Katherine Froggatt (00:00)

Before we get started today, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for pressing play. Thank you for connecting with me today.

At some point after treatment, most of us get told something about sugar, cut it out, starve the cancer. And for a lot of women that instruction arrives without context and without support and without any explanation of what's actually happening inside the body. So we either go to the extremes because everyone tells us unsolicited advice at some point.

Or we completely dismiss the whole thing because it all feels too much and it's too overwhelming. What if neither of those responses is the right one? Well, today I have a doctor in the room with me who works at the intersection of general practice and metabolic health every single day. And he has a very different conversation with his patients than the one that most of us have had, including myself.

Let me introduce Glen. Glen was born in Wellington and grew up in small New Zealand towns, went to the University of Otago and has worked at Tauranga Hospital, then two years in a mission hospital in Papua New Guinea, and then GP practice in Taupo

Glen currently works as a GP in Mangakino and runs a private metabolic health clinic in Taupo called Reversal NZ. Glen has been a multi-sport athlete and represented New Zealand at a World Dual-Thalon Champs in 2012 as an age-Group athlete, competed in the Coast to Coast and the Ironman.

Glen has triple fellowships in general practice, lifestyle medicine, and nutritional and environmental medicine as well. In 2021, he was awarded New Zealand GP of the Year. Glen is involved with Metabolic Health New Zealand and make NZ healthy again. And he's an avid gardener and is together with his wife Vanessa, while trying to produce as much of their own

food, garden to table concept in their beautiful property in Kinloch, Taupo. Welcome Glen.

Glen Davies (02:36)

Yeah, thank you very much, Katherine.

Katherine Froggatt (02:38)

Glen. when we first met that was in the GP practice and I believe that you were not my allocated GP, but then by some chance, you probably saw me and because of my own breast cancer diagnosis, 2016, I just want to say thank you for all the work you've done for women in this space, for anyone struggling with cancer and diabetes. Glen, can you tell me

What drew you to metabolic health and specifically in the context of diabetes and cancer recovery?

Glen Davies (03:09)

Yeah, so was through diabetes that I...

got introduced into the concept of metabolic health. it was, you know, I think if we're good at our job, we learn from our clients. don't like the word patient, but from our clients. And it was a patient who came into my room, Wayne. Between patients he came in, he told me I was bloody useless. And it was about time I read something and he put six books on my table and suggested I read them.

them was Professor Grant Schofield and Professor Karen Zinn. That was What the Fat and several other books, Jason Fung. And I read those books and it just changed the way that I view medicine. I now view medicine as the science of metabolic health. And that applies to all of the manifestations of deranged metabolic health, whether that be diabetes or whether it be

weight or whether it be dementia or whether it be cancer.

Katherine Froggatt (04:09)

Yeah, such important work and the conversations that we are being exposed to right now, even though it's conflicting, but I feel like the narratives are starting to change. And it's so nice for Wayne, for someone like Wayne, we all have a Wayne in our life that challenges us.

So I guess I'm really interested with metabolic health approach. You've done a lot of this and you've helped several people reverse diabetes and you've helped several patients with a cancer diagnosis navigate what would be a really good approach. So tell me about the work that you've done with the breast cancer survivors that's come into your clinic using the metabolic health approach. I mean, where should they really consider starting and

Do you feel that a lot of women who hear metabolic health might be a little bit triggered towards a diet protocol?

Glen Davies (05:01)

Yeah, so just for context, I think there's probably well over 300 people that have reversed their diabetes, meaning they are no longer diabetic and they're not on medications. In terms of the number

Katherine Froggatt (05:12)

you

Glen Davies (05:13)

of people with advanced cancer that we've worked with, it's probably also approaching around 300.

When we audited around slightly over 100 people, think something like 19 of them were breast cancer survivors. So probably about 20 % with breast cancer being one of the commonest cancers. So is it just diet? It's

I

would say diet is perhaps the most important concept, but I would consider the

Katherine Froggatt (05:49)

Mm.

Glen Davies (05:50)

six main pillars of metabolic health to be an appropriate diet, some form of fasting, whether that's intermittent fasting or longer fasting, repurposed medicines, which is a big topic, but I'm sure we'll touch on, intravenous

Katherine Froggatt (06:04)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (06:04)

vitamin C, oxygen therapies, and then the whole spirit

emotional support aspect. So that's what I consider to be the six pillars. If you would ask me what is the most important, I am probably going to identify, well, initially the most important or where I would start, I would identify nutrition.

Katherine Froggatt (06:28)

Mm.

Glen Davies (06:29)

Whether it ends up being the most important, I suspect in the end, as women go through this journey, well, actually, I shouldn't just say women should I because breast cancer is an issue for men as well. so

Katherine Froggatt (06:42)

Yes.

Glen Davies (06:42)

as clients go through this journey, I suspect in the end, it's the spiritual, emotional support aspect that becomes the most important. But I

Katherine Froggatt (06:52)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (06:53)

think when we enter, I think the gateway

is through nutrition.

