Woman: Today we will hear from the experts the latest ways to treat and beat cancer.
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Woman: Today on Living the Life.
Man: People who die of certain cardiac death frequently do so after a meal.
Woman: The hidden dangers of MSG you are not being told. Plus, cancer experts share the latest medical breakthroughs in treating cancer and the role faith plays in the healing process, that’s today.
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Woman: Hi everybody! Welcome to Living the Life. Well, we have a wonderful program today because I think this is a subject that touches every one of us, you know, we all know someone close to us or someone in our work environment who is struggling with cancer and we are going to talk today about how you can treat cancer positively, how you can beat cancer today because of some of what’s available.
Yeah, some really encouraging news and you know, something else that’s affecting a lot of people, especially with health news, if you think the worst side effect from MSG is just a bad headache, well think again. You may be opening a door to heart disease or even cancer. Reporter Gailon Totheroh has more.
Gailon Totheroh: Monosodium glutamate is adding flavor to your food but many researchers believe its also subtracting years from your life. Jack Samuels wonders how he has dodged the MSG bullet for 35 years.
Jack Samuels: I began to collapse towards the end of certain meals in restaurants, and frankly, I thought I was dying.
Gailon Totheroh: And he could have. A physician diagnosed him with atrial fibrillation.
Jack Samuels: That is my heart becomes like jello and just beats all over the place and it sometimes takes me up to five to six days to get over the attack.
Gailon Totheroh: But how could MSG be responsible? Dr. Russell Blaylock says it’s because glutamate gets into the blood quickly and stays there. So a person eating MSG throughout the day can raise glutamate blood levels dangerously high.
Dr. Russell Blaylock: With each meal it rises; it stays elevated till you eat another meal and then arises even further, and eat another meal and it rises even further and then it stays elevated through a good portion of the night.
Gailon Totheroh: Blaylock says even moderate blood levels of MSG can cause harm, partly because specific organs have actual biological triggers called ‘glutamate receptors’. A group of these receptors in the heart controls heart rhythm.
Dr. Russell Blaylock: You can induce a fatal arrhythmia – that is a heart beats abnormally and people could die from it. Well, arrhythmia is the number one cause of death with heart attack. It’s being noted in the medical literature for decades that people who die of certain cardiac death frequently do so after a meal.
Gailon Totheroh: And Samuels is a retired hospital administrator, he says ER doctors…
Jack Samuels: Immediately recognized that it may be an MSG reaction. Sadly, that knowledge has not gone up beyond the first floor.
Gailon Totheroh: In other words, most cardiologists don’t know about the connection to MSG. 2006 animal research shows that MSG damages blood vessels with substances known as free radicals that can lead to clogged, weak arteries and blood clots.
Dr. Russell Blaylock: With humans consuming it everyday, not just a single injection but everyday, they are constantly increasing the free radical generation inside the walls of their blood vessels.
Gailon Totheroh: That’s how most heart attacks and strokes come about. Research shows MSG attacks over 40% of the population in some obvious way – migraines, throat swelling, diarrhea, vomiting, irregular heartbeats, but what about the less obvious, even silent damage? Glutamate receptors on the lungs could explain the rising affliction of juvenile asthma.
Dr. Russell Blaylock: This is one that’s now agreed by everybody is that it will produce worsening of asthma, even fatal asthma.
Gailon Totheroh: And don’t forget the nasty plague of diabetes affecting tens of millions of Americans. There are glutamate receptors on the pancreas which can lead to diabetes or loss of diabetic control, once the disease is present. Blaylock has also studied cancer extensively and written a book for cancer patients. In the last five years researchers have found many cancers have glutamate receptors.
Dr. Russell Blaylock: The total picture is that if you are consuming a diet with glutamate in it, particularly high levels, you are making your cancer grow very rapidly. I referred to it as cancer fertilizer.
Gailon Totheroh: The cancers of this type include several brain cancers, colon cancer, breast cancer and others as well. For Samuels and others who are concerned about avoiding MSG’s impact on health, there is hope. As hard as navigating the grocery to avoid hidden MSG years, safe shopping is doable if you read food labels carefully. Gailon Totheroh CBN News.
Woman: And we are going to have a lot of reports on MSG and so continue to watch Living the Life because we will tell you what foods to look for and you can always go to LivingTheLife.com for more.
Woman: But doesn’t MSG, isn’t it in almost everything that we eat?
Woman: Yeah.
