Dhru Purohit Show
A Controversial Yet Promising Approach to Cancer: Is This The Future of Cancer Treatment?
Mon, 17 Mar 2025
This episode is brought to you by Levels, Bon Charge, and Ollie, For years, many have believed that cancer is primarily genetic or just bad luck, but emerging research suggests we have far more control over our risk than previously thought. Dr. Thomas Seyfried's groundbreaking work reframes cancer as a metabolic dysfunction, focusing on its root cause rather than just treating symptoms. While controversial, this approach offers new hope for both practitioners and patients seeking alternative strategies for prevention and treatment. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, we’re bringing you a special compilation episode featuring Dhru’s conversations with Dr. Thomas Seyfried and experts from the Hippocrates Research Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to continuing Dr. Seyfried’s work by educating cancer patients on metabolic-based treatment approaches. Dr. Seyfried explores the role of oxidative stress, mitochondrial health, and glucose in cancer development and progression, along with his research on ketogenic diets as a promising solution to correct these imbalances. Den Stacey shares his journey of seeking guidance from the Hippocrates Research Foundation—ultimately becoming cancer-free. The Hippocrates Research Foundation team—Daniel Orrego, Dr. Gregory Howard, and Dr. Michelle Howard—discuss their research and their approach to guiding cancer patients by implementing a protocol designed to starve cancer while fueling the body. Dr. Thomas Seyfried is an American professor of biology, genetics, and biochemistry at Boston College. With over 150 peer-reviewed publications, his research focuses on the mechanisms driving cancer, epilepsy, and neurodegenerative diseases, as well as the role of calorie-restricted ketogenic diets in their prevention and treatment. He is the author of Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management, and Prevention of Cancer and serves on the editorial boards of Nutrition & Metabolism, Neurochemical Research, Journal of Lipid Research, and ASN Neuro. In this episode, Dhru and his guests dive into: The role of mitochondrial dysfunction in cancer (04:05) The promise of the ketogenic diet and its impact on cells (09:58) How the ketogenic diet cuts off cancer’s fuel sources (20:37) Den Stacey’s email about his experience with Dr. Seyfried’s protocol (26:54) The Press-Pulse protocol used in Den’s treatment (30:25) The role of stress reduction as a key part of the protocol (35:31) The benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (38:53) Why pharmaceutical drugs and diet should be used in concert (40:47) What an ideal cancer treatment team looks like (46:31) Testing and evaluating the protocol in real-world cases (56:39) Recognizing the success of the case study and the next steps (59:42) Final thoughts (01:02:01) Also mentioned: Full episode with Dr. Thomas Seyfried Full episode with Den Stacey This episode is brought to you by Levels, Bon Charge, and Ollie, Right now, Levels is offering my listeners an additional 2 FREE months of the Levels annual Membership when you use my link, levels.link/DHRU. Make moves on your metabolic health with Levels today. Right now, BON CHARGE is offering my community 15% off; just go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use coupon code DHRU to save 15%. Want to give your dog the best in clean eating? Take the online quiz and introduce Ollie to your pet. Right now, Ollie is offering 60% off your first box of meals when you subscribe today! Just head to Ollie.com, use the code DHRU and you’ll get 60% off your first box of meals in your subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is a metabolic dysfunction in cancer?
Hi everyone, Drew Proat here. There has been a ton of traction in the last several years when it comes to the early detection of cancer and a lot of ongoing research on cancer prevention. And yet the scary truth is, is that almost 50% of us at some point in time of our life will get a cancer diagnosis.
In today's compilation episode, I share a segment from my conversation with cancer researcher and scientist, Dr. Thomas Seyfried, whose groundbreaking research approaches cancer as a metabolic dysfunction and addresses its root cause.
Although extremely controversial, Dr. Seyfried's approach and his science and studies that he's done with this team has provided hope for practitioners and cancer patients all over the world, including one of our guests featured on today's podcast.
Den Stacey, who after being diagnosed with stage four cancer, embarked on a journey inspired by Dr. Seyfried's research to ultimately become cancer free.
