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

Robin Daly
Hi and welcome to the Yes to Life show on UK Health Radio. I’m Robin Daly and I’m the founder of Yes to Life, the UK territory that works to make integrative care available to those with cancer through education and direct support. Today’s show is what I call a big picture discussion, looking at the state of our understanding of cancer and our efforts to treat it. And who better to explore the big picture with than Robert Verkerk of the Alliance for Natural Health, one of the leading thinkers of our time in the healthcare space. For the interview I’m visiting the Alliance for Natural Health offices, charmingly located in a repurposed Victorian station building, which means you’ll hear the occasional train pass during the interview. Thanks for the usual warm welcome here at Alliance for Natural Health HQ, wonderful.

Rob Verkerk
Glad you can be here

Robin Daly
Today I want to have a bit of a big picture conversation, an overview of where things are going with cancer and cancer treatment, and it’s going to have to mean that quite a lot of the detail is left out for another day. It’s going to be top level. We’re at a moment where there seems to be some genuine progress in the understanding and treatment of cancer on the one hand, but this is set against the backdrop of inexorably rising incidents and possibly, most worryingly, a steady lowering of the age at which cancer is to be expected. Firstly, taking in this full spectrum of this unfolding drama we have, on balance, where do you think we stand?

Rob Verkerk
I think there is no doubt if we maintain the current trajectory in terms of how research is funded and how medicine and oncology is practiced in the mainstream, we will be, have very little effect on the overall increasingly disturbing statistics around cancer. And that is because we still don’t have a systems -based approach to looking at cancer. It’s still, you know, I think one of the ways of looking at it is that we tend to view whatever problem we approach through what we regard as our best lens and the best lens at the moment exists in the realm of molecular biology and genetics. So we see most of the developments going on within that realm. So if you look at the moment, I mean, without doubt, the huge opportunity that is being seized on in the cancer research field, if you look at the papers that are coming out about it is in the field of mRNA vaccines.

Rob Verkerk
And so mRNA vaccines were already being heavily studied prior to COVID -19 pandemic. And what’s happened is that they’ve now received massive impotence because of the deemed success. And I find it interesting in every paper you read, you will see owing to the extraordinary success of the COVID vaccines. And we’re now, you know, moving forward. And of course, what essentially that did is, is develop the delivery system for mRNA, mRNA being the instructions that are given to the body to produce proteins and proteins are the signaling molecules of life. So you have this capacity to be able to alter signaling with the butt within the body. And if you like cancer, in its many manifestations, is always a disturbance of signaling. And it’s particularly a disturbance of immune signaling.

Rob Verkerk
So because of the lens that is being used, there is this massive focus on trying to use the technology of mRNA vaccines to first of all, individualize according to someone specific CD8 cells, for example, to talk to the the sentinels of the immune system such as dendritic cells and macrophages, so that you can enhance the production of antigen presenting cell responses that talk to the different classes of compounds that signal to the T cells and the cytotoxic T cells that are in our bodies, those of us who don’t have cancer, that system is working really well, thank you very much. And so we all have cancer cells every day. So you can understand why the focus now is how can we make a cancer patient act more like a healthy patient?

Rob Verkerk
And that’s what they’re focusing on. The problem is when you have so much focus on that, because you can see the dollars and cents of cracking that, you don’t look at the bigger picture of how this system interacts within the whole within all the and it totally ignores the role of epigenetics. And the more we look at cancer, the more we see it as a problem of epigenetics. And when we look at the overall trajectory, this increase in the prevalence of cancer, which can also be seen as a classic disease of senescence. As we get older, we all become less effective. And actually the natural response is to find ways of getting us out of the way so we can make way for the next generation. And so that in itself is less of a problem. What the real signal in terms of the epigenetic crisis that we’re in at the moment is the fact that you raised in your introduction, which is that people are getting Cancers for at every younger ages.

Rob Verkerk
They’re getting a whole complex That’s another signal that we should be looking at not just cancer But all the diseases that we previously associate with aging all happening to people at every younger age and That should be something that we you know are looking what is up with this system. Yeah Yeah, and that’s why I think we’re we’re We confuse If we look at what’s happening in the so -called exciting areas the things that will hit newspaper headlines when there’s been a successful phase one or phase two trial That everyone thinks is going to be a solution. I don’t think so this the solution will only come when we change the overall pattern of epigenetic expression and an example of of Why epigenetics is so important is the the new? Phenomenon that has emerged over the last two or three years on Turbo cancers mmm extremely aggressive cancers that can only happen Not because of a genetic change but because of an epigenetic change So what is it about it?

