, ATP through the electron transport chain. So it's it's kind of counterproductive that we're learning that it's not through their traditional metabolic fates that we think of when we think of normal healthy cell biology. In normal healthy cells, they'll take in glucose. Glucose will be broken down through glycolysis. Go into the citric acid cycle at a relatively normal rate, enter into the electron transport chain to make ATP, which is basically the energy of the cell. And a lot of this occurs at the interface and within the mitochondria. So a lot of people trying baby. Yeah exactly. Powerhouse of the cell. So that's why a lot of people pinpoint cancer as like a metabolic disease. But it's quite a bit more than that. But we're finding now that, the Warburg effect is, is still upheld in most cancer types.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:14:17) - So they'll increase the rate of glucose absorption. But instead of the fate of glucose going through the citric acid cycle into the electron transport chain, it will do that. But cancer cells have found a way to use that glucose in other pathways to stimulate the production of other energy sources, which might be more favorable to the growth of that, that cancer.
Michelle (00:14:39) - Oh, interesting.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:14:40) - So it'll use glucose to either make more amino acids, or it'll use glucose to go into like the pentose phosphate pathway and shuttle that into making more nucleic acids to make more DNA so it can continue dividing. yeah. Or it'll go into other pathways to make fatty acids. depending on where the tissue is such that it might inhibit the immune system around the tumor such that the tumor can continue growing if it's competing for fatty acids that the immune cells need also for their own, survival and recognition of tumor. So it's obviously it's more complicated than we initially observed back in the 1920s when Otto Warburg discovered these things. But it's so much more than glucose fueling cancer.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:15:26) - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Michelle (00:15:28) - Well, it sounds like there's also multiple things that can fuel cancer though, right? It's not exclusive to glucose or sugar.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:15:35) - No it shouldn't it shouldn't be surprising to anybody that cancer cells can utilize all the same things that normal cells can. Yeah. It's it's just the rate, and the way that they do it in a relatively dysregulated manner is very different than what normal cells use. Yeah. So they can use all of the macromolecules that we normally use to, to be healthy. sugars, a variety of different types of sugars, different types of fats, whether they're saturated or desaturated. different types of amino acids. different types of nucleic acids. Even. So, literally all of these macromolecules of life that we learn about in basic cell biology, cancer cells can use these just as normal cells to fuel, their biological processes. And we we have a hell of a time trying to target these pathways, and trying to delineate which cancers are using some of these nucleic acid integration pathways more than the glucose pathways or the amino acid pathways, and oftentimes it's some degree of all of them.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:16:42) - And so we're trying to determine which ones are more important that we can, you know, kind of tease apart and target from a, a clinical perspective usually with pharmaceuticals. And it's fascinating. It's really challenging.
Michelle (00:16:54) - Yeah, I can imagine I mean that's like a needle in a haystack.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:16:57) - Yeah, that's literally what I tell people. I was literally just going to say it's. It's finding needles in a haystack of needles. Yeah, maybe.
Michelle (00:17:06) - Yeah. That's good, that's good. Yeah. So I mean, I'm thinking about I don't have a ton of experience with oncology. I worked in an oncology unit in the hospital for a little while and a little over a year, and for me as a dietitian on that type of unit, my main priority there is diagnosing malnutrition, which I would see the most with my oncology patients and trying to correct it, you know, trying to give them the fuel that they need to be stronger. And sometimes that was through tube feeds, TPN depending on the situation where the cancer was and their abilities to eat and everything.
Michelle (00:17:42) - So I'm like listening to you talking about how glucose, but also all these other things can fuel cancer at a rate different from our normal cells. But I'm also thinking to like where people can go with that is, oh, well, we should just like, well, obviously it's not an option, but we just shouldn't give it the glucose or give it the things to feed it. But on the other side of that, how else are we supposed to fight against it if we're not giving the normal cells the energy that they need as well? So I think there's like and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this. I feel like there's this you need to give your, your normal selves the fuel that they need to fight against the cancer, but in the same sense that can also be going towards the cancer. And it's like, how do you separate that, you know, does that make sense?