I had the opportunity to sit down with Den and his team from the Hippocrates Research Foundation, a nonprofit that continues Dr. Thomas Seyfried's work by helping cancer patients combat their disease through the education on the metabolic approaches to the treatment of the root causes of cancer. I'll also be sharing a portion of my conversation with them in today's episode.
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Chapter 2: How does the ketogenic diet help in cancer treatment?
Now, quick disclaimer before we jump into our conversation with cancer researcher and scientist Dr. Thomas Seyfried. As always, the information provided on this podcast and in my content is for general knowledge and information purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice. Cancer is very complicated and everybody's situation is unique and different. I know this firsthand.
My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer almost 10 years ago, and we had to work with a team, which also included a functional medicine doctor, her oncologist, and a few other holistic practitioners to come up with the right approach for her.
I've talked about this in the past, but that right approach for her was a combination of traditional therapies, which included an accelerated radiation therapy for her. She didn't end up doing chemotherapy because luckily the cancer was caught very early and it was not an aggressive form. That was there.
And she did all the recommendations and followed all the recommendations from her functional medicine practitioner, including reducing her heavy metal exposure, including cleaning up her diet, including exercising more, including improving her insulin.
So this is all to say that while I present Dan Stacey's information and the folks at the Hippocrates Research Foundation and Dr. Thomas Seyfried, who I have a lot of respect for, everybody needs to put their own team together. And the goal is... Hopefully this episode inspires you to at least do some more research in terms of what's out there.
So with that being said, let's jump into my first conversation with Dr. Thomas Seyfried. what I'm sort of hearing big picture as a lay person, not a medical expert, to make sure that I have the correct understanding, is that long before human beings were around, cells had this methodology of getting energy through fermentation, as you've described.
And that's sort of built in to the survival mechanism of not every cell, but a lot of cells that are there. And through a combination of things, which you're gonna get to in a second, things that are driving this, we have created a situation where we forced normal cells to, in a way, become cancerous.
We call that a disease, but if we really look at it, it's almost a survival mechanism of the cell switching from one way of going about creating energy to being forced to consuming energy through another pathway, this fermentation pathway. But in that process, the cells, the cancer cells,
which were previously healthy, they now have become out of control and they have dysregulated, unregulated growth, which ultimately ends up leading to a whole cascading situations of problems. Is that accurate? Is there anything I missed in that?
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Chapter 3: What is Den Stacey's cancer recovery story?
Ketones and fatty acids are for the good of the normal cells of our body. They don't need glucose and glutamine if they can respire fatty acids in ketone bodies. They don't have dysfunctional mitochondria. The cancer cell does.
So we can marginalize the cancer cell simply by depriving it of its fermentable fuels and protecting all of the normal cells in the body by shifting them over to ketone bodies, which now becomes a non-fuel for the cancer cell.
It absolutely makes sense. And really connecting the dots here for the audience that's following along, your early work in the field of epilepsy and showing that essentially a ketogenic diet, right? Because again, we're talking about that. And ketogenic diet is the most studied diet when it comes to brain health and specifically people dealing with epilepsy.
It was the first treatment, right, that was used for targeting, I believe it was kids originally. All right, I got a question for you. What if you could track your food, sleep, exercise, blood sugar, and key biomarkers all in one place? Well, I have good news for you. With the Levels app, this is not only possible, it's actually needed if we're going to fix our broken healthcare systems.
Chapter 4: What is the Press-Pulse protocol?
You want to hear something pretty shocking that I learned from the Levels founder, Josh Clemente, recently on this podcast, is that there are so many people who are unhealthy and they don't even know that they're unhealthy. This is where the Levels app comes in. We have over half of US adults that have prediabetes or diabetes.
And just these two conditions alone set the stage for things like Alzheimer's, heart disease, and even cancer. That's why it's so important to use technology, things like the Levels app to stay on top of your metabolic health and stay on top of all your biomarkers and your exercise and your sleep and the tracking of your food. I've had to use a bunch of different apps to do this.
