Podcast 549: Understanding Colorectal Cancer: Prevention & Holistic Approaches

SCOTT: Did you know that there is a cancer that is the most preventable cancer of all the cancers, yet it still is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths? What is wrong with us as a society? And we're going to be talking about that and a lot more right after this. 

Welcome everybody. This is the Life Enthusiast online radio and TV network. That's my old, old old intro. Hi George. Nice to see you. Everybody, this is the Life Enthusiast Health Shots podcast restoring vitality to you and the planet. I'm your co-host Scott Paton. Joining us as usual, Martin Pytela. Hey Martin, how are you doing today?

MARTIN: I am trying to redefine myself as a health engineer because I'm a nerd and I'm into technical things and details, and maybe I should be. What do you think? Should I start promoting health nerd or stick with health engineer?

SCOTT: Health engineer because you are an engineer. Engineers put things together, and they figure out the solutions to problems and that's definitely what you do.

MARTIN: What I want to say here is this. Whatever we say next is that we are engineering health. We are building health. We are not dealing with illness. We leave that to the doctors and the areas that the FDA regulates. FDA regulates your illness, whether it's to diagnose, mitigate, improve, treat, cure any of those terms- associate that with an illness name. That's their territory. Our territory is health. We build health.

SCOTT: Right and that's true. Thank you. So, most of the people that I listen to on YouTube or watch on YouTube, they'll go through it 10 or 15 minutes before they get to the point. They'll give you the hook. They'll make you curious. They'll continue to have you hang on, hang on, hang on. We don't do that. We're going to be talking about colorectal cancer. I don't know if I said that right or not.

MARTIN: A tumor in the pipe.

SCOTT: A tumor in the exhaust pipe. Oh! I have to tell you a funny, okay, so this, we're not getting to it. I'm going on a sidebar. Sorry, everybody. But visiting my son up in British Columbia, Canada, over Christmas and most of February. And one of my presents to him at Christmas, no, was like his birthday. So almost a year ago [my gift] was an ice cream machine to make homemade ice cream. So he would put all sorts of good ingredients in it, and he would make this high-protein ice cream. So one night we're at the kitchen sink, and he's got this container, and it's got the ice cream in it. It's all made, and he takes the top off, and it's chocolatey. It should smell delicious and it smells like shit. And I said to him, "That smells terrible." And he looks at me. I look at him, and then I go, "Did you fart?" "Yes." So I wasn't smelling the ice cream at all. I was smelling the fart.

So it totally put me off of his ice cream. So we're getting back to our topic today: colorectal cancer is something that we should be able to prevent. We have the knowledge to prevent it. It's not a secret how you can prevent it, but we're not doing it. So the first thing we want to say is like, you know what is it? You mentioned it's a tumor in the pipe. And so do we know because all of a sudden we can't poop and it's stuck behind this tumor that's growing in the pipe, or is it painful, or like what can we look at in terms of clues?

MARTIN: Well, it starts small and gets bigger as time goes. So, it depends how far up, right? Rectal means rectum; anus is the sphincter where you block stuff and then you open the sphincter. Then there's a space about big enough to put a hand in as some p*** demonstrates. That's where the poop is sitting. Yeah, that's where the poop is sitting, waiting to be pushed out, right? And it's about six inches deep. About this deep. And then it takes a corner, the colon takes a turn and starts heading uphill. Right?

SCOTT: Right. And then it goes kind of around the stomach area.

MARTIN: Yeah. First it goes up your left side, then it goes across to the right, and then it goes down to the bottom right side, and that's where your appendix is. In your ileocecal valve, where the small intestine connects to the large intestine. So when we talk about the colorectal is that last four, five, six inches, and then the colon is usually the next piece up.

And so it starts small, right? It starts with one cell, two cells, four cells, eight cells, and starts growing until it becomes noticeable.

SCOTT: So some of the things that you should be watching for would be like changes in your bowel habits if you always go in the morning and now you're going in the evening, or blood in your stool, unexplained weight loss, and fatigue. I don't know if fatigue should be on that list because I think most of us are always fatigued and,

MARTIN: Well, when you're starting to feel more tired than you're used to, then there's something off with you. This blood in the stool. So if it's red, red bright on the toilet paper, you probably have a burst vessel somewhere at the last stage, it's probably a hemorrhoid somewhere, either on the inside or outside of your sphincter. That usually, while alarming, is not a big deal.

