Transcript Disclaimer – Please note that the following transcript has been machine generated by an AI software and therefore may include errors or omissions.

Robin Daly
Hi and welcome to the Yes to Life show . I’m Robin Daly, host of this show and also founder of YestoLife, the UK’s integrative cancer care charity, helping people with cancer find out what they can do to help themselves with lifestyle and complementary medicine. In today’s show, I’m talking to a very unusual oncologist, unusual in that she’s also trained as a functional medicine practitioner. This leads us to take quite a different approach to most oncologists and often to get much improved outcomes from treatment. I’m speaking to Dr Waffaa Abdel-Hadi in Egypt, where she’s based. Hi Waffaa and welcome back to the Yes to Life show.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
Thank you, it’s great to be here, always.

Robin Daly
So, for today’s show, you told me you’d like to speak about the first steps following the diagnosis of cancer. So this is bang on message for us this year, since, as many listeners will already know, we have our twin events this year that go under the title You and Your Cancer Team. The first is online on the 17th of June and the second is in person in London on the 7th of October. So there’s going to be a mass of help on offer between the two events with making and finding your way with early steps. So for any listeners who are lucky enough not to have been through this experience, would you describe the challenges that people commonly face emotionally, mentally, physically when they’re diagnosed with cancer?

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
Yeah, well, it’s the thing is that the word cancer itself is very scary. God forbid anyone gets, but now it has become very, very common. So my advice for anyone, of course, the early detection is the best thing. So people have to be aware about the signs and symptoms of any certain cancer. I have like a huge lecture about prevention and signs and symptoms of every cancer from head to toe. Okay. So people are like when they find this symptoms persistence for more than three weeks, most probably they go for to their doctor, they give them antibiotics for a swelling or a sore throat, and then it doesn’t go away. And so I have like this huge lecture about the from head to toe, which are the symptoms if it persists for more than three weeks and this and that where to go and not to do. However, if someone came to me already with a diagnosis of cancer, the first thing to tell them is do not panic. And I am a clinical oncologist. I am a clinical oncologist and function medicine doctor. So now I have fused the beauty of function medicine with conventional oncology to get the best out of it as an integrative oncology.

Robin Daly
marvellous.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
And this is the beauty to find the root cause of the cancer because and when I actually started doing function medicine, I stopped treating cancer because I thought, let me treat all other diseases so that the cancer wouldn’t come ahead.

Robin Daly
Okay, that makes sense.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
Yes, but then I found a lot of requests for consultations regarding the cancer cases, so I’m back to integrative oncology. So it depends. So someone comes to me with cancer, it depends on the symptoms. If they have acute symptoms like jaundice, or if the style of obstruction, acute abdominal pain, or something that is acute, like it has to be taken care of right now, first thing is to be hospitalized, to metabolize them, and then we take the second step. The second step would be like scans, biopsy, so that we can stage the cancer and see which approaches that we’re going to take. However, if that person who comes to you like incidentally found that she had, she has been coughing for, or he has been coughing for a very long time, and they thought it was allergy, and then they did a scan, they found a lung cancer, or someone while showering a lady, she found a breast lump in her arm, in her breast. So do not panic and relax and collect information, arrange your thoughts, and go for like someone that you can trust. Don’t ask the neighbor. Now you have like the, your your organization, the yes to life charity, you have many other organizations that you can go and ask what are the next steps. So someone has cancer, he gets a biopsy. So he goes to an oncologist, and he tells him like what is the best route to take this biopsy from this area in your body. Like for instance, someone has an lymphoma. So the lymphoma, if it’s like Hodgkin or non Hodgkin, she can get from the most accessible big notes, like in the neck, in the armpits, you don’t have to necessarily go inside the chest. Let me make things simpler. Biopsy. We get a biopsy, we find out what is the type of that cancer, what is the stage of that cancer, and if it’s aggressive or not. And then we get a scan to see the extent of that cancer. And accordingly, we do the staging. The staging is like a baseline to understand what is the is it is it in one place, is it in two places, etc. And then you go to the treatment. So the treatment is either conventional, it’s actually conventional, but we add the integrative aspect. So first thing for conventional treatment to work properly is to give that person the proper chemotherapy or radiotherapy or targeted therapy according to the pathology and according to the blueprint of that patient. For instance, the pathology of the patient like you have a breast cancer. Let’s talk about breast cancer because it’s the most common. So breast cancer, this lady is hormone receptive positive or hormone receptive negative or has like her two positive cancer. This is the genomics of that cancer. But what about this lady? What are the genetic susceptibility that has led her to have this cancer? So we check the nutrition genome. We have many beautiful companies in the UK and in the US. So anyway, so you check the for breast cancer, you check the estrogen metabolic pathways, or you check even how that lady metabolizes the medicine, the medications, because some from for instance hormonal treatments like tamoxifen, you can give it to one lady and she doesn’t have any side effect.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
And you give it to another lady and she gets severe side effects. This is due to certain SNPs, which is single nuclear polymorphism in her blueprint in this lady’s software that makes the tamoxifen more toxic for her or is unable to metabolize the tamoxifen so it stays for more than the half life that is supposed to sit in the body. So it makes more side effects. So we have to arrange between the treatment of the patient and the genomics of the cancer and the genomics of the person in order for the treatment to be effective and with the least side effect.

