Dr. Paul Marik: Key Strategies You Aren’t Told That Help Prevent Cancer [FULL EPISODE]

the bottom line is that 30 to 40% of cancers are preventable and there are simple things that people can do to reduce your risk of getting cancer in this episode I sit down with Dr Paul Merrick a founding member of the Frontline covid-19 Critical Care Alliance flccc and former Chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia medical school Cancer's big business it's highly profitable the average cost of chemotherapy for a patient is probably $100,000 he's the author of Cancer Care the role of repurpose drugs and metabolic interventions in treating cancer in this episode he breaks down his key findings this is American thought leaders and I'm Yan [Music] Kell Dr Paul Merck such a pleasure to have you on American thought leaders thank you Yan thanks for inviting me back again so when we spoke last some months ago on a proper American thought leaders show I'm not talking about the quick hit we did earlier about this new groundbreaking nature study which I'll recommend our our viewers watch if they haven't seen that yet you were looking into cancer treatment cancer prevention you had discovered that in the scientific literature well established there's a whole body of literature that you you know incredibly well-published Medical Professional um you know in the industry for for decades we just simply unaware of and we were talking about how astonishing that was and you have since turned that into a book a kind of monograph um and and what you found is I'll use that word again absolutely astonishing so why don't you just tell me what you discovered yeah so this was by accident and I I certainly didn't know this information 3 or four years ago you know obviously you know Co open up our eyes and it started this Quest about looking at repurpose drugs and alternative therapies so the bottom line is that 30 to 40% of cancers are preventable just through simple lifestyle changes and through supplements you can reduce your risk of getting cancer which is really important because about 10 million people on the planet die of cancer every year approximately 600,000 Americans die of cancer every year and cancer will become the most important cause of death it's going to affect one in two men and one in three women so it is a very common disease and there are simple things that people can do to to reduce your risk of getting cancer and this is Well published you know it's it's just been hidden in the literature it's really important and then similarly they very simple effective measures that people who have cancer can take to improve the quality of their life and to to increase the risk of their chances of going into a remission and these are simple Lifestyle Changes dietary changes and the use of many o of over-the-counter supplements you know go I'm going to take myself back uh some years and uh I remember I watched this documentary uh about a Dr berzinski from uh Texas actually in Polish you would say his name binski but that's how I always thought but you know it was a very interesting documentary because it chronicled a doctor who's been in practice for decades he had found according to the documentary something called an antineoplaston a way to treat cancer um and he had a clinic that he developed and which was ostensibly successful all sorts of people in industry government have been trying to shut him down for decades but it were unable to do so and he continued on and he became this place where sort of you know lost CA cases which were untreatable someone might say oh you could go and maybe you could try there I've heard it helped a few people right and and I guess the message of the documentary also was that industry didn't want to validate his findings because he owned the patents that was the premise and and and they didn't like that so at the time I thought oh this this seems very compelling and but you know and I just kind of left it at that but now hearing everything that you're saying this whole picture takes on a whole new meaning to me I mean you know we talked about diabetes right and there's you know basically treatments for type two diabetes that have no side effect or very few side effects and and are actually also also work very well and but again largely unknown right by the by the broader medical community and this how many in how many areas is this actually the case you dug into cancer so H how many methods are there that that are actually could work that we've been told are some kind of snake oil or dangerous or problematic you know so obviously you know Cancer's big business uh it's highly profitable the average cost of chemotherapy for a patient is probably $100,000 so so you know big farmer makes a lot of money the oncologists in this country make a lot of money and the drugs we talking about are cheap off-patent drugs so you can understand why the you can understand the narrative it's much like Co it's it goes against big farma and it goes against traditional medicine which is a tragedy because they very effective therapies that can really improve the patient's outcome and some of these can be used in conjunction with standard chemotherapy we're not saying that you know throw away standard therapy these can use be used as adjuncts uh and as supplements to standard chemotherapy if patients so choose and I was stunned recently to discover that that MD Anderson Hospital