SCOTT: Yeah.

MARTIN: It's the blood that's digested that's kind of brown, and you can tell that it's blood, but it's old. That's usually further upstream, and that's the one that you need to worry about because the cancer is creating blood supply and something broke it open.

SCOTT: All right. I was going to say there's sometimes when I go, and I have this bright red, and I panic, and then I think “Well, hang on a second. I had beet juice yesterday. The beet juice just goes right through.”

MARTIN: Yeah, beet juice is great. That's an awesome way to test how fast your transit time is, right? Get yourself no beets, and then beets, and then how long between the meal and the red in the poop? So normal, ideally normal transit yeah, normal transit time is about 24 hours, like a dinner should show up in your next dinner, not necessarily next morning.

SCOTT: Great. So, Barbara says, "Watching you live, Scott. Sorry I missed the beginning. As you may recall, I am a colon cancer survivor." Oh, Barb! Barbara. Wonderful to have you on the show.

MARTIN: No, we don't recall, but thanks for telling us. 

SCOTT: Martin wouldn't recall. I recall. So, usually eight hours, because I know Barbara. So, 24 hours. Yeah. 8 to 24. I find that I go mostly in the morning. I don't usually go in the afternoon, but I find that it's like two or three times in the morning.

MARTIN: Okay: So if you really want to be very technical about the best elimination habits, you would want to have something in, something out. If you eat a large breakfast, you should have an elimination that associates that. And then you have lunch, okay, you should have another elimination that comes from that. And if you eat dinner. So, if you really want to be strict about it, three poops a day, three meals a day, and something into the garage, something out of the garage,

SCOTT: Right.

MARTIN: All right.

SCOTT: So if you've gone two or three or four or five or six days without pooping, you've got to do something. Well, I mean, you'd be feeling terrible anyway, right?

MARTIN: Yeah. By that time, you'd be in a terrible [situation]. 

SCOTT: Scott Rogers, my buddy, says, "I grow beets in my backyard. My medicine raised bed. 

MARTIN: That is an awesome idea. Awesome idea.

SCOTT: Nothing like beets, tomatoes, fruits and vegetables out of your backyard. Awesome.

MARTIN: In fact, let me just throw a health tip. It's called the ABC. One apple, two beets, three carrots. ABC, one, two, three. One apple, two beets, three carrots. Put them through a juicer and drink all that.

SCOTT: And Barbara says she's been cancer-free since 2014. That's awesome news.

MARTIN: Good, 12 years, you should be counting, as you are living cancer-free. Here's a big deal with cancer. Cancer is a metabolic condition. So if you change your metabolic regime, it's highly likely that the cancer is not coming back. When you don't change your metabolic regime, regardless of how much surgery and radiation you throw at it, it will be back.

SCOTT: Yeah. She says, "I eat apples daily." Good for you.

MARTIN: Right on, Barbara. Okay.

SCOTT: Getting back to your ABCs, Martin. One of my favorite juices to make with a juicer, like a real juicer that just juices, is an apple, a beet, well, maybe two beets. I'm not getting into how many. Carrots, ginger, and garlic. And sometimes celery, oh, it bites back. But I'll tell you, you have that ginger, and you have that garlic, you never get a cold. It kills it. All right.

MARTIN: Yeah. Well, so just to put a highlight on it. So the garlic is an antimicrobial and the ginger is a stimulant. So it really livens things up.

SCOTT: Cool. All right. So let's talk a little bit about detection. So some of the ways that people look for this particular cancer is because they say if you catch it early, like anything, you can make changes. So there's colonoscopies, there's stool tests, there's actually something called a virtual colonoscopy. Any comments on those?

MARTIN: I'm not an expert in medical procedures. I am certainly well aware of colonoscopies. One of our guys, Jevari Oberon, died because of one. Give you a story. He needed a colonoscopy. In the process of that, they nicked his colon just enough to cause an opening. So then he was getting the contents of his colon into his peritoneal cavity. So he ended up with poop throughout the belly. So it was peritonitis, inflammation of the whole peritoneum, which was followed by a phenomenal procedure where they take you, cut you from stem to stern, take the whole thing apart, take all the organs out, and they wash you with sterilizing fluids and sew it all up. Tada. Anyway, so they are not without risk. They are useful because they allow the person to see what's going on in there, and they usually say, "Oh, they found a polyp and snipped it away.”

