Understanding the Three Pillars of Health

On this show, leading medical educator and respected naturopathic oncologist Dr. Paul Anderson discusses key foundational interventions that he has found to improve quality of life, experience better treatment outcomes, and enhance overall wellness. Dr. Anderson will also discuss how to become a more empowered cancer patient. If you are looking to build a solid health foundation before, during, or after your cancer diagnosis, you won’t want to miss this show!

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Any health related information on the followingshow provides general information only. Content presented
on any show by any host orguest should not be substituted for a doctor's
advice. Always consult your physician beforebeginning any new diet, exercise, or
treatment program. Student. Hello everyone, and welcome to Five to Thrive Live.

(00:43):
I'm Carolyn Gazella and I co hostthe show with my good friend,
doctor LESE. Alschuler. Today wewill be talking about what it takes to
build a strong health foundation before,during, or after cancer diagnosis. But
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(02:15):
Ohira probiotics dot com. With metoday is doctor Paul Anderson, who is
a recognized leader in the field ofnaturopathic oncology. He has three decades a
clinical experience, has held multiple medicalschool positions, and has authored or co
authored several books. Doctor Anderson,Welcome to the show. Thank you for
having me. So let's talk aboutyour three pillars of health. But before

(02:39):
we dig into the details of eachof them, what are the three pillars
of health? And how did youcome up with them? It's a great
place to start. So I triedto make them memorable by reducing them,
obviously to maybe simpler terms. Butthe three pillars you want to think of,

(03:00):
at least the way I think ofit as real a foundation. And
so those are food, muscle,and brain. And we can get into
what they are and deeper talking.But what this came from was I was
involved in some NIH funded human researchhere in Seattle for cancer advanced cancer,

(03:23):
and it was a very very largeresearch project, and so that started me
writing and thinking, etc. Andwhen you're doing that, sometimes then you
look back over the last twenty orso years or maybe longer now certainly,
and you say, what did mypatients who overall did better with their cancer

(03:45):
care? Did they have anything incommon? You know? And in addition
to many technical things and treatment things, etc. Those three pillars kind of
came up over and over and overagain in the people who had better quality
of life and often probably even morelength of life as well. So it

(04:06):
was a commonality in retrospectively looking backover many, many years of working with
cancer patients. Yeah, and it'sinteresting because doctor Australia and I always feel
like we can learn so much fromcancer survivors and the doctors who treat them,
you know, the doctors who workwith them. So that makes a
lot of sense to me. AndI'm curious to dig in because these are

(04:30):
unique food, muscle, and brain. So let's start with the first pillar.
Where would you like to start?We can go in that order.
They really neither is superior to theothers, so we can start with food.
Okay, good, let's talk aboutfood. So tell us about why
that's foundational and dig into some ofthe concepts associated with that pillar. Certainly,

(04:57):
and you know, these three wordsI do a lot to help people
just remember because obviously they're deceivingly simplewords. But food is a big concept,
which includes certainly how we fuel ourbody. That's a big piece of
food. But the other thing withfood and drink is it's a very very

(05:19):
large entree into the human body fora lot of potential toxicities, toxicants and
toxins from the environment and industry,etc. Which we very well know don't
help anybody's health. But certainly ifyou're already epigenetically on edge and you're dealing

(05:40):
with a health crisis, you needthe least amount of you know, toxicant
as well. So food is onmultiple levels in that respect. So there's
the fuel portion, and the fuelportion you know, sometimes we get into
you know, what are your macroand micro nutrients is very you know,

(06:00):
big lots of discussion around what's thebest diet and all of those things,
So that that's certainly a piece there. And as you well know, and
probably every listener knows, there's probablyno one diet that's perfect for everybody,
which is why we do, youknow, individualize things there. So in

(06:20):
the fuel area. The other thingthough, with the fueling of the body
is how much we eat and onwhat kind of cycle or timing. So
we're seeing more and more evidence,for example, that taking a bit of
a break so intermittent fasting is probablygood for us in at least one breast

(06:42):
cancer study and improves survival, youknow, So things like those factors too,
not overfeeding the body, not underfeedingthe body. So I was trying,
and of course something like food iswe of course eat it usually at
least once a day, if notmore. And we all eat for reasons
beyond our caloric needs. Obviously,so food is a big area, whether

(07:05):
it's under or overfeeding the body.But also then how can we make the
fuel as clean as possible. Youknow, we don't live in a clean
environment anymore, but how can wereduce the number of things that our body
just doesn't need to deal with thatmay make the cancer jurney much more difficult.