Robin Daly
I mean, you describe quite a lot of things to look into, if you like, in order to investigate the best treatment path there. Now, some of those things are carried out by the NHS in our country routinely, but others are not. So if you want to be as informed as you’ve just said, that means stepping outside the box and actually getting your own tests. So there’s two things to that. One is, well, the tests themselves, you need to be able to interpret them. So you need a practitioner, and in fact, you need a practitioner to guide you as to the best tests to have given your circumstances. So in a way, you’re saying that you’re not going to be able to achieve these kind of results unless you’ve got somebody like a functional medicine practitioner in tow already. So is that fair? Unless they’re you, who happens to be both, but in general, they’re not.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
Well, my hope is that my knowledge and the other integrative ecology, you have a beautiful in the integrative ecology doctors in the UK. So my hope is that our knowledge can be past the conventional one. Like I keep sending my colleagues the paper about how sugar actually promotes the cancer progression and metastasis and even resistance to chemotherapy. So if someone is taking chemotherapy and his blood sugar is high, he is resistant to that therapy. It will not be effective. So those are ABCs that we have to take care of. And there are certain labs like that. So we don’t just do the genomics, we do the genomics and we do blood biochemistry. And then with the symptoms of the patient, we combine the three together to get the best approach for that patient.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
One of the most important genomics that actually leads to cancer is, and there are like hyper methylated tumors, it’s methylation. So we get the genomics for the methylation, and we do a simple blood test, which is, I find it hard to get it for my patients in the UK and Europe. They have to go to a private lab, but it’s the homocysteine level, because it reflects if your methylation is good or not. If it’s not good, then you have to take something called methylated vitamins, like methyl folate, adenosyl, and methylcobalamin, but you have to get the methylation properly, because this actually makes the cancer process less aggressive.

Robin Daly
Okay. Yeah. Fair enough. Okay. So, yeah. So, we have the situation where there’s only a handful of oncologists for the kind of perspective that you have, unfortunately. So it does mean that right from the start, you would say you’re going to need a team straight away. And so somebody who has the knowledge and the capability to organize these kind of tests and interpret them. And it’s also, it’s going to be a good result. It has to be the case that the oncologist is cooperating with that as well, because it’s all very well getting great information to feed back to the oncologist, but if they’re not interested, it’s not going to help your situation. Yeah. So, it requires teamwork.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
Well, I do send to a lot of oncologists in the UK about my about who I am and they actually listen because I’m a clinical oncologist myself So so I just tell them like I I thank you very much for looking after my patients I like I salute you for doing this this and that may I bring to your attention? number one number two number three like for instance I talked to them about the nutrition a little bit of a low carb diet a little no sugar and I talked to them about Genomics and I talked to them about the methylation and optimizing vitamin D Yeah, because vitamin D For example is actually can can block all the processes of cancer development and it has to be between 80 and 100 nanogram per liter and This is something like I get a lot of patients with severe vitamin D deficiency Which actually impacts their cardiovascular health their anti cancer prevention their? Bone health and even depression so so this has to be put into consideration that we are not treating these can The tumor on the scan we are treating the whole patient

Robin Daly
And, and of interest, so you’re working with UK oncologists and sending them information. Yeah, you’ve got the age because you’re an oncologist, that definitely will help. But how receptive are you finding they are?