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:18:32) - Yeah. No. one of the I mean, we're starting to investigate how nutritional, guidelines can impact cancer patient survival more so nowadays, especially utilizing dietary approaches like ketogenic diets to try and, you know, like ketogenic diet, reducing carbohydrate intake because of the importance of carbohydrates or glucose, specifically in, initially fueling cancer cell growth processes.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:18:57) - But obviously, you know, as we we've discussed a little bit already, it's it's so much more than that. we find that these dietary approaches, they're insufficient alone to be able to change cancer patient outcomes unless, you know, maybe that that cancer is detected in a relatively earlier stage. Because when you have a cancer that is more advanced and well developed, it can use more tools in the toolbox of cell biology, so to speak, such that if you reduce glucose abundance, they're more capable of adapting new mechanisms or maybe already mechanisms that they already have. Because often in the case of solid tumors, it's not just one type of cell. Depending on where a cell is within a tumor, you can have different metabolisms throughout a tumor. It's kind of like in a in a liver. In a normal, healthy human liver, one part of the liver is metabolizing things differently than another part of a liver in a tumor. You have different stratification of different types of cells that are adapting to changes in oxygen gradients.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:20:09) - changes in glucose gradients, changes in, amino acid gradients, and a variety of different growth factors as well. So if I starve it of something like glucose or even glutamine as an amino acid source, which we're finding is important in cancers, they'll adapt new mechanisms to shuttle in other resources or produce other resources, through processes like gluconeogenesis, they'll make their own glucose or through up regulating enzymes in fatty acid synthesis like sterile CoA desaturate one SCD one, which is a commonly upregulated fatty acid producing enzyme in in cancers. Yeah. To adapt to these changes in nutrients that we give it. So we have to be really careful about the nutritional guidelines. And you know this too because you've worked with cancer patients. And not to keep rambling on here too, but it becomes even more complicated in advanced stages of cancers because, you know, one of the things that you've probably seen as well as cachexia and I've spoken about this at length, because most cancer patients in advanced stages and I read a statistic on this and I don't I don't usually like using statistics because I feel like they're a bit inflated in general.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:21:27) - But it is true. In this case, 80% of most advanced cancer patients exhibit some form of axia. But you know when we look at the statistic related to all cancer patients total across all types it's about 30% but obviously becomes more.
Michelle (00:21:44) - Is really quick. Yeah.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:21:45) - Sorry. Is this state of muscle wasting, such that a person's overall metabolism is is competing with cancer cells basically that now their body is starting to break down muscle tissue to try and, sustain some semblance of life, basically, because there's probably not enough glycogen storage in the muscle, there's probably not enough glycogen storage and liver at that point. So typically in these really starved states, they'll start your body will start to break down muscle tissue. And this is what we see in cachexia patients or muscle wasting. Yeah.
Michelle (00:22:22) - Yeah. It gets it gets bad. Like I said I diagnosed a lot of malnutrition. And that was like you'd walk into a room and you'd see it right away like, yep, there is a lot of muscle that's been wasted in this.
Michelle (00:22:33) - And it's. devastating, you know? And yeah, I think this is kind of to what I was touching on earlier. It it's so challenging to figure out like how do we handle this. Because there's been muscle loss here that we want to try and maintain or even rebuild if possible. I mean, if they're at end of stage, you're probably not feeling up to strength training or anything. But yeah.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:23:00) - A lot of it is about maintenance at that stage in terms of muscle building, just trying to get some semblance of exercise in. Right.
Michelle (00:23:07) - Something. Yeah. And and to maintain life, as you said. And and that can be so tough because it's like the same things that are used to maintain life in terms of nutrition can also be worsening the cancer. So it's so tricky. And I think that it's really important that people hear that and understand that. And I'm glad you've been explaining it, because to your point, nutrition alone isn't enough to get rid of cancer when it already exists.
Michelle (00:23:38) - Like we need more than that. And I think there's a lot of really dangerous stuff on the internet claiming that, you know, eating a raw onion a day is going to cure cancer or whatever it is. Yeah.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:23:50) - I mean, I was just reading something I don't know if you're familiar with, I'm not going to trash talk him any more than I already have. But are you familiar with are you familiar with Chris work?
Michelle (00:24:01) - I don't think so, actually.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:24:03) - So this guy, his name is Chris Work. He has a page called Chris Beats Cancer. And he had stage three, colorectal. He had stage three colorectal cancer that was surgically resected. it had metastasized locally, which, you know, he had a relatively high chance of survival. But he did get surgical resection of his tumor. And he found that he was able to through rejecting chemo, he was able to live a healthy life. And so now a big part of his platform and I empathize with him is, you know, trying to implement behaviors associated with reducing cancer risks for his population of people that follow him.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:24:45) - But the thing is, is he actively, talks about how poor chemotherapeutic are, with the intent. Maybe it's not his. No. At this point, I'm fairly certain it's his intent to dissuade people from chemotherapy. Yeah. I think it's important for people to realize that while one person's cancer may not need something like chemotherapy, and it might have a high chance of survival rate after surgery, you can't make that same statement about another person's cancer type. Not only that, like even if two people had the same type of cancer. It's hard to say how someone's going to respond to surgery even then, just it's like a chance of success. so telling people not to get chemotherapy and trying to say that biopharmaceuticals are are the devil is, is is a really poor argument and is actually going to lead to more poor health outcomes. Yeah. then I think what he's intending. But then, you know, the thing is, he goes on to say, okay, chemotherapy nukes are bad, but, take this, this extract of some plant.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:26:01) - Yeah. You know, and which is. Yeah. And it's it's it's really frustrating to me too, because as scientists and I just made a post on this too. As scientists, we often start in nature. Yeah. To get drugs. And this is this appeal to nature fallacy that I often talk about. We often start in nature to get drugs for anybody listening. I want to squelch this right now. It is an absolute bitch to purify and make molecules from a natural product, for For example, we get a lot of so, so some of our drugs in the clinic, they're derived from, from nature. whether it's something like penicillin, but a lot of chemotherapeutic have been derived from, like the bark of some specific trees, paclitaxel being one of them, then Christine being another, camp decision based molecules. but these things sucked initially. So we find them in in extracts from Tree bark as an example. Something like Camp Design, which is my recent post on this. We extract this molecule from tree bark and it has ridiculous toxicities because we don't know what it does.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:27:13) - We don't know anything about the dosing. and when it comes down to it, you know, after ten, 20 years of research on this molecule, we realized that there are certain modifications that need to be made on the molecule such that the the dosing can be reduced, and also the the toxicities can be reduced to off target non-cancerous effects. So while something might be promising in an extract of a plant or some sort of natural product, we need to really determine what the thing is within that extract that yields the potential in treating cancer, and then also how we can make it better to reduce off target effects that are going to affect healthy cancer cells. And often it's this balance of of sacrifice. Like it's it's really hard to make a molecule that just targets cancer cells. We're getting better at it now because we can conjugate these small molecules like Camp to thesun or arenot can you know, modifications of the chemical structure to more targeted molecules like antibodies, which you can bring that chemical directly to a cancer cell if, you know, some receptors that are upregulated on the cancer cell, that are not on normal cells.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:28:23) - But, that's a really hard thing to find as well, because cancer cells often use the same things that normal cells do. Right? So it's hard to find these biomarkers and. Yeah. And yeah it's tough.