Rob Verkerk
And of course people are pointing is their relationship with the mRNA covid vaccines. Well looking like that’s a pretty open area at the moment and again, it’s deeply disturbing to me to see that when People point to the possibility if you look at the way science should function If it’s a plausible hypothesis Open that door Look have a really careful. Look at what’s going in there. The problem is that those doors Increasingly get closed. So we fail to address This epigenetic crisis that is actually driving these is this answer process

Robin Daly
Yeah, so, you know, these things are going to bring help to some that actually not solve the problem.

Rob Verkerk
Yeah, I think what we’ll start to see is some some real successes with more genetic related cancers, which are the absolute minority. I mean, you know, because of the dominance of the somatic theory in oncology research, there’s been this general view that, you know, if you look at the the typical scientific agreement on the role of nature versus nurture in carcinogenesis, you know, we moved from, you know, when I was younger, it was kind of like 50 50. And then for a long time, it settled on, you know, 20% genetics, 80% environment. We’re now kind of moving to a world where it’s probably more like 5% genetics and 95%. And that trend may continue. Right. And, and I would say that the difficulty is that when you look at how much is genetics and how much is an environment, actually, epigenetics tells us that the separation of those two is a false separation.

Rob Verkerk
And epigenetics is about the interaction of the environment on the genome. So you shouldn’t be separating the two. And so which is why the solution has to be about how you change epigenetic expression. And if you want to change epigenetic expression, you have to deal with the things that are most fundamental to the way in which a human being functions. And the things that are most fundamental to it are the environment within within which that individual lives. And, and nutrition, what you eat, and how you eat, when you eat, is one of the most fundamental and intimate ways in which we experience the environment. But also, the more we understand in the field of neuroscience, your mental, emotional and psychological state, which is somewhat argues, absolutely inseparable from your spiritual state, is just as important to that epigenetic expression.

Rob Verkerk
And that’s the reason that so called complementary and alternative therapies are never going to go out of fashion. They we might have to change the way we compartmentalize them, they’ve been deliberately marginalized, because they don’t make money, they compete with the mainstream. But one of the reasons that patients and families affected by cancer keep coming back to them is because they actually understand that they have to change the environment that their loved ones are living within. And, and, you know, changing the frequency, changing the food, changing the dietary pattern, helping someone to move out of a stressful, traumatic situation, that the development of positive psychology is a discipline looking at the work that, you know, Martin Seligman and others are doing the University of Pennsylvania, extremely, these are extremely important sort of new areas that are developing.

Rob Verkerk
If we look at the development in the field of frequency medicine, that is without doubt, a new emerging frontier of medicine that actually loops us all the way back to what the ancients were doing. They’re always saying, you know, the state of vibration of resonance of the being, which is linked to their, you know, their soul journey, their emotional journey, you know, how they’re treated as children and how they grow up and their attitude towards others and their ability to give and, and, you know, feel that they’re part of society. These things should be part of our, the way in which we handle cancer, but you’re not going to have a clinical trial, you know, that’s going to, yes, you might, you might within the realms of a given frequency medicine machine, but the solution is about how you bring this whole universe of different modalities together into a system that speaks to the human body.

Rob Verkerk
And yes, the genetic code is the book of life that in its four letter wondrous way is the underlying program. But that is an underlying program that we come into this world with that is designed to be conditioned and adapted to the environment within which we live. And that is the area of cancer that we are, we’re just by and lasting in, in mainstream.

Robin Daly
medical circles. So a quick plug for the entire show with you that I recorded some time back on energy medicine. Look it up listeners. Very very interesting territory. So look can we take a bit of a sweep here just look I want to look at conventional and unconventional medicine and just see well what’s happened and what is happening in conventional medicine in research and in treatment and what benefits has it brought. I mean we’ve we’ve gone from the traditional three that were always out there with some kind of mixture of chemotherapy radiotherapy and surgery but everybody was delved out with some proportion of those. Now there are some new players in there there’s monoclonal antibodies there’s some immunotherapy you know there’s some new things. How much has benefited our catwalk of pace?