Now with the Levels app, I can do this all in one place. I can track my metrics, my macros, my habits, and my glucose levels from a continuous glucose monitor. And now with their new features, you can even track step count, sleep, and more to understand how your daily habits shape your health. Plus, you can get labs directly through the Levels app or
if you have your own blood work, you can upload it to track 10 key biomarkers and see the full picture of your metabolic health over time. And this is huge because there are key actions that you can take to improve it. For example, when Josh was on this podcast, he mentioned that even a 15 minute walk after meals can dramatically improve glucose control.
And with levels, you can see these effects in real time. Right now, if you're interested in this, the app that tracks it all in one place, Levels is offering my listeners two free months of their annual membership when you sign up through my link, levels.link.dhru.
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Chapter 5: How does oxidative stress affect cancer cells?
I don't know how long this offer will last, so if you've been thinking about learning more about your metabolic health and tracking all of your metrics in one place, now is the time to get started. Just go to levels.link.dhru. Levels.link slash DHRU to get two free months of their annual membership today.
A while back on this podcast, I sat down with a holistic plastic surgeon who told me that one of the best things that you can do for your skin, whether it's wrinkles, fine lines, acne, or overall skin health, is red light therapy. Since hearing that episode, so many people in my family, including my wife and sisters, have been consistent with their evening red light routine.
And the one that they use is the Bond Charge Red Light Face Mask. Red light therapy is a science-backed way to stimulate collagen and elastin production. helping to reduce fine lines, wrinkles, and signs of aging while also improving skin texture and overall appearance. But it doesn't just stop at skincare.
Chapter 6: What role does hyperbaric oxygen therapy play in cancer treatment?
This mask can also be used to help with sore jaws, migraines, eczema, scar tissue, wound healing, and even relaxation. My family loves the Bond Charge mask because you can switch between both near-infrared and red light in one device. It has a sleek, lightweight design that doesn't get too hot on your face.
And the best thing is that Bond Charge offers worldwide shipping, a 12-month warranty, and easy returns and exchanges if you ever are not satisfied. You can even use your HSA and FSA funds to purchase this red light mask. So let's talk protocols. My family uses the Boncharge Red Light Face Mask for 10 to 20 minutes a day while reading, watching TV, or winding down at night.
It's an easy and convenient way to access the benefits of this therapy from the comfort of your own home, and the results speak for themselves. Boncharge also has other amazing science-backed wellness products like low blue light light bulbs, blue light blocking glasses, EMF protection products, infrared sauna blankets, and 100% blackout sleep masks.
Plus they ship worldwide and their products are HSA and FSA eligible. So you can save up to 30% tax-free. Right now, Bond Charge is offering my community 15% off. If you're interested in the red light therapy face mask, just go to bondcharge.com slash drew and use the code drew, D-H-R-U to save 15%. That's bond, B-O-N, charge, C-H-A-R-G-E.com slash D-H-R-U. That's me, Drew. 14% today.
1921?
Yeah, but Wilder studied epilepsy, but he realized that if you put kids on water-only fasting, the seizures would go away. Right. But he realized that when you don't eat food, what's the major changes in the blood? And the blood sugar goes down, and ketone bodies, which are water-soluble breakdown product of fats. So the fats in our body- or mobilized these fatty acids then go into the bloodstream
They go to the liver and the liver chops them up like a wood chipper and makes small molecules called ketone bodies. And these are water soluble products of the breakdown of fatty acids. And they go to the brain, they can replace glucose in the brain. They can be burned by the heart, by muscles. So the combination between ketone bodies and fatty acids can be respired.
If you have a good respiration system, With respect to epilepsy, now here's the interesting thing. So Wilder says, well, we can't cure epilepsy by starving people to death. So let's build a diet that does what a normal water-only fasting would do. And if you eat diets that have very low carbohydrates in restricted amounts, blood sugar goes down and ketones go up.
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Chapter 7: How to build an ideal cancer treatment team?