Michelle (00:28:34) - Yeah. I mean, you could see what you just said about really any prescription drug. I think, you know, it requires figuring out what do we need in order to make this effective. And there's going to probably be some manipulation that happens. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. And yeah, it's probably a good thing actually. And it's it's dangerous when we do have that appeal. The nature fallacy where it's like, oh, well, this is naturally occurring in nature. Well, there's a lot of things that are naturally occurring in nature and can kill you, you know, like, does that mean that it's safer or. Yeah, it's it's a big misconception that I think is very easy to be attracted to. I mean, I find myself being like, oh, this is more natural.
Michelle (00:29:22) - And then I'm like, wait, like, I have to remember what I know. Yeah.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:29:26) - I mean, people don't have any problems with, you know, Ozempic do they? Do you know where it comes from? Do you want me to tell you where it comes from?
Michelle (00:29:33) - Where's it come from? Tell us.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:29:34) - Joe, it comes from the venom of the Gila monster. So what are you going to just go look it up afterwards? It's some form of reptile, but. Yeah. So we initially discovered ozempic from the venom of the Gila monster. But you can't go out there and consume the venom of the Gila monster. Yeah, right. So there's a variety of drugs that we initially looked to nature to find, because there's a lot of cool shit out there in some pretty weird environments. Yeah. but we can't just go eat those things, right? So it's it's to your point. Yeah.
Michelle (00:30:05) - Well, I want to circle back because you mentioned the ketogenic diet, and this is something that is very popular for weight loss, but also as a therapeutic intervention, specifically for children and epilepsy, I know is why it was created, but, I there's a lot of research going on as far as I know, about using it for all kinds of different conditions.
Michelle (00:30:27) - So I think what I'm understanding from you is that that could potentially like kind of cutting off, so to speak, the glucose sources, which, you know, our body can create glucose in other ways, but maybe that could slow down perhaps the cell division of cancer cells. is that the theory there?
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:30:45) - Well, the, the the running hypothesis there. And this is actually being determined in clinical trials now. Beautiful. And there's a lot of there's a lot of preclinical work going on examining dietary approaches in, in treating specific types of cancers, namely things like pancreatic cancers were obviously glucose response is important in driving. Yeah. insulin related insulin related signals, which can drive pancreatic tumor growth. so obviously reducing something like glucose, absorption to the tumor could help tumors like those. or cancers like those. but the thing is, like like I said, we're finding that they're, they're not sufficient alone. We can utilize these dietary approaches to change the metabolism acutely of cancer cells and then once they change their metabolism.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:31:32) - So let's say like I reduce glucose supply through through a ketogenic diet, in a cancer cell that is more predominantly using, glucose than it is something like fat or protein or amino acids for its, for its own energy. But in doing that, in cutting off the glucose, it will shift its metabolism to, other metabolic sources, because it might start to use or increase the expression of enzymes associated with fatty acid synthesis or protein. I can then use a drug that targets some of those pathways such that now it's not getting the glucose that it needed before. And now I'm targeting a different arm. So it's like you're trying to corner the cancer cell in a metabolic direction so it can't go in a different metabolic route. Yeah. You're cutting it off at the resources using like either a small molecule for a different pathway that's different from the the typical glucose or glycolysis related pathways. Yeah. So it sounds that makes sense.
Michelle (00:32:32) - Oh absolutely. So there's like a initial sure this can wipe out some growth in some way, but it's going to adapt.
Michelle (00:32:39) - And then we can bring in some pharmaceuticals to target the adaptations that it's making in order to continue to grow without the glucose supply.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:32:49) - Yeah. Or even change like the the epigenetic component of the cells. So in changing their metabolism, when there's low availability of glucose, it'll enable the expression of genes that were not expressed before. and might actually have promoted resistance to a specific molecule. And now because new genes are being expressed the epigenome has changed in a different way. Now we can treat with the drug that we wanted to initially and it will be sensitive to it. So there's there's another component of that as well.
