New Study Reveals a Shocking Side Effect of Chemotherapy

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Hey, everyone. Welcome to the show. I am Dr. Josh Axe. I'm a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the founder of Ancient Nutrition and Leaders.com. On today's episode, I'm going to be talking about some really, really surprising and crazy side effects of chemotherapy that I think everybody needs to know.

And I'm going to go through natural remedies and therapies that have been shown in clinical studies to fight cancer, along with some ancient ideas about how to fight cancer, all on today's episode. Now, approximately 2 million Americans are diagnosed with cancer every year, and in 2020, 19 million new cases of cancer worldwide. 2020, 10 Million deaths due to cancer.

Now, but listen how cancer is going to continue to grow. In 20 years— in just 17 years from now, by 2040, new cancer cases are expected to rise by nearly 30 million, and by 2040, cancer-related deaths are expected to rise to 16.4 million. And what's crazy is there are— there's been billions of dollars for the past 50 years being poured into cancer research, and yet cancer rates continue to rise.

And it's insanity to me to think that with all the billions of dollars of research, the numbers just keep getting worse. Why do we continue to give money to all of these pharmaceutical companies when what they're doing isn't working? And again, I'm going to get into the end here some of the science behind how using some natural treatments might be part of the solution.

Maybe is what a lot of these pharmaceutical companies should be actually doing their research on— herbs and supplements and therapies and lifestyle— rather than only synthetic drugs. Now, globally, nearly 58% of new cancer cases required chemotherapy in 2018. So the number here is almost 60%. By 2040, the demand for chemotherapy is expected to rise by over 50%.

And radiation therapy and chemotherapy are the— currently the 2 most common forms of cancer treatment. But according to a new clinical study, if you get cancer and radiation treatment, it gives you a greater likelihood of developing a secondary form of cancer. So did you hear that? The treatment for cancer, the side effect is developing a different form of cancer according to a new study.

Now, before we get into this, I also want to talk about the, the primary side effects that are well known of chemotherapy. And by the way, I was able to experience this When I was a child, my mom was diagnosed with cancer at 40 years old— breast cancer. She went through many rounds of chemotherapy, and I remember her losing her hair and all of the symptoms I'm about to go over.

And so this is incredibly personal for me. I experienced them in— from the form of a family member. And so chemotherapy side effects include hair loss, mouth sores, nerve and muscle damage, increased risk of infection, fertility problems, bowel issues, cell and organ damage, and deficiencies in including B vitamins, probiotics, and antioxidant loss are some of the side effects.

You can add a new side effect here, and that is one of the side effects of chemotherapy is cancer. That's one of the side effects. So it's used to treat cancer. And, and I also experienced this side effect with my mom. My mom was given chemotherapy to treat her breast cancer.

About 9 years later, My mom was diagnosed with cancer again, this time in her lung, and I believe a big part of that was due to her getting chemotherapy the first time. And according to the study, it actually increases your risk of getting cancer somewhere else if you get that treatment. Now, additionally, chemotherapy could cause other cancers.

And while advances in cancer treatments approaches have— the reality is, I think a lot of people believe that it increases the prognosis for many types of cancer in the short term. And that may or may not be true, but the reality is it's been linked to developing other types of cancer such as metastatic cancer, leukemia, and other other forms of cancer.

Like my mom having breast and then later being diagnosed with lung due to the side effects of chemotherapy. Now I want to go through this study in a little more detail, and then I'm going to get into some natural solutions that. Have been proven. And I know many oncologists and medical doctors who also have discussed these.

And all of these, most of these are based on— all of them to some degree have medical research behind them. But let me jump into this study now on chemotherapy quickly, and then I'm going to get into some things you may want to consider. So the first study is this: researchers study the impact of drugs on patients with breast cancer.

And here's what they found: the medication increases the risk of cancer cells migrating to other areas of the body where they are almost always lethal. So these toxic medications switch on a repair mechanism in the body which ultimately allows tumors to grow back stronger. It also increases the number of doorways on blood vessels, which allows cancer to spread more rapidly throughout the body.

So again, what we're seeing here is When you have a cancer like breast cancer, okay, and it's localized to an area, and maybe potentially it's even in, uh, let's say the lymph nodes, you get chemotherapy. What those cells do when they see they're being attacked— remember, there's an intelligence to viruses, to bacteria. Uh, we know that viruses have the ability to get smarter.

