Cancer: adjunctive care

A six month appraisal of what I've learned so far

For nearly six months, Pierre and I have been seeing patients for adjunctive cancer care. In one week, as of 8/12/24, our adjunctive cancer care will be augmented Dr Sid Lawler, an internist with more than twenty years of clinical practice. The Leading Edge Clinic is one of five practices nationally participating in a five-year observational study sponsored by the FLCCC Alliance, evaluating the clinical benefit of a ketogenic (keto) diet, repurposed supplements and prescription medications in treating cancer. This intervention, an integration of a keto diet with layered therapy, is based upon the groundbreaking research of Dr Paul Marik and his protocol . Pierre is putting the finishing touches on a detailed four-part Substack series on this topic. In the meantime, I’m going to supply a focused update on what I’ve learned so far from our current patients.

DIET AND GLUCOSE MONITORING CHALLENGES

About fifty percent of my patients have had some kind of difficulty with the keto diet. For starters, we are using the Libre3 continuous glucometer sensor, which costs $80 and, unless a person is diabetic, insurance won’t cover it. The value of the monitor, especially in the first weeks and months of treatment is invaluable, because it gives patients real-time feedback about the glucose spikes which result from different dietary choices. Some patients can’t get over the fact that the sensor uses a small needle, and remains in place for two weeks. If they get really sweaty in the hot weather, it may not stay attached. Some older patients are technically challenged and not up to downloading the app to a phone which provides continuous reporting on their current glucose levels.

Our target goal is a glucose of 50-80 ng/dL, and that alone scares some patients and their family members. They have long been told that if their glucose gets below 70 ng/dL they should drink some juice or eat something, because a lower blood sugar is considered life-threatening. The truth is that as we move away from simple carbohydrates (carbs) and our bodies learn to happily use ketones for fuel, we can think and feel just fine with a glucose of 50 ng/dL.

There are the patients who are underweight when we have our first visit, because they have already started chemotherapy, radiation, and/or immunotherapy and are dealing with decreased appetite and nausea. Limiting them to keto options doesn’t necessarily make sense, so we are instead guiding them in harm reduction: e.g. avoiding processed foods, sugary beverages, and simple carbs. Simple changes such as the order of eating can help tremendously: i.e. eating leafy greens first, then proteins/fats, then starches, and then fruit.

There have also been family members who are on speed dial and ever-ready to take the patient out for White Castle or McDonalds, because “you deserve it.” In part, this reflects that the patient has come to us because of a different family member who is diligently researching and aches to save their loved one’s life, but if the patient her/himself isn’t as committed, there is only so much we can do.

VITAMIN K2

Dr Marik’s protocol advises the use of a Vitamin D3 / K2 combination when high-dose Vitamin D3 is being used. I have previously written about my clinical observations re: compounding factors which promote and perpetuate microclotting in our post-acute sequelae of COVID (PASC) and COVD vaccine-injured patients. Vitamin K2 is one of those factors. In one of my first followup visits with a patient who is a retired nurse, I didn’t get my first sentence out before she said “I’m not taking any more of that Vitamin K2 you ordered. My infusaport has been working fine for a year, and as soon as I started taking the Vitamin K2, it clogged up from clotting. No more!” I didn’t object, and we discussed the other factors to consider when taking high-dose Vitamin D3 which help manage calcium levels: 30 minutes of weight-bearing exercise (e.g. walking) daily, 250-500mg of Magnesium daily, and limiting, or stopping, the intake of dairy products due to their contribution of excessive free Calcium.

One challenge here is that some patients are too weak or fatigued to walk thirty minutes a day. If someone has $6,000 to purchase a Juvent, I think that 20 minutes a day on the Juvent is a fair approximation, but this is beyond the budget for most. When D3 and K2 are in the same supplement, one can quickly arrive at a daily intake of more than 1000mcg of K2, and these are levels at which I have observed PASC and vaccine-injured patients get stuck with stage/grade 4 of 4 microclotting. I’ve communicated my concerns to Dr Marik, and there is some agreement that separating Vitamin K2 from Vitamin D3 intake is reasonable. In this way, a patient can plan for 100mcg of K2 daily, or 800mcg weekly.