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
Actually, most of them are are quite receptive. For instance, I had a patient in Wales, and she had ovarian cancer. And then post operative after treatment, and after everything she came, she came to me with a stoma colostomy. So I don’t know what happened, you had ovarian carcinoma. And now you’re with a colostomy bag. What happened? She said that she had an unfortunate intestinal obstruction from the fibrosis after the surgery. So now she’s living with a colostomy. So I did follow up. So there she I’ve been with her for almost now. God bless her four years, just doing follow ups, improving her blood biochemistry, addressing her genomics, etc. And then I told her she told me, Dr. Afa, I barely sleep. My quality of life is very bad. I can’t even be with with my husband. And because it’s like, it’s not as before. And so I thought, why can’t you reverse your colostomy? It’s been almost like, like four years. So so she said no, no, no, the oncologist and all the surgical team said it’s very dangerous for me to reverse the colostomy for surgical reasons. So I sent a lot of messages to her oncologist and to her surgeon. And I told them like, she is free of cancer. But her quality of life is extremely jeopardized because of this colostomy. And and and they refused all of them. So she had to go privately. And she did the colostomy reversal, I think, eight months ago. And she’s she’s just like, Oh, my doctor was like, no one would have ever thought about reversing the colostomy except you know, so you assess the the the the the condition of the patients in order to improve the quality of life I told her what if the cancer came back and you are with the colostomy still like you will still suffer but you are cancer free now we reverse the colostomy and if it came back will just manage

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
So it’s situational, and I love to go through all these debates with the oncologists, whether in the UK or the US. We just talk together and find the best solution for our patients, if they are receptive, like you said.

Robin Daly
yeah interesting very interesting okay so you’re saying that uh basically uh somebody either an intuitive doctor or a functional medicine practitioner is an essential part of your team if you look at together a rounded view of going through your conventional treatment um of course a functional medicine practitioner will do a lot more than just the tests and recommendations about genetics um they will actually assist you nutritionally in a multitude of ways through your treatment um are there other people that you would feel are essential to your team

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
Of course. So my team is mainly me as a clinical oncologist, and then I actually use the help of, you know, Patricia Daly, she has been on several podcasts. Absolutely. Yeah. So Patricia and I, we did this recovery fundamental program. So the recovery fundamentals are what you should do if you have any metabolic disease. Right. So we have a group for non-cancer patients, and we have a group for cancer patients, and we go with them step by step on lifestyle modification. So foods, breathing techniques, mental spirituality, exercise, who should do which exercise and how. And then at the end, we do the nutrigenomics and we individualize each one of them, which nutrients they do, they would do best on. Like, for instance, some cannot tolerate the fish oil, then they have to take a vegan omega-3 fatty acid from algae. Some cannot tolerate beta-carotene. They have to take retinol permeate to get the vitamin A. So we individualize this. We look at the detoxification pathways for breast cancer, as we have discussed, like why is this lady having bilateral breast cysts and gut cancer so that we can make the body, we clear the body out of innards, out of toxins, using low carb, slightly ketogenic or ketogenic if her lactate pyruvate ratio, which is one of the tests that I can hardly get from the UK as well. But the lactate pyruvate ratio is important because it reflects the mitochondrial respiration. And now everyone know and everyone is aware that cancer is merely a genetic disease. It is a metabolic disease now. So we look at them and we talk with the doctor if they’re interested to do a more integrative approach. I have a lot of people on immunotherapy, the anti-PD1 or for ovarian cancer, et cetera. And the problem with immunotherapy is that it lowers the total leukocytic count very much. And that makes that person vulnerable to infections. Right. So there are two types of patients on immunotherapy. One that is actually being prescribed by the NHS or the hospital and is covered by their insurance. And another one that is on a clinical trial. So the people on a clinical trial, they have to take the medicine on the same day, no matter what happens.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
So, I tell them, but if you keep taking it with a total liquecitic count of 2.5, you might have the probability of having an infection, pneumonia, ICU, and pass away. Right. So, you have to understand that skipping the medicine for a week or two until your total liquecitic count goes up is not a crime. You have to tell the doctor, because they would be aware, especially the ones on the clinical trial, because that will affect the clinical trial result. But your doctor, if you are taking it prescribed by your doctor, private doctor, or the hospital, you have to stop. Don’t take the new position or the, you know, the shot for increasing your white blood counts. Let it happen, because if it didn’t happen naturally, it is a growth stimulus. So, it might actually affect the cancer growth that you are pushing, giving growth stimulus to your body for the white blood cells, I know, but it might have, it might backfire. But if you pause from immunotherapy, while doing an integrative oncology approach, it doesn’t mean that your cancer is growing, because you’re taking vitamin D, you’re taking put, for instance, curcumin, which blocks 90 pathways for cancer development. Someone who has special gene takes the EGCG, which is the extract for green tea. Some people take the mistletoe, which I adore, and it dampens the pain, increases the natural killer cells. So, there are a lot of naturopathic remedies and nutraceuticals that can actually act on the cancer. I just need people to understand one thing. You cannot supplement yourself out of a bed diet.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
So you cannot take curcumin and green tea and then eat an ice cream and pasta and pizza. And you cannot be traveling a lot. This is the thing that I’m actually struggling with, with Patricia. Most are patients, they sign up for the recovery fundamental program and then, okay, I signed up for the program. Now I am okay. No, you have to do the work. Stop traveling unless it is necessary because traveling messes with your microbiome. And we know how important the immune system is. And every cancer actually, there is a lot of papers about the microbiome and breast cancer being an anti-oncogenic. So when you have the right microbiome for breasts, it will actually be an anti-cancer approach. So there is oral microbiome, lung microbiome, colon, microbiome, prostate, vaginal, all of these things. So we have to optimize all of the circumstances in order for your body to give it a chance to heal.