SCOTT: Right. I have two friends, actually that had holes in their colons, not from colonoscopies. They just had the holes. And so the poop, like you said, it just goes into all the parts of your body that should be sterile and isn't now because you have poop in it. And in both cases, they cut them right open in the front, open them up, wash them down, close them. And in both cases, well, both gentlemen were overweight. So what, of course, happens is you're not eating like you did before and you lose weight, and they staple everything together, and the staples come loose, and then you leak again. So, one of them had like three operations and almost died twice, and the other one had a sack for a while, and then after about three months they connected the colon back up so he could poop, and both survived. So that was kind of the good news.

MARTIN: And it's, in fact, miraculous and amazing just what the surgeons have learned to do. Like it's amazing. I have the utmost respect for surgeons.

SCOTT: Yeah. The ability that they have to fix stuff is incredible. And Scott, had a good comment I just want to bring up. He says he sprinkles cayenne pepper flakes on my breakfast eggs each day. The heat only lasts about an hour. But does it burn when it comes out, Scott? That's what we want to know. I remember eating a really spicy meal. I've often done this, and then you know it's like, oh that was really good, you go to bed, and next morning it's like, oh was burning as it came out.

MARTIN: Yeah.

SCOTT: And Barbara says: “Sadly, I did not get a colonoscopy before I was diagnosed with colon cancer. I could have prevented much of the ordeal I went through in the battle that I faced.”

MARTIN: Indeed. Indeed so. Yeah, if you suspect something, it's good to know rather than not know. I was counseling somebody just the other day, and he's saying: “I don't think I want to go have a colonoscopy.” I said: “Listen, if you think there's something wrong, it's better to know than not know. Just go find out.”

SCOTT: So, let's talk a little bit about prevention strategies. Okay, so diet and nutrition, should we have super processed foods? 

MARTIN: Well, the number one thing that's involved here is the volume and movement. 5,000 years ago, people lived in a hunter-gatherer kind of lifestyle, they ate about 100 grams of fiber a day. A nice target that the doctors push on us now is about 35 grams of fiber a day, and it is said that most North Americans are at 10 or less. You see what happens is a hamburger has very little fiber. There's a pickle and a leaf of lettuce and two rings of onion, and that's about the extent of fiber. Not much, right? 

SCOTT: Not much.

MARTIN: Not much. Previously, you had to chew a whole bunch of bullrushes and who knows what to get your belly full.

SCOTT: Right.

MARTIN: Anyway, so fiber with water, soluble fiber. If I were to recommend anything now, I would go with oatmeal for breakfast, steel-cut, not processed. Okra is a phenomenal source of soluble fiber. It's highly underappreciated. Not well known. One of the famous tricks out there is to chop okra, raw okra, and then let it soak overnight and drink the water because the soluble fiber transfers into that.

SCOTT: What about chia seeds and flax seeds?

MARTIN: Sure. Yeah, it's all fiber. Absolutely. Cook it in with your oatmeal.

SCOTT: Well, actually, there's a recipe that I started when I was back up in Canada a month ago, which was steel-cut oats, chia seeds, and crushed flax seeds, and then we would put a little cinnamon on it, some yogurt, I use coconut milk, my daughter-in-law used the regular milk, and then you put it in the fridge at night, and then you have it in the morning. And in the morning, what I would do, because it's really, really thick, is I would put it in a bowl, and I would put some more coconut milk on it and slush it around. And it was, well the cinnamon made it delicious. I don't know if the rest of it was very.

MARTIN: Actually, chia is awesome. People call it the chia pudding. Chia is the one and only grain that you can eat without cooking. All you need to do is just put water on it, and it will suck it in and expand, and I think it's only 15-20 minutes and it's edible.

SCOTT: Yeah. Not long. Barbara say: I was told the stress I dealt with daily had a lot to do with my story. I stay away from red meat whenever possible. Stress is a big one. When we don’t relax it screws up our body in so many ways.