Katherine Froggatt (06:58)

Yeah. Yeah. I feel there is a lot of discussions as well. Like I remembered when I went through my own diagnosis and the oncologist just, or the, even my, the cancer nurse, they didn't have a lot to say about what to eat. And they basically gave me a very generic what to eat and they base it against a balanced diet. No one talks about

as much of insulin resistance 10 years ago. And I think this is just one area that I feel that we need to correct in terms of understanding. And breast cancer patients or clients that I work with all have been in medical menopause. As soon as they, if it's hormonally driven with their hormone receptors positives. So for me, was estrogen receptor positive, progesterone negative. So in some way, shape or form, we are being

put in medical menopause. So therefore the insulin resistance just kicks in straight away. And it's quite a shock to the body. And so I guess where we are wanting to help women understand is insulin resistance is something that we need to understand is happening and how, when we reduce sugar, how that impacts the inflammation and the recovery. So Glen, do you mind talking a little bit more on that?

Glen Davies (08:20)

Okay, so I think we need to create the context first of all,

We used to view cancer as a problem of the nucleus. So we used to say that cancer is a problem with the DNA. The DNA has gone wrong, and then that's coding for cancer. We're now exploring this entirely new concept of cancer. Is that actually the consequence of a upstream problem, which is a metabolic

problem and a problem with the mitochondria. So I'm sure mitochondria is a term that's familiar to most people, but if it's not, think of mitochondria as the batteries within the cells, so they're producing energy.

When we think back to our biology textbooks, there used to be one or two mitochondria drawn within the cytoplasm of the

Katherine Froggatt (09:11)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (09:12)

cell. There's actually thousands of mitochondria within every cell. And the theory of, the metabolic theory of cancer is that the mitochondria are not producing energy properly. There is therefore not enough energy to repair the DNA defects. And then the cells produce these

ongoing abnormal cells. If we were to fix the energy production, if we were to repair the mitochondria, would we then have enough energy to repair the cell or to stop producing these abnormal cell lines? That's the whole theory of the metabolic theory of cancer. Sorry, it's not the whole theory, it's the fundamental.

This then comes down to the fact that in cancer, the majority of cancer cells have abnormal metabolism, meaning they produce energy in an inefficient way. So everyone of the listeners will have experienced that feeling of riding a bike really fast and your quads start burning, you start producing lactic acid. So that's glycolysis or anaerobic, meaning without

oxygen metabolism and it's really inefficient so if you think how long you could ride your bicycle with your quads burning it's a very short distance so an example

Katherine Froggatt (10:32)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (10:32)

of an anaerobic event is running a hundred meters or swimming 25 meters you know if you're thinking the Olympics those are anaerobic events oxygen dependent or aerobic that's running a marathon

That gives you an idea of efficiency. you could not run a marathon using anaerobic metabolism. It's very inefficient. And in fact, it's about 18 times less efficient than aerobic metabolism. And cancer cells predominantly use glycolysis or anaerobic metabolism, which is hugely inefficient, or turn that around, very dependent on glucose, using 18 times

Katherine Froggatt (11:15)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (11:16)

the amount of glucose than a normal cell will. So this is really the guts of understanding this. A cancer cell uses 18 times more glucose than a normal cell. So here you can see the opportunity. It's much easier to starve a cancer cell than it is to starve a normal cell. And mitochondria can use glucose or

they can use fats.

So a normal cell, which has the capacity to move between glycolysis and aerobic metabolism, can use either glucose or can use fats as a fuel, whereas most cancer cells, and this is not emphatic and absolute, but most cancer cells, particularly at the beginning, use glucose only. So fuel the normal cells with dietary fat and avoid

Katherine Froggatt (12:13)

Mm-hmm.

Glen Davies (12:14)

the cancer with glucose. So that's the theory or the context and that's where this advice to avoid sugar comes from because your normal cells function even better but just as well with dietary fats.

cancer cells are dependent on glucose. So if we starve the cancer cells by not giving them glucose, do we weaken them and then make them more vulnerable to the other treatments that we're doing? a nice analogy here is if you think of

Katherine Froggatt (12:48)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (12:49)

a lion hunting a pride, is it pride? No, a herd of zebra. It's not going to go for the strongest

Katherine Froggatt (12:55)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (12:55)

bull. The lions will go for the weakest member of that herd. You know, so what if we weaken

the cancer cells first by depriving them of fuel and then anything else we do, whether

Katherine Froggatt (13:08)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (13:09)

that's chemotherapy, whether that's radiotherapy, whether it's surgery, whether it's repurposed medicines, whether it's meditation, whatever the therapies that we add to this, we're going to be far more successful if those cancer cells are vulnerable because they're starving. that's the context of what we talk about

in the nutrition space. So your question, how strict do you have to be with restricting sugar or restricting carbohydrate, meaning that the cancer no longer has access to glucose, is sort of the choice point.

I know I certainly wouldn't want people to be eating Tim Tams and having fizzy drinks, but

Katherine Froggatt (13:55)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (13:55)

is it okay to have some brown rice and some kumara? That's sort of the choice point. And I think in many ways it depends on

how severe the cancer is. So if I see somebody presenting to me with stage four metastatic breast cancer, I'm probably going to be saying, you've got to go all in. This is strict keto.