RESEARCHING FAMILY MEMBERS

Pierre and I both have encountered many patients and family members who are diligently researching cancer treatments, and bombarding us with messages that reference articles and studies which promise good clinical results from any number of supplements and prescription therapies. There are 256 repurposed drugs and over 2000 nutraceuticals that reportedly have anti-cancer mechanisms.  One cannot treat a disease using over 2000 medicines. Very few of the long list has reliable, or extensive, clinical or in vitro evidence. (In vitro is Latin for “in glass.” It describes medical procedures, tests, and experiments that researchers perform outside of a living organism. An in vitro study occurs in a controlled environment, such as a test tube or petri dish.) Our approach follows Dr. Marik’s protocol, which relies on those therapies which have the widest and deepest evidence base in both efficacy and known safety.  

Telling the social media “experts” apart can be difficult

While we try to be clear with patients and their family members about what we do and don’t provide in our adjunctive care, we still encounter a lot of pushback. E.g. patients encounter the X posts of physicians like Dr William Makis who make claims re: his ability to treat cancer with repurposed supplements and prescription medications. He states “We have proposed a ‘first in the world’ protocol!” It would seem he hasn’t heard of the FLCCC Alliance, or Dr Marik’s protocol which was published in...August of 2023. Dr Makis isn’t doing the right thing. The best example I can give you is that he promotes the use of Laetrile (Amygdalin), derived from the seeds of Apricots. On X he posted “Bioactive compounds are a crucial part of any "Alternative Cancer Treatment" strategy and Apricot fruit and seeds are a reasonable addition (nothing even remotely controversial about it).” https://x.com/MakisMD/status/1784557179975942564 He makes quick work of dismissing concerns that Laetrile is a cyanogenic glycoside—as in, it contains cyanide. If you read Dr Marik’s protocol, you’ll find Laetrile listed at position #45 under Recommended Against. In 2015, a Cochrane systematic review failed to identify any studies of Laetrile which met their inclusion criteria.

DISMISSIVE ONCOLOGISTS, OBEDIENT AND FEARFUL PATIENTS

Thanks to Dr Marik and forward thinkers/researchers/writers such as Thomas Seyfried, Otto Warburg, Jane McLelland, Travis Christofferson, Jeffry Dach, Nasha Winter and Jess Higgins, we now understand that a combination of keto diet and repurposed drugs can target cancer stem cells and increase both the safety the effectiveness of modern Oncology’s primary tools: chemo, radiation, surgery and immunotherapy. For patients who are working with an Oncologist who doesn’t dismiss adjunctive care, the length and number of treatments can be decreased, with fewer adverse effects. My experience so far is that at best, Oncologists tolerate patients’ used of repurposed therapies up until “the real treatment begins”, and then direct them to cease all adjunctive therapies. In his Forward to Dr Marik’s protocol, Dr Justus Hope writes that proactively adding repurposed drugs as early as possible can help prevent cancer stem cells from regrowing the tumor into a more resistant and sometimes indestructible form. Chemotherapy and radiation target about 10% of active cancer cells, but miss the other 90%, and do not address the stem cells which give rise to more cancer. It’s comparable to the way mowing the lawn actually makes the grass grow more. Most of the repurposed drugs which we are using in our adjunctive therapy target the cancer stem cells.

CROSSOVER OF CLINICAL EXPERIENCE

We’ve treated more than 6,000 patients for acute COVID, PASC, and COVID vaccine-injury since we opened our practice in February 2022. It turns out that the expertise we have developed during this time is invaluable to our delivery of adjunctive cancer care. The spike protein of COVID illness and vaccines has profoundly altered the inner universe of our bodies. We have good reason to believe that the spike protein is often at work behind the turbo cancers which are emerging. Understanding how to diagnose and treat the sequelae of spikopathy, including mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), microclotting, dysbiosis, neuropathic, cardiovascular and pulmonary pathologies, makes us more effective at treating cancer in the current contaminated environment, where spikopathy and its impact on the human body is rampant.

As we learned to use layered therapies to treat COVID, PASC and vaccine injury, we are also learning to use layered therapy as adjunctive therapy for cancer. Importantly, the clinical options are safe, gentle, often economical, and can be used together with current conventional approaches. In both cases, it has been necessary to challenge the pre-existing and economically supported assumptions, choosing instead to follow the revelations of existing, if rarely cited, science. We have a lot of work to do, and a long way to go, but I feel confident in the integrity of the practice we have built, and in the pathway that Dr Marik’s protocol has provided.