Woman: But you know they always say when you grocery shop that you should just move around the exterior walls of the grocery store where all the fresh and non-processed stuff is and I guess there’s a lot of tricks for that but I think that some things you wouldn’t expected to be and then that’s why we hope to do more reports on it.
Woman: But you also wouldn’t expect all the results of it. I mean I get headaches. If I eat… I get migraines, yes, so if I am meaning, you know, in Chinese food there’s a lot of MSG in every… most people know that but there’s hidden MSG in so many other foods.
Woman: In so many foods. So I do believe we are going to have a list on LivingTheLife.com.
Woman: Oh great, that’s good.
Woman: Keep watching because there’s a lot more to this and some hidden dangers that you may not be aware of.
Woman: Yeah, and important information. All right, well up next we will have some more important information because we will hear from the experts about medical miracles that are bringing new hope for cancer patients – very important, so stay with us.
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Woman: Well, cancer is touching so many lives and that’s why we are glad to get an update on the latest medical breakthroughs from our friends at Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Dr. Edgar Staren who is the Chief Medical Officer is here, Dr. Timothy Birdsall, who is Vice-President of Integrative Medicine, and Reverend Percy McCray Jr. – he is Director of Pastoral Care and Social Services and we welcome all of you back again. It’s always a treat to have you here.
Wow! In the news lately it seems like we are barraged with this – Elizabeth Edwards, Tony Snow, and really I have to say in my own personal life I have a number of friends right now who are all battling cancer and it’s all recurring cancer. Can you give us some kind of an update on what can be done when someone is diagnosed originally and then it recurs?
Dr. Edgar Staren: Certainly the disappointing news is recurring cancer. On the other hand, the exciting news is that we have a dramatic increase in treatments. In surgery, there’s mechanisms to treat tumors that we otherwise couldn’t resect; with radiation therapy we are now able to focus the treatments without damage to the tissues and therefore the patient is tolerated better; the medical therapies include biologic agents which target the therapies and whole host of different ways to administer it. So the good news is that we are able to treat it in more effective ways.
Woman: Well, is there a new drug? Is it called Tykerb or something… what is the name of that and what does it do?
Dr. Edgar Staren: Well, it’s also called lopatinib. It is a monoclonal antibody which is for (laughing). Let’s think of it as the kind of magic bullet, if you will, and we refer to those whole groups of techniques of targeted therapies which focus the treatment right on the particular type of cancer and in this case it looks at specific receptors, almost like antenna, on the cell surface, on the tumor cell surface and targets that.
Again, consistent with that exciting news, there is over 2000 different medications that are now being evaluated through the FDA and other organizations of those types of targeted therapies.
Woman: So that’s all new? That’s innovative?
Dr. Edgar Staren: That’s all new.
Woman: Well Dr. Birdsall, talk a little bit about what’s available in herbs and supplements. You know, so many people today, I think are wanting to do something natural, just seems like your body should be able to handle this better if you treat it better. What’s available in that regard that’s effective?
Dr. Timothy Birdsall: Well, the key question is what’s effective. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things available, where there really isn’t much evidence to suggest that it does work but we are generating huge amounts of information really over the last decade or so on a variety of natural products, things like green tea, for example, melatonin which sometimes you think about for sleep but actually can be useful in certain types of cancer, and other kinds of natural products that actually can be useful alongside chemotherapy or radiation or surgery.
Woman: Are there some supplements you should not take if you are going under chemo or radiation, because I heard that too from friends of mine who have gone through the chemo, they said they’d stop all supplements.
Dr. Timothy Birdsall: Often times what happens is you get recommendations to stop everything because sometimes oncologists aren’t certain what actually could be used effectively alongside conventional therapy. So it really is a very individualized example.
For each specific patient, one example, St. John’s wort, which is a commonly used herb for depression but it interferes with about 50% of all prescription drugs. So that’s something you don’t want to take in combination with other medication whereas something like green tea does appear to be safe most of the time.
Woman: Would most doctors know that though? I mean that’s the question too.
Dr. Edgar Staren: It’s part of the problem and in fact most doctors do not have that level of training in those particular supplements. It’s why you need to have state-of-the-art traditional therapy in combination with scientifically based complementary therapy and you need experts that can help work together so that you form a team to be able to best treat the patient.
Woman: So we are talking about scientific knowledge, we are talking about nutritional knowledge and what about pastor McCray? What about faith? What role does that play?