And we'd probably

Katherine Froggatt (14:18)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (14:19)

be talking about glucose to ketone ratios, chicken ketones. We'd be doing all that. If somebody had had an early stage cancer and were in full recovery, I suspect they're not going to have to do full aggressive cancer. might be a low carbohydrate whole food diet.

Katherine Froggatt (14:40)

Yeah. Yeah. And it's a fascinating world that we're in right now because there is a label for everything as well, Glen, like, you know, obviously there is ketogenic for therapeutic purposes. and then there is also so many different types. mean, just the other day, somebody told me that, I think I was speaking to another practitioner and it's Mediketo, Medigenic. It's Mediterranean with ketogenic.

So it's quite interesting because obviously the overlapping ingredient that is missing is dietary fat, I feel, you know, sugar deprivation by having enough fats. And I have had a really good relationship with fats from young. And I want to just say with a lot of love, my mom has always bought into the whole low fat movement growing up in Singapore, because you know, we've always grown up.

with her cooking and then suddenly the American sort of diet protocol kicked into the trendy way of eating in Singapore and were very European, very British in terms of influence and everything became really low fat as well. So everything changed. And I guess through my cancer journey, I've had to reevaluate how I'm actually appreciating fats and really embracing it. So I was eating a lot of fat to be honest in the first sort of five years.

from my diagnosis and I was really restricting a lot of carbohydrates as well. And so now 10 years in obviously I've reintroduced what you have highlighted a little bit more flexibility towards eating carbohydrates like brown rice. I still eat my kumara very occasionally, kumara chips. I've got two teenagers who needs to have carbs and also like cooking roasted pumpkin or putting pumpkin in as a mash instead of you

mashed potatoes, for example. So I guess I've evolved over time and I'm really glad that you've given sort of shared this ability for us, depending on which stage we're in or which part of our recovery would be that we have the opportunity to refine what that looks like for us over, over the period of time. I guess that's where the magic is. I'm hearing from you in terms of working with someone like yourself or even a coach that can really help support that journey of, of, of change. that sound about right?

Glen Davies (16:58)

Yeah, so I think you summarized it beautifully. Wherever you are on the journey or however strict you're choosing to be with a low carb approach, there's no place for sugar. So I would be emphatic about that.

Another really important point here is that when I talk to people about low carbohydrate diets, everyone understands the cutting out of the carbs, but very

Katherine Froggatt (17:25)

Mm.

Glen Davies (17:26)

few people understand that when you reduce your carbohydrates, you have to correspondingly increase the dietary fat. And that's the bit that people struggle with. You you've talked very eloquently about the low carb, I'm sorry, the low fat

deception that we've experienced for

Katherine Froggatt (17:46)

Mm.

Glen Davies (17:47)

the last 70 years. If you reduce your carbohydrates, there needs to be a corresponding increase in fat because you don't want a carbohydrate restrict because the biggest challenge that I have in working in this area is that people lose weight because you know that keto diets sort of became popular as a weight loss tool.

Katherine Froggatt (18:11)

Yes.

Glen Davies (18:11)

In cancer, particularly when people are having chemotherapy and radiotherapy, losing weight is a big concern.

Now, I will put that into context. I don't mind people losing fat mass. I don't want them to lose muscle mass. actually using some of these modern scales which determine your muscle mass is actually quite important at the beginning of this because losing fat is absolutely fine. You don't want to lose any muscle. So if you can actually measure your muscle mass and keep an eye on that,

Katherine Froggatt (18:47)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (18:48)

that's fine if you're actually losing weight, if that weight is fat. But

Katherine Froggatt (18:54)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (18:55)

the key is eating enough fat to maintain calories and people shouldn't lose weight, they shouldn't lose any muscle if they do that. So in a practical sense what does that mean? means avocado really becomes your friend. You're not stingy with the dressings on your salads, know, use as much olive oil as

you feel comfortable using. I always say, could you add olive oil to that? The answer is always yes. So choosing

Katherine Froggatt (19:25)

Mmm.

Glen Davies (19:25)

any cuts of meat, leaving the skin on the chicken, frying in coconut oil rather than perhaps using the air fryer where the fat drips off it. There's lots of ways that you can quite simply increase the amount of fat to maintain calories, to avoid losing weight.

you know, that part of the treatment.

Katherine Froggatt (19:50)

Yeah, I love it, Glen. And I have to say that, it was, it took me time to transition. the reason is because I knew that I could, well, first of all, to be honest, I struggled with cutting out carbs because Asian culture, we eat so much carbs, right? Rice, white rice. wasn't a norm for us to have brown rice, Glen. If you've been to Singapore, you have white rice and white noodles and

you know, egg noodles everywhere, in across all different ethnic groups, you know, whether you're Chinese, you're Indian, you're Muslim, you know, there is always rice. even the Japanese culture, there's always rice. So it was very difficult for me to cut that out, right? It was such an ingrained part of my identity to eat in an Asian culture. You eat rice and noodles. So I found, a lot of the, you know,

friends

in my circle including my own family in Singapore trying to tell them to cut the carbs is kind of like a loss of great identity of who we are. So it was a real struggle for me and therefore I knew that I had to allow my palate to adapt and fat was my friend and so I actually added a lot of butter, a lot of cream when I could tolerate the dairy and then I also added as much oils as possible as you mentioned.