Robin Daly
So I hadn’t heard anybody mention that traveling is hard on your microbiome before, and that’s literally just the change of food and everything that’s happening rather than your habitual environment.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
Yeah, it does. And you have for a boots, you have the travelers probiotics. If you go to boots, you will have the travelers probiotics. And yeah, but it actually messes with your your microbiome, whether it was habitual food, but actually the traveling, the the stress stress actually is very it blocks your immune system and and stress. Actually, it blocks something called the BRCA gene for breast cancer. And it’s not just for breast cancer. It’s a tumor suppressor gene. So if you if you block the action of the gene that prevents you from having cancer, cancer will happen. Of course, you have a lot of tumor suppressor genes, but this is an example. And it’s a scientific paper that has been published that actually the stress levels actually block the receptors for the BRCA gene.

Robin Daly
Okay, so just to set back a minute, you said that with Patricia, you’ve got this really comprehensive program of support. People sometimes, one of the problems, I suppose, with the amount of information coming towards somebody once they get diagnosed with cancer is that information overload is a major feature of cancer, I think, for all, except the people who just say, I’m not interested in anything else, I’m just doing what the oncologist says. They don’t get overwhelmed so much, but everybody else does. And it is an issue, and one of the problems really is prioritising, because it seems, as soon as you start to look outside the box, it looks like you come across this, you come across that, and they all seem to be mega important. Everything seems to be important, especially when your life’s on the line. So that’s where the overwhelm sets in very quickly, because people set out to do everything, and of course they can’t, and then they think they’ve failed. So how do you prioritise? I think you’ve put the functional medicine practitioner, or a nutritionist, or an integrative medicine doctor right at the front of the queue as some of the important you need to support you, but how do you prioritise after that?