Rob Verkerk
Well, I think it’s happening. There is no doubt. Yes, I think we need to move away from this sort of triad approach of saying that all of allopathic medicine is only chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery. That is now out of date in terms of how we view it. So you’re actually right. Immunotherapy is a very big area of growth. And obviously, it is being seen and viewed through this, you know, genetic and molecular lens. And, you know, I think the real possibility of it being able to deliver more predictable results for highly aggressive cancers is an opportunity. And it was one that, you know, makes sense for at least a proportion of the research community to be following. The side of it that is concerning sometimes is the fact that we keep discovering kind of by the by that there’s some very unsavory results in some of the early trials that show catastrophic negative adverse effects that can lead to death.

Rob Verkerk
Yeah, autumn. Exactly. And so we are playing with a system that we still don’t fully understand. And, and so there are dangers that the principle being that that the phase 123 approach that has been, you know, developed over the last few decades, as a mechanism being able to bring so called safe and effective therapies to market doesn’t work very well. Right. It’s, you know, it is without one of the areas that we want to be able to tackle is changing the way in which medical doctors and oncologists and health authorities use the terms that there is a conflation between the responsibility of a regulator to review the three pillars of licensing, which is quality, effectiveness, and safety with having determined categorically that the things are that the license products are of high quality and predictable quality are safe and effective.

Rob Verkerk
So you keep seeing the use of these terms safe and effective. And of course, what really happens is that there is a way up between risk and benefit. That is, that is as simple as it is very complex. And, and it involves a seesaw with risk on one side and benefit on the other. That has two different currencies. It’s not like you’re looking at apples and apples, you’re looking at apples and oranges, the risk of, you know, of an adverse effect or even death cannot be measured against the potential benefit in terms of whether it gives, you know, extension of five years survival or ten years survival, or, you know, or even if you look at quality of life measures using disability adjusted life years or whatever, it’s a complex picture. So they’re definitely licensed products are not safe and effective. A lot of these new therapies are still viewed as experimental. Obviously, there are people who are being encouraged to join these clinical trials.

Rob Verkerk
And that has to be an individual decision. The fact that people think because something is an immune therapy, that it’s going to be safe is not the case. And that’s probably a big difference between natural immune support approaches that are being used by many interpretive practitioners and, you know, even oncologists who are working alongside interpretive approaches, you know, those supportive immune approaches tend to be very, very safe. Yeah, entirely different, because you’re not dealing with the, you know, inner workings of APCs.

Robin Daly
the system rather than interfering with it. That be right?

Rob Verkerk
Yes, although you could argue that some of the latest developments are about enhancing the production of cytotoxic T cells, for example, that are meant to be, you know, the technique if we move into the realm of mRNA vaccines is that you could potentially develop a specific pattern of cytotoxic T cells that exclusively go after the unique, if you like, the neoantigens, the new antigens that are associated only with the tumor cells and not healthy cells. So, and that’s would be one of the reasons that I think, you know, it’s very hard to say you should never go down that route, because the possibility, particularly for very aggressive cancers where you need to slow down the rate of metastatic growth of that tumor, if you don’t, it will kill that individual, you need to have and it is inevitably a progression to move towards a higher degree of specificity for tumor cells.

Rob Verkerk
And that may involve having to use, you know, a genetically guided approach that a technology like mRNA could provide. So, so I think we are moving the great positivity moving forward would be the ability to have a much more open door between supportive natural treatments that change epigenetic expression and these kinds of more innovative targeted treatments, because you could then have a highly targeted approach that runs alongside a more generalized approach that supports the body and increases the resilience and we’re still quite a long way away from that.

Robin Daly
Yeah well that’s where a lot of the evidence seems to be pointing that we need both these things that actually one or the other is not nearly as good as both together. So since turn of the century we’ve seen a steady rise in the science and research around cancer as a metabolic disease. Now a lot of people listening may have heard these terms metabolic, genetic and without realizing how significant they are when it comes to the direction of research and even the choice of treatment. So I think it would be useful to spend a minute or two just looking at these terms and maybe give you a layman’s version of exactly what a metabolic view of cancer is, what a genetic view of cancer is and how these play into the ways that people approach science and treatment.