Michelle (00:33:21) - Wow that is fascinating I would. It is fascinating More let me know when those clinical trials come out because I would love to know. Well, there's.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:33:27) - A bunch of preclinical papers on it but Yeah I can send them my way, make some more reels and, and talk to.
Michelle (00:33:34) - Oh yeah. That'd be great. That would be great. Yeah. so something that you've talked about on your page, which I think is so important to communicate is risk.
Michelle (00:33:44) - Relative risk when we're talking about something may cause cancer. What do we saying the likelihood of that is. And that's usually I think what's left out of the conversation and it needs to be left in is how much does this really impact your risk of getting cancer? And I think the way that we typically compute that type of information when we hear it, right, that like X is going to increase your risk for cancer is just it's the way we compute. It is very black and white. If I do this thing, I have a bigger chance of getting cancer. If I don't, I don't. And from what I've been seeing on your post, I'd love for you to talk to talk through, and just what we know from basic statistics is there's a degree of variance there. Something may barely raise your risk of cancer, but because there is somewhat of an increase, you still have to say it could increase your risk. So I'd love for you to speak to that more and give me all your thoughts.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:34:44) - Yeah, sure. I mean, I think it's really important for people to understand one, I'm not a biostatistician, so there's only so much that I can realistically understand about how biostatistics are used to derive specific percentages of relative risk or even absolute risk. but it's also important for people to realize that the statistical models that we use in paper, in papers before we publish them, are with the intent to try and understand an observation. And that just because we generate a number as shocking as it might be, doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to translate to everybody. Right? it might be a big number. For example, I recently made a reel about the risk between tattoos and cancer because there was this, there was this article that went out, through a lot of secondary sources, not even the primary article that, you know, people kind of lost their minds a little bit about, you know, the risks of tattoos and cancers. I have a tattoo, obviously.
Michelle (00:35:43) - Yeah. Anybody watching these.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:35:45) - Things.
Michelle (00:35:45) - Can see.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:35:46) - Yeah. I've got a tattoo. Oh, my God, I'm gonna get lymphoma. anyways, this paper basically did its best to get all of the cancer patients that had relatively advanced stages of lymphoma in a Swedish population. but after a variety of different statistical analyses that were kind of poor, in my personal opinion, they developed statistics upon their models to show that there was something like a 20% increase globally across all the lymphomas that they had tested. for people to have greater incidence, not even risk incidence of lymphoma. So that's like yes or no in terms of I have lymphoma or I don't. So there's statistics said yes, there's a 20% incidence associated with people who have tattoos and cancers. That's pretty strong. And yeah, it's it's strong language. But like the paper was written so. Unclear that I couldn't determine like if their control group that they were trying to compare the statistics to did or did not have cancer. it was just it was really confusing. was it like. And I.
Michelle (00:37:04) - Made it to them over a long period of time or was it like.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:37:07) - A. No. It was based on a questionnaire. I think honestly they had a relatively poor data set and they were doing the best they could. I don't blame the researchers, but there's some level of rigor that needs to go with this study that just wasn't there. They could have looked at other databases. They're some Swedish group. They could have looked outside of Sweden at publicly available databases, or tried to extend the study beyond whatever time frame that they had to get more, maybe more realistic statistics associated with it. But like, sure, people need to understand that that 20% stat that's that was generated from that article. Sure, there might be some risk associated with people who have tattoos and lymphomas, but 20%? Come on now. If that was the case, most tattooed people would have cancers across all populations and we don't see that. nonetheless, lymphomas I would say that there probably be a greater risk of skin cancers from from different types of, of of tattoos.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:38:10) - But again, it also depends on the types of inks, how professional the tattoo artist is, where they get their inks from, whether or not those inks contain carcinogens, if the tattoo artist is some tribesmen out in Guam giving you a tattoo, you know, or if it's some guy in a sterile environment giving you a needle that he opened freshly with some inks that are known not to contain carcinogens. Yeah. You know, nowadays the the availability of tattoos is more strict in terms of sterile practice than than what was obviously many, many, many years ago. Yeah. So yeah, these statistics need to. People need to understand that these stats that we generate in papers, they're they're useful in conveying an argument. But we we need not to place so much strength in them that it clouds our judgment. Understand the trends but don't place so much power in the statistics. Oh.
Michelle (00:39:00) - That's the tweet right there. That's sweet.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:39:04) - If I had a Twitter, maybe people would give a shit. I have a Twitter, but no one seems to give a crap about what I say there anyways.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:39:09) - So yeah, but I only.
Michelle (00:39:10) - Use it threads I don't know what to call. I like that's threads is.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:39:14) - Basically insta Twitter. Yeah.
Michelle (00:39:17) - like you tweet a tweet, but what do you do with a thread? You thread a needle. Is that what we're saying now when we post?
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:39:24) - I don't know, we'll have to ask. I mean, I don't know Adam Mosseri personally, but we can certainly send him a message that I'm sure he'll never see.
Michelle (00:39:32) - Let's see if it's about Adam Mosseri.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:39:34) - If you're listening to this, do you thread a needle when you write a thread? Maybe actually just make that a real and tag me and and I'll post it.
Michelle (00:39:42) - That is the most pressing question of today's episode.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:39:45) - Yeah.