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
Well, the thing is that you have touched a very important topic, Robin, which is the overwhelm of information. It can be it’s very stressful. And then when you look at this YouTube, then YouTube gets you a whole little list of other YouTubes and then all the metabolic approach, the keto diet, the low carb, the Mediterranean, how to regenerate your stem cells, all of these information, they are overwhelming for a non-medical doctor. And even for a medical doctor. But that’s why we we put the Recovery Fundamentals Program, because this is the information that I want my patient to do and know for now in order to reprogram their body to be into into to put it into the healing moods. OK, when when I have someone like and then I ask them, we do like life support every Wednesday. I because of my time, I only attend once per month for each group. And we do a coaching session like the group, like one of them or two of them, we discuss their cases. We take their permission and we discuss their cases and we tell them what what what needs to be done. So so for instance, the overwhelm whenever I have a patient, I tell them, like, bring me all your questions. So they get we they get all the questions in the support. Like, Dr. We have heard that the coffee enema is extremely important. And some others said that the coffee enema disrupts your microbiome. Then we discuss that in the in the life session, the weekly life session. So the overwhelm is is it tracks your health. So what I do is that I have them send me all their questions via an email or we discuss that life and I prioritize. So back to your questions. So I prioritize the. According to the state of the patients, like if the patient has an aggressive disease, then listen, if you don’t have to do that, you have to do the recovery fundamentals, but you have to start chemotherapy. So in order for you to do the chemotherapy with the least side effects, you have to stop the sugar, optimize vitamin D, normalize your homocysteine, check your inflammatory markers and insulin resistance. So I have like we and Patricia and I, we have created this Excel sheet where it goes red, if it’s above level, yellow, if it’s below and green. So and it’s like CBC, so complete blood picture, liver function, kidney function, and then glycemic load and cholesterol, because you can know the insulin resistance from both of them without doing any super expensive blood tests. Thyroid profile with the antibodies. And then if the antibodies are high, we do the epsilon bar virus and CMV. And then we do the tumor markers and the general inflammatory markers. So the patient has to his head has to be organized. So if you if you put the patient into like a very nice framework, he will not be overwhelmed.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
Yeah. And, and actually what we do in the, in the, in the recovery fundamentals or, or what I give homeworks to my patients and I tell them, I need by next week that you do this and that what would help. And I will add by, uh, so I’m doing like a reconfiguration for, uh, the aware clinic and I’m adding two health coaches to the, the, the team so that they can follow up more efficiently with the patient. They are, one of them is graduated from the function nutrition, um, uh, course, uh, by Andrea Nakayama, I think, and the other form the function medicine coaching academy, so they know, they, you know, all about our questionnaires, uh, the steps to do. And I think if you put a patient in this environment, he will not be overwhelmed and he will be compliant to treatments. And because the in compliance, uh, that leads to, uh, unsustained, uh, results. And then, and, and as I told you cannot supplement yourself out of a bad diet and too much is not always good. So I have, I have patients with like 21 lists of supplements, 21 supplements. So I’m telling them, but this is too much. And then everyone talks about intravenous vitamin C. Which is amazing. However, are you a candidate for intravenous vitamin C or it will produce more oxidation that your body needs. So it will actually promote for cancer rather than prevent it. So there are criteria for every treatment that everyone has to check before indulging themselves into that treatment.

Robin Daly
Interesting you introduced coaches there because they are on the rise as a kind of essential part of a team these days, just to have a reference point really, because the other thing that you brought in, which I thought was very important, is how you’re working with people in a group, which is a great way to deal with these kinds of things, I think. I mean, they’re finding that in lots of different sort of disease groups, if you like, that actually working together, well apart from the fact that you can answer one person’s question and everybody gets the answer, also you get this collaboration between the members of a group to actually give each other support and to keep on track for things, which is very challenging indeed, and as a solo journey, it’s no fun. So that’s a great idea, now we need to see more of that happening, I think, I mean, most of these people in this country certainly are on a very solo journey, and it’s very isolated and difficult, so I like that idea. Okay, so I mean, you’re having a lot of forward thinking ideas there about how to better approach the situation of someone with cancer, and as I just said, in this country, certainly people aren’t getting that, generally, it’s not happening. So if it happens for somebody, it’s because they made it happen themselves, that’s the way it happens, is they, maybe they contact yes to life, whatever it is, they look outside the box and then they find a new point of contact, you know, a lot of people would be aware, for instance, that the nutrition’s got something to do with it, so they might contact a nutritionist and find somebody who’s used to helping people with cancer, but they get some doorway into other support mechanisms outside of hospital, and usually things branch out from that, I mean, they come to us, they’ll get lots of referrals to whatever they need. So that’s great when it happens, but it doesn’t always happen, obviously, you know, we as an organisation, what we’d like to see is that oncologists don’t necessarily do what you’ve done and become a functional medicine practitioner, but they know what’s out there, and they know how much it can help, and when their patient says, you know, what else can I do to help myself, they don’t say nothing, they actually give them some useful information who to contact and say, yeah, it’s good, you do everything you can to help yourself. That is a major cultural change, I mean, it’s massive, it’s, you know, it’s, I feel that the culture that supports that is somewhere back in the 1950s or 60s, somewhere, the idea that you treat people as individuals, and you listen to them, and you hear what their needs are, and you respond to them, you know, that hasn’t really crept in yet, it’s you just tell people what they’re going to do in this country, and they cause a fuss, they’re a difficult patient.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
We are in a very, we’re in a very fast paced life, Robin, like I used to see back at back in when I was like practicing conventional oncology back in the Cairo University, I used to see 65 patients per day.

Robin Daly
Wow, it’s amazing, isn’t it?

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
Yes, from 8 a.m. until 2, I have to see 65 patients.