Rob Verkerk
Well, during the process of understanding what cancer is, of course, metabolic theory goes back to the work of Otto Warburg, to understand that the right at the heart of the dysfunction are the energy factories of the body, mitochondria, essentially bacteria that made their homes in eukaryotic animal cells, all animal cells, and in fact, chloroplasts in plants have a very, very similar evolutionary history. So metabolic theory basically says that there is a serious dysregulation in the way that energy production works in the mitochondria, and that is specific to the cancer cells. So when that starts happening, the whole energy metabolism becomes completely dysregulated.

Rob Verkerk
Sugar gets pulled into the system that allows massive development of the cancer cells and the development of metastatic cancers. The reality is that when you look at the available research now, what we see is this continuing pattern, which allows us to think of the fact that there are probably over 10 prevailing theories, we still have to use the term theories, because that means we just don’t understand something completely. So there are 12 or so currently prevailing theories, and of course, Mark Linton has added another one with cell suppression theory to the mix, that seems to show that in certain types of cancer, there is better evidence for one theory being more dominant than another.

Rob Verkerk
So one of the general trends has been, while the somatic mutation theory was viewed as the prevailing theory, I think there is a very large and growing body of oncologists and researchers now that are changing their mind on that, particularly because of their understanding of epigenetics, and particularly because the development of a pharmacogenomic approach to the development of cancer drugs, oncologic drugs, has not revealed very much at all. In fact, the whole thing has been a disaster really, from the point of view, which is why the next frontier is mRNA vaccines. That’s now what they’re… So in the early noughties, pharmacogenomically guided oncologic drugs was going to be the future, and that’s failed.

Rob Verkerk
So essentially, we come back to metabolic theory. There are different kinds of cancers where it is very, very clear that metabolic theory is the big player. And essentially, what we understand about metabolic theory is in practice, those treatment approaches that are going to be highly responsive to a ketogenic diet are going to be ones where it becomes pretty clear that metabolic dysregulation is the main player. If the ketogenic diet isn’t giving the kind of remission response that someone is hoping for, it maybe isn’t the key player and there are other players involved. And that’s one of the reasons that I have a huge regard for Thomas E. Frieden, all the players who really got the news out on it. But if you are a cancer patient or have a loved one who has cancer, and they’ve really done the ketogenic diet as well as they could have, and they haven’t seen a response.

Rob Verkerk
You know, you can also understand that, that, that, you know, and it may be an important component. I mean, that, that the wonderful thing about any approach that has a very low threshold for adverse, for creating an adverse reaction is, is, you know, there is no harm in trying it. There can usually only be benefit. And again, the more we understand about the micro environment of tumors and the system within which tumors exist is that sometimes we can be dealing with an A plus B plus C plus D phenomenon where the ketogenic diet on its own has little or no effect. But when you start combining it alongside phytotherapy, immune support, you know, work on, on, you know, the emotional state of an individual, suddenly the whole thing starts coming together because the system starts to change.

Rob Verkerk
So and that, again, would support this notion that, that cancer is extremely complex set of diseases. And we, we, we use the term cancer to refer to the dysregulation that we see. So it is a downstream dysregulation symptom that we see as cancer. It does not mean that the upstream contributing factors and mediators are the same, which is also why this idea of having a more individualized approach and an understanding that you need to have, you know, a dynamic, individualized approach that is very sensitive to the combination of approaches that are being used. And so the cluster of healthcare professionals that are dealing with this need to be in communication with one another so that they can, with their various expertise, look at the system. And again, this is something that I think we all have a lot of work to do to try and facilitate this integration of communication between different experts who are dealing with different systems within the body.

Robin Daly
Yeah very important. Very interesting to just look at that in terms of here we have these multiple theories and what it put me in mind of is the way I got taught at school well look there’s light and if you want to explain this you call it a particle but if you want to explain this you call it a wave you know and wait a minute it can’t be both but it just means we don’t really understand what’s going on doesn’t it and so we had to work with what we got.