So not just the olive oils, but I love the flavored olive oils that are made in New Zealand. There's so many different varieties that are beautiful. I found flaxseed oil, chia seed oil, sunflower seed oil, pumpkin oil. And I also use as much coconut oil as possible. I love MCT oil. So I basically bought the whole lot of oils into my house and I started throwing out all of the terrible unrefined.

ultra-processed carbohydrates in my pantry. And because the body needed time to adapt, there was an adaptation period. And I worked in with what you've mentioned earlier, some fasting protocol and my mindset behind it when I was working through with the pre-cure team, it was going into this hard fasting challenge and that was the only way I could do it. So through the fasting, through the swapping of carbs out and fats in,

I could really elevate my tolerance and adaptation towards having that change in diet. And I know hand on heart, it was very difficult for even some of my clients to get started. But once we have that mindset and that unshakable commitment towards making that one change, and you've made it really clear in the beginning of our conversation, Glen, that nutritional changes is going to be the most important first step.

And that was exactly how I adopted it. So it was like, was living in fats and initially then, um, it was difficult, but I ate a lot of fat. I had more fats and I dropped the carbs. And then my body just started, it just kind of activated at one stage. I felt good. I felt like I could sleep better and I felt like I had more mental clarity. I think that was the best part of it.

Glen Davies (22:52)

Yeah, just a couple of things. It's important that we talk about.

avoiding the unhealthy oils. So these polyunsaturated vegetable oils, the ones that come in the big two litre bottles that are really cheap, particularly canola oil, those are bad oils. So

Katherine Froggatt (23:11)

Yes.

Glen Davies (23:12)

you cannot replace with carbs with those ones. So it's an absolute no to canola oil. In fact, canola oil comes from rapes

There's no canola beans and it actually stands for Canadian oil. doesn't actually, there's no actual canola beans. It's bad. You don't want that. You don't want...

All of these cheap ones, so the good ones are your coconut oil

Katherine Froggatt (23:38)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (23:39)

and your olive oil. You mentioned flaxseed oil, you mentioned MCT oil, but not the ugly cheap polyunsaturated vegetable oils. There

Katherine Froggatt (23:48)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (23:48)

are no. And then the third thing we haven't talked about is protein. So the guidelines for dietary protein have increased quite dramatically. We're talking about

1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram body weight per day. for me, just to put that into context because you have to actually do the maths, if I was wanting to meat my protein allocation for breakfast, it would be eating five eggs.

Katherine Froggatt (24:17)

Mm-hmm.

Glen Davies (24:19)

You know, so none of us, I suspect, eat five eggs. I'm just saying that that's the amount of protein you'd

at breakfast so we're probably very few of us are actually meeting our protein targets. So the third component we've got three macros we've got carbohydrates which we're reducing, we've got dietary fats,

Katherine Froggatt (24:37)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (24:38)

fats which we're increasing and we're probably also increasing protein because the vast majority of us not hitting the protein target. So if you now imagine your diet it's got a lot of protein meat, fish, chicken,

eggs. It's got a whole lot more fats in it, healthy fats, traditional

Katherine Froggatt (24:57)

Mm-hmm.

Glen Davies (24:58)

fats that have been around for 100 years, and it's got very little carbohydrate other than the above-ground vegetables. So salads, broccoli, cauliflower, yeah, lots, loads of it, but you you don't have very often or much of the potato, the rice, and the noodles.

Katherine Froggatt (25:19)

Yeah. And just for our listeners benefit as well, there's a recent massive change, isn't it, in our food pyramid. So there is a lot of people who are unlearning this whole process and understanding of what a healthy diet looks like. And now we're really transitioning into what exactly what you've just mentioned, lots of good fats, lots of really good quality protein, and increasing our recommended daily intake, plus really dropping

the need or even the necessity of ultra processed carbohydrates, but eating more above the ground if we can. There's carbohydrates in everything, but it's just that, you know, we can actively choose a different way to eat in terms of the three macros, right? So protein, fats, and carbohydrates.

This

is a fantastic segway Glen, to talk a little bit more about fasting because I know that you talked about it initially. you know, how realistic is it for us, someone who is sitting in this diagnosis, you know, going through treatments and wanting to eat better and then also wanting to add on fasting, right? I mean, how...

What sort of timeframe do you feel for someone going through a breast cancer diagnosis? mean, fasting comes up all the time, right? I mean, we are actually fasting already, you know, when we sleep overnight from the last meal we had last night to this morning. In fact, I'm still in a fasted state right now talking to you, very proud to say. And so what does the evidence say about breast cancer survivors and clients specifically? How would we approach fasting for them clinically without tipping the woman into something that would be more...

stress and nervous system dysregulation.