So it was kind of a calorie-restricted fat diet. You know, you can eat avocados and you could eat certain things that would give you fats. And that seemed to manage epileptic seizures. And then, of course, in the 1930s, certain drugs came on that made it a lot easier for patients to say, oh, we have a drug now that can do what a ketogenic diet does. So let's forget about the ketogenic diets.
But Jim Abrams and his son Charlie started the Charlie Foundation. because his son Charlie Abrams was almost killed by various drugs and treatments that he was taking when he could have done a ketogenic diet. So it was resurrected at the late 90s by Jim Abrams. And we were all working on epilepsy and we found no uncertain terms that management of seizures was directly linked to the blood glucose.
And the difference between cancer and epilepsy is we really don't know how ketogenic diets stop epileptic seizures. We know it changes the energy metabolism of the brain, but the clear mechanism is still under massive investigation. And it seems to work against a variety of different epilepsy.
So some people inherit an epilepsy, some people get it from a viral infection, some people get it from a bang on the head, some people get it from tumors. It seems like a ketogenic diet seems to reduce the excitability of the brain in many different interesting mechanisms, which are under investigation.
But we do know that sometimes these children that have managed seizures for quite a long time, months, many months, all of a sudden take one sip of a Coca-Cola or a fruit juice or something, spiking the blood sugar, leading to an explosive breakthrough seizure, which is very clear.
So, my colleagues and I in the epilepsy field knew this, that how is it possible that you can have a child managed with seizures for such a long period of time, and all they have to do is take one sip of a fruit juice or a bite of a cupcake, and within minutes, they're blown up into a major seizure.
So, it was clear that you had to maintain low blood sugar, low stable blood sugar to manage an epileptic seizure. In cancer, we don't see an explosive growth of cells as the result of taking a bite out of a cupcake or a sugary drink. You can't see it, you can't feel it, but you know it's happening.
because we know the cancer cell can't live, one of the fermentable fuels is glucose, and sugar is fructose glucose, so it's broken down. So the glucose immediately goes to the tumor cell and is used for the growth of the tumor cell. But you can't say, well, you know, the guy says, you know, I've been ketogenic diet, I think I'm okay, let me just bite this cupcake.
You can't see whether your tumor cell is gonna be growing like you can see a breakthrough epileptic seizure, it's very clear. But not a growing tumor cell. You just have to know that to manage cancer, you have to keep that sugar under control. And the second fuel is glutamine, which there's no diet. And everybody keeps asking me, oh, you know, glutamine is so healthy for us and all this.
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Chapter 8: What are the next steps after recognizing treatment success?
Really what you're saying, if I understand correctly, please correct me if I'm wrong, is that a ketogenic diet as a therapeutic approach to cancer in a way is cutting off the fuel source that is used in this fermentation process. So still providing fuel for our healthy cells, but taking away the primary fuel sources that cancer uses to grow and grow rapidly inside of the body.
Is that a correct understanding?
Yes. Yes. And the second part you said is absolutely essential. They have to know that the ketone bodies from the ketogenic diets are serving as fuel sources for the normal non-cancerous cells in our body, actually making them even healthier than they were.
Um, there's another interesting biochemical mechanism by which burning ketones, uh, enhances the health and vitality and energy efficiency of normal cells. Um, uh, so that's, that's one issue that is the normal cells burning ketone bodies get healthier when on that's, that's why one of the health benefits of ketogenic diet, I hate to say ketogenic diet, um,
Because it is that, but it's more than that. It's a general health – it's a health system for the body.
Right, because there's stress response is a major part of it, as you've talked about.
There's many other things.
It's not just that we're going to throw this one diet, although diet is a key – part of removing the fuel source of cancer in your work and approach but this is a whole system and maybe when we have a few minutes here in a little bit we can talk about what the whole system is
Yeah, well, I think you're right. I mean, you have to break it down into its various parts. Right. And ketosis in a diet can be achieved with carnivore diets, Mediterranean diets, even vegan diets, although not as effective, but they can still generate a state of ketosis.
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