MARTIN: There you go: Rest and Repair is the name for the side of the autonomic nervous system that is the opposite of Fight or Flight. When you are stressed you go into fight or flight. When you relax you go into the rest and repair. Of course the stressiness of your life is going to keep you away from healing .

SCOTT: And then Scott Rogers also says, "I grow and eat moringa leaves." Moringa.

MARTIN: That guy is living some place tropical.

SCOTT: I don't know where he lives. I thought he lived in the States. But, I just watched a video on YouTube about the moringa leaves and the moringa and how good it is. So that's awesome, Scott.

MARTIN: And yes, we sell Moringa powder in our store. It's an awesome supplement. Anything that you can put into a smoothie. It is a great idea.

SCOTT: Yeah. So, you want to get your exercise, walk, be a healthy weight, it's harder if you're underweight, harder if you're way overweight. You don't want to smoke, and you don't want to drink too much alcohol. The normal things. I was also watching a video that was talking about microplastics. So, Martin, I want to add that probably to next month's list of things to talk about, it was fascinating. But we often talk about the leaky gut, and this fellow was talking about how the plastic is so small, and it gets through a leaky gut. So you need to have a really healthy gut, and as we've said often, it's one cell deep. So you have one cell out of place, you have a leaky gut. So you really need to pay attention to that and,

MARTIN: Yeah. So many. I'm just like a little guy.

SCOTT: You're a little health engineer. You're like a little health engineer. Bing bing bing bing.

MARTIN: I'm thinking about emotions. Cancer is traveling on the vibration of grievance, complaint, the opposite of gratitude. So, when somebody cuts you off in traffic, instead of going into the grievance of, "Man, some people are just such bad drivers.” And I need to come up with, “Wow, this guy is showing me that I'm not leaving enough space between me and the next car.”

MARTIN: Or, I surely appreciate the guy, how elegantly he's cut into such a small space.

SCOTT: Or thank god he didn't hit me.

MARTIN: Even that. Yeah. All the gratitude, happy, all the good things that happen, right?

SCOTT: When I managed a grocery store, one of the things that we always said was the sandwich way of giving feedback or criticism, you say something nice, then you tell them what the problem is, and then you say something nice. And I was thinking about that because, yeah. Scott says, "Amen. Be grateful hourly." My son had some things that he wanted to get off his chest, which was great. I'm glad that he did. But I noticed that all he did was talk about the things that he disliked or resented, right? And so that shows me that he's not spending any time thinking about what he's grateful for or what's good. Right. So, and that's in my opinion, a trap that we fall into, right? I get up today and it's sunny and warm. Ah, it's way too hot. I get up tomorrow, it's sunny, and it's cold. Oh, it's way too cold. I get up tomorrow, it's rainy and cold and mild. Oh, it's rainy. Right? And so, we don't appreciate, wow, I like the sun or wow, I like the fact that we're going to have green, the air is clean because of the rain, and we have green trees. And so, we don't balance that off. And it's, we're in this, and that's what causes the stress. Because the stress is like, “I'm mad at you because of blah blah blah blah blah.” And what causes the relaxation, Martin, I really appreciate, blah blah blah blah blah. And it's such total they're opposites, but totally the energy is so important.

MARTIN: Yeah, here's the challenging part of this: we humans are surviving or have evolved by surviving our hostile environments, so of course we have these two amygdalas sitting right here. And they process both the eyes and the ears, and the smell signals as they're coming through. And they are instant reaction. And our lives, our survival depends on recognizing that something is critically dangerous. As in if it's time to run, we need to run.

SCOTT: Right

MARTIN: Fast. So we're X times, I don't know, 10 times 100 times more likely to see danger than to see not-danger, right?

SCOTT: Yeah

MARTIN: You just described that the sunshine was nourishing the plants and the rain was watering the garden and all of that, and instead you're trying to think of how to not burn your bald head and how to, and so on, right?

SCOTT: Yeah. Right. How not to get it wet, how not to burn it, how not to get it wet, because the blisters are bad and the cold that comes from the wet head is not good either.

MARTIN: Yeah. All that. Right. And so then you need to be expressing gratitude for the fact that you do have a hat.

