welcome viewers i am your host dr heidi weinhold in today my guest is dr david alter dace found cancer treatment centers of america in philadelphia today we will be discussing colon and prostate and how did the street an integrated flea you're watching ask the nature path hello david thank you for traveling so far to be a guest on my show i so appreciate it my pleasure i think and thank you for coming in and bringing this very valuable information to to our audience david can you explain what the what makes cancer treatment centers of america unique in their approach to treating cancer versus other cancer hospitals city ca as i refer to the cancer center is one of the few fully integrated cancer hospitals in the united states there's actually a total of four of them in the u s and what that means is that we bring in all perspectives in medicine including at your path to call list sick and combine them with state of the art on college you care and so you're getting a very complete form of health care all under one roof and i don't think viewers really understand how fortunate we are to have a cancer treatment center hospital here in this state and i'm going to emphasize that you are a nature passive doctor working at c p c a and one of your specialties is corning in prostate cancer yes we do we treat all types of cancer but i just we want to bring some some wisdom to those two subjects today and talk about the power of the integrated model and what natural path medicine can treat contribute to cancer care can you explain to the audience what are some risk factors for developing colon cancer sure well there's things that we can control and our life and those that we can the things that you can control are your age your your ethnic race being african american that have a higher risk for colon cancer and then you know your genetics weight what your family did before you so but i want to talk about the things we can control and that's in our lifestyle are very important for preventing colon cancer namely our diet diets that are high in fat and low in fiber are at a greater risk for colon cancer whereas eating appropriate not the fiber and high fiber diet definitely lower your risk and then your  lifestyle also in the amount of activity you get your if you have obesity that's problematic as well as cigarettes alcohol consumption and ultimately at the base level the amount of information that is in your body is fundamental to the growth of cancer that is so true do you think part of the reason for there being a higher incidence of colon cancer in the african american population is that they have trouble absorbing vitamin d vitamin d as a very important independent risk factor for colon cancer and we want to make sure everyone has adequate vitamin d one of the things that  patients are tested and have good vitamin d levels it's been well studied i can't speak specifically to the ethnic absorption of fats and i have looked into ok so what are some of their early signs or symptoms of call in cancer  that we should suggest are indicate testing for viewers sure well as always you may have these signs and it can be nothing is very benign but any change in your bowel habits that  be a cause for that one explain the weight loss and more fatigue are general symptoms that you know if you combined all of those if you had blood in your stool and you're tired of losing weight definitely talk to your doctor about that what about  and you actually have to get them every ten years after that but on an annual basis it's really good to get what's called a fecal occult blood test which is just a smear that your doctor does it's noninvasive and it can detect blood in the store that you can't families do you have a history of calling cancer in their families sure well shopping the outside of the grocery store you get your whole fruits and vegetables in your whole grains those are wonderful the fruits have soluble fiber whereas things  can you also explain to our audience some of the integrative nature of the past six their fees that are used to help reduce the side effects of current chemotherapy regiment sure well you know the i try to do several things when patients are on cancer treatment i want to help fight cancer with herbs that are cancer fighting and also want to reduce side effects from the chemotherapy is that they're also getting which are very powerful drugs i also want to bring in that holistic perspective about supporting the immune system the other healthy parts of the body so that the body can have the best chance of getting through that treatment feeling well and fighting cancer the best possible one of the best herbs is correct human ok chris human is anti inflammatory i mentioned that earlier as being a fundamental reason why cancer develops but it also encourages common cancer cells to die and it's also been shown to be synergistic with some chemotherapy is that they fight cancer well together so you combine chemotherapy a with curric m and you a better response to that treatment and we're going to take chemo and i can add something that's going to significantly improve your overall family response that's going to really benefit you and then you know we do immune support we try to help with energy levels and help reduce some of the side effects like for example people get sores in their mouth they can have diarrhea from chemo or their appetite can go down and these are all things that natural medicine can really help with this is glutamine powder is that something that they use frequently to mean a lot that's an amino acid and it's nourishing to every cell in the body and it's one of the things cells used to repair themselves ok and so the glutamine helps cells that are damaged by chemotherapy that are healthy repair themselves particularly the lining of the mouth the stomach and the lot of multi vitamin i think you've got to watch out for folic acid if you're on a drug called the loader which is an oral form or five if you often used for colon cancer ok that's really really good information so we we're going to cut for a break and when we i'm an american member and i'm getting things done so i always get working weekends just to stay and that is a great college started out of the question the american dream out of our reach not if we can help with the national endowment for financial education a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people just like you get smart about their money log on to smart about money dot org today and start taking control of your financial life  hi welcome back i'm your host dr heidi weinhold and today my guest is dr david alter dies from cancer treatment centers of america and philadelphia and you're watching asked the