which is probably one of the biggest cancer hospitals in the world indeed has an integrative oncology program where they they advise and they recommend and they coach patients in comprehensive lifestyle changes and just these lifestyle changes you know which include relaxation therapy sleep you know uh improved diet improved relationships exercise can significantly reduce the risk of patients dying of cancer I mean it's an astonishing finding well and and and there seems to be actually applying applying it I guess in in in isolated cases but it's somehow in the collective understanding of how the disease needs to be dealt with it's just not really there no so you know you go to a traditional oncologist and the patient says would ask you know what dietry advice would you give me and the oncologist will say well diet has nothing to do with it you can eat whatever you want to and we know that's just simply wrong there there's overwhelming scientific data that specific dietary interventions can have a profound effect on cancer profound effect and so this is a you know this is this is challenging the standard narrative um so binski is is this a real therapy or what do you think yeah I think it's real you know it's been subject to to to scrutiny and I think you know we we should be transparent and open so from my understanding it seems to be an effective treatment for for cancer I don't understand all the biochemistry but it doesn't mean we can't study it it doesn't mean that it should be outlawed by the FDA I think it should be investigated there's a lot of cancer therapies have extreme side effects I mean radiation chemotherapy right this there's serious quality of life issues with these therapies on the other hand these antineoplastons vitamin D I'm not say you know they may not be a Panacea I don't know but the point is they don't have they're not associated with these types of dramatic reductions in in quality of life so uh I mean that should be part of the equation right absolutely I mean many patients in many patients the treatment of the disease is worse than the disease and we know the extreme toxicity of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and you know these anop plaston seem pretty benign and you know all of the repurpose drugs that we recommend are extremely safe and effective what does the patient have to lose you know the question is where you you you have an intervention which is cheap safe and possibly could completely change the directory of the trajectory of the patient's disease what do you have to lose a few times when we talked about covid in the past we talked about vitamin D vitamin D seems to be this you know Miracle vitamin I don't I don't know if that's but it you know affects the immune system significantly in conjunction with some other um supplements I suppose um but it also seems from what you're saying seems to have positive impact on cancer not just covid so yeah so so the vitamin D truly is astonishing vitamin it more should be a hormone As We Know It's very effective for covid it's effective for depression it's effective for Alzheimer's disease it's effective for diabetes and it just so happens it's highly effective in both the prevention and treatment of cancer there's overwhelming data that patients who are vitamin D deficient have a much higher risk of developing cancer and as we know as as you go further from the equator and you get less ultraviolet B and you get less vitamin D your risk of cancer goes up your risk of Alzheimer's goes up and there's really good data if you take patients if you give patients vitamin D you reduce their risk of getting cancer and patients who have cancer if you give them high dose vitamin D it significantly improves their chances of going into a remission and this is a simple over-the-counter medication presumably some of these things could also be used in combination you could do a diet change you could do uh vitamin D and you could also do chemo at the same time that should help you right or absolutely so what you say is true these things work much better in Synergy when they're done together so for example one of the things we recommend is intermittent fasting or Tim restricted feeding it's been shown in the literature in the oncology literature if that you do Tim restricted feeding at the same time you're doing chemotherapy you get a much better response so there's absolutely no reason there's absolutely no reason that that if patients are undergoing standard you know chemotherapy that it should not be combined with these supplemental or complimentary techniques that can only enhance the patient's response to therapy one of the big findings in your monograph is that or you you essentially believe cancer to be a metabolic disease now that is not I would say the conventional wisdom is it yeah so what you say is true it's so you know this is based on the the work of Dr SE freed you know he's done I mean this is his area of expertise he's written you know hundreds of papers he's written a book on cancer as a metabolic disease which basically challenges the conventional wisdom that cancer is due to a chromosomal mutation and so that has a profound implication because if if it's a chromosomal disease then and the current chemotherapy does make it fits with that narrative but if cancer is a metabolic disease then the standard approach is not going to work and there's overwhelming evidence I mean