SCOTT: Right. Yeah. So it's really like where you put your focus. And then it’s a really important thing because, like you said, we need to rest and repair, and you don't rest and repair when you're stressed out and full of rage and resentment and all those things. It's a downward spiral, and you want an upward spiral if you think down is bad and up is good sort of thing, right?

MARTIN: Yeah. All that.

SCOTT: So, let's talk about some of the things that people can do from a nutritional standpoint. And the first one I want to talk about is one of my favorite products. I just love it. And that's Strata-Flora. I'm going to bring it up here on stage.

MARTIN: Yeah. Highly appropriate that you think of it because this is on the prevention side. This is to build health. This is on the build volume. This thing is loaded with multiple things. The two main ingredients that are functionally important are lecithin and apple fiber. The apple fiber is both soluble and insoluble fiber, and a lot of pectin that absorbs toxins. So this is an absorber and volume generator, and then the lecithin that we put in it is the emulsifier that facilitates the production of more bile. Bile in your liver is created with bitter things. There's a whole bunch of liver-feeding bitter herbs in here.

SCOTT: It's one of my favorite superfoods, and usually I have a bottle every three to six months

that I go through, and it's really funny, and I have to make this comment Martin, because you're, I think you're just absolutely amazing, is we will talk about individual ingredients like lecithin or something when we're just chatting together, and I'll think: “Oh, now I got to go get some lecithin, right? And then, before I do, I go to the bottle that I have in my fridge or my freezer of an Exsula product, and I will look at the ingredients, and it's there, right? Apple cider vinegar. I'm thinking, "Oh, man. I got to get apple cider vinegar." And then I look at what, I make a drink with just water and the Exsula product, whichever one it is in the morning, and I drink it. I drink a glass of water and then a glass of the Exsula, and I'm thinking, "Oh man, like I am getting it because it's in here." And so I don't think that,

MARTIN: Yeah. One important sidebar is that it is there in a meaningful amount. The reason that these things are not in capsules or pills is that you have to take them by the spoonfuls because these structural ingredients have volume. You cannot reduce it into a tiny little brick. If I compressed it into a tiny little brick that's the size of the tip of my pinky, it would be so dense that your digestive system wouldn't even touch it.

SCOTT: Right.

MARTIN: Would come through you undigested.

SCOTT: Yeah.

MARTIN: Whereas this here expands as it goes through you and creates the terrain in which better digestion and better elimination, which is what this is about, is facilitated.

SCOTT: Yeah. And it also has a bunch of pre and probiotics in it.

MARTIN: Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. There are three phases; think of it like a garden. You need to dig it up, you need to water it, you need to slow it down so it doesn't run off. And you need to seed it, right? So, if you have a fresh new garden, you need to protect it, but you need to water it not too little, not too much, and so on. All of these things do happen when you put Strata-Flora in your daily regimen.

SCOTT: Right. Okay. And the next one I want to talk about is another superfood, Ellagiplex.

MARTIN: Yeah. Ellagiplex is for the people who have failed and already have a problem. That's when it's really important. Mind you, you can use it preventively to build health. And that's this. This thing is upregulating apoptosis, a process by which the immune system can tell a cell that's no longer viable, apart from a cell that still can be repaired. Cancer has a phenomenal talent of hiding itself. It has this protective coat, sort of like a wolf who's putting on a sheep's coat so that you think it's a sheep. Well, the stuff that's in the Ellagiplex is taking those sheep coats away from the little wolves, and so your immune system can find it and shut it off.

SCOTT: Hugely important.

MARTIN: So once a year you should probably, everybody should probably take a bottle of this and run through it. Yeah. There's a lot of ingredients. A lot of it has got to do with seeds that are,

SCOTT: You got the aura greens.

MARTIN: Yeah, that's the green stuff that activates the parasympathetic. That's the parasympathetic switch. The mushroom, that's the turn-on, activation of the immune system phases.

SCOTT: And it also has Strata-Flora in it. 

MARTIN: Yeah. Yeah, that's, oh, yeah. Of course. We put Strata-Flora into everything. And then there's the whole bunch of herbs. There are three famous cancer-reversing formulas. One is called Essiac Tea. One is called Hoxsey Formula, which is also known as the Karma Cleanse done by Edgar Cayce. And then the third thing is Sour Sop, which is also a famous plant that is able to help the human body to shut off anything that doesn't belong or anything that's past its useful stage.