(07:28):
Yeah, that's so interesting that you'readdressing food from both standpoints. So
not only feel like okay, wholefoods and you know, plant and anti
accidents, a colorful diet, butalso this aspect of clean foods. Give
us some examples of toxicants or toxinsthat we want to avoid, and give

(07:50):
us some examples of what a cleandiet looks like. Yeah, certainly.
So there's a lot of ways,whether it's the water we you know,
drink, or the food that weeat and every other thing we put in
our body can be interacted with bytoxicants. One of the easiest to think

(08:13):
about would be if we had let'ssay, fruit and vegetable type crops for
example, where we're trying to lowerthe number you know, of pest pests,
so with pesticides and herbicides and things, so we're adding things to the
food. Sometimes that winds up thenbecoming part of the food. And that's

(08:33):
certainly one way in as far astoxicants can go. The other is the
idea of of bioconcentration, which isif we're eating things higher in the food
chain, so that could be youknow, fish or fowl or other types
of meat. Some of them maybe in areas where they're consuming the vegetable

(08:58):
or fruit material, et cetera.And if what they eat has toxicants,
then their flesh will bio concentrate it, and so then we're sort of at
the other end of the consumer chain, so we you know, we may
get a double dose both from thefruit and vegetable world and also of course
the animal world as well if weeat those. So so those are some

(09:20):
big ways in and it's easy tolook at, you know, herbicides,
pesticides and things of that nature.The other thing that is a real part
of the world we live in isour air. You know, we often
don't see what's floating around in theair unless there's a lot of smog or
something, or we're growing by asmokestack. Our air is full of hydrocarbons,

(09:45):
petrochemicals, et cetera, and thosehave to go somewhere, and they
often settle in the water and youknow, on the grass and the other
crops and things. So I alwaystell people, you know, we can't
we can't subtract everything that's bad forus. But what I try and do
is look at two avenues with people. One is stratification, because you know,

(10:09):
I've never met somebody, regardless ofhow well to do they were where
money at some point is not anobject. And for most people, food
is a big part of the budgetand it's you know, so much more
expensive than it was just a fewyears ago. So there are resources I
try and point people to, suchas Environmental Working Group, and they have
lists of cleaner foods that maybe youdon't need to be as worried about where

(10:33):
you get them. And then theyhave something called the Dirty Dozen, which
is really about fifteen things now AndI was tell people, if you have
to spend money on maybe some locallysourced organic produce or some organic food,
at least get the things that aremost likely to have you know, more
chemicals in them, as clean asyou can, and the same with you

(10:54):
know, water and other liquids thatwe take in. So yeah, it
becomes a huge, huge thing becausewe're constantly feeding the system, which is
good, but if we're constantly toxifyingit, then we have to remember that's
a stress on all of the organs. We need to regular immune system and
do all the other things that wetry to do when we have cancer.