Michelle (00:39:47) - So when somebody is talking about let's let's have the example of red meat, increasing your risk for cancer, what is our relative risk there I guess. What's the base ballpark I don't know, I said baseball, the ballpark percentage of just fill me in on the whole red meat thing.
Michelle (00:40:08) - Let's let's go for it.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:40:09) - Sure. The whole red meat thing. so, I mean, I I've tried my best to get actual statistics related to the dose relationship associated with red meat consumption and cancers. And it's, you know, anytime you try and acquire human data and there is there's actually a lot of human data on this that's in some pretty well done studies, a variety of different studies which, you know, compare things like vegetable intake to meat intake and try and provide some sort of dose relationship there, but But I can't for the life of me, I can't get an accurate number just because that data is so variable. Yeah, but I will say, like the thing that I'm seeing across all the literature and all the papers, and this is what I've made a real on recently as well, is that, you know, the people that their diets, you know, they contain red meat, but they also have an abundant amount of diverse types of vegetables. Those people are actually going to have lower risks of cancers because they're consuming a more nutrient rich profile of foods.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:41:12) - So it's not necessarily about red meat. Yes. If all of my diet is red meat, if I wake up and I eat a steak and I, I eat a steak for lunch and yeah, if I just carnivore diet it, this is what I'm describing. And I eat a steak for dinner. Yes, I'm going to have poor health outcomes when it comes to like my heart health. Not even just cancer, cardiovascular disease. And so that's a pretty good output in some of these articles as well. Is is relative risk to to cardiovascular diseases, and even diabetes. but again, it's really hard to generate numbers on these. But you know, we do find over all of the research, all available research that the people who consume a diverse diet that contains a lot of, you know, not only red meats but leaner type of meat. So obviously, if I'm consuming red meats like pork or steak, obviously the leaner cuts of those, those particular meat choices are going to have better effects because their their amount of saturated fat might be lower, than obviously the fattier cuts of meat, which, you know, sometimes are more delicious, but those shouldn't occupy, you know, you shouldn't be consuming a ribeye every time you have a steak, maybe get a more lean cut of sirloin or something like that.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:42:24) - Yeah. but yeah. So those diets that have high amounts of fruits and vegetables alongside, red meats, particularly leaner cuts of red meats or even lean meats in general, are going to have more favorable outcomes when it comes to human health. not even just through cancer. Yeah. That's it.
Michelle (00:42:41) - That's it.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:42:42) - That's it. Podcast. Over. See you guys next time.
Michelle (00:42:46) - Another plug for more fruits and veggies, people. Honestly, there's not enough plugs in the world, but it's. Yeah. Yet another reason it can offset any potential risk for cancer that you're getting from red meat, which is something I've always heard too. And I was eager to hear your thoughts on that. So I'm glad to hear that. That's like confirmed stamp of approval from cancer daddy.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:43:10) - Actually, I cancer daddy. Yeah. I have a question for you actually based on this though, to where do you think that this, why are people so continuously confused about this kind of stuff? Because it just seems like no matter how much evidence we have out there for the importance of consuming this diverse diet in relation to human physiology, it just seems like people get so easily wrapped up in these, diet cults.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:43:37) - Yeah, for lack of a better word. What do you think drives that?
Michelle (00:43:41) - I think that's a conversation of human behavior. Really? Like, why do we why are we attracted to, extremist messages or things that are. what's the word I'm looking for? Just fantastic. And out of this world and new and noteworthy. Like, why are we so interested in those things? And, I think there's this is something that Doctor Andrea love talks about a lot. I don't know if you know who that is, but she's.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:44:10) - I know who Andrea is. Yeah. She's not a good she's not a fan of me. But I like her a lot.
Michelle (00:44:13) - Yeah.
Michelle (00:44:14) - She's been on my part a couple times. And she is? Yeah.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:44:17) - She's awesome.
Michelle (00:44:18) - She is good.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:44:19) - Tell her I said hi.
Michelle (00:44:20) - I will let her know. Something to.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:44:23) - Unblock me. Oh, no.
Michelle (00:44:26) - Anyways, something that she says a lot is that we just have so much. Well, there's a huge obsession with health and trying to be in control of it.
Michelle (00:44:35) - And I think when people are given information that sounds like a new way to take control of their health, all logic seems to go out the window in terms of what they've been told before. And and I also think it's a literacy issue of just not being. And I don't blame people for this because not everybody is a PhD or a dietitian. I think it's just like, of.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:45:01) - Course.
Michelle (00:45:02) - People are easily swayed by information about nutrition because they don't necessarily have, like the baseline knowledge of why something like fruits and veggies can offset the the cancer risk of red meat or whatever it is, like there's, just a gap there in knowledge and literacy and statistical literacy, too. And so I think it's a combination of all those things and people wanting to be in control and people being attracted to new things that everybody swears by. And especially when you have people that are an authority figure in some way, whether they're a doctor of psychiatry and talking about nutrition or whatever it is. Yeah.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:45:49) - no names there, Yeah.