Rob Verkerk
This, this is exactly it. You know, we see another, you know, huge area of development in understanding cancers is, is what role do microorganisms play in it? And you never see Mark Linton is as indulged in this in this whole area. Yeah. But of course, we were also moving into a realm where we understand more and more about the crucial role that microorganism has play within living systems in general. And, you know, we have a big hangover from the germ theory around the role of microorganisms as pathogens. Yeah. And again, we, we, yeah, we have to understand that a microorganism can be a pathogen in certain situations and conditions and environments. And in other situations, that very same organism may actually provide an adaptive stress to the system, or it may facilitate genetic exchange, the more we understand about viruses.

Rob Verkerk
And, you know, again, I’m a big believer that, that we need to understand, you know, complexity and the dynamism of, you know, complex systems is the area that I did my PhD in and multi -traffic interaction. So I’m really of a view that the evolutionary biologists that are starting to think of viruses as a process, rather than a thing, takes us closer to understanding the evolutionary role of viruses. So we got, you know, if we look at cervical cancer and the role of HPV, yes, there is a clear association between certain HPV variants and cervical cancer. Does that mean that HPV is always a bad guy? Absolutely not. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest it may play a very, very positive role, even for HPV 16 and 18 in people who don’t express cancer.

Rob Verkerk
Why? Because their epigenetics is different. And so, yeah, thinking of viruses as a process, thinking of microorganisms as facilitators that are an incredibly important part of living processes that help us to adapt to changing environments, the very fact that probably 8 to 12% of our genetic code is actually a virome, is comprised of retroviruses that have been integrated within our genome. I mean, was that all a mistake? No. And the more we understand about the non -local effects of, you know, changes, that is one of the difficulties we have in all the genetic research that is being undergone. And I personally have very grave concerns about the role of CRISPR gene editing technology in the food supply. Because as we said earlier, food is one of the most critical things to our epigenetic expression. And if we start to change our food supply from the kind of ancestral food types that we were exposed to over millennia, we’re going to be playing the system. Yeah, we won’t be able to adapt quick enough.

Rob Verkerk
And we could create a whole range of long non -local effects that create very unpredictable consequences in terms of gene expression.

Robin Daly
Scary stuff. Okay, anyway, back to the metabolic. So what do you think metabolic research and science is bringing to the table for people with cancer now? What’s the big wins?

Rob Verkerk
I think probably the the number one win is a vital understanding of the role of mitochondrial health, if I can put it that way. You know, mitochondria have just been seen to be this little energy factory that exists in the body that, you know, produces the chemical energy that we need. And if we can understand that one of the keys to life is to ensure that we look after our mitochondria, that we work to get them, you know, regulated better, and that for the electron transport chain to work within a mitochondria, there is a vital need for a range of cofactors and nutrients, and that we need to ensure that the disruption through the Warburg effect of how respiration occurs within that doesn’t occur because as soon as you start getting that disruption,

Rob Verkerk
the dysregulation will provide the exact foundations for a metabolic cancer to take hold in the body. So we don’t see in preventative health care much being done in terms of mitochondrial health. And one of the reasons that, you know, for example, a colleague of ours, Dr. Leo Poenbaum from the Poenbaum Institute in the Netherlands, has just received a three million euro grant for looking at what he calls his intermittent living concept for cancer. And specifically because if you look at one of the most dangerous things we do, it’s sitting down, you and I are doing that right now. And it is no secret to suggest that sitting is the new smoking. The one thing our mitochondria absolutely hate is sedentary bilabia. It is a killer. And if you look at the work that is now being done, looking at how we change mitochondrial health in order to maintain the regulation of our mitochondria, we’ve got to start sitting so long, we have to engage in this concept of intimate living.

Rob Verkerk
And, you know, there are probably two really important areas that we can all think about in terms of how we improve our metabolism in that way, whether or not we have cancer or we’re trying to prevent a cancer with every one of us on this planet is doing one or the other. We have cancer out of control, or we’re trying to prevent it. And one relates to patterns of physical activity. And it isn’t good enough to just say, you know, get out there and, you know, have a walk three times a week, and do 30 minutes of activity, moderate activity, three times a week, that isn’t enough to generate mitochondrial health.

Rob Verkerk
The human being requires that we put greater demands on our body. And the interesting thing about putting greater demands on our body is that we it means we stress our body more. And we many of the problems that we deal with today, or with cancer is a big part is linked to the increasingly unstressed nature of particular systems that they’re not placed, we all think we live in this highly stressed environment, but we have what might be termed an imbalance of stress in our lives. So we might have deep emotional stress, or financial stress, relationship stress, or stress about the future. But we do that while we sit in our armchair, putting no stress through the physical systems that push the metabolism, push the mitochondria, to be able to become stronger and more resilient.