(11:16):
Yeah. Absolutely, And we alsolove the Environmental Working Group and their lists
and resources and it's a great list. And before I leave food, I
have been reading a lot of newresearch on the dangers of ultra processed foods
and how we really need to belimiting our intake of these ultra process foods

(11:37):
which I would assume would fall intothis category of uncleaning or or toxic foods.
What's your take on the research associatedwith ultra process foods. Yeah,
I think I think just quickly,the more we humans do to food before
we consume it, the more weintroduce you know, avenues for either contamination

(12:03):
or possibly even change you know,of of the macro structure of the food,
and and so the more handling ofit, the more processing, and
then the more you know, themore preserved it is the more likely that's
just it's not going to be receivedby the human body the way that something
that maybe we just pulled out ofthe ground would be. So I do

(12:24):
think that's probably where that research ispointing to. Yeah, I would agree.
Okay, so the second pillar ismuscle. Now, this one I'm
super curious about. Why is muscleimportant? Well, you know, the
it almost sounds, you know,almost too simple. But what's happened in

(12:48):
the last ten years. Uh,in immunal biology, but especially in tumor
biology, is the idea that wesort of observed in the past. But
I think we have the biochemistry andphysiology and immunology worked out better now to
show that literally, when our muscles, especially the big skeletal muscles that kind

(13:11):
of hold our body up and keepus moving, when they are working,
they literally send out signals that arechemical signals that are perceived by the rest
of the body. To say,that is, if our body was speaking
to itself, so it speaks chemicallyto itself. These signals actually say we

(13:33):
are going to try and shift toa healing a healing biology, healing biochemistry
here, and we even you know, for better or worse, COVID triggered
a whole lot of new research,and a paper came out showing where they
mapped out even certain things that wedidn't think muscle had anything to do with,

(13:56):
like healing, brain inflammation and things. There's research now that's mapped out
these same signals that kind of arepro healing actually can be you know,
healing in the brain. And thisapplies a lot in people who've had you
know, radiation damages the brain,membranes and surgeries, certainly if you've had

(14:16):
a brain tumor all those things.So muscle, but muscles obviously it's sort
of like food. It's not onits own in our body. Its counterpoint
is actually fat. And so Itried to you know, express these three
in the positive terms. So muscleactivity sends out healing signals. Fat activity

(14:39):
actually sends out pro inflammatory signals thatif you look at the chemical again the
kind of chemical speak side of kindchemokinds, et cetera, associated with fat,
they go downstream and they trigger alot of the same chemistry that would
be involved in say metastases of canceror cancer growth or stem cell activation things

(15:05):
like that. So, but whatI was trying to talk to people about.
Is the same way with food,where sometimes it's very hard for people
to make a sudden shift, butyou make shift over time. You know,
people will, you know, verycommon they'll say, gosh, you
know, I just got done withsurgery or chemo or something. I don't

(15:26):
feel like doing anything. Do Ihave to be a marathon runner? You
know to make this work? Andit's actually all you have to do is
a little bit more muscle activity thanyou were doing before. When of course,
if you had surgery, you haveto be cleared for that. But
so you don't have to go andyou know, start lifting weights or anything
unless that's something you were doing.You just have to get those big muscles,

(15:48):
you know, think of the thighsand the arms and you know,
or lower and upper leg et cetera. And so I've literally had people where
they just got to the hospital andthey're still recovering, and so I'll say,
well, where can we start,you know, what can you do
right now? And the answer willbe, well, pretty much, I'm
still kind of with my feet uprecovering. I can make it. I

(16:11):
make a trip to the bathroom orthe kitchen, you know, five times
a day, and we'll say,well, that's fine, let's just add
one more loop there. You know, maybe you don't need to go to
the bathroom in the kitchen, butjust do one little loop. And what
I was telling them is it's it'sbaby steps, especially when you're really run
down from you know, therapies,et cetera. And it's it's it's different

(16:36):
than when you were say a kid, and you've go out for a sport
and you're sore for a week andthen you're you know, you're in shape.
Basically. Now, it's like youmight do this baby step for three
or four weeks and then you'll feelready to go to the next step.
Now, if you have someone ina survivorship position where they're in secondary prevention,
maybe they're you know, in prettygood shape and they just you know,

(16:57):
need to keep moving. So theother cool thing is the food you
take in can feed into this becausethe different macros you know, can help
the muscle and diminish the fat chemistrythat would be more proneflammatory. So that's
that's what muscle means. Yeah,it's perfect. I love it. It