there's overwhelming evidence in the literature that that it's not a metab that it's not a chromosomal disease it's a metabolic disease in fact the um the person who who who discovered d DNA you know the Watson and Crick you know Dr Watson has basically said in a in an oped that he doesn't think cancer is a chromosomal disease and we should look at the metabolic changes that happen in cancer I guess the question is couldn't it be both like couldn't there be genetic you know mutations I mean we I think that we know that mut it's mutations that actually cause cancer effectively right but the question is how does that happen and couldn't both mechanisms be right yeah so you're right it is a complex interplay between metabolism and genetics we know there are some genetic predisposition for example we know that woman with the braa gene have a much higher risk of developing cancer but what's interesting is their risk of getting cancer nowadays is about 60 or 70% of getting breast cancer 30 or 40 years ago it was 40% so it does illustrate that there an interplay between you know environmental and lifestyle changes and genetics but most it's current thinking is maybe 5% of cancers are due to chromosomal or genetic defects it appears that um most cancers are are not genetically determined there's been an increase right in a variety significant increase in a variety of metabolic diseases to my eye I have not studied this but I mean and and just in general you know I guess in America there's this obesity epidemic right I'm sure that actually has a significant impact on on obviously on metabolism how could it not right I suppose but what did you find are the kind of core kind of causes in your understanding so there's a length between obesity insulin resistance and cancer probably underlies 30 or 40% of of cancers are due to obesity and insulin resistance there's a very strong Association and so there's an association between the intake of of high glycemic index foods and sugar Beverages and um and cancer because of its effect on insulin resistance so so there's overwhelming data and as the incidence of obviously obesity is increasing so it seems in parallel the incidence of cancer is increasing and then obviously there's the problem of you know environmental cogens just on to lay on top on top of this problem over the past years I've noticed um an increasing perspective I I I suspect it must also be in the literature but certainly among um in the health related discourse in media and so forth that obesity is more more a genetic disease than a lifestyle disease yeah I don't think that's true because people's genes haven't changed much over the last 30 or 40 years but if you look at the incidence of obesity particularly in the US it's it's increased exponentially so it is a lifestyle disease you know like most things there may be a genetic predisposition but I think without question of doubt that obesity is is a lifestyle problem because we eat processed foods and foods high high in carbohydrates and glucose and we snack all the time you know Western people tend to eat all the time rather than doing what our forefathers did you know eat one or two meals a day so Western people eat all the time they eat highly processed foods high in carbohydrates and glucose uh in essence we have become you know processed food addicts does it make sense to say that you know if you just focused on the Obesity issue you could you would deal with a whole bunch of these other issues perhaps even cancer based on what you said earlier yeah so I think fundamentally lifestyle change which which would start off with diet and then exercise and then sleep if you if you attacked those problems I think you could eliminate almost all the chronic diseases of Western society which would be cancer cardiac disease Alzheimer's disease I think all these chronic diseases are related to bad lifestyle and lifestyle choices so you don't think it has to do with you know increased radiation that's one of the things you hear right often or um yeah I I think obviously environmental carcinogens are important you know and people or families that live near power lines or at an increased risk of certain kinds of cancer the problem is is it it's so pervasive that you know pesticides and toxins are so pervasive that it's very difficult for any individual to to completely El eliminate there is good data though that people who who eat um uh organic food as organic as can be have a lower risk of cancer so there is data showing that if you eat a diet of organic food your risk of cancer is less so there are things that you can do but it's pretty difficult to you know not to breathe the air that we exposed to or drink the water but um there's no question that environmental carcinogens have played a role okay so let's say you know in order of importance you found a series of lifestyle decisions and perhaps supplements so let let's kind of go through that and maybe in order of importance based on your study of the literature um you know because maybe there's some things that folks watching could like Implement right now that would that would help them yeah so so I can quote um a randomized control trial which is the gold standed that the Ivory Tower used so they did a a a simple intervention three things to see what would happen to the risk of cancer and so it was vitamin D IM Three fatty acids plus an exercise program and they show the combination