Michelle (00:45:52) - I think that also easily sways people because, you know, white coat syndrome, they think that they must know if they have an MD behind their name and or have a PhD in something. And I think it's important to remind people. So I will write now that a PhD is a specialist in a very specific thing, which is why I have cancer daddy on the podcast right now to talk about cancer, because that's what his PhD is in his cancer biology.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:46:20) - But as you point out, relating there is like it's it's important for people to know. And I can't stress this enough on any podcast that I've been on. People need to be comfortable with the fact that I will often say, I don't know when I don't know something and not be thrown off by that because I can't. I know a lot about cancer, but I also don't know everything about cancer at the same time, right? Yeah. Because there are specific cancers that I've studied. I have to dedicate a lot of time to studying those specific cancers.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:46:47) - I can't realistically be expected to know everything about all of them.
Michelle (00:46:50) - Right?
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:46:51) - Yeah. So and I.
Michelle (00:46:53) - Think the deeper you get into a field, the more you realize you don't know.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:46:57) - Yeah. And you also realize how much more entrenched in a niche you become. Yeah. So even in even regarding my own career, I've had to take a step back. because on my academic track of, of research, I found that I was going down this rabbit hole of just getting entrenched in studying the same cancer types in the same mechanisms forever, which is nowadays kind of what is necessary to become a professor. If you don't do that, you're kind of taking the hard way into academia. Yeah. and so I've taken, especially since I've transitioned out of academic work, more into biotech. I've taken more of this holistic approach to, to cancer, where now I'm trying to focus on, you know, what are the important physiological factors in treating a diverse type of cancers, as opposed to just hyper fixating on the mechanisms that I can find across a bunch of different types of cancers.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:47:55) - Because still, at that, at that level, it's still one mechanism across a bunch of cancers, but you're not considering all of the things that make the different cancers different to treat different physiological implications and different in their advancement, different in their staging as as the cancers develop. Yeah. So I've found that I've, I've gained a better education stepping out of academia because I'm forced to learn more about the clinical aspects of a bunch of different types of cancers, and not just a fixation on one type of cancer or one mechanism within a bunch of types of cancers.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:48:31) - Yeah.
Michelle (00:48:32) - Yeah. Yeah.
Michelle (00:48:34) - So it's it's.
Michelle (00:48:35) - Tough because there is People love to think they know everything. Yeah. Again human behavior. I think that's just like we're all selfish in some way and think very highly of ourselves. And when you do go through an academic track or you go through the wringer of having people tell you that and it just rings, then you realize like, oh, wow, I am an idiot in a lot of ways.
Michelle (00:49:04) - And at the same time, that is something that I can improve on in a specific way. But that doesn't mean I'm going to be all knowing in all things, because, yeah, there is no way that you can be all knowing in all things. And that's the biggest danger with, people on the internet, really, is the confidence that they exude over knowing something that they actually have no idea what they're talking about. And it's also that, like, I can't remember what this is called, but Dunning-Kruger effect. Possibly I'm about to explain it and then you let me know if that's what it is. The difficulty it takes to disprove something is immensely more than, or I guess, the effort. I should say the effort it takes to disprove a claim is immensely more than the effort it takes to just say something like, I can just say something right now and it would take zero effort at all. But for you to then correct me, you have to sort through all of these things in your brain, pull out the filing cabinets from all this different stuff, but perhaps bring up some studies, explain stuff to me that takes you way more effort than it would take me to just give you something to dispel in the first place.
Michelle (00:50:13) - So I think that's another big problem too, is that people have an unearned confidence, by just saying stuff that sometimes is not being refuted because it just simply takes a lot of time to do it. Like, I know for myself, there's a lot of things that I could make videos about, but I don't because I don't have the time and I just don't want to.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:50:35) - Yeah, and it's.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:50:35) - Tough too, because, like, there's no video I hate making worse than debunking video. And I it's like everybody everybody wants them though. And that's the thing is like they're entertaining. You want to be entertained, go to a fucking circus. Go watch some clowns. I'm not here to be your fucking monkey on a string. You know, it's it's so frustrating to me. And I'm sorry to go off on a tangent here though, too, because it's like the debunking videos. They, they're they're counterproductive to education. And it's it's one thing to, you know, find a video of somebody who thinks they know something on the internet who clearly doesn't know what they're talking about, and then, you know, show them in the background of a video.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:51:16) - And being like, this person is an idiot. Let me tell you why this person is an idiot. And it's like, obviously they're an idiot. You sent me this video to talk about how much of an idiot they were. So you're you're left in this, like, self-fulfilling prophecy of of people just calling each other idiots online with, with kind of no clear resolution. Yeah. And so I'm not trying to place myself on a pedestal, but like, it's not fun making that content for me. I'd rather be more productive in the way that I, I go about these things. And as you said, it's also significantly more challenging to find evidence to refute those statements, because either there isn't any. Or I have to go through extreme measures. Oh, my cat's here. I have to go through extreme measures. He ran away. I have to go through extreme measures to, to try and explain some biological principle about why it's false. Yeah. whereas I could just continue educating the way that I normally do and people get more out of that.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:52:14) - So that's why, you know, I typically stray away from the debunking stuff and it's it's unnerving and it's frustrating to me that people would rather that than me. Discuss the the really interesting new paper that came out that, you know, discusses how cancer cells shift their metabolism in a variety of different ways to use some specific type of nucleic acid or, or how a ketogenic diet is doing in a clinical trial, or how the implementation of artificial intelligence is using is being used to detect skin cancers and even single cell models. I was reading a paper the other day about how AI is being used on single cell sequencing techniques to determine, on a single cellular level, how some cancer cells within a tumor can become resistant. So it's like this idea that tumors are more than just one type of cell. Yes, one cell might respond to a therapy, but there are always some cells that won't respond. And if we can find those, those needles in the haystack of needles, that will have a greater chance of of treating someone efficacious.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:53:19) - And so there's papers that, that use AI to do that. And it's it's awesome. I'd love to talk about those then, you know, do the the doctor IDs approach of just shitting on somebody on TikTok or.