Cancer cells, uh, will do this too. And so I think there's a couple things potentially at play here based on this study. Some of those cancer cells start to say, oh, we're being attacked here, and they start to move out to other areas of the body and they start to spread. And then also, you're damaging— with chemotherapy, you are damaging your liver so your body can't detox as well.

You're damaging your lymphatic system so it can't detox as well. You're damaging your cells so your cells can't detox as well. All of those are side effects of chemotherapy. So, your cells can't detoxify as well.

Yeah.

Also, you are weakening your immune system, and so it's not as strong at fighting cancer. So ultimately, one of the issues we see here with chemotherapy is it's damaging a lot of the tissues of the body. It's damaging and weakening the immune system. So now your body is less strong at dealing with cancer cells in the first place.

Also, these cancer cells— the part of the side effect of chemotherapy is it increasing your blood vessels, uh, which then allows it to more readily spread throughout the body. So basically, again, the study says this: the side effect of chemotherapy is cancer, okay? Uh, according to this study, or a secondary type of cancer that's not the primary that the person is dealing with.

And we see this all the time, that, that when you look at the rates of somebody who has cancer, the chance of it coming back— they say coming back, it almost never comes back the same area. It always comes back to a different area of the body due to 2 reasons. One, the person had cancer in the first place, and maybe the lifestyle was not changed whatsoever.

So why would somebody not develop another form of cancer in the future, in all likelihood? And the other thing is you weaken your immune system with the treatments. Here's the idea: the cure is worse than the disease in many cases.

Now, I do want to say, and I, I want, I want to make sure I put a disclaimer here, I'm not saying there is never ever a, a, uh, a time where somebody should be using chemotherapy or radiation.

And I think even lower-dose chemotherapy— and some doctors that, uh, have looked at more of the research and are more conscious of this are looking at some things in ways that maybe it could be used in a more limited way and only in certain cases and in lesser amounts with using a lot of other modalities and therapies combined with it.

But I am saying that I think today it's sort of like the only tool in the tool belt For many oncologists, and they need to be aware, and you need to be aware that the side effect of chemotherapy is cancer according to this study, or at least increasing the risk of.

Now, the good news is this, according to a second study, the findings from a 3-year study found that there is a 61% reduction in the risk of invasive cancer in patients who do regular exercise. Took a vitamin D supplement and took an omega-3 supplement daily. Okay, so people that exercised and got vitamin D and omega-3s had a 61% reduction in the risk of developing a future invasive cancer.

So the great news is there are natural things that can be done for prevention, uh, for, for reducing risk. And I want to go through some of these things now along with some therapies that are oftentimes combined with Uh, these more traditional therapies. And so I want to dive into these right now. One of the first ones I want to share, this is something my own mother did.

Okay, so when my mom had cancer, um, this is something that she did. Now listen, she also worked— we, we mentioned before, we met with the oncologist and we were having conversations, and she was under their care the whole time. But the first one here, she did Gerson therapy. And this is where my mom's diet was primarily. Now I want to go through Gerson.

My mom was Very similar to this, but not exact. Here, the diet is doing almost all vegetables, okay? You're doing steamed vegetables, raw vegetables like salads, and vegetable juices, okay? That's the primary part of the, uh, the primary component of the diet is vegetables. Uh, in addition to that, coffee enemas, okay?

And what coffee enemas do is they stimulate your vagal nervous— your, your, your vagus nervous system, and they cause your liver and gallbladder to release bile So it really sort of activates your body's ability to cleanse and detoxify. So it sort of kicks on in overdrive your detoxification system. The next thing here is beef liver.

Now, the newer Gerson therapy that when some people took over, some, some of them eliminated this part of the therapy, but the original Gerson therapy had them either eating raw beef liver or juicing beef liver. In doing that, the reason is beef liver is the most nutrient-dense food on the planet.

It's incredibly high in B vitamins and all the nutrients needed for the liver and the cells to act in the strongest manner possible, and the blood. So really, it helps with cleansing and strengthening, detoxifying the liver and the blood, uh, and the cells.

And, and by— when you look at the most nutrient-dense food on the planet, we're talking vegetables, we're talking liver, they're right up there. And so this really makes a lot of sense. And then natural therapies such as Lugol's solution, pancreatic enzymes— these enzymes help with senescent cells and basically break down a lot of proteins that are in the body that shouldn't be there.