Glen Davies (27:02)

Yes, I'm the same. haven't eaten yet today. So context, we understand that the immune system removes...

damaged cells, including cancer cells, in the fasted state. And we know that the body builds new cells in the fed state. So if we can extend the period of time where we're not eating, there's more opportunity for the immune system to remove cancer cells. So you have your last meal at night, and a really good sort of role is eat during daytime hours. So 6 o'clock, you have your dinner.

don't have any more calories until your first meal of the day. Now, some people are really

good at fasting and other people are not so good. you have your first meal that might be breakfast, but can you delay your breakfast? Can you have it a little bit later so that there is more time elapsed before you have your first calories?

Katherine Froggatt (28:03)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (28:04)

So we're talking at the moment intermittent fasting. So that might mean that you delay your breakfast, you might make a brunch and then that creates this opportunity. So if you make a brunch,

You might only start having two meals a day, so you might eat at say 10.30 and five o'clock at night. Or you might do time restricted eating. You still have your three meals, but you're condensing them into a shorter period of time.

A lot of

Katherine Froggatt (28:29)

Mm-hmm.

Glen Davies (28:30)

my clients will eat two meals a day. They will have their first meal at midday, their last meal at six. So that's a six hour eating window and an 18 hour fasting window. That's very common, but the balance point here is that you're not wanting to lose any muscle mass. So you're maintaining your protein, you're maintaining your resistance training, and you're not restricting calories, you're restricting carbohydrates.

That allows a lot of people to eat two meals a day, having their first meal at midday, their next

Katherine Froggatt (29:00)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (29:01)

meal at six. But very much depends on where you are in your journey.

A wonderful segue into this idea of being fasted when you have chemotherapy or radiotherapy. I'm an absolute fan of this. This is just my observation at this stage, but it's supported by probably everyone working in this field that when people are fasted before, during, and after their chemo, there are less side effects

Katherine Froggatt (29:27)

Mm.

Glen Davies (29:28)

from the chemo. What might be happening here? What we suspect happens is that the normal cells

go into a hibernation state, the cancer cells are more hungry. More of therefore the chemotherapy goes to the cancer and less goes to the normal cells, so there's less collateral damage. There's probably more complexity to it, but

Katherine Froggatt (29:51)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (29:52)

we observe that people who are fasted with chemotherapy and radiotherapy do better. Specifically, that might look like. OK, so let's say you're having every three weeks you have an infusion four hours. I would recommend, and that's every three weeks, I'd recommend the fast starts. If you can fast easily, I would do a 72 hour fast. I would fast the day before the day of.

in the day after. if you're not,

Katherine Froggatt (30:21)

Mm-hmm.

Glen Davies (30:22)

fasting is not easy for you. Have your last meal six o'clock before the day of your chemo. Fast the day of the chemo.

If you're not finding that easy, you could have your last meal at six o'clock or your first meal at six o'clock the day of it. But if you could make it breakfast

Katherine Froggatt (30:40)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (30:40)

the following day, that would be fantastic. There's no absolute rules here. This is a concept that you apply to yourself. I don't find fasting particularly easy, but I know there's others that they don't care if they eat or they don't, you know.

Katherine Froggatt (30:57)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (30:58)

Do it fast around those treatments and get the benefits of more of the chemo going to where you want it to go.

Katherine Froggatt (31:09)

Yeah, fascinating. and I think I really heard you say that it's, what we can doing. We can manage. it's not a hard and fast rule. It's something that we can work towards. I remember that I was, trying to be, you know, coping with the loss of my appetite as well as, know, the treatments as well. So sometimes I inadvertently fall into the hole.

I'm actually fasting because I don't really feel like eating. There's a change in my taste buds and you know, food just tastes a bit yuck. So some days I do go a little bit further and I don't really eat and then I'm able to go to the next morning. But I felt that when I was so fatigued doing the treatments that whenever I felt like eating or, you know, I love bone broths. then I would

take some bone broths because that's also again part of my Asian heritage where all I wanted when I was sick and not feeling great was something hot and really yummy and delicious that wasn't really eating. I haven't had a great appetite but all I wanted was sip on some hot soup that made my body feel warm because when I was going through chemotherapy I was freezing, I was cold and it was almost like my body was so depleted of energy.

And so I kind of just fell into the whole fasting just by accident. And so I guess what I was really also curious is that are the oncologists on board with fasting for patients? Have you heard that some patients come back to you and say, you know, I said this to my oncologists and you know, what was their reaction?

Glen Davies (32:41)

So generally, no. I think that these are the two areas where there's not a lot of discussion happening in the.

in the clinics and this is probably an area where we can be most supportive in terms of giving some guidance to people on what the nutrition plan should look like and why and what the fasting plan

Katherine Froggatt (33:02)

Yeah. Yeah.