Robin Daly
So you will never address the whole person.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
No.

Robin Daly
I can see that but even within seeing 65 patients, if you know there’s a big help just over there who will actually answer a lot of this patient’s questions and direct them where they need for help and everything else and you say so, then you’re actually making your life easier. You’re going to not only have a happier patient because they’ve actually getting listened to and having their questions answered, but also they’re going to be healthier through your treatment. You’re going to have reactions over and over again and readmittances. You’re going to have a simpler job and you’re going to get better results and you’ll feel happier about the results you get. So, I mean everybody wins, but nonetheless it’s not handling that change. So anyway, I’m just interested. You obviously see both sides because you’re an oncologist and a functional medicine practitioner, a rarity indeed, but how do you feel that oncologists are going to stop feeling threatened by the the incursion, if you like, of other people into supporting people with cancer and actually see that as a help to them and their patients?

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
Well, hey, the problem is that why do they see integrative oncology as a threat to them? There are a lot of sick people, a lot, like one in every two men, one in every three women, like get cancer or get like precancerous lesion, et cetera. So there are a lot of people. So it’s like a mindset. When I was talking, when I was seeing 65 patients per day, and then someone comes to me from the pharmaceuticals, offering me information about a new drug, I would say, yeah, give me the leaflet. I will look at it later. But then if someone comes to me, I say, oh, Dr. Offe, I think that we should give a nutritional program for the patients, whilst me seeing 65 patients, well, I said, okay, I will refer that patient to you, however, and I think that it’s the same in the UK as well, that nutrition in the hospital, like clinical nutritionists in the hospitals, they don’t follow the right nutritional advices for cancer patients. So we still see people who have surgeries and they give them like the ensure or the, you know, this protein shakes that are filled with sugar, and we don’t accept the educated patients who go to the hospital and they ask their doctors, I will not put this in my mouth. And I have a lot of patients who actually go to surgeries on a ketogenic diet and the recovery time is much better, much better than people who just eat jelly and pudding after surgery. So everyone has to know, like the clinical oncologist has to know, the nutritionist has to know, we have to have support groups, et cetera. And I think from what you are doing, God bless you, from what I’m trying to do, from what all of the other great doctors and name that I got to know from our last conferences together, we are on the right track. However, we need doctors to listen. Why am I listening as a conventional doctor? Because I had a personal incident with cancer and I didn’t believe that I need to poison people in order to get better. I will poison them, but not them. I need to poison the cancer and make them feel better. So what we’re doing is that we see a cancer on a skin and we bomb it with a nuclear chemotherapy.

Robin Daly
Yeah, yeah. What you described is you’re like a sort of different philosophy. One of them is like, well, my job is to kill this cancer. And but the other job is my job is to make this patient well, which is a different job, actually. And certainly, I think you’re exactly right. I think it’s not quite the case now. But certainly, within my experience of taking my daughter through chemotherapy, this was at the time when they tried to, they were trying to give as much as they possibly could without killing you. Yeah. So they were going beyond the threshold, but it would kill you and then bringing you back to life again with, by giving your stem cells back. It really, that was a sort of dicing with death thing. And I don’t think that’s, that’s not happening anymore. They realized it didn’t actually even work. But nonetheless, that kind of mindset of support is, well, you know, that’s, that’s the thing which we want to introduce, if you like, into the health service, it goes with prevention. And it’s all about sort of caring for people, not just treating them. And they become people within that, because you have, if you want them to be well, get well, you have to actually listen to what’s going on.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
yes hear the whole story he has to hear you have to hear the whole story yeah

Robin Daly
So just, you know, you mentioned why you got involved in looking outside the box, if you like, could you say a bit more about that? I mean, I think that’s a fascinating thing, because, you know, here you are, you are an oncologist, presumably didn’t know anything about nutrition and functional medicine at one point. But for some reason, you decided to look into it for yourself. So would you tell us a bit about that? What made the difference?