Michelle (00:53:30) - Which I mean.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:53:32) - It's fine. There's comedic value.
Michelle (00:53:34) - Work there like that is that is.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:53:36) - Absolutely.
Michelle (00:53:37) - Important still because I think that it does end up being educational. If, if it's done well, you know, and I think, like in the case of IDs, there's always good evidence that he's discussing. And I think that can be pretty valuable. But I also think that it's great debate at the end of the day. that's why those type of videos do really well. And if you ask people who make those type of videos, they'll agree, you know, like, I.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:54:03) - Would love to I would love.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:54:04) - To speak to to kids about this too, is because, like, you can't tell me that he's not frustrated with doing this shit over and over and over.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:54:12) - Oh, I think he does. Because the amount of.
Michelle (00:54:13) - Yeah, I think he gets tired.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:54:15) - The amount of effort that he goes through to, to find the research, to try and break it down on top of the stuff is like it's depressingly too much. I wish, I wish we could just get into the things that he's interested in without having to consistently do that stuff all the time.
Michelle (00:54:33) - Yeah, yeah, he'll every now and then he'll mention in a comment, like, I spent four hours on this video for you and this is this is your response.
Michelle (00:54:42) - Right?
Michelle (00:54:43) - Oh hi, Katie. Which one is.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:54:45) - This? This is Apollo. Okay.
Michelle (00:54:46) - Anybody that's not watching this on YouTube go watch this on YouTube. So you give me Apollo. Sweetest little ginger cat. Oh my goodness.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:54:55) - She likes to dance. Yeah. This should just be the the the real that you promote this video with.
Michelle (00:54:59) - Absolutely.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:55:01) - I can plop some music in this, you know.
Michelle (00:55:04) - Since.
Michelle (00:55:06) - Oh, he is you.
Michelle (00:55:07) - I really want an orange tabby. I want an orange tabby. And I want to name it Bowser.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:55:11) - That's a good name.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:55:13) - They're good.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:55:14) - Cats. Yeah. His brother is Hermes. Their bros.
Michelle (00:55:17) - Nice, I love that. I think it was a. Was Hermes on your story today?
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:55:23) - Yeah, Hermes was on my story. He's, he's quite a bit bigger than Apollo.
Michelle (00:55:26) - He looks a lot like our cat Harvey. He's just got the. His tabby markings is orange instead of ours. Is like a brownish grey, but like, markings otherwise are, like, pretty much the same.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:55:37) - It's cute. Yeah.
Michelle (00:55:39) - Well, we're a little off topic here. That's okay. Close things out. You can keep Apollo in the frame.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:55:45) - All. Yeah.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:55:46) - He doesn't doesn't not want to be here, so.
Michelle (00:55:48) - Oh, you're so welcome here, buddy. You are an honored guest. So last thing to wrap up. Let's just touch on the aspartame conversation. Sure. so my understanding of this is that it would require a ginormous amount of aspartame to cause any potential harm.
Michelle (00:56:10) - And before you would even have an increase in cancer risk, you would have an increase of other problems. yeah. But but I want to hear from you about that. Can you confirm slash deny and also. I think I've heard some conversations about, like, the grading of this, like a grade B or something. I don't really know how that works, so I'd love for you to.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:56:32) - Oh, the,
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:56:34) - The International Association for Research on, cancer, has a grading in terms of their association to risk.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:56:43) - Beautiful. Yeah.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:56:44) - so that's probably what you're talking about. And I've actually I've spoken to Apollo at length about the implications of aspartame on cancer risk. And although he recognises the importance of the International Association of Research on Cancer and their designation of aspartame, as you point out, the the abundance of aspartame needed to, you know, put somebody at risk for specific types of cancers. And again, Apollo is an agreement, right, buddy? the amount of aspartame that somebody needs to consume is just way too much.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:57:22) - such that they would need to drink like hundreds and hundreds of cans of Coke per day. That they would have other issues. outside of aspartame.