(17:18):
makes a lot of sense. Okay, So the third pillar is brain,
take us through why brain made thecut. Yes, and again this was
you know, looking back over many, many years of people and kind of
you know, what were the groupsthat really did the best. Brain is

(17:41):
euphemistic. Obviously without a brain,we wouldn't be here. But the way
I talk to people about brain is, you know, you can look at
sub sections of the mind and youmight think of you know, mind,
body, medicine, or other thingsin that nature, and that certainly not
the wrong with any of that,but I try and talk to patients about

(18:04):
your brain has two sets of inputsthat you have to be mindful of with
with with anything really, but especiallyas a cancer survivor. One set of
inputs might be the obvious ones wethink of, which are what's coming in
from the outside into my mind andmy perception, and especially when we don't

(18:26):
feel well or you're recovering, etcetera. Sometimes not feeling well can trigger
us to maybe consume too much negativeyou know, media or other you know,
other upsetting things. So the thethe outside in sort of inputs have
to be monitored and you have tobe a little careful about it. It's

(18:47):
not like you have to isolate yourself, but you have to be a little
careful, and that's you know,there's so much media available. You can
watch anything on your phone or listento what you want. But the more
negative those things are, the moresort of dark they are to you as
a person. This is different fordifferent people. The more that your brain

(19:08):
is now diverted sort of like divertingyour immune system with toxins, it's mental
emotional toxins. And so now yourbrain, which has this wonderful capacity to
keep track of what's going on yourbody immunologically and harmonially, et cetera,
it's it's kind of got a cloudover it. So that's sort of the
outside in. And you know,this obviously can include other people. You

(19:32):
know, there's people in our livessometimes that are just naturally very positive and
some are very negative, and youknow, some are harder to be around.
And one thing that I've talked topatients and written a lot about is,
you know, you don't have toalways separate yourself from people, but
sometimes you have to be careful withthe amount of time you let these things

(19:52):
in. So that's sort of theoutside end direction. But I think equally
important, and you know all ofhave felt this is the inside inside out
to the brain, which is us. But what are we saying, you
know, to ourselves? And uh, you know, I've certainly worked with
people in you know, pretty prettycritical states for long enough to know and

(20:18):
and I know just of my ownself that if I'm injured, or if
I'm coming off of some therapy that'syou know, really intense, or I
just got a diagnosis, I don'twant my internal talk is really easy to
shift into a very negative frame ofmind. And I think that the important

(20:41):
thing about that internal talk is internalor external talk, but especially that internal
talk of what we tell ourselves becomesvery disempowering. And you know, one
of the concepts that I think isthe most probably critical is you to the
that's reasonable. You can control alot of the food that comes in,

(21:04):
You can control your body a bit, and you can control somewhat what comes
in from the outside of your brainand your self talk. The more you're
in control of those, the morethat says to your inner being, we're
doing what we can, and youbecome literally more empowered. And empowerment,

(21:25):
you know, by these three meansleads to usually better outcomes. So the
brain is just very you know,it's it's like none of them are not
important. You had your physical body, You've got what we put in the
body, and then we you know, we have the mental circuits. Those
are so core. I think that'swhy those three are kind of what I
saw and everybody and still see whojust have better outcomes. Yeah, it

(21:51):
makes so much sense. I mean, the messages that we give ourselves are
powerful, so it makes a lotof sense. And I could see where
food, muscle, and brain interacttogether to be foundational. And you mentioned
the word empowerment. I want toswitch gears a little bit because you have
a wonderful book. It's called CancerThe Journey from Diagnosis to Empowerment. Why

(22:15):
is empowerment so important specific to aperson who's been diagnosed with cancer? Yeah,
I think you know, this isanother one of those concepts that I
know, I sort of was workingwith, but I never really you know,
put it into words until I wastrying to look backwards and say,

(22:36):
well, you know who does betterand what you know what's involved. So
when I started to outline and writethat book, and I wrote it specifically
for patients and loved ones, soit's easy. It's not like a textbook
it's really easy and short. Butthe core concept is that generally speaking,