Glen Davies (33:03)

should look like and why because this is not an area that's focused on in mainstream oncology clinics. this is a real

area of where we can really support, and help and add value and power to the treatment. I just wanted to, you said something really interesting in there. When people have used fasting as part of their religious practice,

We're generally talking

Katherine Froggatt (33:34)

Kiss.

Glen Davies (33:34)

about water only fasting or sometimes not even water. When we're talking about fasting in this context, there's no carbohydrate in there is the key feature. So if this was Ramadan and you were talking about fasting and using bone broth, that doesn't work.

In this context, when we're talking about fasting for metabolic health, bone broth, because it's basically just providing warmth and electrolytes, it's fine. It has no significant carbohydrate in there. So from a metabolic point

Katherine Froggatt (34:12)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (34:12)

of view, it's not breaking the fast.

Katherine Froggatt (34:16)

Yeah, yes, I do remember that my Muslim community when living in Singapore, they would definitely go through a strict fasting and going through that Ramadan period. So yes, thank you for clarifying that Glen. So I know that there is an area, know, every time we catch up in Topar, we always talk about the intravenous vitamin C. And I know that this is an area that you're deeply passionate about. And so with repurposed medicines,

and

supplements that we are able to offer. And a lot of GPs don't do that. What do you think about what should be included for clients who come with a cancer diagnosis and what sort of doses and for how long?

Glen Davies (34:56)

Yeah, so the topic of repurposed medicines, again, let's frame that and put that into context. So if you've never heard the term repurposed medicines, you've probably heard people maybe talking about ivermectin. You've maybe heard them talking about worming treatments. as far as I understand, it's not because we're trying to kill worms.

We're trying to starve the cancer.

We're putting pressure on limiting the fuel supply of the cancer to weaken it. Our first step is to take away all the carbohydrate, which is the main fuel source. This is the Warburg effect. The next thing we're doing is we're overlaying fasting. But we now get into this detail where some cancers, particularly if they have metastasized, seem to have learned to

other fuels other than glucose so some will learn how to use protein and some may even

Katherine Froggatt (35:59)

Mm-hmm.

Glen Davies (35:59)

learn how to use fat.

With this repurposed medicines, what we're doing is we're blocking the metabolic pathways, the fuel supply. We're overlaying another level of protection. So I'm sure many of your listeners will have read How to Starve Cancer by Jane McClellan.

Katherine Froggatt (36:18)

Hmm, the climate.

Glen Davies (36:20)

Jane McLennan has done an amazing service in writing that book. She was really the first person, I think, to popularize or bring it into the mainstream vocabulary. She transferred a lot of basic biochemistry into a readable form. So thumbs up to Jane McLennan, How to Starve Cancer.

Katherine Froggatt (36:40)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (36:42)

When we look at the repurposed medicines for breast cancer,

that I use is this one here. It might come up backwards, Cancer Care by Paul Marrick.

Katherine Froggatt (36:49)

Mmm. That was perfect. Yes.

Glen Davies (36:55)

And what he's done is he's broken the repurposed medicines into categories. So there's one here, a protocol for breast cancer specifically. I'll read out what's

Katherine Froggatt (37:07)

Amazing. Yes.

Glen Davies (37:08)

on there. So there's mabendazole. Mabendazole you will all probably have come across because you've wormed your kids with it at some stage. It's called Vermox.

Katherine Froggatt (37:17)

Yes.

Glen Davies (37:18)

Ivermectin is a fantastically interesting medication that has many mechanisms in this repurposed medicine role. Then curcumin, is the active ingredient in turmeric. Propranolol is

Katherine Froggatt (37:32)

Mm-hmm.

Glen Davies (37:33)

fascinating. It's a beta blocker. And its story is that many of you may have seen children with a strawberry nevus, a birthmark that's quite raised and looks like a strawberry.

the face. What they observed was that

Katherine Froggatt (37:45)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (37:47)

in children that had heart conditions that were taking a beta blocker, it resolved and they went, wow, what's happening? And it's because it's stopping the birthmark from forming new blood vessels, which you'll be familiar with the term as angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels.

Katherine Froggatt (38:04)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (38:05)

So they then recognized if we can stop the cancer from forming new blood vessels, it's harder for it to get the fuel there.

So this is basically a fourth layer of restricting the fuel. So that's propanolol, the beta blocker.

Katherine Froggatt (38:20)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (38:21)

Doxycycline, which is an antibiotic. Now, of course, we're not using it as an antibiotic. But just context, when you think of right back into the beginning of evolution, the mitochondria were separate bacteria that another cell came along. And instead of eating it, it actually took it in.

But then the mitochondria and the larger bacteria formed the symbiotic relationship where the mitochondria said, I'll supply energy, you supply fuel and protection. this is the...

hypothesis, I guess, of how mitochondria ended up inside our cells. They have their own DNA. They only use the maternal DNA, actually. They don't have any DNA from the... And they reproduce themselves independently. So we go, OK, they're basically a bacteria. It actually makes sense that you might be using an antibiotic.

in this area of mitochondrial health. And also, the cell walls are very similar to that of worms and helminths. So why would we be using worming medicine? So you can kind of see how there's a bit of context in there. So I'm getting

Katherine Froggatt (39:35)

Mm.