Rob Verkerk
So what what happens with mitochondria, is they literally shrink in size, and they shrink in volume. And if we don’t start thinking about this idea of what we call mitochondrial biogenesis, how we build bigger, healthier, and greater in number, we want to We need to, it’s one of the reasons grip strength is so strongly correlated with quality of life and even lifespan and chronic disease. If we can maintain physical strength and do the kind of physical activities that enhance mitochondrial biogenesis, we will reduce our risk of cancer. And is that happening in the realms of cancer care at the moment? No, the metabolic theory and all the work around that supports that idea of mitochondrial health. And the second aspect that we can all deal with is this idea that we expose ourselves to, if you like, chemical or nutritional stresses.

Rob Verkerk
And this introduces, which we could also talk about in relation to mitochondria, but this concept of hormesis, where a little bit of something that is potentially damaging, has a knock -on effect on increasing the resilience of the whole system. And so if we look at, say, we understand the importance of a huge diversity of plant compounds, like sulforaphanes, glucosimamids, indulcery, carbonyl, all these lovely things we find in cruciferous vegetables that many cancer patients know are very good for them. And these were compounds that I was studying during my studies at Imperial College. All of them are pretty toxic. All of them exist in plants as plant secondary compounds to kill infectious agents that might otherwise kill them. But in small amounts, they have this profound effect at improving our capacity to address, if you like, polygenic stresses that come in. Building resilience. Yeah, building resilience. So that’s one of the reasons resilience is the foundation of health.

Rob Verkerk
I have a major issue with the WHO definition of health. I keep hearing people saying, what a fantastic definition, because it basically talks to the fact that health is defined as a complete state of physical and psychological health and wellbeing. And the reality is that there’s not a single person on the planet that is that complete. So what it does is provide an entire universe of eight billion people on the planet who are potentially open for pharmacological treatment. So, and the more progressive views on what health is, move to this idea of experience. It is an experiential state. It is a dynamic state. So as you can have cancer in your body, we all do and be in a healthy state, but it is the degree to which there becomes an imbalance within the body and having an imbalance in your mitochondria, an imbalance in your respiration system that your cells are using,

Rob Verkerk
an imbalance in your immune modulation that is able to mop up the cancer cells that are floating around our bodies that brings us into this state of disease. And that happens because we are losing resilience. So yeah, so intermittent living if you like is should I think become because it is completely about a non -drug based approach to health. We have to relearn how we live in modern society in ways that actually optimize our epigenetic expression. And we can take all the green medicines and all the conventional medicines that we want. If we don’t change the way that we express our genes because of our specific behaviors, we are in deep trouble. And there’s a fantastic study that’s been done in the U .S. looking at the amount of genes of influence, clinical treatment of any type has in in health outcomes and the effect is a stunningly low 16 percent and nearly all of the outcomes, the vast majority nearly 50 percent are the result of behavior and so and the rest of it is environment.

Rob Verkerk
So we have to start to look at how we change our behavior to change the way that our body works because the system is breaking down because we’re not behaving right we’re not we don’t have the right environment around us so that’s what we need.

Robin Daly
Well, we have to end there. That’s a good high point to end. Really fascinating as usual Rob. Always great and I can always depend on you to not only have the science and everything else but also the big picture, you know, the wood and the trees and that’s so important. I think we’re looking to this kind of thing very often, you know, the big picture is missing and it was focusing on one corner and thinking they’re doing great stuff but it’s actually, you’re able to step back and look at the whole thing and say well okay that’s useful but it’s not going to really make a difference but what is going to make a difference?

Robin Daly
What is the thing that addresses the big picture and that’s what you’re pointing to? So really great. Thank you very much for a really interesting interview. Thank you so much Robin. There are very few people with the ability to encompass and synthesize all the moving parts of cancer research and treatment in the way that Robert Kirk does. So I hope you found that both enlightening and useful. Thanks for joining me. I’ll be back again with another expert guest for the next Yes To Life show here on UK Health Radio next week. Goodbye.