Rev. Percy McCray: Wow, it’s huge. There’s probably 20 years of documentation now that strongly tells us that people who are religious, belong to faith-based organizations, have religious practices, basically they live longer. They have lower rates of fear of death. They have lower rates of high blood pressure etc. etc. Things that simply they can do that empowers them that you don’t necessarily have to have a prescription; you don’t need a professional per se, but it’s part of the everyday lifestyle of many of the people of our country in utilizing the power of faith and hope, which basically are the dynamic twins – they work together to create an optimal opportunity of expectation of good things to happen.
So faith is becoming a clearer, more important role in the healthcare community today with respect to being integrated as, as the doctor said, with other modalities and treatments that are being offered to people.
Woman: You know, it’s interesting because you are hearing more about faith on some of the secular stations in national news that they do talk about that, and you know they would not talk about unless they had evidence of that, because it’s not like they really want to talk about that. But it’s incredible how the power of prayer that we are seeing more and more, has been such a force in a person’s life when they go into trials and tribulations but I think especially in cancer we have talked about all of us know someone who is going through this, and when you see someone who is going through, who has the Lord in their life, their attitude is so different, a positive attitude is so important.
Rev. Percy McCray: It’s huge. Well first and foremost because they are turning their attention to a higher power that then give them some more hope and idea that there’s something beyond what they see, hear, taste, smell, and that creates a different attitude, a different disposition that begins to send a message to their body that hey, maybe there’s something else that can be done and save here in conjunction with good, solid medical treatment and advice that begins to give a person with just a completely different positive outlook toward what has been typically a pretty bad disease.
Woman: Right, and there’s no more hopelessness. They have hope and hope is in the Lord, and when we come back we will hear more from our guests about the latest in cancer treatment. You do not want to miss this; stay with us.
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Woman: Well, we are back with Dr. Staren, Dr. Birdsall and Reverend McCray from Cancer Treatment Centers of America. You know we see the commercials; we do love them and that give people so much hope but I was always curious how many cancer centers are there around the country?
Dr. Timothy Birdsall: Well Louise, we have three hospital centers – one in Philadelphia, one outside of Chicago, one in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and then we have an outpatient center in Seattle, Washington. We just announced actually we are breaking ground on our fourth hospital which would be located in Phoenix.
Woman: Oh great, how about that one?
Woman: Just relax outside the sun, get a tan.
Woman: Why don’t you to talk a little bit about what some of the other cutting edge treatments for cancer might be today?
Dr. Edgar Staren: Well, again we think about cancer treatment in terms of traditional therapies that being surgery, radiation and medical oncology, and especially in the areas of medical oncology some amazing breakthroughs, we talked a little bit about these targeted therapies and such but even different means of administering chemotherapy – we thought of that as all that was intravenous and now many of the chemotherapies can be taken by mouth with the same kind of efficacy and obviously that’s much easier for the patient.
Woman: And I have friends that I have seen taking by mouth and actually even some of them intravenously, chemo for a long, long time. It’s almost as though life is sustained on an occasional basis with this medication.
Dr. Edgar Staren: Well here’s the unique way that we are stating to think about cancer – we know we don’t cure hypertension; we don’t cure diabetes, we are getting to a point where we are managing cancer and that’s a very positive way of thinking about it and certainly is one way of addressing that disease.
Woman: How many survivors are out there? I mean I think, during the break we were talking about, is it ten million?
Dr. Edgar Staren: Over ten million survivors.
Woman: That’s incredible.
Dr. Edgar Staren: So we all are touched by this disease process and as we started earlier talking about the potential for recurrent disease, that is always something that needs to be thought of and so much like the concept that we discussed earlier on – hope. All those individuals, it’s important that they have hope so that they can move forward and take that experience and think about in those terms.
Woman: And you know what, I can’t even imagine, I mean we have friends that this has happened to, when you sit in the doctor’s office and you hear those words, you know, because years ago it was a death sentence and now we know that it isn’t and so when you talk about living with cancer, let’s take it like a Tony Snow or anyone else who is living with it, how long can someone live with that? Can you live like an almost normal life?
Dr. Edgar Staren: You can. It’s not the same kind of a concept because of these advanced therapies we are able to take tumors out of organs such as the liver, the lung, bones and the brain – that type of technology provides opportunity for a long-term life. Radiation therapies that can focus on the tumor and treat without damaging tissues in those areas, otherwise would have been in the past. So the advancements in technology are key but they need to be supported by an integrative approach that I work with my colleagues, who are so expert in those kind of areas.
Woman: Well you know, one of the things it seems has also been a very positive development over the years is that people are getting much more well informed individually and so they are doing a lot more preventive things, not just in nutrition but even in things like colonoscopies, having mammograms on a regular basis, what’s sort of the standard for that right now? Is it still after 40 or should women be looking at before 40?