Glen Davies (39:36)

off track. Sorry. So that's mitochondria. That's doxycycline sulforaphane, which is from broccoli sprouts.

Modified citric

Katherine Froggatt (39:44)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (39:45)

acid, now vitamin D, now that's a whole fascinating topic in itself, but we're talking about using much higher doses of vitamin D than we would get from sunlight alone.

aged garlic extract, atorvastatin. Now that's fascinating. Atorvastatin is a cholesterol-lowering medicine. Now we're not trying to lower

Katherine Froggatt (40:04)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (40:05)

cholesterol in this context, but you would have heard that many people who take astatin for cholesterol-lowering develop muscle pain.

Some studies show up to 40 % of people do. So we know that it's damaging the mitochondria,

Katherine Froggatt (40:19)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (40:20)

it's affecting the electron transport chain in the mitochondria. So we know that cancer has damaged mitochondria already. What if we could damage them a little bit further? Would that be enough to make that cancer go into apoptosis or programmed cell death? Because cancer cells have lost

Katherine Froggatt (40:38)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (40:38)

the ability for programmed cell death.

If we put a little bit more insult into the cancer cell mitochondria, would it be enough to kill it? So that's kind of the logic, or one of the logics of where atorvastatin sets resveratrol. That's the antioxidant that became famous because it's in red wine. Interestingly, when that article came out

Katherine Froggatt (40:59)

Mmm.

Glen Davies (41:00)

in the New York Herald, every American airline sold out of red wine that day.

EGCG, that's green tea or green tea extract. Berberine, berberine is the natural equivalent of metformin. It's used in the diabetes space. So further lowering the blood glucose. And then the high dose intravenous vitamin C. I will talk briefly about vitamins.

Katherine Froggatt (41:24)

Mmm.

Glen Davies (41:26)

It's possibly a targeted chemotherapy. So how it might be working is

The vitamin C molecule and the glucose molecule are almost identical in chemical structure. Normal

Katherine Froggatt (41:39)

Mm-hmm.

Glen Davies (41:40)

cells can tell them apart, but cancer cells are a bit dumb and stupid and primitive. They can't tell the glucose molecule and the vitamin C molecule apart. We've made them rarely starving.

They're starving, searching everywhere for just a glucose molecule. You inject what they think is huge amounts of glucose, they're going to gobble it up. In fact, they take up so much that when they start to metabolize it, it's metabolized into hydrogen peroxide. So the cancer cells are bleaching themselves from the inside out. The normal cells have just taken up a small amount. So virtually a targeted

Katherine Froggatt (42:17)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (42:18)

therapy. So that's what we're searching for in oncology.

is a targeted chemotherapy that only the cancer cell takes up and the normal cells don't. We don't have that yet. Could vitamin C be, you know, I mean, I'm not suggesting that vitamin C replaces any form of chemotherapy, absolutely not. But as an adjunct in this metabolic space, could it be useful?

Katherine Froggatt (42:44)

Yeah, this is exciting because obviously this is a space that we should be watching and developing a little bit more data, I think. And I love that, you know, just to add in that you've already started some sort of audit with your patients. And that is definitely a space that I find it super exciting if we can get more data from people from different types of cancer diagnosis to adopt different

changes within their lifestyle as well as having the repurposed medicines into their protocol. I think that's super exciting to see what the outcomes are. I know that it does take time. I've come 10 years. And so my curious question to you on that note with repurposed medicines, Glen, is how long do you see that a woman with breast cancer should be on these repurposed drugs?

Glen Davies (43:37)

That's probably one of the most difficult questions you could ask me. I think it's very individual, you know, because...

Katherine Froggatt (43:42)

Sorry. Yeah.

Glen Davies (43:45)

Clearly, if someone wasn't responding well to their treatment, we would be increasing them rather than decreasing them. If someone had a relapse, we'd be putting them back in. But one of my biggest challenges is we're using so many things all at the same time, aren't we? We're using chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hormone deprivation, surgery, diet, fasting, repurposed medicines, possibly some

oxygen treatments, possibly some vitamin C, we're using meditation, spiritual techniques,

Katherine Froggatt (44:16)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (44:17)

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then you go, well, what thing is working and what thing isn't? And if I take something out or stop doing something, am I going to put myself at risk? So I struggle with how do you take some of these things away? know, one of those things in the reservatrol, for example, is that the thing that's

making all the difference and if we stop it.

Katherine Froggatt (44:40)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (44:40)

do we risk coming back in? I don't know. And this is where we probably come into the intuition side. Particularly in breast cancer, think intuition is so important. I think intuition guides us a little bit. I think people have a feeling when they're out of the crisis time and when they could comfortably start.

reducing things. All I do is I

Katherine Froggatt (45:05)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (45:06)

reduce things very slowly so that if there was

you know, some backwards step, we can add things back in again. But I'm really challenged in that space. What we do tend to do is start pulsing things. rather than taking it continuously, it might go from continuous to month on month off. But

Katherine Froggatt (45:26)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (45:28)

I guess if people are doing extremely well, that's something we really celebrate. How you withdraw these things, I think, requires bit of intuition, care, and timing.