And so also aids in digestion. And so again, pancreatic enzymes are great, potassium compounds, sometimes thyroid hormone. Oftentimes people do peptides today, actually in placement of this as part of Gerson, if you've heard of peptides. And then also vitamin B12. But I would say my mom did something very similar to this.

When my mom had cancer, she did steamed vegetables, raw vegetables, juiced vegetables. She did liver, she did bone broth, she did some wild-caught salmon, she did some berries, but that was her diet for the most part. She ate some healthy fat too on occasion, a little bit like coconut oil and some avocado, but that was her diet in total.

And so, very, very similar to what I'm sharing here, but one thing that— and there are studies, many. These are older studies, but related to Gerson therapy and its benefits. The second holistic treatment in terms of a diet that's been used for many, many years now, probably going on 70 years, was the Budwig protocol.

And Dr. Budwig found a 90% success rate in counteracting the cancer-causing process. And basically, she found a big problem today is we're eating a lot of bad fats, right? A lot of hydrogenated fats. And she believed that there is a mixture of a meal that would actually help with re-energizing our cellular health and our mitochondria. And mitochondria is sort of like the engine of the cell.

It's really important for cleansing and healing, tissue regeneration. And so what she recommended is, uh, doing 6 ounces of something called quark, which today would be considered, um, very similar to like a goat's milk kefir or a cottage cheese. Uh, and then doing several tablespoons of flax meal, so ground flax or chia.

And then with that, adding in a little flax oil, turmeric, black pepper, and doing that as a meal. That's a Budwig therapy, uh, that, that is a meal that it's all— was used throughout. Um, it's been used for many years now as well. I wanna now also talk about number 3, pancreatic or proteolytic enzyme approach.

You know, there are, uh, this is where you basically take— now what proteolytic enzymes are, you might have heard of some of these. Bromelain, nattokinase. There are many others, but these enzymes, they help break down senescent cells that can be cancer-causing. And what you want to do is take this on an empty stomach.

It also helps your body get into autophagy, which is the same benefit you're going to get when you fast. So if you've, you know, heard the benefits of intermittent fasting or doing fasting, many similar benefits of what proteolytic enzymes help do within the body. But you want to take about 5 grams 3 times daily between meals on an empty stomach for this.

The next one I'll mention here is chelation therapy. It could be vitamin C, it could be glutathione and acetylcysteine. Um, there, there are, there are many forms of chelation or vitamin IVs. Okay, I also like Myers cocktail, but doing a cocktail that has antioxidants is something that you want to do.

And really, the pro-oxidant effects, uh, are what appear to be what helps destroy These abnormal unhealthy cells within the body. And then I wanna walk through some supplements here. And, and by the way, again, the diet I really love here is what I mentioned here with my mom.

And it is, and now listen, this might sound radical and it is, but my mom ate mostly vegetables in, in, in the form of, now when she juiced, by the way, it was, is, tends to be low sugar. Now she did some carrots and beets, but for the most part it was a lot of celery, a lot of turmeric and ginger, parsley, cilantro.

Uh, spinach, romaine, a, a lot of those sort of, even some cabbage, a lot of those vegetables. And then she did steamed vegetables and then she did raw. And then with that, she did liver and salmon and bone broth. That was sort of liver, salmon, bone broth. That's where, where she got most of her protein.

Uh, and then in addition to that, she might do just the most she ever did was probably a half a cup of berries. Uh, and then a little bit of healthy fat from avocado, coconut, and olive. And that was it. That was her diet. And, um, and it served her well. Uh, and so, and, and then the other big part is lifestyle. You want to get, you want to get outside as much as possible. That is key.

Every minute it's nice out, you want to be outside. And even when it's not nice out, you want to at least get outside a little. If you want to get outside every single day, if you can get your feet on the bare earth as much as possible. Now I want to talk about some of the supplements according to clinical studies that have been shown at some point to help aid the body in cancer prevention.

First is vitamin D3. I'd recommend 5,000 IUs once to twice daily, depending on your levels. You get a vitamin D test, you definitely want to be over 30, but ideally over 60 or higher. Turmeric, also curcumin, lots of studies on the compound curcumin there. Fish oil or omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin C, E, and selenium, chlorella and spirulina. Those are forms of seaweed that help cleanse the blood.