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
Well, first of all, I had a far relative who had lymphoma and then she reached out to a naturopathic doctor in the States and her lymphoma was behind the kidney. It was 26 centimeters and then she simply got supplements from the States. Yes, yes, it was huge behind the kidney. And then in two weeks from just using the supplements, it shrank into 15.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
Like, yeah, I was like, oh, and you haven’t started chemotherapy yet. So and then I used to be given those. So that was in the private practice, not in the in the in the general hospital. So I was like, so she told me, like, I am going to prepare myself to take chemotherapy. This is what my naturopath taught me. So her naturopath taught her. So before the you know, before chemotherapy, we give something called pre-medication. So it’s like some saline, normal saline with the anti-emetic to prevent the vomiting, proton pump inhibitor for the stomach and steroids. So she said, I don’t want anything. I will only maybe take the proton pump inhibitor. I don’t want an anti-emetic. I don’t want the cortisol. So I told her, like, auntie, because she was a far relative, you will you will you will vomit. It’s a harsh chemotherapy. And then she asked the doctor to give her like half the dose of the chemotherapy.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
So I was like, Oh my God. So, so like, are you taking half the dose of chemotherapy and you’re not taking. So she is cancer free from lymphoma. God bless her touch wood from 2000 and now we are 2023. I called her last week to check on her.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
In other scenarios that inform a patient, especially the non-Hodgkin lymphoma, they take chemotherapy, the scans are clear, we shake their hands, congratulations, and we get them like a cake to celebrate that they are free. And then six months later, they get another relapse, and another relapse, and another relapse, and then the patient like wither and die from the side effects of the chemotherapy. That’s when I tried her naturopathic approach actually with my relative who had lung cancer. And I told them like, I don’t have cancer, you have sarcoidosis. So I played on his mental status that this is not cancer, because if he knew it was cancer, you would have died immediately. Because they don’t have this background about cancer is not a death sentence. And I used to give him chemotherapy in the house. I used to give him taxon, carbo, and anitala, immunotherapy for lung cancer. So I gave it to him, and he didn’t have a drop in his wide blood counts or hemoglobin. He was going to work the second day without any side effects. What happened is that from the radiotherapy, he had post radiation and pneumonitis, which is inflammation in the lung and the pleura, pleuritis. So he kept coughing, coughing, coughing. So they gave him, guess what, steroids, large dose for three months to stop coughing. What does steroids do? Steroids are an amazing acute therapy to save the day. However, if you use it for a long time, it’s an immunosuppression. So after three months, metastasis in the brain.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
So I said, I’m not going to do this again, ever. And I switched to, and I knew, I saw this video for Mark Hyman, and I switched to function medicine, which is actually, oh, this is the medicine that actually makes sense. Why do people type 2 diabetes cannot reverse their diabetes? They can. Why do people get cardiovascular diseases? It’s not just genetics. Well, so if someone has a cardiovascular insult or like a stroke, you check his cholesterol. He has hyperlipidemia. Why does he has hyperlipidemia? Is it his diet or genetics? You change the diet. The hyperlipidemia doesn’t change. You change the genetics. You actually not change the genetics, but you med in with the expression of the G. So you check here. The ApoE, is it 4 over 4, 3 over 3, 2 over 3? And then you give the right diet to improve the expression of that gene. So there are a lot of tools that can be done. And what if you have a cancer patient, and this was my case study in the keto life conference last year, 79 years old lady, single breast lump lesion, open heart surgery 20 years ago, diabetic on antihypertensive and insulin. And they wanted to do full mastectomy for her followed by radiotherapy. So her son heard about me came to me and I told him, listen, like your mom will die in the operating theater. And we did the metabolic approach with her with very tiny things. And we did something called sono dynamic therapy with my friend here in Egypt, and now she’s two years without active cancer. She didn’t do surgery. She didn’t take chemotherapy. She didn’t even take hormonal therapy. However, we did the biopsy, we did the scans, we did the blood tests, and she couldn’t afford to do a new to genomics test. But we guessed like because we’re good clinicians, so we can assess how things go. So it depends on every case. In some cases, I tell her you have to go through chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery. And some others, well, this is not aggressive. It’s a slowly growing tumor. How about we try the metabolic approach, and if it got bigger, then we can go more aggressively.

Robin Daly
Absolutely. Yeah, very interesting. So, you know, it was that personal experience of yours, if you like, that pushed you to really look somewhere else, which of course not everybody’s got that. So, one of the things, you know when I was asking you about your interactions with oncologists in Britain and their willingness to look at various things? Well, you’ve mentioned a lot of times, of course, about the fact that cancer is a metabolic disease. And this is something which is, it’s beginning to be widely accepted, but it’s certainly not accepted in UK hospitals. I don’t think anybody’s talking about metabolics in hospitals still. This is, if you like, it’s the sort of barrier we have to cross between cancer as a genetic disease fundamentally, or is it fundamentally a metabolic disease? And, you know, these are two different theories. And, you know, I think it’s quite clear at this point, since they’ve been going down the genetic route so long, they’ve actually found out that it’s not true, but they haven’t found anything else instead. And so it’s still being used, you know, there’s still people talking about it as though it’s true, even though all the evidence is there that it’s clearly not true. So, when you come along with approaches which only make sense within a metabolic model, how are those accepted? What kind of response do you get?