Michelle (00:57:31) - Like you wouldn't believe.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:57:33) - Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:57:35) - yeah.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:57:36) - So yes. There again, this goes back to the same sort of discussion about tattoos and cancer that just because there is some risk associated with this doesn't mean that that risk for everybody is going to be the same. You can certainly avoid something like aspartame. There's nothing wrong with doing that. but I find that drinks that have aspartame in it are useful tools, especially because, useful nutritional tools, because, you know, they're typically zero calorie. And so if I want a zero calorie sweetened beverage that has aspartame in it, I have a Coke Zero or something that has sucralose or aspartame in it. Every once in a while, maybe one a day. I'm going to be fine. But it's, you know, if, if, if that, alongside other poor dietary choices, those sorts of things are going to increase my, my risks for, for diseases like cancers.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:58:27) - It's not just just the aspartame thing. And it's, you know, a lot of people like to fixate on risk associated with a single ingredient in food, like aspartame or sucralose. But again, if we realize that our diet is so much more than the protein, we eat so much more than the aspartame that we're consuming. I think people will have better health outcomes in the end, once they start to consider that food is so much more than a single nutrient.
Michelle (00:58:54) - Do you think that there's the same kind of offset of risk if somebody has a diet that's diverse in fruits and veggies and all kinds of things and they consume aspartame. Or is there not really a.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:59:09) - What do you mean there?
Michelle (00:59:10) - Well, like it is with red meat, you know, like fruits and veggies can kind of offset potential harm.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:59:18) - Do you think that's I.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:59:19) - Honestly I don't I don't know if it'll offset any risks of aspartame, but I wager in people that are consuming a diverse diet, you wouldn't even be able to see the risk of aspartame on on disease just because they're likely not to be over consuming it anyway, that it would be deleterious to their health.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:59:37) - Yeah. Yeah, I'm just curious about that.
Michelle (00:59:39) - Well, there you go. Another plug for a diverse diet.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:59:42) - Yeah. That's what God forbid.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:59:45) - And Apollo again, we feed him a diverse diet and just look how healthy he is.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:59:49) - I know he's so healthy.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:59:50) - He's like, he's just so healthy, you know, so majestic.
Michelle (00:59:53) - He can tell that he is just living the best life.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:59:56) - Yep. He's he actually wants.
Dr. Joe Zundell (00:59:58) - To eat more. And he's only here right now because it is international begging hour.
Dr. Joe Zundell (01:00:03) - Yeah.
Michelle (01:00:03) - He's ready.
Dr. Joe Zundell (01:00:05) - Otherwise he.
Dr. Joe Zundell (01:00:05) - Doesn't. He doesn't care about me.
Michelle (01:00:07) - Apollo, do you have any thoughts for the for the pod?
Dr. Joe Zundell (01:00:12) - Any thoughts? Buddy? He. He doesn't care about humanity either way. I think that's what he, That's his overall statement.
Michelle (01:00:21) - He only cares about you as a slave to feed him.
Dr. Joe Zundell (01:00:23) - Barely. Yeah.
Michelle (01:00:26) - Well, any other thoughts today that you would like to leave with the audience, Joe, not Apollo.
Dr. Joe Zundell (01:00:32) - Yeah.
Dr. Joe Zundell (01:00:35) - no. I mean, I think, honestly that that people just need to be a little bit more critical about the way that they think about things in general.
Dr. Joe Zundell (01:00:44) - And while things are fancy from a scientific perspective, and I absolutely love to talk about the fancy mechanistic stuff. There's only some relative realism associated with things that I like to discuss that are going to be associated with a person's health outcomes, that it's important that we not extrapolate the things that I discussed or that a lot of other scientific communicators discuss so far such that they're not real anymore. and I do my best to try and be transparent about that kind of stuff, because I always try and tie my videos in at the end to say just how likely something is. But, yeah, just just a little bit more critical thinking, than than what we're normally used to.
Dr. Joe Zundell (01:01:28) - Yeah. Yeah.
Michelle (01:01:30) - I love it. Yeah. Well, tell the audience where they can find you to learn more from you.
Dr. Joe Zundell (01:01:35) - Sure. So I recently just made a website. You can follow me at Doctor Joe's on Dell com. you can also follow me, on, on my Instagram, which is at doctor Dot Joe's on Dell.
Dr. Joe Zundell (01:01:48) - I have a Twitter. Don't really use it. So not even going to give you the handle or whatever the hell that is there. threads. I'm trying to become more active on YouTube, so you can you can YouTube. Doctor Joe Handel or Joseph Handel. My page will pop up. I have a video actually coming this week about, this myth that we all have cancer cells within us. which I think stems from a relatively poor understanding of cell biology. So I'll discuss in that video which is four minutes. And 30s I think is manageable for most people. Oh yeah. yeah. So, you know, follow me on YouTube, Instagram, go to my website. I have a newsletter sign up on my website, all the way at the bottom. check my link tree for other affiliations on my Instagram. the newsletter link is also there.
Michelle (01:02:39) - Perfect.
Michelle (01:02:40) - Well, thank you so much. This was a lovely conversation and I'm excited to hear what people think about it. So if you love this episode, please let us know by leaving a rating or a review would be lovely.
Michelle (01:02:53) - and share it with a friend who may be interested in this topic as well. And I'll put all of Joe's links in the show notes so that you can go follow him and learn more from him. And, we'll catch you next time. Thanks, Joe.
Dr. Joe Zundell (01:03:05) - Thank you.
Dr. Joe Zundell (01:03:06) - I appreciate.
Dr. Joe Zundell (01:03:07) - It.