nature path today will to discussing an integrative approach to treating prostate cancer david tell us a little bit about prostate cancer and how common it is in the united states of prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in the u s behind breast cancer and it affects many men and we can be a source of great anxiety for men because diagnosed and a lot of the population but the reality is that it's not a great killer in cancer and so it's important to know how to manage prostate cancer appropriately ok so what are some early like science and symptoms of prostate cancer what are the are many early signs and symptoms that's why it's really important to get screening and  screening is the gold standard in this country for detecting prostate cancer if it's more advanced cancer you could have blood in the urine or you could have difficulty urinating but really it's much better detected early since so glad that you mentioned something about a screening because i think that there's a lot of confusion right now as far as p s a testing and if it should be used for screening for prostate cancer can you explain to our audience exactly what definitely happens in prostate cancer but there's other reasons prostate cells might produce p s a such as an infection in the prostate and it varies from man to man some men a certain number of p s a would be highways of the men that might be more close to their normal and so it's important that once you detect a high level of p s a that you follow up with your doctor and he'll watch that number over time see how it changes you can get a biopsy which is going to give you so much more information about what's really going on in the prostate and  you know so often you can manage early stage prostate cancer without having to do anything radical and you can actually get the p s a to come down and then that's a really good point a lot of men do for this watch and wait approach time to intervene medically sure well you know there's important markers in prostate cancer one called your gleason score which is just to determine how aggressive this cancer is and so when gleason scores are low it's that what's going on the press has actually become a more full blown cancer and so we can do a lot with lifestyle certain herbs vitamin d all of these play a role and if you do need treatment your oncologist will tell you that the advances in radiotherapy and surgery have really come a long way and supported us consider both because for some men radiation might be about much better treatment than actually having the prostate surgically removed but either way if you  prostate cancer early you can take care of it appropriately and it doesn't have to be life threatening at all so what are some nature of mastic modalities that are used to treating prostate cancer and also have you an excellent supplement it combines a lot of the science that we know about westerners with some of the wisdom of chinese medicine and it's a formula that is very anti inflammatory again i talk about inflammation is being the root cause of why cancer grows in the body out and showed that it could lower p s a by about twenty five to fifty percent in about half the men who took it and when they re biopsy the prostate actually showed that the cells that were looking like they were heading towards cancer reverted back to normal cel s that's great and there's still some people that it's not going to work for and they need to continue to be have regular follow up with their doctor to know when it is time to intervene how how important do you think lifestyle is in  some correlation with dairy and red meat in particular what do you think about that what are your thoughts well it gets again to the information connection there and red meat are very inflammatory foods for most of us  and so if we can reduce the amount of information through dietary intake but also by managing our stress levels by keeping a healthy weight getting some exercise and even just doing meditation in mind body techniques for help can really help change that biochemical miller who that reduces the chance of prostate cancers going to want to grow and that's true for most cancers same with colon cancer and so lifestyle is really fundamental staying healthy and cancer free so believe that what are your thoughts on modified citrus pectin in your in treating colon cancer in do you recommend this this is there's been some research about using it metastasis which means the cancer started in one place and then move somewhere else and that's what makes cancer very dangerous and m c p reduces metastasis in cancer and we particularly like to use it around the time of surgery because when there's cutting going on in certain areas of body or open it can actually facilitate the spread of cancer and so we use modified citrus packed in before and after surgery to reduce the chance of metastasis ok and some recent research just came out showing  all play a part and so you know if you have a p s a that has recently been shown to high if you can create a holistic integrated approach to your health you're going to have the best chance of avoiding any complications  there's a lot of side effects of prostate surgery so what do you what do you recommend how can you help speed healing as a natural path i just want to support the body's healing process and really help the body have the nutrients it needs we have a formula called first intention company called troll meal ok and then just you know taking care of self getting some exercise after surgery and visioning yourself returning to your vital state is actually important and getting your body back to where it was powder which you talked about earlier as well prevent the side effects from radiation of the prostate which can just be irritating to the lower g i get diarrhea and the mean is healing for that and then what ok ten grams twice a day usually about a tablespoon of powder you can mix it in water juice it doesn't taste bad ok but taking that many capsules is going to be difficult but glutamine really is very healing to the body i use a lot  with radiation patients is there any supplements that can in particular interfere with radiation therapy sure you know there's a debate about any accidents and chemotherapy and radiation  we say that dietary and the often things like vitamin c things you get from fruits and vegetables are quite safe and actually have been shown to help with radiation and chemo very high levels of the essence that your body is familiar with namely glu out there approach i just wanted to get to saying dr aldred nice for taking the time to to being on the show today and also for it for cancer treatment centers of america for free truly for treating