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
It’s a lot of debates and a lot of arguing back and forth. Okay, good. However, I send them the 2019 and there’s a 2022 one paper about hyperglycemia and tumor progression in different malignancies, number one, and I send them the vitamin D papers about how vitamin D is crucial in actually preventing cancer and optimizing the treatment. And the other thing is that they get to, so they are resistant because they don’t have time. So I sometimes I think, oh, it’s my fault. I didn’t go to like cancer, like the ASCO, the American Society of Clinical Oncology or the, and I have to go as a clinical oncologist and tell them about this.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
So sometimes I think it’s my fault, but then, well, it’s not only me. There are a lot of clinical oncologists, especially in the States, who actually do the integrative oncology. So you have to be courageous enough in order to speak out loud in the oncology. However, after my presentation in a, in a, in a, in a conventional oncology conference, next presentation will be like a symposium for a pharma medicine that says that, oh, but this medicine is amazing and it improves the overall survival from three months to 4.2.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
And we will just if you and the more you you have the patients going in them and we have an offer by to get one free. I don’t know, Robin, but like I am trying to whichever data I put in any lecture I give, I have the scientific data at the bottom. So I am ready to go into conferences oncology and have people like give me a headache about vitamin D and cancer. So why are you debating with me? Look at the reference like if you just open your laptop or your iPhone and you just say vitamin D and cancer or methylation and cancer. They just don’t they just I don’t know there is resistance. They don’t want to do it.

Robin Daly
hmm no they don’t want to do it. Well there’s a lot of pressure to conform I think and to keep doing what they’re already doing and individually of course they’re seeing 68 patients a day or whatever it is and they just think well look I’ve got no time for this stuff you just do what you’ve been taught so um

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
But you are doing an amazing job in England, like the association that Nina Fuller has developed for the integrative oncology. Like I am so proud and happy that something like this exists. It’s good.

Robin Daly
It’s really good. Yeah, no, it’s very good. And we are getting some traction just beginning, you know, it is happening and it will happen. It’s got to happen because it’s the scientific facts, you know, it’s you can’t buck the facts forever. And so, yeah, it is happening. And that’s great. We just got to keep pushing like mad, though, if it wanted to happen anytime soon.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
we’ll just have to count on awareness and that our patient is very aware about what’s going on, the treatment options and even show the doctor the papers in his face and like why should I be taking this when I should be taking that etc.

Robin Daly
You’re right education and patience is the way to create the pressure for change and yeah, that’s what we’re doing So anyway, I think we’re out of time very interesting and full Conversation. Thank you very much. Bye. Bye

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
I hope that the audience have got like some clinical pearls out of it. So don’t panic. Don’t panic. Check the status. Right. You have to do the right labs, the right scans, the genomics if you can, and a biopsy is crucial. Not a fine needle biopsy. It has to be a tissue called biopsy to get the right tissue. And then you have to prepare your body to take the chemotherapy if you are eligible for it. Right. Prepare your body.

Robin Daly
Thank you for saying that. All too many people say that thing about, I’ll do my conventional treatment and then I’ll look at all that stuff. And I’m like, no, no, you’ve got to look now. So, yeah. OK, well, thanks very much, Waffaa.

Dr Wafaa Abdel-Hadi
Thank you very much Robin for having me and take good care of yourself.

Robin Daly
Thank you, lovely to talk to you.

Robin Daly
So refreshing to have an open-minded chat with an oncologist about what works and what’s best for patients. As I mentioned at the start, we’re coming up to the first of two one-day conferences, together called You and Your Cancer Team. There will be a mine of practical and helpful resources for people with cancer. The first event is online on the 17th of June, so get yourself a place right away. Read about the brilliant line-up of speakers and topics and book at YesToLifeAnnualConference.org or else you can get there from the event section on the main YesToLife website, that’s YesToLife.org.uk. Thanks for listening. I hope you can listen again next week when I’ll be back with another Yes To Life show.