of all three reduce the risk of cancer by 60% 60% so those are very simple things that people can do so you know it's a matter of exercising taking vitamin D and modifying your diet can significantly reduce your risk of getting cancer I'm just going to repeat that for a second you're saying the combination of vitamin D omega-3 a fatty acids and exercise reduced cancer risk by 60% that's correct wow yes so that doesn't get a lot of press um because you can't make money in fact it's counterproductive for the pharmaceutical industry and the medical complex if people don't get cancer and so you know this this was published in a peer-reviewed paper a peer- reviewed Journal it's a really good study it's supported by other studies the many studies that show that exercise reduces your risk of cancer there's data that show that simple relaxation techniques and techniques in terms of meditation yoga relaxation techniques improve your outcome if you get cancer so there are some very simple lifestyle interventions that can reduce both your risk of getting cancer and if you have cancer can improve the outcome well I I'm just going to you know comment on this given how prevalent cancer is in our society I mean the risk of cancer and you outlined this a little bit earlier is high for every person if you can reduce that by 60% I mean we should all be rushing off and starting this regimen never mind other things you're going to tell us about in a moment yeah so it it doesn't get the attention that it should get I mean you know particularly vitamin D the the data on vitamin D in preventing cancer in preventing Alzheimer's disease in preventing depression is overwhelming and it's it's safe you know it's it's a cheap intervention that has minimal Adverse Events and so from my perspective there's no reason that everybody should not be taking vitamin D um let's talk a little more briefly about vitamin D can you overdose on vitamin D so it is possible you know if you take Mega doses of Vitamin D you you can get very high levels which cause high blood calcium levels which can cause kidney stones but you have to take exceedingly high levels so you know what we recommend is 10,000 units a day which seems to be a very safe dose that you know it by all standards it's a very high dose but the data suggests that 10,000 units a day is safe and does not cause toxicity and you feel comfortable sort of advising this on camera to a broad group of people based on your understanding of the literature yeah so I think between 5 and 10,000 units a day depending on your particular scenario makes a lot of sense I mean there's there's really good data for so you know patients with cancer patients with depression we would recommend maybe 10,000 units you know as a prophylaxis for for people 5,000 units a day is a very safe dose and again I'll just mention this also is a covid prevention even I suppose in a situation where people have been let's say overly boosted and therefore you know more susceptible to being infected this this would still help there's no problem to take vitamin D and and protect yourself yeah I mean vitamin D has enormous immunological effects it affects gene expression there are hundreds of genes that are affected by vitamin D and there's really you know excellent data that um vitamin D reduces your risk of getting covid and if you get Co it reduces the severity of the disease so your chances of being hospitalized or dying or less so you know what we should have been what we should have done you know with the with the co pandemic if it was a pandemic was we we should have been boosting people's vitamin D level particularly the elderly who you know in old age homes or Elderly Homes so they don't get much sunshine and are certainly vitamin D deficient you know instead of you know vaccinating them we would have done a much greater service to to the population if we just given them vitamin D well and also what comes to mind I've discussed this on a number of programs is people with darker skin in Northern climates don't synthesize as much so they may have even lower levels of vitamin D and not realizing it so there's another you know very valuable use Cas yes so you know elderly people don't make vitamin D well um obese people don't make vitamin D people of dark skin don't make vitamin D so there's certain groups that are even it's even more important to take vitamin D is there anything else vitamin D is good for well it's you know there's nothing that it's bad for unless the only thing is it can be bad for is if you have high blood calcium so if you if you have hypocalcemia for whatever reason you wouldn't want to take vitamin D but otherwise you know it's it's very safe you mentioned something about addiction to food and I suspect that a lot of people you know I even just sort of I'll mention this anecdotally um I actually I was told recently a story about someone who was working in the food industry broadly speaking who quit at one point because she realized that she her job was basically to make food more addictive yeah so there's no question that processed food there's a pervasive addiction to processed food and BAS basically the sugar and fructose causes a high that then stimulates the appetite and it becomes selfs serving because the more you eat the more you want to eat and then you become your blood glucose goes up and you develop uh insulin resistance and so people are addicted that