(22:59):
nobody wants to hear the diagnosis youhave cancer. Okay, I certainly have
never met anybody that you know,was waiting for that, et cetera.
But the first thing that happens isis that we go into the natural human
process of grieving really what we lost, which is our life before cancer,

(23:22):
and that process of grieving, aswe all know, we can either move
through it and you know, cometo what I would say is not just
acceptance but empowerment, or we canget stuck in different spots, you know,
along that pathway, and everyone doesit different. You know, some
people don't really have trouble with afew steps, some have more trouble,

(23:47):
and some people kind of loop aroundbetween a few. That's normal human stuff.
But the reason I wrote the bookto try and get to this goal
of empowerment is once I start torealize that's what I was talking about,
I started to dig into the research, and there's there's a lot of medical
empowerment research, more than I thoughtthere was. And so some hard markers

(24:11):
like pain medication and pain management worksbetter in empowered patients, quality of life
improves, which may be obvious toeveryone, but quality of life scores are
higher in empowered patients and on andon. So there's actually, you know,
a lot of research in this area. And once I saw that,

(24:33):
once I saw, well, yeah, this is a commonality of patients who
did better. It makes a lotof sense that, you know, Empowerment
is not ignoring your problem, youknow, and saying well I don't have
cancer, or you know, Idon't care about it or whatever. We
all care about what we have wrongwith us. Empowerment is, you know,

(24:55):
kind of like we've talked about withfood, muscle, and brain.
It's realizing this is part of mylife. I don't know where it's going
to go, but this is partof my life. I have good people
around me helping me from the outside, the medical team and everybody else.
But also there's all these things Ihave internal agency over, and so you

(25:17):
know, things like food, muscle, and brain are things you can get
at and other things. So empowermentis really being realistic with your situation,
but also realizing whatever you do havea modicum of control over and input into.
So you may not make your ownchemotherapy decision, but you have input

(25:37):
into them. Sometimes you know,whatever you have raises your body's feeling and
your mind's feeling of empowerment. Andlike I say, there's not really any
research on empowerment that doesn't show somemarker of quality of life or medical outcome,
et cetera that's not improved by it, which is cool because she and

(26:00):
I love to focus on the research. So to know that the empowered patients
have better outcomes and they have betterpaid management and some of these really clear
indicators, you know, of healing. I think that's that's really that's really
cool. I want to remind ourlisteners that the book is called Cancer the
Journey from Diagnosis to Empowerment by doctorPaul Anderson. Doctor Anderson, Where can

(26:25):
people find out more about you andyour work? Do you have a website
that you'd like to share? Yes? To make it easy, we made
a hub website which has links tothe books and I do podcasts and all
that, and right, so it'sit's doctor a Now, but it's just
shortened to d r A n OW So doctor a now dot com and

(26:48):
and then that has links to whateversomeone might be looking for. D r
A now dot com dot com.Okay, perfect. Well, one last
question for you. We're talking aboutthe empowered patient and I've got about a
minute to go. What characteristics doesthat patient have? Yeah, so briefly,

(27:11):
everybody starts in the same place andit's usually with a big hit with
a diagnosis and treatment is rough,et cetera. Empowered patients are no different
in that respect, but it's whatthey do in managing their internal and external
environment so that they again gain It'snot about total control. It's just about

(27:34):
awareness and realizing that they have morecontrol over more aspects than they might otherwise
think they do. So empowerment reallyis sort of rising above this thing that
took the wind out of your sales, and it's a daily practice. It's
something that we all have to workon. It's you don't become enlightened and

(27:56):
stay there. So that's really whatempowerment is is being realistic but also knowing
that you are still in control ofthe ship. Yeah. Right, and
that's so significant when it comes toa cancer diagnosis. Well, doctor Anderson,
this has been wonderful. Thank youagain for joining me. Thank you
so much. It was great.Well that wraps up this episode of five

(28:19):
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(28:42):
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