SCOTT: Cool. And the last one we want to talk about is Endosterol.

MARTIN: Well, that's an interesting sidebar. Of course, you see there goes Barbara when she found Eckhart Tolle and when she found Byron Katie, they both are the people who teach mindfulness and gratefulness and focus and emotional healing. That's why 14 or 12 years later, she's still here. It has more to do with emotional health than with any pills.

SCOTT: Yeah. Well, and that's one of the things we always talk about, right? You have to look at your emotional health. You have to look at your physical health. You have to look at your mental health, your spiritual health, and make sure that you're focused, focusing enough so that they're all doing well because it's like a table with four legs. Take one leg off, and it's probably not going to stand for very long.

MARTIN: Yeah. 

SCOTT: All right. So, let's take a look at this product. Endosterol.

MARTIN: Okay. Endosterol is a suppository, meaning that it's inserted into the body rectally. It's deposited exactly where it's most needed, and it's well loved by both men and women. It has the,

SCOTT: So there's 10 in the package. Would you use it all at once or do you do it one a week?

MARTIN: Yeah. Every third day or some such. Yeah.

SCOTT: Okay. And this isn't something you would do all year long. You would just do it a certain,

MARTIN: Well, it depends, right? If you find yourself with a prostate that's not functioning well, then you want to reengage and fix the hormones and fix the balance, and this detoxifies and balances and builds proper function. So especially boys with prostate issues or girls with the same stuff, right? Their endocrine system is functioning from that part of the body. If you have anything to do with estrogen or issues of the ovaries functioning. That's, you want to get this one.

SCOTT: Okay. And it's got quercetin, dandelion, ellagic acid, and ginkgo biloba.

MARTIN: And saw palmetto. Yeah, we could take it apart. So the saw palmetto is very famous for its 1,3-beta-sitosterol, which has been well researched into all of that stuff to do with normalizing cells. And the ellagic acid, that's a thing that's the core ingredient in the Ellagiplex, that's where the name came from, and quercetin, you've heard about quercetin, that's the source material for hydroxychloroquine, if you want to hear, do you remember hydroxychloroquine?

SCOTT: Yeah.

MARTIN: Yeah. They made relentless fun of the orange-haired idiot from the White House when he mentioned that it helped him deal with his illness.

SCOTT: And dandelion is a really powerful herb.

MARTIN: Yes. Well, that's liver support. Yeah. That's flushing toxins out of the body. Yes, sir.

SCOTT: Right. Cool. All right. Yeah. Barbara says, "Absolutely. Balance is essential.” That's so important. Cool. All right. So, Martin, any last comments about, I think people need to be aware,  that there's lots that they can do to deal with their health. It's not just one-pill that solves everything. You need to really look at your lifestyle and how you're living.

MARTIN: Okay.

SCOTT: Yeah.

MARTIN: Well, regularity, volume, consistency. Not too soft, not too hard, not too often, not too infrequently, all that.

SCOTT: Cool. All right, so thank you everybody for joining us. We've come to the end of our time together. George says, "Thank you, Scott Martin, for another great episode. I appreciate that." And Barbara says, "My husband's been taking Urinozinc for over 20 years now for prostate health. We've come from an alternative health family. Yay.

MARTIN: Yay, Barbara. Okay, so Barbara, just to mention, zinc is super important, as is copper, as are many, many other things, but that's the immune system. Right on. 

SCOTT: Awesome. So, you've been watching or listening to the, just had a party bus go by. I'm in Medellin, Colombia, and so I had to put it on the mute button because there was a party going on just like right beside me. So, thank you, everybody for joining us, for joining the party. We go live every Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. Eastern time, and that's 11:30 Pacific time. And we really appreciate you all joining us and being with us. Make sure you,

MARTIN: Before you go, subscribe. We really need you to hit the subscribe button if you want to ever bother seeing us again. Because the algorithm,

SCOTT: We're not popular on YouTube. Let's put it, we'll say that. They don't like.

MARTIN: We need your help to be more popular on YouTube. 

SCOTT: That's right. Thank you. Yes. Share with all your friends. And so thanks for joining us, everybody and this is the Life Enthusiast Health Shots podcast, restoring vitality to you and the planet and see you next time. Bye for now.