there's animal data that shows that glucose is more addictive to to mice than cocaine or heroin say that again yeah animal data suggests that glucose like sugar like sugar yeah like sweetened beverages yeah is more addictive to to experimental animals than cocaine it causes such a heart and of course to be we're it we're not allowed to run those experiments on humans um wow so there's no question that a large segment of of the western population are addicted to processed foods and just by switching to real food and so you know if it looks like food it's food you know if it comes in a carton or has a wrapper and it has a a package insert or a list of ingredients and preservatives and chemicals then it's not real food so just by changing your diet to real food can make an enormous difference you know it's very interesting CU one of the things that I I've done keto dieting for a long time and you just the moment you start doing it it actually becomes very normal you just have to kind of overcome the initial kind of desire to to to eat the sugary things but after a while it's it's it's not an issue at all but I I've often told people I think the reason it actually works is because you just can't eat most processed things if you're eating keto you just it's just not not an option for you yeah so once once you become adapted to eating real food eating processed food becomes very difficult it's just becomes you know unappetizing and doesn't have the same appeal and so that that's why it's not a difficult thing to do you know it should be a lifestyle change not a diet and so once you you start eating real food then um the processed food becomes unappetizing I know it's still nice to have that you know that burger once in a while yeah it's kind to cheap now and then um let me ask you about this so you know I I myself do a lot of meditation it's been incredibly helpful to me um at the same time I can disclose I don't get a ton of sleep and and so and what so what what is the cost of that or or what what is the right amount of sleep in this to Bro of course it's going to be different for different people but you mentioned that as something that's important so sleep is really important for brain restoration and so there's something called the glymphatic system which is the way the brain detoxifies itself during sleep it's it's it's it's like the lymphatic system of the brain but it's only active during sleep and so we know that people that are sleep deprived it reduces your life expectancy it increases your risk of cancer so it's really important that people you know people have the idea that they can get away with five or 6 hours of sleep and it doesn't affect their their health that is not true the data is clear that people who who you know an adult needs at least 7 hours of sleep and interference with sleep in you know increases your risk of many diseases including you know dementia and there's data that people who have cancer who actually have um sleep dysfunction have a much higher risk of of demising absolutely fascinating what about you know you mentioned some repurposed drugs and so forth with for use with cancer that are not generally known yeah so there there there's a there's there is a group called redo which looks at repurpose drugs for the use of cancer so so they list about 250 different drugs believe it or not that have shown you know in experimental models to have activity against cancer cells in the book or monograph that I wrote I reduced them down to the 30 that I thought was the most effective and so there are really good studies showing that that um both in a test tube in a in in a um animal model as well as in patients that it has anti-cancer activity and there's there's a list of these you know so vitamin D is is is number one but then we have melatonin we have green tea um the anti-diabetic medication Metformin actually is a very powerful anti-cancer drug and then we have the antiparasitic drugs there's mebendazol I that that have activity against um cancer cells um the this I was going to say the the horsey wormer so believe it or not believe it or not the horsey wormer is very effective against certain Cancers and so we know of of cases of patients who had solid tumors who were given the horse dwma and the together with some other drugs so you know as a said it's not one one magical drug It's a combination It's a combination approach but we're given a regimen which included the horse DW and the cancer disappeared absolutely fascinating you know it just it also struck me you know there there's no reason why you you couldn't have your vitamin D have your matcha I love I probably drink matcha every day you know uh you know concentrated green tea in the powder and and me melatonin or other things also very kind of innocuous um yes so you know the bottom line is you know there are some patients who would choose this approach rather than undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy particularly for cancers that are not responsive to chemotherapy but also you know you can use them as adjuncts to chemotherapy so that in the end you need less chemotherapy and the data is clear that the combination is more effective than chemotherapy alone so you know this is this is I think the point you kind of have to approach any treatment these days skeptically any treatment regimen you really have to I'm going to say the the the the terrible term do your own research