Dr. Edgar Staren: Well, it continues to be an ongoing debate. We certainly know without question, the data supports mammograms ever year after 50. From 40 to 50 the data is very strong. I certainly recommend it for my patients, as do most of my colleagues. The reason for the debate is that during that age period the breasts are more dense, mammograms may not have the same level of accuracy, but again, advancements in technology – we are seeing digital mammograms improving that, MRIs are starting to show in patients that may be at higher risk and increased utility and an early identification. We now have advancements for colon cancer with the colonoscopies and even these virtual colonoscopies that are starting to come into vogue.
So the good news is that as we have advanced technologies for diagnosis and treatment the hope becomes more.
Woman: But we go back to the MRI because I mean I have got my mammograms and so we have to get… and I think it was a sonogram or something I’d have to take, so is that the same thing as an MRI or that’s different. Sonogram is what?
Dr. Edgar Staren: Ultrasound. It actually uses sound waves.
Woman: Oh, okay.
Dr. Edgar Staren: Whereas the MRI stands for Magnetic Resonance, and so it’s a different type of technique but neither of those have radiation associated with them so they [voice overlap].
Woman: Can we… why not, I mean should you ask for an MRI, that’s another thing, do we ask our doctor or do we just listen to what they tell us?
Dr. Timothy Birdsall: I think that that should… it’s a tough question. The most recent data that has just come out in the last few weeks really says that there is increased benefit to doing something like MRI. The problem with MRI is that it’s very expensive and it really hasn’t been validated right now as a screening tool, that is a test that every single woman should get, and because it’s so much more expensive than mammograms insurance companies have been reluctant to pay for it on a screening basis. But certainly, when there’s a question on a mammogram, it makes all the sense in the world both to look at from an ultrasound standpoint and to look at it with an MRI so that you have a complete picture before you start jumping in the treatment.
Woman: Pastor Percy, can we just ask you, is there ever normal life after a diagnosis of cancer?
Rev. Percy McCray: Well, I guess the emphasis and the underscoring would be on normal. What is normal? But certainly with respect to returning back to some of the habits and lifestyles that people want to live, there absolutely are opportunities for people to do that and again, faith plays a role with respect to that in believing and looking forward to possibly moving forward and moving on. There are strong documentation that show that people who are religious and belong to churches and have strong faith, basically have a lower fear of dying. And so again, a lot of…
Woman: So they are living.
Rev. Percy McCray: That’s correct, exactly. So cancer is beatable; it is treatable and it is survivable with a different attitude and an outlook.
Woman: Needless to say we have only… Living the Life, we have only covered the tip of the iceberg here but for more information about Cancer Treatment Centers of America or articles about some of the latest breakthroughs we have been talking about, just go to LivingTheLife.com. Thank you.
Woman: It’s just great having you guys here.
Doctors & Pastor: Thank you.
Woman: Well up next, Dr. Peeke tells you why it pays to think small when you are trying to get in shape. So stay with us.
Woman: I am thinking of, I am thinking.
Dr. Pamela Peeke: I have given you three elements – mind, mouth and muscle. Do you want to really look great by the end of the summer time? Well guess what, it’s all about the magic of small steps. Just simply pick one of two items in each one of those categories – mind, mouth and muscle and go for small steps on everything.
Woman: If you want to shape up for summer go to LivingTheLife.com.
Woman: Still thinking.
Woman: Still thinking.
Woman: I am still thinking.
Woman: But it is good. She has got some wonderful advice and you know what, there’s time. We still got time before summer.
Woman: You know, can I just say how much I love these guys coming on our show, talking about some of the issues that you know, we all deal with as we were saying we have someone that we know or a loved one who is going through cancer and they just - they give you hope, you know.
Woman: They are so reassuring. I love the fact that they integrate all of the scientific and yet the natural supplemental nutritional with the faith because those for me, those are all elements of life and I don’t want to have to pick or choose one of them. I want to be able to put them all together knowing that God has his hand upon my life and he is going to orchestrate that.
Woman: That’s right, and you know, and then we have to make choices. We can’t always allow the doctor to make the choice for us. We have to make that choice too.
Woman: And can I say, if you are facing cancer today don’t face it with fear; face it with faith and with hope. God is in his heaven; all is well; keep living life abundantly. You know, joy has a lot to do with our healing and staying healthy as well. So we just wish you lots of smiles today. We will see you next time.
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