Green tea contains a compound called EGCG, which stands for epigallocatechin, and those catechins are a form of antioxidant that have been shown to have many benefits. Garlic is another one. Melatonin to help the body sleep and heal more readily. Magnesium, because what it does for helping cleanse the liver, and an actual liver supplement or an organ blend supplement.

And there are many beyond this as well, um, and I wanna touch on a few other treatments that can oftentimes— and by the way, I am not recommending on this video because I can't, because the video would not be allowed to be up. I'm not recommending people go against their doctors. I'm not recommending they not get chemotherapy.

I think that you should partner with a physician that is going to lead you to the best possible outcome, and I think following the advice of your physician is oftentimes wise.

What I can do What I believe on this video is really just share with you some things that, uh, some research that has been done and some things you might consider as you study and learn more about, uh, cancer and some, uh, some therapies that can go along with the traditional approaches.

And so, one of the oils that's been used for many years, and there are some studies around this, is frankincense oil. Now, I believe frankincense and myrrh Uh, are as a combination is even better. But frankincense and myrrh, uh, has compounds like pinene which have some really powerful benefits in terms of what it does for cellular healing and just balancing out cellular health.

Immune-boosting medicinal mushrooms— I'm a huge fan of reishi, turkey tail especially, and then shiitake and maitake. But mushrooms have many benefits. In clinical studies, they've been shown to shrink tumors often. And actually, there's actually Some studies show that certain mushrooms like reishi may reduce chemotherapy side effects such as nausea and hair loss.

So I recommend doing higher doses of these medicinal mushrooms if your physician feels like that's appropriate. Fasting and vegetable juicing, as I mentioned, and I don't recommend fruit juicing. Again, vegetable juicing. Now, fruits like lemons and limes are fine, but outside of that, you really want to stick to just those nutrient-dense vegetables.

Um, doing a ketogenic diet, I don't— it's ideal for some and not ideal for a lot of people with cancer. So it really depends on the type of cancer you have. There's a new type of advanced therapy that I love called NK cell therapy.

This is where you get your blood drawn, they go in and they multiply your body's own NK cells, put it back in your body, and that army can then go and fight, uh, killer cells. And so there's a great physician, his name's Rafael Gonzalez.

He is with, I want to say, UC Irvine, and he is doing studies and actually treatments out of out of, uh, out of, out of Cancun and Cabo, uh, with, with these NK cells therapies. And they're doing a lot of testing at, uh, at UC Irvine, actual studies in, in these universities in California. And so NK cell therapy, something you want to look into with some amazing benefits.

Oxygen therapy such as hyperbaric chambers, I think there's some real benefits of driving oxygen into the cells. And then of course, prayer building peace in your life. I believe in the power of prayer for healing. I believe in meditation.

One of the things my mom did is she would constantly pray, and then she would, uh, meditate and say certain scriptures like, by his stripes I'm healed, over and over and over again. She focused on, uh, uh, as well just spending time, um, just being grateful. With a gratitude practice just throughout the day.

And I believe that cancer, oftentimes there's a, there is a spiritual and emotional component really tied in there. So I think working on and strengthening spiritual health, doing a practice of prayer and meditation— and meditation in this sense is, is more of the, uh, what I'd call Judeo-Christian meditation, not more, less of the Buddhist or Eastern meditation.

It's a focusing on one thing, like how grateful you are about all the things in your life. Okay, something like that. Or focusing on the person of Christ, or focusing on, um, being in a joyful state, you know. And so, so it's, it's more focus— rather than focusing on nothing, it's focusing on one thing that is, uh, that, that is pure and healing and positive.

It's more of that sort of meditation for healing, uh, I believe is the most powerful. And so I want to say again, again, that, that I wanted to do this episode because The recent study came out showing one of the side effects of chemotherapy is getting a secondary form of cancer to the form of cancer being treated. I mean, this is something people need to know about.

Also, so many people don't know of many of the natural therapies I talked about, everything from NK cell therapy, stem cell therapy is another one I didn't cover here, hyperbaric chamber therapy, these medicinal mushrooms such as reishi and shiitake and turkey tail. For using frankincense oil, many of the supplements that have been shown in studies like vitamin D and turmeric, right?

So, so there's a lot of things I don't think people are fully aware of. Uh, and even Gerson therapy also talked about pancreatic enzymes. These are all things I think people should consider and know about when it comes to cancer, because it's still— even though the bill— we put billions and billions of dollars into research, it's still growing almost every single year.

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