right this was became something that you're not allowed to say right over over the last few years it be absolutely I think the bottom line is patients must be empowered Ed they need to be empowered by the truth and they should do their own research I think the days are are gone where you trust sorry I'm sorry to say this you trust implicitly what the physician says particularly the oncologist in this country so in some European countries the oncologists or integrative oncologists they follow you know particularly in Europe they'll use a combination of standard therapy plus unconven what would be considered unconventional but it happens in the same hospital um in this country there you know almost all oncologists will just follow chemotherapy so I think that patients but with the with the exception of this of this one which probably in many cases would but has this whole integrative yeah so it is interesting so they they do they focus on lifestyle interventions as part of it they don't look at repurpose drugs or other dietary manipulation so there is the I was surprised that they actually do have such a program uh which is really which is fantastic but it should be much it should be the standard of care their patients should follow in you know comprehensive lifestyle changes as well as you know I would say you know repurpose drugs how many papers did you look at for this monograph yeah so I looked at over 1,400 different peerreview papers um so I think I have a pretty good understanding of the literature and this data is out there this data is published I mean there's really good data for example showing that um controlling your diet if you have color rectal cancer and have surgery and you control your diet so that you control your glucose you risk of getting a metastases and d of a metastasis is much less and this is in the oncology literature so the the data is out there um that's why patients have to do their own research and you know which is what I try to do in my book is to really compile all the data out there in a place that patients can read and then decide you know what they think is would be fit in with their lifestyle over the last few years and our viewers can you know look back to some of our previous interviews you know I mean you started out as a you know running an emergency room a big emergency room and of course and you also developed this uh the vitamin C sepsis protocol which is you know now been Vindicated we've talked about that before I think you've published over 500 papers but not really focused on cancer why should people trust this people would say stay in your lane Dr Merck yes I have been asked a question and that that is a good question so firstly it was ICU not emergency medicine just although it's a small point so the the reason is is that I I have no stake in the game that I'm I'm not going to I have no conflict of interest I can objectively look at the literature and so that's what I've done in most of my career is objectively looked at the literature and come up with treatment plans so I I'm I have no conflicts here I can objectively look at the scientific data and I can simulate the data and I can compile the data and so that's what I did you know I'm not claiming to be an oncologist I'm just presenting the data that's out there all I'm doing is I compile the data that's out there and because I have no conflict of interest I have no skin in the game I can be honest and objective and transparent and so if people don't think it's true well let them decide for themselves but you know obviously I've looked at the literature and I'm presenting it as honestly and as scientifically as I can well and the reason I mentioned you know the number of papers you have published and of course you know sepsis is this huge problem and frankly any hospital it's a significant cause of death in any Hospital you develop protocols that were better and cheap and can be applied you know almost anywhere in the world you know in places where that don't have you know terribly great Hospital facilities I gu I guess I'm trying to say is you've you've done a lot of thinking about how to treat people and help make them better including uh during covid in fact that is actually what cost you your your career is in you know running the ICU because you refused to use these protocols which we now know were terrible right and and you applied you tried to do something better which indeed it worked yeah so I think Co basically opened my eyes to be honest you know I I followed the narrative previously and then I realized that there was another story there was another side to the story and I think the diabetes and the cancer treatment is a good illustration that there is another side the data is out there it just needs to be brought to the surface oh great so where can people find this cancer monograph of yours yeah so two places they can go to the flccc website so that's lccc.edu the monograph at on amazon.com well wonderful well any final thoughts as we finish yeah I think that people need to be empowered to improve their own health that I think cancer is largely a prevent able disease and that people should do what they can so they don't get cancer it's as simple as that well Dr Paul Merck it's so good to have you on again thank you Yan it's always a pleasure thank you all for joining Dr Paul mer and me on this episode of American thought leaders I'm your host Yan Kell [Music]