Katherine Froggatt (45:43)

Yeah. So powerful. I really embrace Glen that you've mentioned this so beautifully as a GP intuition and how you've highlighted spirit of the person as well. and this is the area that I found I personally have had to face from the very beginning, of my diagnosis where I thought that I was just absolutely not going to make it.

I felt that whole loss of confidence and trust in my body and I felt that because when I was diagnosed 10 years ago, my daughter was only three and my son was, you know, six. So it's a real like unshakable burning desire for me to actually decide that no matter what happens moving forward from today.

that I am going to find every avenue for me to survive in order for me to still be the mom and be here on in this lifetime with them. And so that spirit, that change, that absolute like, promise to myself, I think it's the part where I find it's hard to articulate, but if we can shift somehow, the connection back into our body and start trusting,

and learning how to read the signs and the signals of what my body is telling me, there will be some wisdom there. And I feel like that alignment can happen very gradually as soon as we decide that we make that commitment and promise and that we elevate the way our body feels and the spirit of how we are managing our day-to-day emotions. There's that mindset behind it as well.

that I find that we need to talk a little bit more because let's face it, the cancer diagnosis of any form, any types, breast cancer is personally mine, but there is still that fear that sits every single day that affects our ability to think, to feel, and to really elevate where we want to be because we all want to survive this, but how we get there is kind of a little bit unique for all of us. So yeah, I mean, I just want to say how beautiful it is that you've, you've

been able to sort of make this become such a piece that's essential for recovery gland. Cause there's not always GPs will talk about spirit and intuition.

Glen Davies (48:01)

I think one of the big differences in this approach is that this is an empowerment model. One of the problems with going through the mainstream process is that stuff gets done to you.

And that is necessary. What we're doing here is there's also, as well as the stuff that's being done to you, there's also so much stuff that you can control, you can manage, and you can take self responsibility for this as an empowerment model. So that I think

Katherine Froggatt (48:32)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (48:32)

is really useful for taking away fear. Because...

when you give your power away when stuff's being done to you, you lose control and that loss of control is frightening. This is saying as well as that, there's another six, seven, eight, 20 things that you can do yourself that is empowering. And I observed that as people

get more and more involved in this metabolic approach, the fear diminishes because they then start to understand.

Katherine Froggatt (49:07)

Hmm.

Glen Davies (49:10)

Knowledge reduces fear, doesn't it?

Community

Katherine Froggatt (49:14)

Yeah.

Glen Davies (49:15)

reduces fear, empowerment reduces fear. I say to people, I want you to be as knowledgeable about your particular cancer as your cancer team is.

Katherine Froggatt (49:26)

Mm-hmm.

Glen Davies (49:27)

When you're in that space and you're having a same level conversation with your members of your cancer team, that's not a fear position.

That's an equal position and I think that's where we want to be. There's a lot of tools here that people can do in addition to what they're offered in the busy, overwhelmed, mainstream cancer space. Learn, study.

watch podcasts, watch YouTubes, learn, become empowered, become knowledgeable, and then the fear diminishes.

Katherine Froggatt (50:07)

Glen, I think we have just lost you there, but what a conversation. I want to bring it home for you because there is a lot in what Glen shared today and I do not want any of that to get lost. So here's what I'm taking from this episode. The metabolic approach is to recovery after breast cancer is not a diet. It's not about being perfect or

Going all in on a strict keto that's almost therapeutic level from day one. It's about understanding what is actually happening inside your body and making decisions that work with your biology rather than against it. Glen started us with nutrition, and that is the right place to start. Reducing carbohydrates, increasing healthy fats and protein, and cutting out the seed oils and the ultra-processed foods.

Not as you know, restriction or deprivation, but seen as a way to manipulate the cancer cell So that one fact changed how I thought about food after my own diagnosis, then there is fasting, it's not a restriction.

And it's not a pattern to fall into for the wrong reasons. But using the body's natural overnight window, extending it gradually, giving your immune system more time to do what it is designed to do. And the repurposed medicine, the intravenous vitamin C, all of the things Glen outlined, that is a conversation for another episode. And I'm going to bring Glen back for sure because it deserves that space properly.

Now what really stayed with me most today through what Glen and I discussed right at the end, this is an empowerment model. When you understand what is happening in your body, the fear has less room to run the show. Knowledge reduces fear. Exactly how it happened for me. I was busy gathering a lot of information and taking back even a small amount of control in a situation that has felt completely out of control. That in and of itself was.

Changes everything. This is exactly why I built Breastwise. If today raised questions for you about where you are metabolically right now, the resilient remission assessment is the right first step. It's free, I've personally designed it, it takes a few minutes, and it will give you a clear picture of where you are now and where to focus next. The link is in the show notes.

And if you want to work with Glen directly, he sees clients online through Reversal NZ, based out of Taupo, New Zealand in the North Island. That link is in the show notes too.